26 25.37 N, 108 37.26 W
We got up leisurely and went to the Hotel Hidalgo for breakfast. Afterwards, Rich went back to our room to rest his ankle. Reg, Phoebe and I went exploring. The Hotel Hidalgo professes to be the birthplace of Zorro and where he lived until he was 10 years old. There is a statue of him in the courtyard. I am not sure if this is all true but it does add a little mystery to the Hotel. Apparently Zorro makes an appearance selected evenings at 7:00 pm.
We went looking for the El Meson del General restaurant. It was recommended to us by Cesar. It was not too far from our hotel and they serve seafood, so we decided it would be a good place for dinner.
Even though it is Sunday, most of the shops are open and people are doing their shopping. Since Xmas is coming soon, there were many shops and stores with toys and bicycles. We passed through one open air market selling fruits and vegetables and had drying rattlesnake skins for sale. Some stores were offering cowboy boots and hats which are very popular, the more pointed the toes the better and white hats.
We did see some police wearing balaclavas and carrying semi-automatic weapons riding around in a truck. Everyone seems to accept and ignore them. We did the same.
After a bit more walking we went to the museum. We saw a short film about the local indigenous peoples and about the secret forest. The secret forest refers to the remaining sub tropical forest that is in the area but once stretched all the way to Panama but deforestation has shrunk the size to just the local area around El Fuerte. Sorry I can not give you exact dimensions but it is home to a wide variety of bird life, which we will be seeing tomorrow as we have signed up for a bird watching tour. The museum also had many old photographs of the area including the Copper Canyon. It was surprising that many of the photographs were reproductions from the archives at University of California - Davis. After seeing the canyons and the train stations / towns, the pictures were more interesting as we could compare to what we had just seen. Many photos were of the settlers of El Fuerte. What is it about old pictures, nobody smiles. They all look so dour. I can imagine that life was hard then but, geez, at least smile for the camera. A group of young boys (10 year olds I would guess), came up to us in the museum and said random English words, like "stand up", "sit down", "hello", "what". We tried to respond in both English and Spanish. This went on for a bit until they started asking for money, then we ended the game.
In the afternoon we celebrated Reg's birthday. Phoebe got him a t shirt from Creel. We got him a small bottle of Lechuguilla, the local agave liquor. We all shared some and had a few beers and some wine on the patio, watching the river go by.
In the evening we went to the new restaurant we found. It specializes in seafood. Rich and I had shrimp scampi ($125 pesos a plate), Phoebe had the grilled shrimp and Reg has the black bass with onions. We all liked our selections. For dessert we had flan and what was billed as cheesecake. We all decided it was more of a vanilla cream pie with a graham cracker crust. It was still good.
We went to bed early as we need to be up and ready by 6:00 am to go on the bird watching tour.
Buenas Noches
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