Overland travel is all about staying in the roughest, most unforgiving environments. Ignoring personal comfort. Shunning the trappings of a tourism. Seeking out discomfort and… no! Wait! Screw it. Today it is all about luxury.
We managed to escape the irresistible gravitational pull of Santa María del Tule. Well. Sort of escape.
When your brakes fail, it might as well be on a winding mountain pass with sheer drop offs and hairpin bends. Even better if it is a pass that climbs from near to sea level up to almost 3000m, before dropping back down to below 1500m. (That’s pushing 10,000′ before returning to less than 5000′ for those of you who have not gleefully embraced the metric system.)
Not a lot can be said to enhance the awesomeness of a surrealist sculpture garden in the jungle. So we’ll just launch straight into some photos.
El Espinazo del Diablo (the Devil’s Backbone—a mountain pass along Mexico’s highway 40) is an infamously sinuous mountain road that joins the towns of Mazatlán, Sinaloa and Durango, Durango. The road has a bit of a reputation for punishing travellers with terrifying accident-inducing winding turns. Luckily travellers are also rewarded with spectacular views as the road runs along a mountain ridge, high in the Sierra Madre mountains. This seemed like exactly the kind of thing we should investigate further.
So how far can two overland monkeys with no maps get exploring the infamously labyrinthine roads of Mexico’s Copper Canyon region? It turns out that they can make it pretty far.
We left with a Map. Well, OK, that isn’t entirely true. We left with a scrap of paper with the names of a couple of towns we would need to drive through written on it.
As usual, we had hit the road without much of a plan. People we had spoken to had suggested several great places near to Loreto which sounded like fantastic next destinations. However, hindered by our near complete lack of maps, Agua Verde was simply the place on that list that we accidentally stumbled upon next.
After a week relaxing on the beach south of Rosarito, recovering from zipping all over the USA like mad people, it was time to get moving again. We just didn’t move very far.
I suspect it is considered a crime to visit British Columbia or Alberta and not pay a visit to Jasper and Banff. Not wanting the Canadian Mounties to angrily chase us out of the country we made the detour to check out these two stunning but expensive highlights of Southwestern Canada.