On our way back to the U.S. from Copper Canyon, we decided to take a side trip to the lumbering town of Madera, which is the nearest city to Huapoca Canyon, the northernmost of the Canons del Cobre complex. (We were traveling in a van ). We stayed several nights at the Real del Bosque Hotel, rated by Mexican tourism at 4 stars, but we would put it at a l or 2. Okay, but nothing special. It has a restaurant attached--handy in a town with few places to eat, and also a fine little archeological museum. The hotel arranged a guide for us, Saul, who agreed to take us out for a full day to visit the local Paquime (late Anasazi ) ruins. He charged us each only $30, but we did have to drive the van. The road to the ruins is dirt and got progressively worse, but we consoled ourselves that if we did ruin a tire, at least we had a young man along who could change it! (As it turned out, we got by with tires intact.) The road starts out by passing through the Ponderosa pine forests which have formed the basis of the No. Mexico lumbering industry for about a hundred years. The forest appears to be all second-growth and looks typical of what one would see in Arizona at high elevations. After and hour and a half of driving, we were startled to look down into Huapoca canyon and see q uite excellently developed hot springs pools, complete with water slides, just above the river. The municipal pool, Saul informed us. Then, we c rossed the bridge in Huapoca Canyon and soon arrived at the first set of ruins. A visitor center is under construction on the site, and trails are very well constructed and marked. Obviously, the area is gearing up for tourism. There were three thousand year old Pueblo sites here. We climbed down to one, with the expert help of Saul. It was a two-sided ruin situated on a promontory. We walked through the ruin to see both sides. After that, we walked farther and were content with viewing two other ruin sites, El Nido de Aguila (eagle's nest) and El Mirador (the view). Both had a number of adobe dwellings, much as you would see at similar sites in the Four corners of the U.S. Following that, we drove for half an hour on an even rougher road to a ruin site called La Cueva Grande, the large cave. We walked in about 20 minutes on a newly constructed trail and found a large cave with several dwellings inside, , with a waterfall coming from the top of the cliff in front of it. A very beautiful site. According to Saul, there are other archeological sites in the area. He is currently taking people to one called La Ranceria, which appears to be a large site inside a cave. He also leads rafting tours down the river in Huapoca canyon. The name of his company is Conjunto Mogollon; his website is www.maderarafting.cjb.net. Tourism is only about a year old in Madera. More visiting sites are planned for the future. If you want out of the way tourism, Madera is definitely worth a stop (if you are driving on your own.) (My husband and I drove to Copper Canyon by ourselves, as well as driving to the Basaseachi Falls and Batopilas. We had a fine trip and we highly recommend driving to Chihuahua.) We plan to go back to Madera eventually and see more of the archeological sites.