Sub-zero air slams my consciousness like I´ve walked into a wall.
So much for my pilgrimage to health-giving climes.
I leave the coach and take approximately four minutes to explore the only two streets in Creel covered in concrete. During this time it starts to snow.
I start to swear.
It settles on the hood of my only jumper. Cruelly seeks out the gaps between my eight t-shirts with icily prying fingers. I retreat to the hostel and throw myself dramatically on the bed to cough pathetically and dream of England.
I cry. Just a little.
I wish for a friend. She walks through the door.
Eva is softly spoken, blonde, fluent in both spanish and poetry. A stud through her lip and a thirst for her trip. Almost immediately she exclaims; You have a hoop!
Those damned coincidences. She is one of the only hula hoopers I´ve ever met.
She is only eighteen but at this moment infinitely more grounded than me. Her path mirrors the vague ideas I have for mine - except hers are backed by essential criteria that my distracted mind has failed to notice.
Apparently the train we want doesn´t go until Thursday. It is now Monday. Thursday it is, I chant. And thus our friendship is soldered clumsily together. Wanderers, joined by the need for another´s back to lean against whilst facing the world alone.
Her enthusiasm reveals just how cynical I´ve become in two weeks. Sparkly-eyed raptures remind me that snow is usually received with pleasure. And, despite her sometimes hesitating manner and gently slurring speech, the girl has balls. On her lead we ditch all the tours, to the surprise of the town, and go it alone. We skip through the snowy valleys to a glinting lake surrounded by globular rock columns, over which we scamper and bask like lizards.
I teach her hoop tricks in the sugar-dusted forest. We make it our mission the next day to create one for her from water piping and electrical tape. A mission achieved so easily, in fact, that we plan to fund our wanderings by flogging them to rich gringos.
Thursday dawns bright and pushes us onwards to Divisadero, the meeting point of three of the biggest gorges in the world and part of a system of rifts so huge that it could swallow four Grand Canyons.
It is incredible. Like someone tried to bend the earth too much and it cracked, like a giant butterscotch brownie.
We climb into the train at two and hang out of the window like dogs until seven.
Sun drips lensflares onto my photographs. Breath is whipped away with the slipstream. Scenery rushes and looms.
Tongues leave mouths as the sun starts to sink. I can barely see the top of the canyon through the window. It looks like it is about to collapse in on itself. A kind of reverse vertigo turns me upside down and shakes me, slowly.
The train trickles tentatively down the side, doubling back on itself to process the terrain at its own pace. Sunset touches the peaks with fire.
Eva retreats to her seat with a frozen head but I linger on for another hour, until the sky becomes sprayed with pinprick stars and the canyon is a smudge in the dark. The train coughs diesel smoke into my mouth. I cough it determinedly back out again.
When my lungs finally give up I return to my seat. Plug myself in to a bubble of music. Watch the silent movie playing out all around me.
We are ejected at 11pm to a dusty carpark a few kilometres out of town.
Los Mochis, Sonora.
Dirt roads. Warmth. Neon. A state ruled by cartels and subject of warning from many.
We stand in the middle of a dwindling crowd and wonder what the hell to do next.
So much for my pilgrimage to health-giving climes.
I leave the coach and take approximately four minutes to explore the only two streets in Creel covered in concrete. During this time it starts to snow.
I start to swear.
It settles on the hood of my only jumper. Cruelly seeks out the gaps between my eight t-shirts with icily prying fingers. I retreat to the hostel and throw myself dramatically on the bed to cough pathetically and dream of England.
I cry. Just a little.
I wish for a friend. She walks through the door.
Eva is softly spoken, blonde, fluent in both spanish and poetry. A stud through her lip and a thirst for her trip. Almost immediately she exclaims; You have a hoop!
Those damned coincidences. She is one of the only hula hoopers I´ve ever met.
She is only eighteen but at this moment infinitely more grounded than me. Her path mirrors the vague ideas I have for mine - except hers are backed by essential criteria that my distracted mind has failed to notice.
Apparently the train we want doesn´t go until Thursday. It is now Monday. Thursday it is, I chant. And thus our friendship is soldered clumsily together. Wanderers, joined by the need for another´s back to lean against whilst facing the world alone.
Her enthusiasm reveals just how cynical I´ve become in two weeks. Sparkly-eyed raptures remind me that snow is usually received with pleasure. And, despite her sometimes hesitating manner and gently slurring speech, the girl has balls. On her lead we ditch all the tours, to the surprise of the town, and go it alone. We skip through the snowy valleys to a glinting lake surrounded by globular rock columns, over which we scamper and bask like lizards.
I teach her hoop tricks in the sugar-dusted forest. We make it our mission the next day to create one for her from water piping and electrical tape. A mission achieved so easily, in fact, that we plan to fund our wanderings by flogging them to rich gringos.Thursday dawns bright and pushes us onwards to Divisadero, the meeting point of three of the biggest gorges in the world and part of a system of rifts so huge that it could swallow four Grand Canyons.
It is incredible. Like someone tried to bend the earth too much and it cracked, like a giant butterscotch brownie.
We climb into the train at two and hang out of the window like dogs until seven.
Sun drips lensflares onto my photographs. Breath is whipped away with the slipstream. Scenery rushes and looms.
Tongues leave mouths as the sun starts to sink. I can barely see the top of the canyon through the window. It looks like it is about to collapse in on itself. A kind of reverse vertigo turns me upside down and shakes me, slowly.
The train trickles tentatively down the side, doubling back on itself to process the terrain at its own pace. Sunset touches the peaks with fire.
Eva retreats to her seat with a frozen head but I linger on for another hour, until the sky becomes sprayed with pinprick stars and the canyon is a smudge in the dark. The train coughs diesel smoke into my mouth. I cough it determinedly back out again.
When my lungs finally give up I return to my seat. Plug myself in to a bubble of music. Watch the silent movie playing out all around me.
We are ejected at 11pm to a dusty carpark a few kilometres out of town.
Los Mochis, Sonora.
Dirt roads. Warmth. Neon. A state ruled by cartels and subject of warning from many.
We stand in the middle of a dwindling crowd and wonder what the hell to do next.
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