4/29 EL FUERTE AND SAN CARLOS

The down of El Fuerte, the fort, is where we got off the train from Copper Canyon. It sits on the El Fuerte river, which is the home of many birds. In the 1700's there was a fort there, but there are no remains of that fort, so the city built one as a museum. In the evening we had a folklorico show that was delightful. In the background is our hotel. It was originally part of the nearby church and has been expanded recently. As you can see it is quite lovely. The room we had was interesting. It had two doors, because if you had one door it didn't have enough room to open, so they split the door in half. It was so small, that Duane had to remove his backpack to get in and the door hit the bed when you opened it. We had to get out of each others way to move around...but the hotel was lovely.

We went on an outting to see petroglyphs and birds. These are some of the petroglyphs we saw. Very different from American ones....very Mexican looking. Our guide did not know how old they were. Some were just recently discovered.

Birds, boy did we see birds from our rowboat. This is a cardinal, obviously.

This is a great blue heron, nesting in a tree. The entire tree was filled with then and a couple of egrets, all nesting. Some had babies.

On an island in the river, were all these black vultures. There didn't seem to be any dead animals around, they just seemed to like this island.

This is a turkey vulture. We have them at home, too.

Here are 2 baby egrets.

And 2 baby herons

We went with our local guide German, pronounced Herman, to a native village where he grew up. We visited a lady who made homemade corn torillas and visited the local school. Arleen made her own tortilla, with help and even ate it. At the school we were taken to their computer room by a little girl named Joana, who made a picture for us. She and her classmates sang a song for us, and we sang You are my sunshine for them. Grand Circle gives money to this school and supplied the computers to them. Then we were treated to a native dance show by the local men, including the deer dance done by a father and his son.

Next morning we left for San Carlos, a beach town near Guaymas, on the Gulf of California. This is a lovely hotel, but not new. There are lots of people here since May1 is labor day and a holiday. So this is a 3 day weekend. There is a wedding here Friday nite and another Sat nite. We leave Sunday morning for Tucson. So we saw a little of the town, ate at a shrimp restaurant and came back to the hotel. Duane fell asleep. He was tired and slept the nite away.

On Sat we walked the beach and picked up shells, sat at the pool and did this blog.

In the morning, early, we leave for the US