Tickets, Baskets and the Luck of the Draw

Riding the El Chepe Express — Mexico

We weren’t sure we actually had tickets.

We had paid for them—8400 pesos, about $500—but somewhere between Baja and Los Mochis the process had unraveled into something that felt less like commerce and more like philosophy. The El Chepe website didn’t work. The confirmation email arrived after I made a phone call conducted in what might generously be called “mutual bewilderment.”

The email said we were confirmed. But an email, I was about to learn, is not a ticket. It is a suggestion. At 7:15 a.m., outside the station in Los Mochis, a sharply dressed agent divided humanity into two groups: those with boletos, and those without. We hovered between them —  ticketing purgatory.

Inside, the line moved at a pace that suggested the concept of time had been recently introduced and not yet widely accepted. Six people ahead of us. Departure in 45 minutes. Then 30.  Then the kind of time where you start doing mental math involving alternate futures—none of them good. The ticket lady behind the plexiglass seemed to be explaining the history of the world to everyone she encountered.

The man ahead of me was in the same predicament. He was Mexican, but worked in Texas and spoke excellent English. He held up his phone. “Same problem,” he said.

We watched as he reached the counter. A flurry of Spanish. Head shaking. His wife joined in. More Spanish—more rapid and intense. The kind of Spanish that does not ask for permission so much as wants action … fast.

Finally, tickets were printed.

Hope!

Now our turn. I stepped up and presented my glowing rectangle of proof. “You must forward your email,” she said.

I tapped my watch and shook my head. “No tiempo. Siete minutos!”

This did not move her.

Then, from nowhere, the man’s wife reappeared at my side. She leaned into the plexiglass and launched into a rapid-fire appeal that had severe moral authority. I didn’t comprehend a word. But I understood everything. A pause. A nod. A printer whirred. She turned and smiled. “It’s good.”

I stood amazed.

Tickets in hand, I turned to thank her—but she and her family had already vanished, as if their work in this world had been done.

We ran. Bags, daypacks, what dignity we could gather—all of it hauled onto the train just as the doors closed and the engine pulled us out of the station with perfect, indifferent timing.

I dropped into the seat beside Cyndy and grinned. “After all of that,” I said, “this better be spectacular.”

The windows were large and clean and promised views of Mexico’s famous Copper Canyon. Bigger than Grand Canyon of the United States, said the brochures.

The first views — a garbage dump. Plastic bags tumbled in the wind. Shanties assembled from whatever materials had survived previous lives—cardboard, tarps, plywood, fragments of effort and hope passed us by. Chickens working the dirt like professionals. A goat considering its options.

Then a young man. Maybe twenty-one. Thin. Dark hair. A paper COVID mask pulled across his face. He stood alone in the middle of a sea of trash, surrounded by debris, staring into it as if he was in another universe. He never moved as we passed. What was he thinking? What did he expect to find? What dreams was he allowed to dream?

And then he was gone.

Gradually, the geology around us took over. Shanties gave way to houses. Houses to ranches. Dry plains stretched outward, dotted with cactus and scrub. A cowboy moved cattle across brittle grass, his hat working hard against the sun and dust.

Ahead, the Sierra Madre rose.

Inside the train, another world surrounded us. Leather seats. Polished finishes. Waiters gliding through the aisle with trays of drinks—wine, tequila, mojitos—appearing at precisely the moment you didn’t know you wanted one. A bar car open to the air was announced and by 10:30 a.m. 20 passengers had committed fully to the idea of vacation. Part of the first class experience.

The train climbed. Brown turned to green. The air cooled. We looked back on a river-carved gorge so snake-like you’d have thought it would surely break the train. The long machine swayed, rattled, hissed—making every noise an apparatus can make when it is both old and determined—but never hesitated. Cliffs tightened. Tunnels swallowed us. Bridges carried us over perilous ravines.

But upward. Always upward.

Fifteen minutes outside Divisadero near the top of the mountain, the train slowed. From a cluster of rough homes near the tracks, a family appeared—a mother, a teenage girl, and a small boy. They ran alongside the train, holding up brightly colored woven baskets. They kept pace as the train crept forward.

There’s something about a moving train that creates a false sense of distance—as if what’s happening just outside the window belongs to another world. Until suddenly, it doesn’t.

I jumped between the cars, found a window I could open. They were there instantly. Faces lifted. Arms extended. Baskets raised. Cyn and I didn’t need anything. We had nowhere to put the baskets they were offering in our cramped baggage, but I had money in my pocket. I handed 100 pesos to the boy. His face broke open into something ecstatic. His mother lifted the baskets again, offering them in exchange.

“No es necesario Regalo,” I said. A gift.

She looked confused, then relieved. But still they ran alongside us, because that’s what you do when an opportunity hasn’t entirely vanished. Then the train gathered speed and they were gone.

Back in my seat, the rhythm resumed. Drinks. Food. Smiles. Efficiency. The mountains slid past the window in long, quiet strokes. And the question settled in. Why them? Why this family—running along the tracks, selling what they could, hoping for something—anything? And why me? In this car surrounded by so much.  I didn’t earn it.  I wasn’t a better person. I wasn’t smarter. It was a crap shoot. A lottery. Nothing more. Nothing less.

And it wasn’t fair.