Bus Travel Chihuahua to Mexico City

Chihuahua, Mexico Bus

We reached Chihuahua at 7 PM.

      I left the Chihuahuenses to switch to an Omnibus. Chihuahueses does not put paper in the lavatories; Omnibus does. This is no big deal but it demonstrates that Chihuahuesesa has a low regard for the passengers that I find annoying. I had never ridden on Omnibus and wanted to check them out.

Copper Canyon train stop at Divisadero.  Train passenger get 15 minutes to
look out at the junction of three canyons  

Copper Canyon Trips

From Chihuahua you can get a bus to Copper Canyon for 240 pesos to the village of Creel in the high mountains at the edge of the Copper Canyon. The train is not the only option for a Copper Canyon visit.

see Copper Canyon options Copper Canyon Trips.  The Cuauhtemoc Bus makes 5 trips daily.

I left Chihuahua on an Omnibus at 8:00 PM after a burger dinner and settled in for the 12 hour trip to Zacatecas. (635 pesos)

I slept most of the night and arrived in Zacatecas at 9:00 AM, 8:00 Tucson time. I then booked a 10:45 Futura Bus for Mexico City Terminal Norte for 430 pesos.

Futura Buses are the best of the three: Futura, Chihuhuenses and Omnibus. They are each a good and convenient ride. Chihuahuenses does not provide paper in the lavatory (hardly a First Class attribute) and their bus was an older model frayed at the edges. Omnibus was running an older bus also but they did provide paper, took careful head counts, and had a well maintained lavatory.

The Futura bus did have paper in the lavatory and was the newest bus of the three.

Primera plus, a division of Flecha Amarilla, runs on the coastal route from Mazatlan to Mexico Norte and they run the best buses and best service for the long haul trip through Mexico, north of Mexico City.

Primera Plus runs luxury buses from Mazatlan on the Pacific Coast

 to Mexico City through Guadalajara  

I arrived at Mexico City's Terminal Norte and 8:00 PM and booked an ADO bus for Oaxaca,  leaving at 11 PM.
I have made this run before and I wanted to arrive in Oaxaca at dawn. ADO runs excellent service south of Mexico City. See ADO

I slept most of the way and arrived at 6:00 AM refreshed.
The total cost of the trip (excluding food) was around 160 USD including the Tucson/Douglas Shuttle. ($320 USD round Trip) Round trip air at the time was around $ 550 not counting taxi to and from the airport. (about $100 USD)
BUS-$340 USD including taxi transfer      AIR-$650 USD including taxi transfer.   (575 with a shared shuttle to Tucson Center)

Bus Service Mexico: Just Show Up. (Article)
The bus companies have web sites but they have for the most part opted for style rather than substance. They are full of razzle dazzle flash but lack function. With the exception of ADO and Primera Plus, they are not fully connected by computer and can not take bookings on the web.   That is not a problem. You just show up and there are so many options, so many lines and so many buses going in all directions that you seldom wait more than an hour, usually less. (Except at Christmas and Easter)
I usually stop in one or more cities for the night on a long trip like this. see Mazatlan,   Morelia,   Guadalajara,   San Louis Potosi,   Zacatecas, Chihuahua, Casas Grande, Alta Vista/Sombrerete

Estrella Blanca (Article) is a group of bus lines that serve 27 of Mexico's states. Lines include Futura, Futura Plus, Chihuahuenses, and Elite along with many more.

Mexico City Norte Bus Station

Mexico Norte terminal is a bus hub for trips north west and east primarily 

although ADO serves southern Mexico from Norte.  Buses from Norte 

terminal also serve to  Teotihuacan Ruin and Tula

Next: Eight Months Backpack By Bus to south America/Antartica

Bus Travel Mexico, Border Crossing, Douglas AZ, Agua Prieta

Agua Prieta/Douglas Arizona

     After the Douglas Shuttle from Tucson and the border crossing by foot, taxi to the bus station, and ticket purchase,  we pulled out of the Central de Autobus de Agua Prieta at 11:50, headed for Chihuahua.
We were soon on a straight, black road through the middle of a flat grassland with mountains in the distance. The road runs parallel to the US border for a long distance, then heads south over low mountains before entering another plain on its way to Chihuahua.
At Janos, we joined Caretera Federal 10 (Highway 10) which comes southwest from Juarez/El Paso, 90 miles south of White Sands NM.
      At 2:00 PM, we stopped at an Estrella Blanca station. ( Chihuahuenses is a division of Estrella Blanca) The driver made no announcement as he went in to have dinner. This is a twenty to thirty minute stop, I knew from previous trips.     

     Unfortunately the drivers rarely announce stops except on the ADO buses that run south of Mexico City. It is best to ask them how long a stop will be. Usually the stops are five minutes, (cinco minutos) and it will not do to leave the bus. It is best to get out and stretch the legs whenever possible, however; just stick close to the bus.
     Use the bathroom on board the bus.  It will usually be cleaner than what you will find in the station and you don't risk getting left behind. The driver might take a "headcount" but not with any list. Passengers do get left behind, including me on a trip to Catemaco when The driver said cinco minutos (5) and I thought he said quince. (15)

The bus route south from Agua Prieta runs through mountain and flat grasslands north of Chihuahua

     Lucky for me, on that occasion, it was the next to last stop and I quickly caught a local bus to Catemaco in time to reach the station just as my driver wolfed down his first bite of dinner. His jaw dropped when he saw me and I wondered if he pulled out of that station knowing that I was not on board.

     At 3:10 we reached Nuevo Casas Grandes for a ten minute stop. Outside of Nuevo Casas Grandes ($70 peso cab ride) there is a great ruin called Casa Grande or Paquime. This is a non-Mesoamerican site. (Mesoamerica's northern boundary is the Tropic of Cancer)   Casas Grandes more closely resembling a Southwest US Pueblo site. The ruin site has a great museum.

     Turquoise flowed through Paquime on its way south from Arizona and New Mexico to Teotihuacan and all the way south to Palenque and the Yucatan Maya.

From Casas Grandes we continued southeast on 15 and then joined Highway 45.  We then turned due south with a bead on Chihuahua., a place where you can book a train ride or bus ticket to the Copper Canyon. 

     These are great roads, as flat and straight as can be and we averaged about 50 miles an hour.  If you are figuring time between stops, the 50 MPH holds up in most cases, except in the steep mountains.

Next Chihuahua
Oaxaca Semana Santa, Silent Parade, Easter Week,       Oaxaca Guelaguetza Parade Video
Oaxaca Day of the Dead

Copper Canyon Trains Pacific Coast Station, El Fuerte, Mexico

El Fuerte, Best Station for Copper Canyon

     Mazatlan is one of those mega resorts I was avoiding but I love the town and the friendly people so I wanted to visit.  I went through town to the beach for a few hours. Time was running short for me so I headed north and out at the northerly exit and headed for Los Mochis and more specifically to El Fuerte, a town with a train station on the Copper Canyon train line.

     El Fuerte is 50 miles inland from the Pacific Coast city of Los Mochis and the start of the CHEPE train line, a rail line that runs for 400 miles from the Pacific Coast through the Copper Canyon, and into the City of Chihuahua in North Central Mexico.

     For those who want the longest possible train ride on Mexico’s last regularly scheduled passenger train, Los Mochis is the place to start. The train leaves the station at 6 am and reaches the center of the Copper Canyon area at the village of Creel at between 4:00 and 4:30 in the afternoon. Creel offers lots of lodging options and tours to the various Copper Canyon Villages and sights. (See second class train and save)

For those who just want to reach the Canyon, the station at El Fuerte offers a better option. The train is scheduled to arrive at 8:55 am at El Fuerte. Good hotels in town and a great zocalo make El Fuerte interesting. The later leaving train makes it more convenient. The first 50 miles of track from Los Mochis to El Fuerte is through flat farmland offering little to see. East of El Fuerte the train starts into the mountains and the scenery gets interesting.

I parked for the night in the “camp ground” beside the station at El Fuerte and prepared for the morning train. The family charges 100 peso per night for parking and they lock the gate after the evening train arrives from Chihuahua about 7:30-9:30.  See Copper Canyon Train Schedule

Copper Canyon Best Way

From El Fuerte,  I crossed into Sonora on Route 15 which turned inland away form the coast and eventually reached Hermosillo and then Nogales about 2200 miles from my starting place in Oaxaca.
     The Nogales crossing is a difficult one. If I make this trip again, I will take Route 2 south of Nogales and make the border crossing at Agua Prieta.  I had arranged for mail to be sent to the Nogales, AZ, USA post office so I went through Nogales.  The line was a two hour wait.

Next Tucson to Chihuahua by Bus

Road Trip, Pacific Coast, Mexico, San Blas, Nayarit State

San Blas, Nayarit, Mexico Pacific Coast

      Fish grilling on outdoor barbeque racks, oysters on the half shell, grilled shrimp, and banana bread stands; these icons of coastal Mexico let you know that you have found San Blas.

     I had left Route 200 at Las Varas and continued north along Matachen Bay.  At the northern end of Matachan Bay, a group of banana bread stands crowd the road near the La Tovara lagoon rides. If you go back south a short distance on a dirt road you come to the huge open bay where you find a dozen palapa restaurants. The road continues to your left out along the bay where you see no houses, palapas, nothing but beach and bay. You can camp there but it is best to have a posse.

Back on the road to San Blas, I found the fishermen’s cooperative docks and from there found Los Cocos RV park where I put up for a week, 920 miles south of Nogales.

     San Blas made the Guinness Book of World records in the 70s when its Matachen Bay produced the longest surfable wave. Some of those 70s surfers are still hanging on in San Blas, long in the tooth, specters in faded tie dye.

Time seems to have stopped in San Blas, the last time in the 70s, but time has stopped for San Blas more than once over the years.

      The first occasion that San Blas felt the ebb of commerce was in Spanish Colonial days when the forests up stream of the River were clear-cut, the river silted, and the harbor became shallow, too shallow for the ocean-going traders that were sailing to the Philippines and hauling home exotic Asian trade goods. The deep water boats moved south to Acapulco and the San Blas boat building and cargo handling ended. The Longfellow poem, the Bells of San Blas recounts the loss of the square-rig industry for San Blas and its abandoned church, the crumbling bell tower no longer able to support the bells.
     San Blas bounced back from the loss of shipping when it developed its shrimp and fishing industry. A huge mangrove estuary extends from San Blas north for a hundred miles to Mazatlan and this is a rich nursery for fish and shrimp. Prosperity came again to San Blas but it was short lived when foreign boats quickly moved in and depleted the shrimp and fish.
     Surfing and tourism would next invigorate San Blas but once again that would ebb as the bay silted and the waves no longer produced those record rides.

Eco-tourism is the next wave for San Blas. While whale watching (humpback and whale shark) and lagoon rides for birding may never make San Blas the future Puerto Valarta, San Blas will retain its small town fishing village ambiance and will host enough tourism to remain a delightful alternative to the mega resort.
I loved the place and I will go back if I get the chance.