Once we had got off the train we spent a few minutes bartering with different staff from the local hostels and eventually ended up heading off with the Germans, and someone they met, and so on, so that we ended up with a group of nine.
We had nine of us trying to fit into the guys truck, which wasn't that hard with the size of the trucks, but Rees's and my backpacks ended up sittting on the roof. It was raining lightly, but earlier had been pouring down and as a result a small creek that we had to cross had swollen and there was a small steep enbankment and I just knew our packs were going to fall off. They didn't and it seemed our luck had changed for the good.
Got out at the hostel, put our bags in our rooms and all gathered in the lounge room, were the introductions took place. We had ended up with 3 Germans, 1 french girl travellig with a french mexican girl, a brazilian guy, a solvainian girl and us two ozzys. The hostel owner's son started telling us about local trips he takes and sudenly the room was full of languages, French, Spanish, Dutch and some english. Rees and I just sat there bewildered. We all went out together for a meal at the local restaurant, where thankfully for us, everyone had to use english as the common language.
We enjoyed an excellent mexican meal and learned a bit about each other. The solvanian girl was probably the most pequaler character. She only knew a bit of english and her native toungue and had been travelling through Mexico a couple of weeks. Her approach to not being understood by someone was to just repeat her bad english agian, just louder. Quite funny.
Next morning the German's bought themselves a local map and headed off hiking for a few days. As one of them had stated a day earlier, they lacked the german puctuallity and headed off about 1pm. The rest of us headed off on a walk to a local lake, 8 km out of town. The walk was very nice once we got out of the town into the green farming valley with small farms consisting of a crop of corn, a heard of 10 head of cattle and a small shack as a house. We got to the lake and settled down on a rock over looking the lake and had some lunch. It was very peacful and I enjoyed the chance to sit down for a while and relax after the hectic last couple of weeks. After lunch Rees went for a swim and we headed back and picked up a few beers on the way back to the hostel, which were very enjoyable at the end of the day.
Next morning I was woken about 6am to Fabio (the brazilian) and Margareta (the Solvanian) leaving to hich hike to the next town. We got up a couple of hours later and went on one of the day trips provided by the hostel with the two french girls. Our destination was the hot springs deep in the canyon. We got driven out to a spot and hiked down into the canyon. The hike into the canyon was awsome, but the destination was a bit of a let down. We had envisioned swimming in rock pools, but when we got there we found man made little pools that were filled by a natural spring. It felt very artifical to have hike for an hour and a half through this canyon to come across the small swimming pools. The water was nice and we relaxed there for a while and had some lunch and headed back to the hostel. We were back at our hostel room for about half an hour when there was a knock on the door. One of the Germans had returned. He had hated the hiking and was aracnaphobic. So soon as he told us this we started telling storys of Australian spiders, the white tail, red back and how easy it is to be killed, so I don't think he'll be heading for Aus very soon.
Went out for a few beers that night at the local pub, it was full of mexicans in cowboy hats and boots. Mindfully there was a sign at the bar requiring all guns to be handed over. Had a couple of beers and decided at seeing we were in Mexico it would be rude if we didn't have a shot of tequilla. To impress the locals we decided to show them how we do tequilla shots in aus, stuntman style. A snort of salt, shot of tequilla and a squirt of lemon in the eye later the locals couldn't beleive there eyes. Loco Australian's. Few more beers and headed home.
Next morning, got up and got our things together and headed down the train station. The train ride back to Los Mochis was just was amazing and we got in about 11:30pm.