Barranca de Cobre - Copper Canyon: Part I

From Las Glorias I took Mex 15 back to Las Mochis, stocked up on food and beer for my fridge and drove up to El Fuerte, where I camped at Hotel Bugambillas on the North-West side of town. Coordinates N26°24.611’  W108°37.593’. Very nice and safe place to camp either in an RV or with a tent. It is a large grassy area with power on some sites, actually hanging from some trees, and it also has hotel rooms in a Motel kind of style. There are no dedicated showers for the campers but the Señora let me use one of the unoccupied Hotel rooms to have a shower in the morning. Everything very nice and clean and with a price of 150 Pesos/night more than reasonable. Should you desire to take the very popular train vs. driving yourself that would be the perfect place to leave your vehicle for the three or so days.

To head into the Canyon and down to Urique

Next morning I left El Fuerte towards the North East still on Sinaloa State Highway 23, a nice paved road heading into Choix, drove thru Choix all on the same road, outside of the City it turned out to be a really nice brand new road, to head into the Canyon area I was bound to take a turn off to the East at the village of Tasajera. Thanks to the map that my friend John, who had done it with his motorbike had prepared for me and printed in large scale out of google map I could figure out pretty good where it was supposed to be. The first road that surprisingly even had a sign for Tasajera was blocked off with huge rocks, so I continued on the paved road, exactly in the curve when it turned slightly to the left and I would have had a heading of straight up North if I was to continue, it has a little steep turn off down to the left. At the time it was marked with a temporary orange “Desviaciòn” (Detour) sign, I trusted that it was the detour from the road that I was to take but was blocked off with those rocks. Turn off to the right, respectively East, at N26°47.000' W108°15.211'. 

In Part II I will add a whole series of GPS coordinates (of about every 15 to 20 minutes) since those roads are not any map I had (with the exception of John's) that will lead you down to Urique should you want to follow my tracks. 

I will also tell you a little about Marihuana trafic and some drug war down in the Canyon and why I decided to change my original route plans.