The town's central plaza, with buildings on two sides.
In the morning, we packed up and checked out of the hotel, and went for a long drive on twisty mountain roads. We stopped for a while in the little town of Cerocahui (seh-ro-cah-WEE):
The town's central plaza, with buildings on two sides.
...where we visited this church:
The church is made of reddish stone, with a bell tower.
...the Parroquia de (parish church of) San Francisco Javier. Juan told us that the church, which was originally built of adobe, dated back to 1679. It had fallen into disuse and was in ruins, when Father Andrés Lara arrived in 1939, and supervised its reconstruction, completed in 1941. We took a look inside the church:
The interior of the church is painted white, with an elaborate altar at the far end.
...and saw a mural across the street in honor of Father Lara (he's the one in the glasses).
The mural depicts four people, including Father Lara. At the far left is a panel with text, but it's too far away to make out what it says.
We then continued on our way, and came to our next hotel, the San Isidro Inn. This was a very rustic type of place, out in the middle of nowhere. As usual, after we got settled in, I walked around and took pictures:
A dirt road leads into the hotel complex, with a wooden sign bearing the hotel's name hanging above the road.
A stone walkway with wooden railings leads up to the hotel's main building, which is painted cream and rust red, with a red tile roof.
Our room is painted blue and yellow, with a wood beam ceiling and tile floor, and dark wood furniture.
There were some interesting pieces of artwork on the grounds, such as this one, which Juan told me represented the Chepe Express:
A model of the train, made primarily out of logs.
...and this whimsical critter right outside the main building entrance:
A metal sculpture of a frog, sitting on a stump.
The hotel also appeared to be a working ranch. There were horses:
Several horses stand in a field beneath some trees.
...as well as cows, pigs, goats and chickens. By the way, the rightmost horse in that picture is actually a burro.
Our room was in the main building, but Lucia, Esmond and Blanca were in cabins:
Three one-room cabins stand in a row.
Lucia and Esmond's cabin had an interesting mural on the back wall:
The mural shows a robin sitting on a tree branch against a blue sky. A window with many circles and squares of stained glass is beneath the robin.
Take a close look at the stained glass in that window:
A closeup view of the window.
Those are actually bottoms of glass bottles. When I saw that, I went to look at the window from the outside, and discovered the rest of the bottles!
On the outside of the cabin, the bottles are sticking out of the window. Incongruously, the bristles of a push broom stick out between two of the rows of bottles.
...although I'm not sure what the push broom is doing there.
I found this interesting sign pasted to the mirror in our room:
The second and third lines translate to words of wisdom that I learned in Boy Scouts: "Take nothing but pictures. Leave nothing but footprints." The first line turned out to be a worthy addition: "Kill nothing but time."
Having time to kill that afternoon, I went for a walk. I walked about a mile down the highway:
The "highway" is a dirt road stretching off into the distance.
...or what passes for a highway in that neighborhood. Like I said, we were way out in the boondocks. I passed a school along the way, and several of the young boys were hanging on the fence, watching me as I went by.
Later, we all went on a walk, led by Mario, one of the owners of the hotel:
...and his faithful companion, Max:
Max is a small pug dog.
Mario led us through some property belonging to the family, which was at one time going to be developed into an extension of the hotel. Just a few items remain as reminders of what might have been:
A small white building.
A set of swings
A trampoline
...and then we came to our destination - a cave:
If you look really closely, you can just make out a bar and stools inside the cave. Farther in, there were several tables and shelves, and in a little alcove at the far end of the cave, I found this shrine to the Virgin:
The shrine consists of a picture of the Virgin in a wooden frame, and a small wooden bench for kneeling.
When we got back to the hotel, we visited the gift shop:
A small building, painted in the same colors as the main building. Text above the window says "Artesanias Raramuri De la Montaña" (Raramuri artisans of the mountain).
...where Terry bought a T-shirt, and we got some gifts for friends, including a bottle of vino de membrillo, or quince wine. We gave the wine to our friend Guillermo, who said it was very sweet, but good.