CANFA Comment

13 Sept: Sydney Airport
We arrived home to Sydney yesterday (12 Sept) from LA.After 6 weeks and 19 flights we will be home shortly - can't wait, especially since David said that we had 27 mm of rain last week.

After Mazatlan we caught a train and spent the remainder of our trip heading towards Chihuahua through the Copper Canyon - the world's third largest canyon. We had an amazing trip going from lush country to high and barren mountains. There were not many European tourists but we felt 100% safe all the time. We wandered through Indian villages, who live next to caves in which they used. They were selling their handicrafts, training their little toddlers to quietly go up to tourists and show what they had with their innocent faces - it broke many a heart. They seemed to be a quiet people but needed a little money as they didn't grow cash crops, only enough corn, beans and potatoes for their own use. Their crops were very poor and had many weeds not like some commercial corn crops we saw later on that used hybrid varieties.

On our last day we visited a region 110 km out of Chihuahua that was mainly Mennonite (similar to the Hutterites in Canada, but more modern than the Amish in USA). We went through their museum and had lunch at one of their houses in town. About 6000 moved there from Canada in about 1930- 1950 to escape the backlash against Germans, and they now have about 70,000 members. They don't live in closed communities as in Canada but in houses and farms around the town. They try to keep their traditions but are allowed more freedom as some women have careers. They have the world's largest apple orchard in the area, we didn't get to see it but we did manage to visit an apple packing shed. It reminded Ray and I of our orange orchard days! The houses looked very affluent, unlike the unfinished buildings in Mexico. They were very good farmers but suffering a drought (only 6 inches this year compared to 30 inches last year), but their crops looked very good.

Hope that you have enjoyed travelling with us around the world. We certainly saw a lot of farming and different ways of life but we can't wait to get home and get ready for what will hopefully be a good harvest.

Anne Williams