{"id":4530,"date":"2015-11-30T18:00:08","date_gmt":"2015-12-01T01:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/?p=4530"},"modified":"2016-09-08T15:59:35","modified_gmt":"2016-09-08T12:59:35","slug":"visiting-villa-del-oeste-durango","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/visiting-villa-del-oeste-durango\/","title":{"rendered":"Visiting Villa del Oeste, Durango"},"content":{"rendered":"

A popular destination just outside of Durango is Villa del Oeste<\/a>, a far west town that has been used in the filming of a lot of Westerns. I was rather ambivalent about going because, even though it’s not too far from Durango (just 10 minutes if there’s no traffic…), I didn’t feel like making the effort to take out my truck and go there. So I had popped in at the tourist info kiosk at one point and asked if there is a bus that goes there. Only on weekends, when they have shows. I could take a bus at 1:00 p.m. to make it to the 1:30 p.m. show and then either return on the 3:30 p.m. bus or spend the afternoon and watch the three different shows, to return on the 6:30 p.m. bus. Perfect! I was told the cost was $35, which I thought was just bus fare, but nope. The bus is free and the entrance to the village is $35. Definitely not worth driving!<\/p>\n

Julia wanted to catch a guided tour about Pancho Villa at 4:00, so we decided to go catch the 1:30 show, do whatever wandering around we had time for, and come right back on the 3:30 bus. That was more than enough time to get a bit of a sense of the place since it’s pretty small.<\/p>\n

The ride inspired a joke that would follow us through the day. The bus slowed down on the highway and Julia said, “Llegamos” (we are arriving). I said, “No. Es un tope” (No, it’s a speed bump). We wound up on another bus later in the day and as the bus slowed down for a tope, Julia said, “Llegamos…” turned to me, and then we both howled, “No, es un tope!” I guess you just had to be there. \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

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One of the frequent comment in reviews about the town is how fake it and touristy it looks in real life compared to how well it photographs. So true!<\/p>\n

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The shows are held on the main street. Lots of benches for guests, some more comfortable than others.<\/p>\n

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My oral comprehension of Spanish is still terrible, especially when it comes to fiction. I do okayish following a straight up informational narrative, but when I have to follow a plot, different voices, a variety of inflections, etc., forget it if I don’t have subtitles (Spanish okay!) to guide me. So I really didn’t understand much of the show. But based on the jokes I did get as well as how much everyone else was howling, it was funny!<\/p>\n

At one point, a no good husband who was always running off stood up to his wife and pointed a gun at her, yelling, “You’re not afraid of my gun?” She had been chasing and whacking him with a giant saucepan in previous scenes and was standing there holding the saucepan. I whispered to Julia, “He should be more afraid of her saucepan.” She turned to me, a huge grin on her face, and burst out laughing. The joke continued later in a souvenir shop where you could buy replica guns and I bemoaned that there were no saucepans for sale!<\/p>\n

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There was a cancan show after. Reminded me of Dawson! I was wearing a flowy black skirt, so I went into the street and danced, too, swirling my skirt around. So much fun!<\/p>\n

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We wandered around a bit, finding a snack (cranberry bun for her, nieve for me), and got some pictures taken. This was my favourite:<\/p>\n

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The town has a few stores with souvenirs, lots of portrait studios, and some food vendors. It would be easy to spend an afternoon here with kids, but not a full day.<\/p>\n

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There were a few things we could have done had we chosen to stay till 6:30, like a cart ride or even go horseback riding, and I know we didn’t explore every inch of the village, but we both agreed that we wanted to get back to Durango rather than hang out.<\/p>\n

This was a fun couple of hours that I know I wouldn’t have enjoyed half as much on my own!<\/p>\n

It was 4:00 when we arrived, so Julia had to hoof it over to Francisco Villa. I walked the block with her, thinking our day was over. But she\u00a0said she wanted to do a cemetery walking tour\u00a0quite a bit later that evening, so how about we meet up for dinner around 6:30, then go do the tour? Great! I told her to come meet me at the hotel when she was ready as I would be there having a break.<\/p>\n

I was glad to have a few hours to decompress and relax. I also had a headache from all that Spanish! What an education the day had been so far! I didn’t understand everything Julia said, not by far, and I sometimes had to pull out a dictionary to more clearly express myself, but, really, we did okay comprehension-wise. There were so many laughs all day, which transcends any language barriers. This is one of my favourite things about traveling solo, meeting up with someone just for a day and sharing some memories with no expectations of becoming lifelong friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A popular destination just outside of Durango is Villa del Oeste, a far west town that has been used in the filming of a lot of Westerns. I was rather ambivalent about going because, even though it’s not too far from Durango (just 10 minutes if there’s no traffic…), I didn’t feel like making the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,891,14,635,3],"tags":[825],"class_list":["post-4530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-durango","category-durango-city","category-mexico","category-north-america","category-travel","tag-ghost-towns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4530\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}