Road Trip Part 5 - Yecora

Back on the road and onto the next town. A couple of the sights along the way.
As always click on the photos to view them larger or hit Control and the photo.
I laughed when we saw these guys just a heading down the road.

The road improved somewhat and then there was this.

We finally arrived at the junction where our "highway", and I use that term very loosely, intersected with the highway that most people travel, from Hermosillo.  It was now only 47 km. to Yecora and the road although it was still one windy, hairpin turn after another was very good.  Lovely pavement without potholes.  What a joy!  It was still slow travelling and took over an hour to drive the 47 kms. because of the terrain; but at least we were not bouncing all over.
We arrived at Yecora, which was our destination for the night.  We found a motel room and checked in.  I never did take a photo of the motel; but it was just a plain building, nothing special.  Hotel Sendero, decent room 400 pesos for the night.
We then needed to find some lunch and kind of stopped at the first place we saw.

Food was edible; but nothing special.  They didn't have any Coke, only Pepsi, so they sent the young boy to buy a couple for us to have with our meal.
After filling our bellies we wandered around the town to see what there was to see.
The Plaza is pretty new, having been re-done in 2010 for the big Bicentennial of Independence celebrations.

Kiosk.

No trees; but lots of shade.  Not my kind of plaza; I prefer big, old trees and fountains; but then I don't live there.

Old adobe.

Local fruit and veggie prices.

We had a light snack in a place at the far corner of the building on the left.  The ladies son was watching an animated movie with his friend on a couch in the same room and he was full of questions.  Every time he thought we needed something he jumped up and got it for us, even if we really didn't need it.  He noticed I was watching the movie also while we waited and he got up and turned up the sound.  He asked if I liked it and I told him yes, that Roy doesn't let me watch movies like that.  He looked at Roy as if to say what is wrong with you that you don't like these shows.  Too funny.  After we were done eating we called him over and gave him a little tip, told him that he was the best waiter in all  of Yecora.  He just beamed.

The next day after a good sleep we were off again on the bottom loop of our tour and headed towards the old mining town of San Javier.

Road Trip Part 4 - Arivechi, Sonora

The paved road from Bacanora onward just kept getting worse and worse.  We were travelling very slowly over narrow paved road full of potholes, no shoulders of course, and almost never any guardrails.  The few times we did see guard rails we knew we had better be darn careful!   At times there were so many potholes that it was impossible to dodge them, there was just no where to drive where there were none.  Some of them were a foot deep so you didn't want to hit those full on.  It was slow, slow travelling and also stressful as the road also was one twisting turn after another.  We were climbing higher and the road was getting worse.
We saw lots of these signs, some of them with the word, "sinuoso" (sinuous) on them

and lots of these signs as well, many of them with 30 km. speed on them, and you needed to heed that speed limit.

I didn't realize until later that I hadn't taken even 1 photo of the horrible road.  I had put the camera in the case to keep it from flying around and most of the time I was hanging on to keep from bouncing around.  Now I wish I would have taken some.
I knew from searching online that there were hot water pools around Arivechi and we had packed our bathing suits intending to go to them.  When we saw the sign that said 8 kms. to the pools and looked at the gravel road that was even worse than what we had just gone through, we decided we were just not going there.
We were very glad to finally see Arivechi.

 This was the town I was looking forward to seeing the most as I had seen photos online of the kiosko in the plaza.
We did our usual drive around to find the church and plaza and were even more impressed than I expected.  Beautiful.
We chatted with a lady while we were sitting in the plaza and she told us that the lady busy cleaning the plaza has a son who is working for 8 months in Canada.  She also told us there was a petrified stone by the City Hall.  We walked over to see that and I won't say what I think it looks like. :)

Petrified stone

Click on the photos to see them larger or Control + click to see them really big. :)

We also saw these usual blooms on a tree there.  At first I thought they were just leaves; but the leaves were a very different shape and colour.

Odd flowers.

The plaza is really pretty with a fountain and benches in the shade of the trees.

I took a lot of photos of the kiosk as it is just so unusual.  The town is named Arivechi in honour of Arivechi San Javier, who had the kiosk built as a replica of the kiosk in the plaza Santa Maria Rivera in Mexico City or so I read anyway.

This was the last town on the road before Yecora where we were going to spend the night.  So, back onto the horrible highway and onward we went.

A Little Road Trip

We have been planning on a short road trip for a while now; but wanted to wait until it warmed up a bit. Where we wanted to go is quite a bit higher altitude than where we live right at sea level and therefore much colder at night.
We thought that after Semana Santa, (Easter), would be a good time so we packed up some extra blankets and left for a few days.

This was our route.

We headed north Wednesday morning, on the south side of Hermosillo we got onto Highway 20 and were on our way to our first "sightseeing" stop on the Ruta de la Sierra, which was Mazatán , Sonora.
Other than one short detour around the workers installing some huge pipes the road was fine. The pipes continued pretty much all the way to the town, sometimes above ground and sometimes underground.  It diverted here and there; but pretty much followed the road. I assume that it is a new water pipe for Hermosillo from the dam; but I might be wrong. Mazatan apparently means place of the deer in the Opata language.  We wandered around, checking out the plaza and church.We decided to have an early lunch so looked at the menus at a couple of places and picked the place that was serving Carne con chili.  This is not what people from north of the border think of as Chili con Carne.  It is basically just beef cooked with some really tasty concoction of chilies, it is not spicy hot; but it is very good.  We ordered from the menu painted on the wall and the older man who seemed to be the only one around bustled into the kitchen and began preparing our food. We wandered outside and sat in some chairs under the awning and waited until lunch was served.  We were pleasantly surprised with his servings.  Homemade french fries,(which were not greasy), beans, tortillas,shredded cabbage and tomato and of course the meat.  Very good food in a humble establishment.
After paying our bill we headed off towards Bacanora.
(Click on the photos to view them larger)