The day started with a bit of excitement! As we were getting ready to head down for breakfast  the power went out in the hotel! I mean everywhere- except for a few emergency lights in the hallways. It immediately posed the following questions. We were on the third floor. How do we get our luggage downstairs as elevators were not working?  Would there be breakfast? And most important how would Yvonne dry her hair? As it turned out the power did return in about 20 minutes and all went well. Yvonne got her hair dried, the elevator got our luggage to the lobby and we even had time for breakfast before departing for Creel.

But before leaving Chihuahua we went to the city center to briefly visit the Government Palace building and the nearby Cultural Museum.

Today’s route would take us through an area of Mexico noted for farming and the home of a fairly large Mennonite community who first migrated from Canada to Mexico in the 1920s. Today there are around 75,000 Mennonites living in Mexico (50,000 in the area where we are), mostly in the state of Chihuahua. Christopher and Abraham arranged for a tour of Mennonite cultural museum near the city of Cuauhtemoc, which was about two hours from Chihuahua so it made for a good break before lunch. The tour, led by a young Mennonite woman, was fascinating! The museum is laid out in a series of rooms that are staged to show various aspects of their lives. There were displays of farming equipment, the kitchen of a Mennonite home, the dining area, the bedroom arrangement, laundry/ironing area and the main meeting room of the home. The guide described their lifestyle, eating and clothing protocols and cultural aspect of being a Mennonite. As a culture they are not as strict as the Amish, as they use modern machinery and technology. They are very strict if you stray from the norm you can be “shunned” and basically excommunicated. In fact our guide experienced that when she became what she referred to as a “modern (i.e. liberal)” Mennonite, which now makes up about 20% of the people. After seeing and hearing the stories of their lives I am intrigued enough to want to read more about the culture and values.

Lunch was at a locally owned Mennonite pizza parlor which uses their renowned cheese. It was a nice change of pace and we downed more than our share of pizza!

We arrived in the delightful town of Creel late in the afternoon. Our hotel there was charming. It has that definite Western theme from the spacious rooms, the hotel lobby with a huge stone fireplace, animal heads mounted on the walls, and a charming cocktail lounge/restaurant. There was even a brewery attached to the hotel.

We had time to wander in the downtown area before dinner and several of us went “shopping”. Creel has the feel of a small US western town.

Dinner was at the hotel and Christopher treated us to a sample of the local version of tequila called “Sotol”, made from a desert plant called “desert spoon”, rather than from the agave plant used to make the tequila we are most familiar with. It has the same kick as tequila but has a different feel, described as “bright and grassy, strongly bearing an earthy flavor with musky, vegetal highlights. My opinion is that it is “an acquired taste”.

Day two was now complete.