I am sitting on a low wooden bench in the Ciudad Juárez train station. There is very little to keep me company except for flies. The box office is closed. I have been traveling almost non-stop for 32 hours. I haven’t eaten in the last twelve. I’m so tired it hurts.

What, I wonder, am I doing here? The answer is that I have come to take a train ride; but such a train ride. Through an area as spectacular as the Grand Canyon (but bigger) with an interconnected system of six canyons. If, like me, you are fascinated by trains, you will not be able to resist a walk through some of the most incredible landscapes in the world.

The trip is not for everyone. If you insist on Pullman service and fine dining on the train, you’ll be much better off on the Blue Train in South Africa or the Orient Express. This Copper Canyon train is of a different breed. Not inferior. Not one iota less pleasant. Just different.

I have been to Mexico four times before and found Acapulco exciting, Jalisco exciting, Mexico City a big worry and Cancun not to my liking.

He knew little about the Copper Canyon and the journey from Chihuahua to Los Mochis. I first came across it while reading Fodor’s Guide to Mexico. The book described the train ride as “the most scenic train ride in the world”. That is why I have now arrived at the deserted station of Ciudad Juárez.

He had flown to Los Angeles. From there I had to get myself to the Copper Canyon and its railway.

I arrived in Mexico by an unorthodox route.

I flew an overnight ‘red eye’ to El Paso in Texas via Las Vegas and Albuquerque. From El Paso I took a taxi to Ciudad Juárez, El Paso’s sister city. Juarez is on the other side of the Rio Grande and you need a $US17 tourist card. I have since discovered that it is better to cross and take a taxi to the other side.

From there I took the train to Chihuahua.

A little advice. Don’t take the bus. The bus station is clean and comfortable and the bus ticket is only $15. But the bus travels 380 km to get there and this is a very tiring journey. I had been warned about this and took the train.

The Juárez train station is not cheerful, although it is being improved. Today, as I sit here and write this, it is a concrete structure open to the air on one side, like a bomb shelter. Low, dirty, shabby benches to sit on; a toilet that I dare not investigate because the smell would choke a horse; and nothing more. Nothing at all. There is no soda machine. No kiosk. Not a thing.

Except the flies. (I am told that it has now been cleaned and redecorated. When I see it I will believe it.)

This is the lowest point of the trip. As soon as I get on the train that will take me to Chihuahua, everything improves dramatically. The six o’clock train for which I bought a reserved first class ticket is of a very high standard. The ticket costs around $15. This for a journey of around 400 kilometers.

The train is nothing like the station. Fortunately, the car is air-conditioned. It’s spotlessly clean and the seats recline airplane style. I laugh out loud with relief. The train first passes through the suburbs, the poor suburbs, of Juárez. We are now traveling through a flat plain with dry vegetation. Very similar to Australia.

The conductor, immaculately dressed like all the train staff, crosses the train and announces dinner. There are few takers. Reckless to the last, I walk to the dining car and face a pre-arranged dinner. A small plastic cup of Coca-Cola. A plastic plate with four French fries, two saltine crackers, a spoonful of cold macaroni, a small portion of shredded dried fish.

As a food, this does not inspire or encourage me.

The train arrives at the Chihuahua station. A fleet of taxis, predatory hawks to a man, lie in wait. They want 10,000 pesos to take me to a hotel. A vigorous haggling reduces it to 6,000 pesos. This hotel, the Exelaris, was once a Hyatt. No more.

That night I walked into a bar called El Pantera Rosso which seems to have little to do with Pink Panther. On a previous visit to Chihuahua, he had gone to the museum that was once the home of Pancho Villa. There I met a lady who was said to have been the wife of that great revolutionary. But she seems to have had many, many wives. Not always with the benefit of the wedding ceremony.

On this visit I skip the sightseeing and organize a wake up call at 5.30am so I can catch the train to Los Mochis. Go out to the station and claim my seat on the Chihuahua-Pacific railway that covers the 640 kilometers to Los Mochis.

Important to know that I booked in advance. You’ll find advice elsewhere on the internet to say you can take your chances. This is not good advice. Books. I’m in first class which costs $US125 roundtrip. The second, which I would have booked if I’d known how to do it, is only $53. First class is excellent with reclining airplane seats.

practical details

This is not a cheap trip to take through a package tour. Some of the tours from El Paso cost between $1,600 and $2,000 per person. This is really silly when you consider that the price is usually around $126 round trip and that is first class. Go down to second class (coaches were first class a few years ago) and it can be a little over half of that.

They will tell you that the second class train is slower and you will miss the scenery. If you are making the return trip, this is not the case.

The departure times, in Spanish and quoted in Mexican dollars, are here:

[http://www.chihuahua.gob.mx/turismoweb/transporte_tren.html]

Prices and phone reservations and other good things:

http://www.nativetrails.com/train/train.htm

We leave Chihuahua and the landscape is flat, almost Australian, nothing fascinating. This was the country that was fought for the most in the Revolution and the breeding ground for Pancho Villa’s Northern Division. The train then begins to climb in a series of winding curves towards Creel, which is a logging town.

After Creel we keep going up and the air becomes distinctly brisk. The desert slowly changes and turns into a pine forest. It’s two in the afternoon.

Just before the Copper Canyon is Divisadero, where the train stops for a quarter of an hour. In Divisadero, the floor of the canyon is almost two kilometers below your feet, with views that take forever on a clear day. Tarahumara Indians on the platform sell souvenirs to tourists. Its people originally occupied the highlands, but during the Spanish invasion they had to move to the canyons to avoid forced labor in the mines and on farms. The settlers have a lot to answer for.

Copper Canyon covers more than 65,000 square feet. km of extremely steep mountains and canyons. Formed by five major river systems, these ravines (canyons) are four times the size of the Grand Canyon in Colorado.

Before the completion of the Chihuahua al Pacífico railroad in 1961, the only access to the area was on foot or horseback. Now the train magically makes it all accessible.

The scenery is, the only word to describe it, amazing. In another country, I once took a sightseeing flight with the Hallelujah Choir playing every cannon in sight. The Choir is precisely what this trip deserves. Fortissimo.

After Divisadero, the train passes through several tunnels and over tall, narrow iron truss bridges as it travels through the various side branches of the canyon. The train approaches Temoris, where he must find a good position by a window. Here the footprints pass over themselves three times.

When I look out the window of the train, I can see there, on the opposite side, another railway going in the opposite direction. What is this railway? Where are you going?

It is, of course, the rail I ride on, doubling back on itself to get around the canyon walls. In fact, at one point the track makes a complete 180-degree turn, inside a tunnel.

The track turns, winds, twists, turns. The train meanders while looking for the way forward. The train passes 100 meters above the Chinipas River.

From the window I can’t see the bridge. I am suspended in space. I am a little afflicted with vertigo and sweat and stare with wild guesses. My hands grip white knuckles.

Eventually I relax, I get bored; this is, after all, a ten-hour drive.

I start to check on my fellow passengers, pause for a beer, talk to the person sitting next to me. However, the landscape always drags me back.

It was dark when we arrived in Los Mochis, so I missed some of the spectacular scenery on the run to the Sea of ​​Cortez. Does not matter. The next day I got up early again and took the train back to Chihuahua. This time I took the slow train. Mexico is not a place where one wants to rush things.