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We have always felt the trip to Mata Ortiz is a major part of buying and enjoying the pottery. Just
getting there is an adventure in itself. The three of us, David, Tara and our twelve year old daughter have
driven the 1500 mile round trip from North County San Diego to Mata Ortiz and back in an old Nissan 300 2x (absolutely not recommended) and our present Jeep Cherokee that so far
has been able to manage the roads. We cross the Los
Piňos
mountain range near San Diego and enter the
desert, sinking below sea level at Ocotillo, California, while often hitting 105 degrees around Yuma.
To encourage us on the trip we buy ice cream and chew ice right through Gila Bend and into Tucson, Benson and then south to Bisbee, to the border town of Douglas Arizona and
into downtown Agua Prieta. No sweat, this is the easy part
of the trip. Once into Mexico, the road narrows, becomes full of pot holes (an aptly named phrase) and
takes us over two sets of Mountain ranges, and into
extraordinarily beautiful ranch land. As we follow the
narrow road over the mountains, we pass many crosses draped with plastic flowers for the truckers who
haven’t made it: one memorable curve had seven such memorials at last count. When we finally hit Nuevo
Casas Grandes where a few of the potters now live, we breathe a little easier. Another twenty minutes we enter
Colonia Juarez, a tiny Mormon community of Western style Victorian architecture, with watered lawns and breathtaking neatness.
What the Mormons are doing here is another story: suffice it to say, at Colonia we leave any semblance of reasonable road and head off into the unknown.
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 If the river isn’t too high we cross through it to the other side of town, otherwise we
proceed from a street called “Snow”. Either
way, the challenge is immediate for the next 12 miles; rutted, washed out, dirt road, dusty washboards, enormous craters, large rocks everywhere-at times
civilization seems almost to disappear. Finally, if we don’t lose our way, we come over a bluff and see
an adobe mud village spread out on a flat plain with the worst roads of all throughout.
In a valley at almost 4500 feet with one river, known by the cottonwoods alongside, Mata Ortiz is, poor looking until one gets to see the homes up close.
When you finally get out of your vehicle and step inside a home you enter a world of pottery magic. Pottery,
on beds, religious articles all around, plastic flowers, big dolls, physically beautiful people, simple surroundings, much warmth. Mata Ortiz is the center for some of the best
potters in the world. As you go from home to home hoping the pots you buy don’t break on the craters that
are part of any passage through the village, you feel lucky to be part of this community even for a short while.
Tiffany window in the Gadston Hotel Douglas, Arizona
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