Thread: Topolobampo

There is nothing at the pier - freight. There were a couple of vendors there. Several areas were set up those who wanted a beer.

We were not able to sign up for the Copper Canyon tour - DH's cardialogist said that it would be too long a day for him (18 hours from the time you get up until you go to bed).

So we signed up for the Los Mochis tour. We visited the museum, looked at the front of a factory and walked through some gardens. We did enjoy walking through the gardens and seeing them being restored. The original man who owned them has long sinced died and his historic house was replaced with a shopping center. His swimming pool is now part of the gardens and is beyond repair. The museum was a waste of time as was the stop in front of a factory. We were supposed to have had an hour to shop in town. Instead we were given 20 minutes to either go to a local art shop or use the hotel's facilities (Saint Armis???) - we both needed to use the facilities which didn't give us much time to walk around the town. We would not recommend this tour!!! The evening before when we got our daily program we read that a free shuttle bus was being offered to go into Los Mochis. When this port talk was given we were doing something else so if the free shuttle was mentioned then - we missed it. But it wouldn't have made any difference since we had pre-booked this tour and there would have been a 10% pentalty fee if we had cancelled it.

This tour was offered on our first segment (Nov 7th cruise). I tried to get as much information from those who did take it since we were unable to take this tour.

The tour can handle 330 people. Breakfast was served from 3 - 4 AM in the Lido for those who went on the tour. Then everyone gathered in the Veermer Lounge at 4:30 and waited until 5:30 when they boarded their buses. Each person was given a card that indicated their bus number, train seat assignment, and what time they were to eat at the summit. It is about a 2 hour bus ride to the train station - the buses were given a police escort through Los Mochis so as to avoid lights and traffic. Once on the train everyone got a box breakfast. There were 2 shifts for lunch at the summit. And everyone was given a box snack on the train on the way back to the buses. Some said the food was definitely not HAL's - the overall rating - typical Mexican food. Everyone was back on the ship by 11 PM. So in order to eat between 3 and 4 AM you had to be up by at least 2:30. For those passengers - a long day - 20 and 1/2 hours!!!

We were able to attend a small meeting with a few TA's and the captain after this tour. All the TA's had small groups on this cruise (20 - 30 passengers in each group). One man claimed that he had brochures that said the train was supposed to be the Southern Orient Express (I have never heard of this) and the some of the cars were supposed to be dome cars - none were. He had shown his clients this brochure and felt that he had been mis-represented by HAL. The train nothing more than a regular Mexican train. All complained about the dirty windows - it appeared that the windows had not been cleaned in weeks. The bathrooms wer terrible - especially on the return trip down - no one had bothered to clean them or restock the toilet paper or paper towels. As I mentioned before, everyone was assigned seats. Some people had great views on the way up to the summit. Others didn't. On each car there are 4 windows that are quite small making viewing the scenery difficult for 8 passengers. On the return trip passengers trade assigned seats so that those who had the bad windows now have the larger windows. But as one woman said - it was great for about 2 hours but for the last 4 hours you travel in all darkness. In the talk session that we attended, another woman was asked if she would take this tour again and she said no and she said that she wasn't really certain if she would recommend this tour to anyone or not.