Creel

We took a bus from Divisadero to Creel, a ride of just over an hour. It was much cheaper than continuing on the train, and a Swiss couple who happened to stay at the same places as us in Divisadero and Creel did take the train and had an awful trip. Some rocks had fallen on the track and the scheduled one-hour ride took more than four hours.

Creel is a much bigger town than Divisadero. With elections just a month away, there was plenty on canvassing. This generally involved a pickup rolling down the street with giant speakers in the back playing a campaign song while canvassers walked alongside.

On Sunday morning, we went to the bar at the Best Western (actually a very nice bar!) to watch Mexico take on Germany in their opening match of the World Cup. Mexico of course upset the #1 ranked team, and went on to advance from the group stage. That was fun to watch in Mexico, even if they are the US’s main rival.

On Sunday afternoon, the entire town seemed to just cruise the Main Street. We’re talking everyone. Not just young men, but entire families too. Some of the younger kids would ride their bikes. There was a group of a half-dozen men on horseback. Everyone sips away on Tecates. And they go back and forth for hours.

On our first day in Creel we took a hike that went up over a bluff with views of the town and over to some unique rock formations.

As the sign indicates, the next section is called Valle do Los Monjes, which translates to Valley of the Monks. However, it was originally called Valle de Los Penes Largos. I’ll let you guess the translation on that one…