Why You Should Jump on the Copper Canyon Railway Through Northern Mexico Catherine Jarvie - Evening Standard
go to original June 12, 2017

The MEXICO Report correspondent Rick Najera, shows what it's like to ride El Chepe train into Mexico's Copper Canyon in Chihuahua, Mexico. (Susie Albin-Najera)

The not-in-Kansas-anymore moment happens as soon as we land. It has taken a little over an hour to fly from Mexico City to Los Mochis in Mexico’s northern Sinaloa state but its location, between the Gulf of California and the foothills of the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range, leaves a dramatic first impression as we hug the spectacular blue of the coastline to arrive in a desert landscape scattered with sky-high cacti that wouldn’t look out of place in a Tex Avery cartoon.    

The jumping-off point for people heading to the beaches and surf resorts of Baja California, Los Mochis is also the first (or last, depending on your direction of travel) stop on the Copper Canyon Railway. One of the world’s great rail journeys, every morning one of two first-class trains leaves from Mexico’s Pacific coast in the west, the other from Chihuahua in the east. Covering 665km over 14 hours, El Chepe passes over 36 bridges and through 87 tunnels as it climbs from sea level to more than 2,400m. The ticket can be booked in hop-on, hop-off segments, giving you days — or weeks — to explore the stops along the way.

We’re here for nine days, starting in El Fuerte, one stop further along the route. Its desert climate means that in December, when we visit, it’s 30 degrees by day and fleece-jacket cold at night, making our stay a  blend of poolside cervezas and warming open fires. We spend a happy two days navigating its Spanish-influenced avenues and plazas before we get our first glimpse of El Chepe as it steams into the station on day three.

Ensconced in the train’s restaurant car, we see that against a backdrop of lush tropical forest, waterfalls and canyon walls so close we could almost reach out and touch them. The nomadic Ruramuri live scattered across the canyons and came to international attention when their feats of barefoot running — up to 100 miles in a single journey is not uncommon — became the subject of a bestselling book, Born to Run. Their presence punctuates our journey, the women in their colorful wraps and hand-embroidered skirts and shawls offering snacks, jewelry and handicrafts to passengers through the train’s window every time we stop.

The next few days pass in a breathtaking blur. Bahuichivo, our second stop, takes less than four hours to reach but rises so steeply in elevation that the 24 hours we spend there, hiking and horseriding amid the pine-filled valleys, riverways and waterfalls, feels not just a world but seasons away from the arid scrub and desert landscape that surrounds Los Mochis. But it’s when we stop at Divisadero to take in the view that a true sense of the canyons’ scale really registers. Deeper and wider than the Grand Canyon, the Copper Canyon is in fact a series of six major canyons and spans a total length of more than 59,500km. Shimmering red in the afternoon light, the view across Urique canyon is so vast it boggles the mind that this is just a hint of what’s on offer.

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