Day 19 – Parras to Torreon

Breakfast was at 7:15 again and after a quick breakfast of the usual eggs and ??(bacon for me), we circled up the group and made our way out of town to the Casa Madero winery(est, 1597) and made some brandy and wine purchases. I'll taste the brandy one home, but it did get good reviews from Roger. We'll see. Brandy isn't my favorite form of grape beverage, but I'll give it a shot..

This winery/distellery has been here over 400 years. Amazing!



Wow, some copper pots those..




Some roof system..



Don, finalizing his purchase..

 Our ride today is a short 110 miles, so we soldiered on and made our destination in Torreon,the Fresno Galleria Hotel by 11:30 AM. The plan was to visit a hard rock mine in the afternoon at the little town of Mapimi.

We had a quick lunch across from the hotel at a little tacqueria. I had pork & cheese tacos, very good.

After a brief retreat to the rooms, we met on our bikes for the trip to the mine. Roger figured it was about 25 miles each way. It turned out to be more like 45 each way, with the last several miles on cobbles. Sheesh, I thought I'd seen the last of those things. The mine, it turned out though, was an amazing piece of work, with an entire mining town, from headquarters, to sleeping quarters to eating quarters to brothels all built with indigenous stone, and boy were there enough around for whatever needed building. The town was built on a hillside that had some shafts sunk into the hillside below the town, but the largest part of the mining effort took place across a gorge that was a good half mile deep and connected to the town via a very long suspension bridge built just before the turn of the last century. It's advertised as being the second longest suspension bridge, behind the Oakland Bay Bridge. A very long wooden bridge. The mine itself dated from about 1537. Fascinating place.

Here's a photo essay of this amazing place..

After being amazed for over an hour, we figured we'd better beat it back to the hotel to avoid any further night riding occurrences. The park guide up top radioed the guide at the bottom to have him stop any traffic that might be coming up. Did I mention the cobble portion of the road is nice and steep, and one lane wide? Once out of the park, we tried out a “shortcut” back to the hotel Roger had scoped out online. It turned out to be a dud, with the pavement ending after about a mile and turning into a fairly smooth, but very rocky road.

Back into Torreon, we rested for a bit then and checked The Weather Channel website for weather on our route and found we had a 30 to 50 percent chance of rain on our route from Torreon to Chihuahua. Bummer. The local roads are especially greasy and really slippery-slick when wet. Oh well, hope for the best and plan for the worst(slow way down and allow lots of room to the vehicle ahead). We went next door to Tony Romas for dinner. As we close in on the border, more Americanized businesses appear. Backing into US food, several of us had their special, baby back ribs. I found them well cooked, but the sauce too sweet for me. Still a nice meal for our third to last day in preparation for re-immersion. Walking back to the hotel brought the first sprinkles.. Not promising. Sleep now....