Ajijic–on Lake Chapala, the largest lake in Mexico–is a typical mid-sized Mexican town in many ways. Every Wednesday a tianguis (farmers’ market) takes over one huge street and everyone comes out to buy avacados and fresh-squeezed orange juice and any of the hundreds of other wonderful and affordable goods for sale. The streets are cobbled. The town square is peaceful. The pace is languid. The sun is out pretty much every day of the year. Nobody obeys the traffic signs.

Despite a sizeable (and growing) population of gringos, Ajijic retains a healthy Mexican population and they retain a healthy regard for the Virgin of Guadalupe, especially during the festival held in her name every December 1-12 throughout Mexico. It’s a time for Mexicans to honor their own unique religious icon, also known as Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, which was tolerated by the Spanish conquistadors who figured turning a blind eye to a miracle-working Mexican version of the Virgin Mary was a small price to pay for converting an entire country to Catholicism.

It all began on December 12, 1531 when the image of what has come to be accepted as the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared on the cloak of Juan Diego, a peasant who, earlier in the day, had encountered an odd teenage girl who had requested that a church be built in her honor on the hill of  Tepeyac. Mexico’s virgin was eventually invoked by revolutionaries and honored by Popes (there’s a shrine to her in  St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome) and today she is perhaps the most ubiquitous symbol in all of Mexico (left).

December 12 was decreed a feast day for the Virgin of Guadalupe in the early 1800s by Jose Maria Morelos, a priest and rabble-rousing leader of Mexico’s War of Independence against the Spanish. Today, in typical Mexican fashion, the Virgin of Guadalupe celebration has been expanded to encompass the first 12 days of December and her festival is marked with  both the profound and the not so profound.

On the one hand you can buy a car freshener with the Virgin’s image on it and hang it from your rear view mirror (we did). On the other hand, millions of devoted pilgrims and followers swarm Mexican shrines and temples devoted to the Virgin every year during the annual festival commemorating her miraculous encounter with Juan Diego. Mexico’s Basilica of Guadalupe,  Tepeyac hill near Mexico City, is the most visited Catholic pilgrimage destination in the world. In 2009 more than 6 million pilgrims traveled there over December 11 and 12–many of them walking for biking long distances.

Ajijic’s festivities don’t include millions of people, however, those who do take part make sure they have a good time.

The faithful pitched tents for the 24 hour mountain-top Virgin of Guadalupe fiesta above Ajijic. That's our orange Coleman tent in the lower left hand corner.

We were lucky enough to get invited to one of Ajijic’s celebrations of the Virgin which combined some of our favorite things: a good stiff hike, good friends (new and old) and the chance to take part in Mexican hospitality and ritual. But first we had to get there.

On December 6 At 6:00am we (along with our great friend Tom from Ajijic) met up with Renee at the local Oxo (think 7-11 but without the creepy parking lot lurkers). Renee is a Mexican resident of Ajijic, an avid hiker, a big-hearted guy and an artist and it was thanks to him that we were headed to the top of Mount Chupanya, 6.5 miles and 3,000 feet above us.

We began the steep steady climb in the dark and slowly wound our way up the desert scrub hillsides of the Sierra Madre for about three hours before we reached our destination, a saddle in the mountain with a small shrine to the Virgin that’s been hand-chipped out of a huge boulder.

This small Virgin of Guadalupe shrine has been carved out of a huge boulder on Mount Chupinaya above Ajijic.

The trail takes us past a few stations-of-the-cross markers, through someone’s small hand-worked corn field and in and out of many different types of vegetation ultimately passing a cluster of crosses, then the summit shortly thereafter. When we got there around 9:30 we were shocked to discover that we weren’t the first arrivals. Already hard at work was a group of Mexican men and it was a pleasure to watch (and try to help) as these guys, not necessarily even friends on any other day, worked seamlessly and resourcefully together to turn a narrow, lumpy bit of hill into a party pad.

It was amazing what they accomplished with a few tarps, a knife and some fallen logs. And as we watched them build a campfire, create makeshift benches, string up tarps, collect firewood and literally unearthing buried treasure, we thought MacGyver’s got nothing on these guys.

For month these men and others had been hiking up the mountain from Ajijic and neighboring communities with enormous bottles of purified water, huge soup pots and other cooking utensils,  bottles of tequila and many other necessities that were the makings of a party which was expected to attract 200 people–not to mention an entire banda band (typically at least eight musicians) which would hike up with their instruments some time in the wee hours when they were done playing at parties down in town.

The early arrivals (including us) warmed up by a never-ending campfire between trips into the woods to dig up party necessities that had been cached in the ground over the previous months.

Two vital ingredients that couldn’t be cached in the ground ahead of time were fireworks and noise makers. Virtually no celebration in Mexico is complete without setting off copious quantities of bombas (extremely loud creations that look like giant bottle rockets) and fireworks or cuteras that come with names like vampiros. During the 12 day Guadalupe Festival even priests set the things off at their churches.

It wasn’t long before other men began arriving up on Chupinaya, huffing up the hill carrying huge baskets full of bombas and cuteras on their backs. All told, about 300 of the things were ultimately amassed at the top. Almost immediately one guy began lovingly sorting, piling and covering them. Then he began lighting them–usually four or five in a row from extremely close range.

By noon it was drizzling and Tom was sorry he hadn’t bothered schlepping his tent up the hill. All said, however, he kept miraculously dry under a crudely strung up bit of plastic even after the drizzle turned to a true rain. We’re just saying.In large part due to the rain, this year’s Chupinaya Virgin fiesta attracted far fewer than 200 people and the banda band arrived late and in reduced numbers. But by dawn they were set up gamely in front of the shrine where they belted out loud, rollicking, slightly-circus-like banda tunes on their drums and cymbals and tubas.

OK, the weather kept the Tuba-man at home, but someone walked up to the top of the mountain carrying a bass drum.

At some point in the soggy night the party crew had begun simmering an enormous pot of menudo (a slow-cooked soup made with tripe) and a equally impressive pot full of cafe olla (a Mexican spiced and simmered cowboy coffee). We’ve had menudo before and have we’ve made peace with the fact that we just don’t care for tripe (cow stomach) but we do like the broth so we breakfasted on a couple of bowls of rich broth (puzzling our fellow revelers by politely refusing the tripe), then we packed up our wet gear for the hike back down.

In the morning the rain stopped long enough to allow Karen to go on a successful orchid hunt.

As we began our descent the weather cleared and we were treated to this view of Lake Chapala and the village of Ajijic 3,000 feet below.

The sun finally came out when we were about half way down the mountain. Here Karen and Tom push on.

 A few days later we found ourselves at another Virgin celebration, this one slightly more urban, in the viollage of San Antonio next to Ajijic. It was December 12, the culmination of the 12 day festival, and San Antonio–like virtually every other city, town and hamlet in the country–was marking the day with a big fireworks display at the entrance to the church. As if to enhance the experience, the power miraculously went out in San Antonio, plunging everything into darkness–the perfect backdrop for the huge castillo or intricately built tower of spinning wheels and fancy shapes which would be brought to life with one flick of a match.

The Virgin of Guadalupe Festival in San Antonio on Lake Chapala culminated, as so many Mexican festivals do, with a castillo (fireworks tower).

The fireworks finale of the Virgin of Guadalupe Festival in San Antonio on Lake Chapala included this castillo (fireworks tower) and a larger-than-life fireworks Virgin.

Basaseachi Falls is not technically inside the official boundaries of the Copper Canyon Natural Park (Parque Natural Barranca del Cobre) but it’s close enough for us. Actually the 812 foot cascade–which is the second highest waterfall in Mexico and/or the highest year-round waterfall in Mexico (depending on who you ask) and the 28th highest in the world–is the center piece of its own park, the Basaseachi Falls National Park. And rightly so. This gorgeous unbroken ribbon of water that made us think of Yosemite Falls, the seventh highest waterfall in the world, more than once.

The CHEPE Copper Canyon train doesn’t go to Basaseachi Falls so we drove there taking highway 16 which was marked as a major highway and looked pretty straight in our Gia Roji Mexican road atlas but turned out to a narrow winding road full of 18 wheelers. At one point we watched in horror as the pickup truck in front of us nearly got wiped out by an oncoming big rig which has taken a corner way too wide.

Basaseachi Falls and the Candemeña Canyon from high above on the rim trail.

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Around 5 pm we finally pulled off treacherous highway 16, reached the town of Basaseachi safe and sound and found our way out to the Basaseachi Falls National Park. Happily, the park gates hadn’t been closed yet. We’re not exactly sure there are any actual park gates, come to think of it, and we never passed a ticket booth or an entrance station either.

Anyway, with the light fading we hurried to find a spot in the park’s campground where we had our pick since we were the only ones there. The campground is rocky but each of the vaguely demarcated sites has a spot that’s smooth and flat enough for a tent.  Some also have solid metal park benches bolted into place. We picked a particularly grassy site on a bluff above a river and spent a good part of the night wondering who okay’d the budget to install a half dozen huge fancy metal street lamps throughout the campground instead of improving the mostly-not-working bathrooms. And where do they get a budget anyway if there’s no entrance station or fee collection?

We're not sure what this trail sign is supposed to be warning us about (falling gorillas?) but whatever it is, it doesn't look good.

The next morning we hit the trail headed for the bottom of the waterfall and what we believed would be a stiff two hours or so down a couple thousand feet then back up again. We didn’t even bother with hiking boots or our Mountainsmith day packs–just one liter of water and our sneakers.

We reached the top of the falls in less than 10 minutes but you can’t  actually see the falls from there since the cascade is directly under the viewpoint so we started down the trail into the canyon. Then we came to an unexpected fork in the trail.

Of course we took the fork and ended up hiking way back up to the opposite canyon rim until we were substantially higher than the top of the falls where we’d started. This delivered us to a group of three overlooks including San Lorenzo. They were spectacular vantage points on the full face of the waterfall but we’d unexpectedly added a couple of hours and a couple thousand feet of climbing and descending to what was supposed to be a moderate hike.

Weirdly, long sections of the trail on this side of the canyon have recently been widened and paved with large flat stones and concrete–most likely because you can just drive to this chain of overlooks and the tempting trails are meant to entice people to stroll from point to point.

Basaseachi Falls from the San Lorenzo viewpoint.

We, however, hiked on. After getting our fill of the hard-earned view we descended back down to the fork in the trail, then continued on our original route to the bottom of the waterfall. This trail was steep and exposed and hot but spectacular and heading back up proved to be a long hard slog (did we mention that we’d run out of water by this point?) made only vaguely easier by the promise of a sandwich once we got back to our campsite.

Karen cooling off in the refreshing spray at the bottom of Basaseachi Falls.

Basaseachi Falls (click image for full size panorama)

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Some towns just feel disappointing before you even get there. Guachochi–the gateway to the Sinforosa Canyon, one of the deepest in the entire Copper Canyon system at over 6,000 feet at it’s most dramatic point–definitely gave us that vibe.

Luckily, we spotted a sign marking the turn off for the canyon while we were still on the outskirts of town and we quickly made a right, crossing our fingers that we’d miraculously be able to camp out by the canyon instead of settling on what was sure to be a lackluster (at best) guest room in Guachochi.

After about 12 miles of dirt road which was practically destroyed in places by the steady convoy of logging truck driving in and out of the area we finally reached the gate to the Sinforosa viewpoint. The old man at the gate told us he locks it up at five and if we’re not out by then we’re in for the night. He also said our ten pesos per person entitled us to camp out at the veiwpoint if we wanted to. We hurried down the final mile of dirt road to check out the canyon and the camping.

Sinforosa Canyon with the Rio Verde far below as seen from the Sinforosa viewpoint.

The Sinforosa Canyon seemed more jagged than the chasms and slopes we’d been seeing for the past 10 days or so as we traveled through the Sierra Madre. From where we were standing the canyon walls were even too sheer for cactus, scrub trees or brush to cling to. This meant the underlying rock–with all it’s color, shape and striation variations–was much more visible than in other parts of the Copper Canyon that we’d visited. Here more than anywhere else, it felt like looking at the Grand Canyon as the evening light created contrast and surprisingly vibrant colors on the world of rock below us.

Sinforosa Canyon in the evening.

Opportunities to camp are not routine in Mexico and they can sometimes mean nothing more than a sort-of flat spot to pitch a tent. Out at the Sinforosa viewpoint, however, a range of flat spots had been cleared and a covered pavilion with a huge brick fireplace in the center had been constructed along with bathrooms with running water and ample trash cans.

As the sun sets we set up house in the pavilion, happy that we always travel with enough food and water for at least one night of unplanned camping so we can take advantage of opportunities just like this.

A dirt road leading down from the main overlook and camping area brought us to this bridge over a deep and narrow side canyon cut by the Rosalinda Waterfall. The red-roofed pavilion makes a spectacular camp site.

After crossing the bridge the trail heads deeper into the Sinforosa Canyon, eventually reaching the bottom.

The next morning we walked a mile or so down a dirt road beyond the rim-top viewpoint and camping area. As we headed toward the spring-fed Rosalind Waterfall we discovered two more covered camping pavilions–one of which is right on the lip of a side gorge cut by the cascada. There’s no bathroom or running water down at this pavilion, but if we had it to do over again we’d drive the extra mile to this stunning location. Next time…

One of three covered camping pavilions with fireplaces along the rim of the Sinforosa Canyon. Pity about the view...

A panorama of the Sinforosa Canyon from the Sinforosa viewpoint. (click image for full size panorama)