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Motorcycles Nicaragua Ride South Travel

Ride South – Nicaragua

While it wasn’t quite a full day, the border crossing into Nicaragua had taken a bit more time than I would’ve liked. As I mentioned before, when it comes to Central American border crossings, it’s best to assume they’ll take quite a bit of time. I ‘budget’ about a day to cross one; if it takes less time than that, then great; I’ll use that time to explore and find a nice spot. 

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So hey: Time to find a nice spot with the time I had. After the border, the terrain changes a bit. You ride through stunning forest on a beautiful road (really, I was shouting into my helmet how amazed I was at the quality of the pavement). Wonderful twisties sling into slowly into lower, drier land and you’ll eventually hit the town of Palacagüina. I made a gas and snack stop and weighed my options. I’d heard nice things about Léon, and it was a fairly quick ride there. 

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It was 2:13 PM. Doable? I guess I’d find out! 

I passed through some areas where the locals were burning fields and it created some very cool light for a motorcycle glam shot or two:

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Nicaragua really enchanted me with gorgeous landscapes out of the gate. Things got a lot more monotonous and dry as I progressed south-east, until I turned onto Nicaragua Ruta 26, a somewhat straight-shot two lane road right to Léon. 

Out of many rides through Central American countries, for some reason, this particular stretch really stuck with me. I don’t know if it was the unique, purple and orange light that preceded the sunset that started casting itself on the small, makeshift homes between the thin forests that lined the road or the interesting pockets of dwellings I rode by. It might’ve been the looming turrets of volcanic buttes and mounds that dotted the landscape in the far distance, making for an alien and new landscape, or the entirely-new shade of volcanic brown that the soil took on.

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Either way, it felt magical; a really unique, and different place to be riding, which was nevertheless ruthlessly casting longer and longer shadows as I rode through it. 

It wasn’t looking very good for me. I was racing the sunset. It’s not a race I won.
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In my resignation, I pulled over and took a few shots of the ridiculous view. I was on a small two-lane road, which a clear view of spectacular volcanoes on my side; the brilliant orange—yellow sunset light creating a for-once harmless conflagration of their slopes, a light-show that defied superlatives. Stars were already visible and barely a car passed by while I sighed into my helmet. 

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I kept riding, feeling like a bit of a moron. I remembered how things turned out in Honduras and I decided against pressing on. I pulled into a marked turnoff for a small town. 

I often use previous ride reports, tips from friends and other travelers or something like iOverlander to find a nice spot to stay. I had no data, so this was going to be a fun adventure. I barely knew where I was. That made my first order of business was finding a bit of food and a beer. 

At the restaurant, I asked the locals who were extremely surprised to see a giant space suit wearing gringo if there was a hotel in town. There was one! Just… one. With two rooms. I was happy to have a spot and wandered the town, which was having a religious parade of some kind:

It was impressive and I would’ve loved to find out more about tit, but after a solid 500 km day it was time for some rest.

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The sole restaurant / cantina of sorts in town wasn’t open for breakfast so a quick load-up in the blazing Nicaraguan heat and I was off to go to Léon. I could go on the main road, but it looked like there was a trail into town that was dirt…

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Easy choice! I did run into some traffic, so some lanesplitting was required:

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The road wasn’t incredibly scenic as it was dug into the landscape, but it did have some fun technical bits with rocky parts and deep sand in addition to cattle dodging. In about an hour or so I was in Léon.

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Hmmm, dirt. I love it. I had washed off some of the previous dirt with some low water crossings and it was now time to properly dirty it again.

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I made a quick stop for breakfast in Léon and decided to push on for Granada. It looked a bit more fun than Léon, which I didn’t find all that appealing.

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Granada is a beautiful town, reminiscent of Antigua Guatemala. I settled on grabbing a spot near the lake to explore the town and relax a bit.

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Colorful buildings with volcanic backdrops; the Central-American speciality. Granada has a bustling center, but if you’re staying near the water you can explore it without having to put up with the overly-touristy buzz of the main square.

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The weather took a turn for the worse later in the day.

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I took the early afternoon arrival to grab local fish lunch, walk around and generally relax a bit. The pace of the last few days had been intense, so it was nice to kick back. At night, I met a few other overland travelers and had a pleasant dinner with them in the touristy-but-fun-bustle-y center of town and even drank a few (good!) local brews.

It’s great that microbreweries are just about anywhere now, which makes for better drinking than a dozen of Nicaraguan’s regular Toña lagers.

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Relaxation day was over, and since I budgeted only one day to get from Nicaragua to Costa Rica and my girlfriend was coming in on the 22nd, I had some time to explore something I’d really wanted to go explore: the island of Ometepe.

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It’s a quick jaunt down to San Jorge from Granada, where you can grab a ferry to the island. Ometepe is a volcanic island, formed by twin volcanoes that pop out of the massive lake Cocibolca.

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Ferry tickets are bought at the dock.

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This is why you bring your own ratchet straps, folks! It’s worth noting there’s two different ferries, but the other one isn’t exactly great for vehicles; it’s a much smaller boat. You might be able to get a motorcycle on it, but it’d require some skill.

Anyway, for this one the price was 50 cordobas for a person and 420 (heh heh) for a vehicle. After chit-chatting with some of the people on the dock (with a Toña or two) and talking shop about bikes they simply let me on the ferry for free.

They even let me play Captain for a bit:

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I like Nicaraguans.

While it was a bit windy and choppy the day before, today was smooth sailing with some white-heads and rocking but nothing terrible. A beautiful view of the island was paired with intermittent rainbows of light casting through the lake waves the bow was smashing through.

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It was already getting a bit late by the time we made it to the dock. Longer shadows cast from the ship and golden light was playing all over the island.
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I travel rather spontaneously, so I hadn’t really looked into where I should stay or eat. As the sun was setting, I found myself on a far more important mission: Finding the best possible spot for watching the sun set into the beautiful, vast lake. I rolled off the ferry and quickly zoomed through the tiny port town and onto the ring road that loops around the volcanoes.

I came across the island’s airstrip, which you get to drive on — a first for me!
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A short distance down the road from the airstrip was a dirt trail, leading to two farms near the water.

RIDEEARTH-1004576I asked the (also motorcycle owning!) owners if I could pay them to stay on their beach and they happily welcomed me, offering me food and a beautiful spot to pitch my tent and watch the last rays of sunshine lick the faraway mountains as the weather cooled.

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This will do.

Categories
Border Crossings Guatemala Honduras Motorcycles Photography Ride South Travel

Ride South – Antigua Guatemala

San Pedro de Atitlan has two roads going out of it: one that goes back the way we came, through the hairpin fun-zone, and one that was repeatedly (even on ADVRider) marked as too dangerous too cross. It was unpaved and ran the periphery of the lake, right unit it hits one of the volcanoes and tickles its back, carving a route south of the slope and then looping back to the lake to Santiago Atitlan until finally meeting a road south at San Lucas Tolmán.

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Well, this sounds fun…

We did ask the lone police guy we’d been seeing in town and he didn’t really seem to have an opinion on the road. “¿Es peligroso, el camino?”, we’d ask, and he’d just shrug. Good enough for us. An American told us not to do it. Lots of robberies.

The thing is, we have fast bikes. And not that much to lose. And we love scenic byways. So in the morning, after having gotten some fruity breakfast by the lake — fresh fruit and vegetables are everywhere in Guatemala, and incredibly cheap at that! — we set off to ride this mysterious and supposedly dangerous road.

Breakfast first! It was a sunny day today, none of the clouds from yesterday (yet):

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This girl was just riding her horse through town, alone. She can’t have been older than 8 or 9.

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A funny syndrome of riding the Americas so far has been something I like to refer to as Relative Southern Danger. Wherever you are, whether it’s the US, a Mexican state or any South-American country, up until Costa Rica you’ll encounter a particular conversation with the locals.

You’ll first tell them others have told you it can be dangerous around here. “Ahh, no!”, they will exclaim. “The [area South of wherever you are] is the dangerous part. Around here, it’s quite safe.” The area in question can be the next country over, the next Mexican town or state south of you, or even something like a road. This will continue for some time until you reach Costa Rica, where it’s hard to claim things are less safe than Nicaragua.

It’s almost always an exaggeration. By all means, follow common sense, but also take things with a grain of salt. And a grain of recklessness.

The loop out of San Pedro is gorgeous, and quickly climbs to beautiful fields and farms.

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Farmers were out here and looked surprised to see us, and all waved us hello. That was nice. We waved back.

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Eventually the paved section ends and you drop rather precipitously (seriously, I think the drop was almost a foot, as if someone had just… disappeared the road) into a sandy wash and the fun dirt road begins. I suspect they were building more pavement here; lots of men were working on the road and they were all in a great mood. And again, rather surprised to see us. We said hi and chatted for a bit before blasting down the dirt.

It was definitely a rough dirt road. The constant water from the slopes carves channels and rocks out of the road and at times it was kind of a shit-show, with riverbed rocks and ruts all over the place.

It didn’t help that at times, an astonishingly stunning vista of the lake and its volcanic rim would come into view, momentarily distract you, and then lure your bike’s front wheel into a massive rock. All part of the game around Atitlan… Ah, Atitlan, you beautiful devil. Distracting, yet so demanding.

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After about an hour or so, we’d rounded the ‘terrible’ road and were on a beautiful sinuous paved road towards Santiago. Little farms and buildings dotted the route, the sun played through the leaves overhead and we soon found ourselves in San Lucas.

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Here, I’d say goodbye to Stu. It didn’t make any sense for him to follow me at my breakneck pace to Costa Rica, so he’d stay down here and explore Guatemala before also riding at a gentle pace to Costa Rica to sell his bike there. We’ll resume the ride at a later point, when we’re ready for it.

For now, it was goodbye. The town square was as great a place as any to say bye, and I felt a strong tug at my heart as he left. You get very close to a friend as you ride the Earth with them; you share hotel rooms with your stinky gear, brave what might be mortal danger with them and push yourself to and perhaps through limits you never knew you had. And now, I’d be alone. It felt weird.

RIDEEARTH-1004096He’s a great dude. I wished him the best, we pointed bikes in opposite directions, and off I went.

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The road out of Santiago quickly meets up with the Guatemala highway 11, which blasts straight south between some volcanoes on a gentle jungle-y downslope. After I rolled through this scenic route, there was a sort of intersection of four roads where I grabbed some quick food, a fresh coconut, and set off for Antigua.

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Antigua is a gorgeous town. According to my admittedly limited understanding of Spanish, ‘Antigua’ stands for ‘Antique’ or ‘Old’; as in, it’s the old city. The tiny city is a great example of gorgeous colonial architecture, and its set right between imposing volcanoes, which is kind of the Guatemalan thing to do.

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I rolled in to El Hostal and rolled my bike into the lobby as was customary. This is always a great conversation starter with fellow hostel-mates and I made friends in no time.

While my time in Antigua was going to be brief (sadly — if you go here, stay a few days and hike the volcanoes, seriously) I made sure to hit some places. CA Moto Tours and Cafe is a motorcycle rental joint in Antigua and I dropped by to chat a bit about bikes and life. Super fun people, those! They talked a bit about Tolga (known as ‘Ride Must Go On’ or just ‘Ride Must’ on Instagram) who’d been through earlier. It’s a small adventure-motorcycle world!

I discovered the American Embassy:

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And just sauntered around a bit to take some photos:

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And found a BBQ joint in town. Don’t get me wrong, I love local food, but sometimes you gotta take a newfound hostel friend (and moto tours office) recommendation and grab something smokey and delicious and wash it down with local beers.

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A big benefit of my pick of lodging, El Hostal, is its proximity to Cafe No Se. I’m a big fan of mezcal — that’s no secret — and this place was the birthplace of Illegal Mezcal, a little-known mezcal at first but now commonly found in the US as an upscale tipple. It’s a great stiff drink and this tiny bar / café matches its character: it’s a raucous place, full of weirdos and dirtbags. 100% my thing.

For once, I enjoyed a bit of solitude at the bar. While it was pretty busy, I walked in at the right time to get a stool at the bar and chatted a bit with the bartender — over some mezcal, natch — before writing a bit. In the smoky, busy ambiance I reflected on my newfound solitude. It was refreshing, different, strange and a bit lonely. You really get used to being so close to someone on the road for months, and the change was kind of profound.

I enjoyed my meditative drinks, internalizing and processing all the sights and experiences of the last weeks, as rowdy bodies crammed into the bar, burning up the last oil of an exotic warm Wednesday night. I caught wisps of stories of selling psychedelics to fuel a trip around the Americas for years, hitchhiking in faraway deserts, how homesickness was the sound of the creek next to the ranch they grew up in. Everyone’s singular, beautiful stories echoing off the walls in a faraway place. I was alone, and yet, I felt a sense of immense belonging.

———

Sunrise came the next day and despite the mezcal I had an easy time getting up and prepping the bike.   After just two brief days I was leaving Guatemala, easily one of my new favorite countries. It was time to ride to Honduras.

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An easygoing breakfast at El Hostal laid a good foundation for a walk around town.  One more photo walk? One more photo walk:

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This place is so stunning. The energy on Antigua is unique, and its people wonderful. A city I’d love to come back to.

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Better leave a sticker to remind myself of that.

I rode around town a bit with a newly made motorcycle friend who was a local, who was hoping to help me find some synthetic oil. Unfortunately we had little success, but he did show me a nice mirador, or viewpoint:

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It’s easy to understand why people felt like this was a place for religious significance and reflection.

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Ah. I love Antigua. I love Guatemala. It was rough to leave. I put a reminder on the bike:

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And started my six-hour ride to the border.

Guatemalan highways were surprisingly well maintained. I had a rough time getting through traffic in Guatemala City and got lost through a few of its confusing road layouts, which sent me through some dodgy barrios and into some even crazier traffic, but I made work of it.

By the time I reached the Honduran border, it was getting dark.

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Darkness seems to tap the will to work out of the Guatemalan border workers, and I found myself almost tempted to use the services of the always-present, always-annoying ‘helpers’ that offer to speed you along the border if you pay them. It almost never actually works, and you end up supporting a rather annoying practice, so I never did.

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But a solid hour of copying paperwork, waiting for computers and general bureaucratic nonsense later, I was allowed to head to Honduras.

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Mr. Hat here did change my Guatemalan quetzals for Honduran currency, which was nice.

After stamping myself out and canceling my import permit, it was time to do the reverse in Honduras. It was pitch black as I walked into the abandoned and large custom’s office.

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Honduras’ border must have been influenced by the Big Copier lobby, as you need 4 copies of everything. I was sent to a small room to do copying of all sorts of documents: my passport, the vehicle registration, my drivers license, the vehicle title… and after getting all that, copies of my stamped documents. It took a while, and then the officer demanded a rather high price for my vehicle entry.

I’m not entirely sure if there is a fixed price to enter Honduras. From what I’ve heard, it is one of the worst countries as far as bizarre border inconsistencies go, with some people being forced to pay tons of cash to get in. I was being asked about $30, which seemed exceptionally high coming from Guatemala.

I ended up calling a friend to ask him to Google the fees. Danny, the friend, picked up the phone terrified, assuming I had been kidnapped and this was finally the call where I asked him to wire tens of thousands of dollars before they started sending a variety of my appendages in registered air mail to my family.

It wasn’t quite that dramatic. Failing to find a definitive answer, I paid the man, which in retrospect seemed to be the legitimate price. Who knows? Forget it Jake, it’s Honduras.

It was late enough at this point anyway, and I wanted to just end the day.

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The last bit of light outside was the green glow of my GPS, which pointed me to a hotel in Copán just a bit down the road. That’d do. Cold air brushed my face as I cautiously but enthusiastically rolled into Honduras, through a curvy road, into unseen unknowns.

Categories
Guatemala Motorcycles Photography Ride South Travel

Ride South – Guatemala: Lago Atitlan

Guatemala is dangerous. Not in the traditional meaning of ‘danger’, which is the type of danger you get warned of from sheltered people that assume anything 100 miles south of where they’ve lived is a shady place nobody should ever go; no, Guatemala is dangerous because it swallows people whole.

Particularly people like us.

You see, if you’re a traveler, you might come through a country like Guatemala with plans for an epic trip North or South of its borders. But you’ll find the kindest people you’ve ever met, vast jungles and epic volcanoes, dramatic landscapes dotted with ancient temples, fascinating cultures and exotic animals — all accessible at an incredibly low price. Guatemala is beautiful, kind, diverse, and incredibly cheap. Guatemala is dangerous because trips end here. People just forget to leave.

Today we were going to a spot that eats a lot of people whole in Guatemala, Lago Atitlan (English: Lake Atitlan).

First, it was time to wake up Stu:

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We had a quick breakfast and went out on the road. Would you look at that, a non-Pemex gas station! Mexico has a nationalized gas company, so you really only see one ‘brand’ of service station. It’d been almost three months since we’d seen a new gas station brand. Ola Puma:

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As a bonus, this nondescript gas station overlooks a valley dotted with gorgeous, dramatic volcanoes. They seem to spring forth out of the Earth in Guatemala like mushrooms. Just tons of them around every turn. A fascinating landscape.

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Traffic situations, roads and general traffic rules are even more relaxed / nonexistent in Guatemala compared to Mexico.

It was already noticeable riding down further South in Mexico that people started being a bit more ‘loose’ with the rules of the road, maintenance of roads or even paving of roads, and in Guatemala it reaches its logical conclusion:

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When they’re not running you off the road or generally driving like a malicious idiot, these ‘chicken buses’ are beautiful to look at:

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After the more dodgy intersections and traffic situations of Guatemala, we had a stretch of beautifully paved and fast highway, that led is into some nice high mountains.

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That little dot is Stu, cheerfully flying along.

We soon had to turn off to get to the lake, though. Clouds built on the ridges of mountains and volcanoes ahead of us as we dipped off large highways into smaller byways, from larger villages into smaller pueblos…
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Seeing more and more people in their native dress, as the villages got sparser and smaller.
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Eventually, it was just countryside we were riding through. Our reading of maps wasn’t the most brilliant, so we had a small but fun detour through the scenic countryside of the mountain ridge that surrounds Lago Atitlan.

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At times this little dirt road was little more than some two track road, and with the wet fog it all got a bit muddy, too. Pretty fun, but we were getting properly lost and it was time to see if we could find a way out and to the lake we’d been promised.

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We ended up getting some help from a fellow who led us the right way. Turns out there was some pavement hiding in these mountains!

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We finally found the edge of the clouds…

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A few more miles of fun, fun dirt road…

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And here it was, in view now, Lago Atitlan.

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I didn’t really take photos of the way down as it is basically a fantastic set of hairpin turns on gravel and sand that didn’t really allow for a lot of one-handed shooting, but I really regret that I didn’t pull of somewhere to figure out a way to get a shot. We were already dodging chicken buses and other traffic on the road, so there wasn’t really a good way to snap a photo, but let this map serve as a general indication:

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Oodles of noodly fun.

A short road takes you from the bottom of this hairpin salad to San Pablo La Laguna, where you’ll get your first lake-level views of the massive volcanoes that define the perimeter of the lake.

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We rode on to San Pedro La Laguna, rather famous for its eccentric hippie inhabitants and wonderful views.

While the entire lake and its surrounding volcanoes (3 in total, one rather big one) were covered in clouds, light filtered through it like a lamp shining through milk. It was spectacular to see.

Lake Atitlan is over 700 feet deep, and the result of a massive eruption some 80,000 years ago. The volcanoes that dot the rim of the caldera, large as they may seem, are an order of magnitude or two smaller than the one that blew up to form this lake. As the years went by, it filed with water, and it now feeds two rivers that flow downstream from the massive reservoir. Precipitation fills it constantly, keeping it full of water.

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It’s known as one of the most stunningly beautiful lakes in the world.

I’d agree, even when it’s cloudy out.

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The towns on its rim are accessible by road, with some of the smaller ones only accessible by boat. Tons of Mayan culture runs through the towns, in everything from customs to food and architecture. It’s a remarkable place.

For visitors, it’s an easygoing place.

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For everyone, life revolves around the lake.
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Strolling the streets you find animals, small backyard farms, coffee being dried…

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And, inexplicably, a Dutch evangelical community? I’d recommend against learning Dutch, it’d be more useful to learn English. And that’s coming from a Dutch guy.

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Classic shrines are found throughout, and the layout of the city seems organic and spontaneously grown rather than planned. It forms beautiful little parks, spins tiny streets and alleys around trees and geological features, and always dips down into the waters of the lake.

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Please keep your giant cock jokes to yourself, folks.

The actual ‘downtown’ area of San Pedro, which you’ll visit if you want to get out some cash or some such, is much more of a typical Guatemalan town, with chicken buses and traffic craziness in spades:

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But you won’t spend too much time here. This is where you wander:

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And where you find Life, nestled on the slopes of a volcano, seemingly plunging into what is an even bigger volcano crater. A meeting of fire and water with steaming mountains all around.

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And as the sun started rolling behind the sharp ridges of the rim the fire lit the steam alight with beautiful fire.

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Another victory of the fire over the water.

It’s not hard to see why people get lost here. Or perhaps, why some try to get lost in this particular place only to make attempts at finding themselves.
QuickJPG-1004078 We, as humans, travel and change our lives to seek that very vague thing. It doesn’t matter if you are home or on the road, or if you feel satisfied or lost in life. The greatest developments in my life I’ve experienced were times when I truly felt lost, alienated from what I knew, and it forced me to grow.

It seems like you seek something in those moments: a sense of balance, perhaps. A grounding influence. Something that makes you feel like yourself again.

I truly felt that way when we rode up to Alaska, in a strange state where my entire life seemed uncertain. The future, entirely vague. My mind muddled and feeling disconnected with everything, including myself. In Atitlan, I noticed it in other travelers, too; some perhaps more lost than others.

We spent the evening meeting with other travelers or locals who’d gotten stuck here a long time ago. Eaten by the giant caldera, willingly trapped on the slopes of a volcano.

It’s a stereotype, but in the end, I related to the lost ones so strongly. And I hope they found themselves — or the thing they were looking for.

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Categories
Border Crossings Guatemala Mexico Motorcycles Photography Ride South Travel

Ride South – ¡Adios México!

San Cristóbal is a special place. That isn’t just because it’s a ‘pueblo magico’, or ‘magical town’, but because it is in Chiapas, one of Mexico’s most unique states. Chiapas is a humid, tropical state covered in jungles that house various well known and yet-to-be-discovered Mayan ruins like Palenque, Bonampak and Toniná.
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As I mentioned in my last post, all that culture is still very much here. It’s here in the people, in the tiny villages, and it’s very much here in San Cristobál. Like Oaxaca City, it felt alive with the throbbing pulse of a local culture. Chiapas’ indigenous culture has been clashing with the Mexican government for quite some time, and you don’t have to look far to see signs of that.

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There’s marks of the Zapatista (a left-wing, indigenous-rights socialist group) throughout, and there were a lot of words of roadblocks on the roads going out of town.

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You also see a lot of people in their native garb.

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We were in the heart of the city, in the very pleasant Rossco Hostel. The place has a really quaint charm to it, with its lush courtyard (where we stored the bikes) and friendly house dogs. Being a backpacker hostel, it also has its fair share of colorful characters moving about, and we explored the town a bit with some of them.

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I had to do a few maintenance things: I needed a new key for my bike panniers, so I went to ask around town to find someone who could make keys. I was pointed towards a crafty young boy who told me it’d be the equivalent of about half a dollar and to come back in about an hour.

I came back to get this key:

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Yep, it was slowly and painstakingly etched by hand. No machines here, just actual handiwork. It works like a charm. Just amazing.

In bike maintenance, since we’ve been in such hot and humid climates I couldn’t help but notice the HP2 running rather hot. Hot, in this case, means ‘at the notch’, which is the top of the engine temperature dash.

I’d gotten several suggestions on the HP2 thread on ADVRider but the most helpful one was just to perhaps cut off part of the front fender that was blocking the airflow to the oil cooler altogether. Wouldn’t you know it, it cooled down the bike quite a bit.

The fix:

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An interesting situation arose for me: I have to meet my girlfriend in Costa Rica in about 11 days. We’d had plans to meet up for some time, but she’d finally nabbed a ticket out of Chile where she was doing a trip and the date was now final. That gave me a bit (a lot) less time than I wanted to check out Guatemala, but at least Stu could take his time there.

Some great sights still awaited us: the ruins of Palenque and the beautiful sights of the rest of Chiapas were tempting, but we had very consistent and reliable reports of entirely shuttered roads and violent protest with several tourists gone missing in the days before, so we made the decision to head for the border the next day. Fortunately, Guatemala would offer excellent riding, Mayan ruins and a slightly lower chance of violent mobs.

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So with that, we loaded up our bikes in the courtyard, tossed out a half HP2 fender, slapped some Mexico stickers on the panniers and headed for the border.

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Our late start combined with roadworks and roadblocks led to a 90 km ride — which was supposed to take about 2 hours — becoming a 5 hour affair. We had only traveled about 90 km south of San Cristobal de las Casas when we hit the town of Comitan at nightfall with angry clouds boiling in the sky. Forecasts said downpours, and we’re fairly close to the border, so we stopped.

Not wanting to attempt the border crossing at night, we decided to stay one last night in Mexico here.

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A beautiful town.

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I love this zippy (unofficial) yellow police motorcycle.

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Yeah, those clouds are bad news.

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The next day we rolled through the hotel (this never gets old), off the curb and into the streets of Comitan and bid Mexico adieu.

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It’s a pretty sort of roll downhill towards the border crossing at Ciudad Cuahtemoc / La Mesilla.

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Ah, border crossings.

In Central America, you should budget time. It’s a currency they are generous with, so your budget should be substantial. In the case of border crossings, I usually budget about a day. If we get a border crossing done in less than a day, that’s pure profit as far as time goes. Don’t go into it expecting things to go well, fast, efficient, or in any way normally. That way you’re much less likely to be disappointed.

The Mexico-Guatemala border isn’t half bad.

When we entered Mexico, we put down a deposit when we got our ‘temporary vehicle import permit’ or TVIP. There’s more names for this particular document, but let’s refer to it as the ‘TVIP’ in our posts about border crossings. Much like you get a temporary visa upon arrival that lets you stay in the country for a few months, your vehicle gets to be in a country for a bit by the grace of this piece of paper.

When you enter Cuidad Cuahtemoc, the first order of business is to get your vehicle checked out of the country, and then yourself checked out.

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This is the spot for that. There’s a big awning that you cannot park under, so bring some sunblock. Then be prepared to be told to go get copies of documents. You can’t do these in advance: they’ll be stamped documents and of course there’s only one spot in town that does copies at somewhat-extortionate rates. It’s also up here, on the hill behind the adauana offices:

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Oh well. We went up to get copies (and water, it’s in a convenience store, hooray!) when a giant bus full of smelly backpackers (not as smelly as us, mind you) arrived. Oh no! The last thing you want is to be stuck behind a 150+ people who need their papers processed.

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Fortunately they gave us priority and they refunded our deposit on the vehicle, stamped out the paperwork and got us stamped out of Mexico.

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Currency changers walk around here and can give you a decent exchange rate, provided you negotiate a bit. You’ll need local currency at the border and unless you collect international bills you’re better off exchanging whatever cash you have left at a decent rate. Just look up what the exchange rate is on Google and show it to the money changer. They’ll counter at something and if you’re happy with it, go exchange your cash and rejoice in your newfound local wealth.

There’s a little road between Ciudad Cuahtemoc and the actual border between Mexico and Guatemala, and on that exact border line is where you’ll find the customs and immigrations of Guatemala. This is what’s called a ‘no man’s land’.

Right before you get to it, there’s a jaw-dropping lookout of the rolling hills of pure Mayan country.

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This is the splendor that the once-mighty Mayan empire ruled over. Images don’t do it justice. The landscapes and skies were vast, with god-rays shooting between scattered clouds over mountains that dramatically erupted from the fertile valley. The very mountains themselves felt like resting gods, perhaps nearly forgotten, their powers slowly diminished over time until they went to rest here, only to be overgrown in thick jungle.

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Or perhaps it was this photobombing butterfly that was the reincarnation of the native gods.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, I’d lost Stu, who had left to go to the border already. Time to catch up! Stop here for the initial customs paperwork (passport stamps!)…

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Then pull up for the mandatory vehicle import permit.

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This little office is the one you want, and they’ll actually check your VIN! We were surprised at how diligent they did their work. No attempts at overcharging, we got the regular 160 quetzals for the vehicle permit and 40 for the mandatory fumigation of the vehicle.

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Stu’s doing the work of getting the KLR legal in Guatemala.

And a hose-down with (likely not really effective) fumigation chemicals.

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Interestingly La Mesilla, the border town, really grew an entire little ecosystem around the border. Things are no doubt more and less expensive on both sides, and thrifty people have set up tons of shops with almost everything imaginable on both sides, which grew to this bustling little ramshackle metropolis:

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Little taxis shuttle people back and forth, annoying ‘helpers’ dot the area, and tons of merchandise is moved in trucks.

The border crossing didn’t take more than an hour or so and we got on the road. Not having a clear goal for the day, we rode to Huehuetenango, the closest city that should have a bank for getting some currency and perhaps a good spot to grab some food.

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The ride there was pure bliss. Beautiful, twisty mountain roads flanked by epic cliffs and mountains. The road snakes through the valley following a river that splits off somewhere near Colotenango, leaving you to the two-lane ‘highway’ 7W to Huehuetenango. We got in sometime after nightfall.

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It’s not a very fantastic town. In Huehuetenango, we looked around to find a kind of nice local’s spot, but really only found some dubious truckstop kind of joints. At the end of the night we did manage to find some Americans that lived in Huehuetenango that were here for ‘mission work’.

I wonder what kind of mission it was?

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I think their mission might have been drinking. What a coincidence, that’s ours too!

After a night of chatting with their super friendly community and exchanging tales of travel we grabbed some roadside food to get a true local flavor:

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After which we hit the hay. There was a whole new country ahead of us just waiting to be explored.

Categories
Mexico Motorcycles Photography Ride South Travel

Ride South – Oaxaca to Chiapas

Come on, do I really have to leave Zipolite? At this point, I’d met locals that had given me a coke bottle full of cloudy (purportedly) ‘mezcal’ that I really enjoyed and we’d made friends with half the town. We never thought we’d find another town like Skagway on our Ride North, but here it was. And it was a nude beach, at that.

We had to go. Stu fired up the KLR and almost steered the KLR into a wall at speed thanks to the 1+ foot deep sand we were parked in, so I decided to spare my (dry, bah) clutch and just push my bike out to the street.

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Where we loaded up the bikes in searing hit. Pro-tip: put your helmet in the shade while you do this!

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All nicely packed up. We looked our old digs up and down once more and had some breakfast in town, where the local policy was clearly spelled out:

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I’m not entirely sure if all the locals really adhere to this rule…

After a bit of snacking we had the hot air of the road blast the tears off our face that beaded our cheeks after tearful goodbyes… Okay, perhaps it wasn’t quite that sad, but I felt less than motivated to move on.

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This is our route today. The coastal Oaxacan route 200 is super fun, twisty, offers gorgeous ocean views and plenty of great (and not so great pavement). It’s not terribly busy, either.

We pulled right up to two guys really ripping up the road on their smaller bikes and got off for a drink and made some new friends:

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We gave them some stickers and patches. One of them was named ‘Galileo’. What a cool name, man.

Salina Cruz was an interesting town. Coming from a very naturopath hippie micro-beach community, we were thrust into an industrial port town where a gas refinery and trash fields around it burned in the distance. Tons of people were in and about the town, and it had a decidedly different atmosphere and feel than all of Oaxaca we’d seen so far. We found the edge of the state, and not a particularly happy slice of that edge.

The day’s ride had been hot and exhausting and after looking for camping near the water we just gave up and got a cheap hotel instead. We wanted to rest up a bit after hearing some horror stories about the road we’d do the next day, anyway.

We were planning to ride to San Cristobal de las Casas, a ‘pueblo magico’ in Chiapas, the final Mexican state. To get to Chiapas, you have to cross what’s know as the isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico’s narrowest little piece of land. As the Sierra Madre hunches down and the volcanic mountains of Chiapas and Guatemala arise to its East, wind gets channeled in from the Caribbean and blows across the isthmus at great speeds. We heard stories of toppled trucks, motorcyclists unable to stay on the road, all sorts of terrible tales of horror.

I recalled the great video from Becky (Motoventuring) where they were blown over on the road.

Well, we went on the ride and while it was windy… it was kind of a joy. Tons of windmills (quelle surprise!) and trucks on this route, but by no means the Death Winds we’d heard of. We probably got lucky, or some aspect of it might have also been the penchant for drama people have. We’ve heard a lot of horror stories and have yet to find a road or place that was quite as bad as people said!

L1003776 L1003777 Hey Stu, what do you think—
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Yeah, he’s cool with it.

After the flat terrain of the isthmus, the mountains pick up again. Roads snake up a set of rolling hills which rapidly turn to scenic mountains and before you know it, this gorgeous state of Oaxaca is no more:

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This is it, the last state of Mexico! We can’t believe it. Despite having seen so many parts of it, we were still craving more. Every part of this country is a delight.

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And would you know it, Chiapas would prove to be no different. Look at this dramatic, gorgeous landscape. Hot, but gorgeous.

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The road into Chiapas, towards San Cristobal de las Casas, is stunning. Probably in my top 5 rides of all of Mexico. This unreal, golden set of dry hill vegetation turns to greener and more colorful varieties of scenery before fading right back into dryness and golden hues again. A feast for your eyes — and the road, a feast for the soul.

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And there’s quite a bit of road to cover! We entered the hills near San Pedro Tapanatepec (what a mouthful), to cross the highlands of Chiapas and then make a blast for the hills near Tuxtla Gutiérrez and hopefully ride into San Cristobal by sundown.

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The flatlands were smoky. We rode through thick smoke for a good 30 minutes until we ran into the source: burning fields. We were absolutely starving but decided to push through this to save our own lungs, and found a mariscos (seafood, yep, perhaps a bad idea) out here in the highlands to chow down on. Surprisingly good!

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In Tuxtla Gutiérrez we gassed up and found a Minecraft bike (?). We debated if we wanted to check out the town but it seemed truly dreadful to us, and we had a bit of sunlight left.

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Boy, am I glad we drove up the mountain to San Cristobal.

As we ascended through hills and mountains outside of Tuxtla, we rode through our first small Mayan villages. Unlike Aztec culture at large, Mayans continue to live to this day, still cultivating corn at high altitudes, still speaking their Mayan language and observing a lot of its customs. The dwellings, while somewhat modern, were still dotted on the ridges of mountains by the roadside and were still surrounded by stalks of corn and other traditional crops.

The people on the side of the road looked like they could’ve been here many centuries ago. It was a powerful reminder of just how strong Chiapas’ native identity and culture is to this day — something that is the source of many conflicts with the Mexican federal government.

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There are the hills they live in, and the hills they have lived in for generations upon generations. And we’re just lucky enough to see them as they are in this small snapshot of time, bathed in golden glows of a setting sun.

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I suspect the Spanish had something more tangible in mind when they were out here looking for the gold of the natives, but this can’t have been a bad consolation prize. Sunsets in this high country are magical, and the warm light played with the cornstalks in a beautiful fiery way.

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Ah, how can I keep going? I have to stop and take photos. I have to keep moving, too, as we hate riding in the dark in unknown places and on mountains without great visibility and into a town we’d never been in… but, the scenery. Just look at it:

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I’d stop to take some photos, and Stu would overtake me. I’d keep riding for a bit, and fly by Stu on the side of the road, taking photos. The process would repeat so often that eventually I was trained to listen to that big pig of a thumper’s roar echoing of the mountainside and make sure I had my camera ready to snap him rolling by:

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And with that purple glow, the sun had been laid to rest. Only the light from our own headlights poured over this twisty road now, the last few dozen miles to San Cristobal, no doubt scenic but it scenery and views now invisible to us.

It’d been a solid ride, and we checked into the Rossco Backpacker Hostel, which we were told gives a free night to bikers. We were not just warmly welcomed, but for the same price they gave us a full room to enjoy in the back and a beautiful spot in the courtyard to park the bikes. Tomorrow, we’d set off to explore San Cristobal and make plans for Chiapas and what lay beyond the Mexican border.

But first, beers, food, and a bit of rest from our taming of the isthmus and chasing up the Mayan trail.

Categories
Mexico Motorcycles Photography Ride South Travel

Ride South – Zipolite

As I was packing up the bike to leave the magical city of Oaxaca, I started to wonder what lay ahead.

Mexico has been a particularly excellent country to travel through. The sheer variety of it is mind-blowing. This would be our first return to one of its coastlines since we went ashore in Mazatlan after our ride through Baja. With the temperatures picking up in Oaxaca, the ocean did sound appealing.

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There was a KTM 1190 Adventure in the lot at our hotel, Hotel Paris (fine spot, by the way — and nice secure parking!) in Oaxaca. Stu’s KTM cravings continue to intensify.

After a bit of looping around town to find gas we drove through some very flat and empty terrain before starting the ascent of the mountains the separate Oaxaca and the ocean. Today’s ride would be exceptionally twisty and fun and see a the weather change rapidly and frequently.

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As the first turns and hills appeared it was time to try and put on a podcast to listen to while carving turns.

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Not a bad view from here. People build some beautiful homes out here, with little farms and gardens in the loamy fertile soil.

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It was very hot out, so the best thing we reckoned we could do was to move quickly to ensure adequate air flow. That does mean you have to really hit those corners hard, but I suppose there is just no other choice. We had to do it, officer, you know how warm it is today!
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But as we gained altitude it started looking like some clouds were meeting right on top of the mountain range that we were crossing.

L1003355 And indeed, not just the temperature dropped: we saw some rain, which was the first time on this trip we’d been caught in it.

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We sought a bit of food so we could let the rather violent rain pass. This was… possibly the worst food we’d had in Mexico yet, and perhaps one of the worst meals of my life. I am assuming villagers here eat at home, not at the street-side restaurant.

Look at that, the rain has passed!

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Out from our parking spot we could see a seemingly steaming forest, a bizarre and beautiful play of earth and air as wisps of cloud ran its tendrils through the woods like a million ghostly white hands.

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These are the kind of views that are like music to your eyes. Beautiful, classical music, with a range of complex layers and indescribably beautiful textures that a camera or microphone really can’t capture well.

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Stu was also very impressed. And wet. Impressed and wet.

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As we continued, we basically started riding in the clouds themselves, which still had plenty of moisture to go around. We rode through some sheets of rain, wet fog/cloud, and the roads were slippery as hell. Heidenau K60 tires are great for a lot of things but the grip in the wet sucks sometimes.

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I believe me taking these exceptionally bad photos with my camera is what eventually led to water getting into the viewfinder. Oops. Well, they should’ve sealed it a bit better.

After about an hour of relative cold and rain we cleared a bend and it was suddenly beautiful out. We truly just rode out of the clouds, on the edge of the downward slope that would lead us toward the coast.

A short lesson in Spanish signage:

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‘Curva Peligrosa’ means ‘fun turn’. The more you know! Speaking of signage, there was a massive surplus of curve indicator signs in Oaxaca, apparently, because they absolutely studded the hills in them. Almost every turn had these reflective signs showing you helpfully the the road did, in fact, turn here:

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I was delighted to find another first on our trip: a proper jungle. The windward half of the mountain range receives a remarkable amount of moisture from the ocean and dumps it onto not just unsuspecting motorcyclists, but also the forests, leading to a truly lush and gorgeous forest full of palm- and banana trees and deciduous trees of all kinds. An absolute explosion in biodiversity.

L1003420 This side was also quite dry, and we enjoyed being able to hit all the turns a bit faster. We did, ironically, work up quite a thirst and found this fantastic roadside family who cut and served coconuts. Highly, highly recommended:

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How’s the drink, Stu?

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After you finish it, you just give it to the good man and he’ll cut it up, throw in chili, lime and a few other goodies and you can eat the flesh. Delicious. Such a brilliant idea.

The twists and undulations in the road started to even out a bit, villages started appearing, and eventually we found ourselves on fairly flat ground. A massive mountain loomed behind us and the sun was rapidly sinking towards the now-sometimes-visible ocean. We crossed a bridge:

L1003445 … and tried to make it for Zipolite before dark.

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Zipolite was something I’d just heard about through the grapevine. I was told that despite Mexico’s somewhat conservative nature there were places where people took the laws and rules a bit less seriously, walked the beach nude, and let others do with their life what they pleased. Zipolite is one of those places, or so I was told, and I from what I heard its menagerie of crazies and eccentrics made for a very unique small beach town.

Being from San Francisco, I enjoy a good hippie beach town as much as the next guy.
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We definitely rushed once we hit the coastal highway, having to ride a little bit north (boo! We should be going south!) to make it to Zipolite. A small byroad shoots off the highway after a little mixed sand/dirt/pavement trail takes you right to the famed beach town.

We got in right as the sun started kissing the horizon. I just hopped off the bike and ran to the beach. It’d been a long enough day.

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The first order of things was, naturally, a dark beer, but also a quick gander at the local cuisine:

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Fish, right off the boat. You can’t just pass on that.

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This wonderful open-air ‘kitchen’ makes the absolute damn best fish and shrimp. I think it was the best shrimp I’ve ever had, period. That makes for one of the best and the worst meals in my life all in one day!

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This was a great beginning to a stay in Zipolite that went by far too fast. We met some locals and drank the night away. We rolled our bikes into a sandy, crappy beachside hotel so we had a place to stash our stuff safely. It was also right next to a bar called ‘A Nice Place’.

It was a nice place.

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Zipolite is a bunch of ramshackle structures all dotting a beach that is flanked by dramatic jagged rocks.

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Around sunset, you can actually see the sun spilling through some of the eroded rocks, spilling it last bit of warm and orange light into the cove.

L1003543 It’s a stunning sight, and it never gets old.

L1003552Then, as the sun starts to set and move against the horizon, it somehow feels like it lingers, as if the light that spilled in past the rocks hangs in the air like smoke.
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We were so mesmerized by this that we routinely forgot about the sometimes powerful waves and nearly drowned our telephoto lens…
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It’s all good, we kept it dry.

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Zipolite’s a small place, so you see most people come out to watch the sun set. This couple had a beautiful moment as the last light was slowly extinguishing and giving way to a clear starry sky:
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And then that was it. But a purple glow of the sun remained and we had another nice night out with some really great people we met and instantly got along with. It’s fun how easy it is to make friends as a smelly motorcycle bum.

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The next morning it was time for Stu to do some work on his fork. What’s the best possible place to work on motorcycles? I’d say a sandy courtyard of a crappy beachside hostel is just the ticket.

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Alright, give me your war face!

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Ah, yes, this is our accommodations. The place isn’t much, a sort of driftwood-fire-hazard by the beach, but it was ours for a few nights, and it did great. The owner was a total ass to us, but I kind of love that. Who doesn’t dream of quitting everything and moving to a tiny nude beach paradise far away to heckle strangers every day?

I know I do.
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Speaking of dreaming, Stu was looking dreamy so I took his portrait.

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It was our third day in Zipolite already, and it was starting to become apparent that if we had any say in it, we’d probably stay around for a long time. Perhaps we should do something productive or keep traveling, I would tell myself.

And then I’d walk by our regular spot:
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OK, we’ll stay just a little longer.

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Zipolite’s main drag is paved (!) and has all sorts of fun little shops and restaurants. The food’s great almost anywhere and there’s tons of gluten/meat/dairy/cat/dog-free meals available everywhere. I personally eat everything, but despite their laid back attitudes in life a lot of hippie types tend to be very picky eaters.

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Ah, how can you not love this place? Wandering around was a joy, with the town being so tiny. We were offered some exotic psychedelic drugs on the street at times, too — it’s not often you see a kind stranger offering to sell you some DMT. It reminded me of San Francisco a year or 10 back, where in Dolores Park you’d get offered a multitude of fun mind expanding substances if you just sat around with your friends on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

On the beach the drug of choice was alcohol, though, especially in the form of a nice chilled Pacifico. Ahh.

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I took a short hike up to the ‘meditation point’ which overlooks the cove. You get to really see the remarkable texture of the jagged rocks from up close — when they’re not covered in cacti and other interesting plants, that is.

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I have to admit, just the salty air and rushing waves really felt calming after what felt like such a long time riding inland.

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A change of pace.

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Oceans have a grounding effect on me. I’ve always lived near the ocean, and as a kid I found its sights, sounds and smells uniquely inspiring and important. There’s a saying in Dutch, that goes something like ‘to go and have the wind blow it out of you’; to have the ocean winds clear your head, and cool you down.

Oceans do that. I suppose that’s why this little meditation point was here, up on a cliff being battered by waves, up and away from the town and in a bit more wind than the cove the town hides in.

L1003658 L1003659 I walked back, the wind now playing a softer ballad through the little paper ribbons on the trail.

It’d be our last night in Zipolite.

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I wrote a bit in my hammock and had a beer as I sorted out some thoughts. Being on the road every day is nice; you get new sights, make new friends and have adventures every day. It lets you take your mind off a lot of regular thoughts in your mind, and it helped me lift myself out of a horrible depression I plunged into after my divorce.

But you do have to take time on the trip to reflect, and think a bit. Let the thoughts intrude on your mind so you can sort some things out.

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But as the light on my sandy feet turned orange, it was time to snap a few photos of the sun dipping behind the rocky outcroppings again. Stu ran out with our new friend Laura, who enjoyed photography herself:

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her brother Alexander and Bregje, our other new friends had already set up a nice little beach base right outside of A Nice Place:

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Where we could grab ample beverages to talk the night away and lament our having to get back on the road. Zipolite would be an easy place to ‘lose a trip’; with how cheap it is to live here, it’s tempting just to stick around for a while and see if you can work out some things in your life or write that novel you always wanted to write.

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And sometimes you’re lucky enough to make wonderful friends there, as well.

L1003730 With the glow of sunset vanishing we turned to the glows of a beach bonfire where old, young, hippies and locals all gathered to warm themselves, play music and dance.

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Here’s to the crazy ones.

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Categories
Mexico Motorcycles Photography Ride South Travel

Ride South – Oaxaca

To get from Tehuacán to Oaxaca you have two options: The toll road, 135D, or the free Ruta 135, which is looking exceptionally twisty and fun. The border between the states of Puebla and Oaxaca is also a unique transition into a high desert.

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This map again: sticking to the twisty 135. Where are we?

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Starting to get pretty close to the end of Mexico! This is where things start getting noticeably different: different climates, environments, our first jungles, and the edge of Aztec Mexico as it starts to transition to ancient Mayan Mexico.

Fortunately, unlike the explorers of yore, we had faster means of transportation than donkeys, and these roads have beautiful, curvy tarmac to carve with our tires.

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What a unique landscape out here. It reminded us of Baja, but at such altitudes and with such desolation. Morbidly brown, dry mountainsides with dramatic rock striations.

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Stu loves a good rock.

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We made occasional water breaks; it was getting warmer as we descended towards Oaxaca. We also stopped just to take some photos, because these curves lent themselves to some dramatic sweeping.

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Weeeeee!
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If there’s ever a need for a promotional image of Ruta 153, we humbly submit this one:

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Note the green stuff on the next mountain over. We’d successfully escaped the arid region and were now heading into the hills around Oaxaca, which surprisingly bloomed with actual green vegetation. It was wetter here, and the air hitting our faces felt warmer with every turn.

It was also the lower sun that was now shining in our face. It was getting dark by the time we rolled into Oaxaca.

Oaxaca (pronounced kind of like Wa-Hakka) is a state in Mexico that’s very well known for its culture and scenery. It’s pretty vast, stretching almost from the Caribbean to the Pacific, and almost smack dab in the middle of it sits Oaxaca City. Once an area of settlements of warring Zapotec and Mixtec natives, the greatest ruin that reminds you of its past is on hill outside of town called Monte Alban, which is the site of an Aztec fortress that was once used to maintain a military presence to rule the area.

When the Spanish came around, they used a their traditional, exceptional peacemaking technique to finally end generations of fighting between the locals by killing basically everyone and enslaving whoever remained.

They also established what is now modern day Oaxaca city, which gives it its beautiful colonial architecture.

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It was far too late for us to make it up the hill, so we wandered town for local specialties: mole, chocolate, art, and one I’d heard of since Baja: mezcal. Oh boy, do I love mezcal.

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Side note: apologies for the photo quality drop as we often avoid walking with big cameras in unknown cities at night. You never know…

The streets were slammed with people, music, and food. Oaxaca is a sublime city, one I truly loved the moment I started wandering around in it. If you’re not in the colonial cobblestone streets you’re walking through covered walkways filled with people and stalls.

There was also some kind of party happening (in Mexico? You don’t say!) and people were in costumes, playing music and having an incredible time. There were balloons all around the place and people selling various edibles and beverages including this rather fantastic rig:

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Nevermind, I decided to grab a camera. 

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I love the image Stu took of me with this kid, who kept calling me ‘Thor’. There were actual people in costume there, like Captain America, and I guess I looked the part!

Apart from the bucolic zocalo and the partying locals, another treasure of this place that we kept coming back to was chocolate. I don’t think I’ve ever had the feeling like chocolate was a drug. Some people (cough, girls) joke about how chocolate is a drug to them, and something they need to keep them happy. Sound recognizable?

Well, we’re near the birthplace of chocolate. The word “chocolate” comes from the Nahuatl word chocolātl. Aztecs loved the stuff. And sure enough, the chocolate here is insane.

We had a cup at this particular place, Oaxaca en Una Taza (Oaxaca in a cup). It wasn’t just good; I felt invigorated and pulsing with energy until 3 AM. I’ve had highs from drugs that were less intense. If you’re in Oaxaca City, you owe it to yourself to get a hot cocoa or a mocha here. Who knows, perhaps they slipped some amphetamines in our cup, but it was a real experience.

After the joys of mole and chocolate we indulged in some mezcal (ahem, some) and we hit the bed.

We got an early start the next day just taking in the city and its sights.

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There’s always an ‘interesting bike of the city’ we find, and this one is awesome. I’d do a RTW trip on it, you?

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Some kind of dog show! These good boys were doing a very good job following commands. As far as our experiences with dogs in Mexico go, they must be the 0.1%.
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A short walk from the zocalo is the gorgeous cathedral of Oaxaca.

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Beautiful vignettes of colonial architecture, color and character at every turn. I really, really love this city.

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A piñata? Unsure. Beautiful, though.

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This blind man played music. We did ask his permission to take a photo — it’d be rather tasteless not to.

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Just your average street decorations:

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Mercado Benito Juárez is the most-go indoor market in Oaxaca City. Expect to find everything, including some really weird foods like maggots, grasshoppers and lots of meat. The place was absolutely filled with smoke. Awesome.

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The markets go on on the streets, with beautiful little bits of art and culture whichever way you go. We purchased a few skulls to safety-wire to the bikes. Unfortunately mine only made it a few miles before it shattered.

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As we walked back to the hotel, we reveled in the bustle and warmth of this city.

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Stu noticed some locals having a very hard time getting a lug nut loose on their car, so we helped out. By ‘we helped out’ I mean that I took photos while Stu did the hard work:

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Content with food and sightseeing in the city we rode the bikes up to Monte Alban, the Aztec fortress. The views got staggering:

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… and unfortunately that’s where it ended. Monte Alban closed very early, so we weren’t allowed entry. We peeked at it from afar and walked around the old trails up on the mountain. It’s a beautiful hill, and being up there makes it easy to understand why they fortified it so long ago. It has a commanding position overlooking the entire valley, with all its hillsides easily in view. Thick shrubs make it hard to get through the vegetation unless you follow certain routes.

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Disappointed, we headed back down and debated whether or not we should stay in this magical city for just another night.

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How could we not. Chocolate, magic, mezcal and superheroes filled the city as the sun went down. Adventure could wait a day.

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Categories
Mexico Motorcycles Ride South Travel

Ride South – Leaving Puebla

It was a crisp morning in Puebla. It doesn’t really get that cold in these parts of Mexico, but if you’d ask the local they would probably have a different opinion. People were huddled up in thick sweaters.

OK, it wasn’t actually morning. We had a bit of a long night, and I got up without a sign of Stu. He eventually made it back to the hotel just in time for some breakfast — another cemita, of course — and we had a bit of a wander around quiet Puebla.

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This helmet, though:

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A new year means New Year’s markets, apparently, and the they had all sorts of interesting things to peruse:

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Also cats, which were not for sale:
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I recalled the Dutch restaurant that we ran across when stopping in Cholula and I’d reached out on Facebook to see if they would be open. They excitedly replied ‘Claro!’, so that was the lunch plan. It would give us a great chance to visit Cholula’s historic church and Aztec ruins.

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Time to get out of this beautiful parking spot! It’s a 20 minute ride to Cholula from downtown Puebla. Make it 35 when you’re hungover, hungry and a bit slow.

Today’s route:

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The two dots near Cholula are Puebla and Cholula. Tehuacán is our stop for tonight, and Oaxaca our goal!

Cholula is an unglamorous city sitting in the shadow of the giant volcanoes that separate it from Mexico City. Today, it was quiet; it seemed nobody was out and every shop and restaurant was closed.

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Not so much the church, of course! Mexicans really love churches, and today was a special day, with people all about the church and common areas. The church here actually sits on an Aztec pyramid, which has been covered in dirt and grass as the ages relentlessly buried it in time.

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I am sure building a church on top of it didn’t exactly help the situation.

Puebs_y_Pops-00724 In some areas, you can still visit the ruins and admire the incredible scale and craftsmanship of the Aztecs. A genuinely fascinating and impressive society that was completely eradicated.
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Oh, and for the Dutch restaurant? We arrived at the ruins and church only to find it closed. Just like every other restaurant and shop. A taco stand managed to cool my hangriness, but I was very, very upset.

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So I suppose after taco lunch it was time to get on the road. From Puebla we had less of a clear goal: we really wanted to just get to Oaxaca. There’s brilliant riding between here and there, but for now it was a lot of highway in some very urban areas.

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Sometimes, the volcanic nature of the landscape surprised you as you rounded a turn…

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And light played beautifully on long stretches of roadway.

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Finally, we arrived in Tehuacan as the sun was setting and angry clouds were starting to gather. It’s never a really great idea to ride at night, let alone in countries like Mexico, so this would be home for tonight.

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Did I mention we’ve been blessed with unreal weather? This was the first sign of that changing. A very orange sunset betrayed moisture in the air, and the clouds amassing on the horizon made us realize we probably wanted to avoid camping tonight and grab a quick motel.

Tehuacán was an interesting industrial town. After having a chat with the ladies that ran the motel we walked across a myriad of train tracks to a set of working-people-neighborhood restaurants that happily served up food on a day where so many other places were closed.

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Another new favorite food discovered: tacos al arabe. Kind of like a kebab meets a taco.

Tehuacán might have many redeeming, beautiful and even interesting sights but as we arrived late and it was a holiday, we’d have to skip most of it. We were on a mission to get to Oaxaca, anyway!

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When dawn broke we realized just how colorful our choice of lodging really was! Little did we know this was but a taste of things to come…

Categories
Mexico Motorcycles Ride South Travel

Ride South – New Years with Popocatépetl and Iztaccihuatl

It was an early enough morning for us waking up in our tube hotel. Today an interesting challenge awaited us: circumnavigating the periphery of México City as we pushed eastward through the old Pass of Cortés (aka ‘Paso de Cortés).

It’s a pass drenched in history; supposedly Cortés, the Spanish conquerer of the Aztecs, marched his army through this pass to bring the native Mexicans of yore to heel. They fought the Mexicans at Cholula (yes, like the hot sauce…) and then went right up to Moctezuma’s home. Some strong tales of soldiers going into the volcanoes nearby to extract sulfur survive. Hmm, we should try doing that…

Nah, all that wasn’t really on our mind today: it was a lot of miles there, and we’d had some scattered reports that the path which ran through the saddle between two mighty volcanoes was pretty tough. Wikipedia listed it as ‘at least sometimes drivable’. That’s perfect, sounds like fun!

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Our route for today. We rose from our tube home

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And got some really rather great breakfast at the local haunt Les Colorines.

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It’s a beautiful pink building and you can grab some of the pulque this area is so known for. We also ran into some fellow adventure riders from Mexico City!

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Ahh, this isn’t helping Stu’s KTM envy at all.

Anyway, time to hit the road. I turned the key on the HP2 and it instantly popped my taillight. Cool, nice.

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Popped a new one in there. On to the highway!

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These roads.
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Have utterly.

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Incredible views.

We had a bit of highway slabbing until we made it to the short paved section up to the pass. Mexico never gets enough credit for how spectacular its roads are; this is right outside of Mexico City and it is breathtaking. Smoldering volcanoes lie asleep between rolling hills as you ascend slowly through corn fields, lush forest and small farms.

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This dip-in was the beginning of a pine tree-studded road absolutely riddled with turns. You couldn’t keep the bike upright for more than about a third of a second. It was pure joy and we took zero photos. Seriously. what a fun road. We saw absolutely nobody go up here and made it up the pass in about an hour or so.

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There’s a small cultural center at the top where you can learn about the history of the pass but also the volcanoes. There it is: Popo. Popocatépetl. The big pope.

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Not only is it a massive volcano, it’s actually still active. It has small eruptions all the time and you can see the plume of its smoke coming out of it here. It’s quiet.

Perhaps too quiet.

This thing is the 5th highest peak in all of North America, and the 2nd in Mexico. It’s kind of insane that it is sitting within striking distance of the most populous area of Mexico, with all of its massive power able to probably wipe out millions of people. For now, it’s a great backdrop for a motorcycle.

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We kept our guard, of course, in case this would suddenly turn into a scene from the 1997 disaster flick ‘Volcano‘. With some help, Tommy Lee Jones would suddenly appear too. Or Anne Heche… on second though, we’d rather have her around.

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Glam shot time! Which one is your favorite? I have a favorite. It’s the blue one.

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After our incessant clicking away with cameras we rode to the visitor center and met this huge fantastic family from Puebla! They loved the bikes and we took a ton of photos with them. I love how friendly they are around these parts, they even offered us candy and snacks (and soda, always soda…).

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Anyway, it was time to make it down that supposedly ‘sometimes traversable’ dirt road.

It’s beautiful. As soon as you start descending from the visitor station, it’s a rather sandy and dusty affair, but the views are insane. The entire valley soon stretches ahead of you with Puebla and Cholula in the distance, and turn after turn drops you slowly through forests of pine trees which give way for deciduous forests that grow on crumbling hillsides. The volcanic rock that sticks out at times is beautiful and jagged, and roots and sand washes keep it interesting.

We both kept a pretty good speed and as I’m perhaps a middling dirt rider I’d rate the route a 5/10 in terms of difficulty. There’s definitely some gnarly parts that could wipe you out if you’re not paying attention as well as some deep sand that’s always fun to wiggle around in at speed, but nothing you can’t handle if you take your time or pay attention. We did a bit of both.

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We stopped only once for a sip of water. What a ton of fun this road is. We again, didn’t run into anyone else, and quickly flicked the bikes around the final turns down to a disappointingly well paved road.

There it was, we’d finally cleared the pass. Much like history and Cortés, it now lay behind us, and Popo smiled as we left it growing smaller and smaller in our rear view mirrors. I was daydreaming about the pass and the magnificence of the volcanoes… and trying to steer around a pack of stray dogs when I saw Stu’s KLR hit a tope at speed in front of me and narrowly managed to avoid his panniers which comically flew off with a big arc.

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He should really fasten these things a bit better, a tope always sends them flying. There they are!

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A nice opportunity to snap another headshot. Calm. It stopped smoking. Probably better for its health.

We had a brief stop in Cholula! Right next to a historic buried pyramid and beautiful church, there’s an ostensibly Dutch bar. They might have the snacks I crave the most from home: bitterballen. Fried little balls filled with meat ragout. Alas, they were closed. Holidays.

Pretty church, though.

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We weaved through celebration traffic (seriously, there was a ton of traffic) to the downtown area of Puebla, where we were sure we could find somewhere to stay.

Did we mention we really never make reservations? We figured it’d be easy enough to find a hostel or somewhere else so we could enjoy the festivities right in the middle of town. We parked on the zocalo (the main square) and started looking around for hotels.

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Such a beautiful square. Puebla is a gorgeous town. It’s also a pretty busy town when it comes to festivities, apparently, because we couldn’t find a single hotel anywhere. Just when we were about to give up, we found a sort of refurbished governor’s mansion that was turned hostel… and it turned out they had a spot for us!

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What a spot!!! This might be the most beautiful parking spot we’ve ever had on this ride. Did we mention this place was a steal? The only catch was that they were having a gala that night. We weren’t invited, and we’d have to move the bikes into a hallway near the kitchen. Fine with us! We got a spot!

We met some of the fellow travelers at the hostel and went out with them to grab…

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Ah, the life giving dark Bohemia beer. I really love this stuff. Damn. As usual there’s several local Mexican treats to try here, and Puebla has a bunch of great ones. Mole Poblano is pretty well known, but the ‘Cemita’ is less famous. It’s a sesame seed sandwich with chicken or pork cutlet, mayo, avocado, and just tons of good stuff. It’s probably one of my new favorite sandwiches!

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Mei is one of the backpackers we ran into at the hostel. She’s an NY film student and was fending off practically the entire male population of our hostel, who were all trying to get lucky with her on New Year’s Eve.

Her way of dealing with it was beer. Always a good idea.

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After dinner and beers, I did some work on my laptop as Stu got ready for a date with a girl.

As droves of people celebrated in the city, I went to a local bar to make some new friends and drink my favorite dark Mexican beers until the celebration and dancing reached a crescendo at midnight. I couldn’t have been happier to ring in the New Year.

The next day I woke up with a blurry brain, a soft pounding reminder of walking the bustling streets into the city, the round of Heinekens I bought my newly made Mexican friends and a New Year’s Eve party at another hotel rooftop that I snuck into at 2 AM.  It was a night to remember, and a great way to kick off a year of adventure.

Categories
Mexico Motorcycles Ride South Travel

Ride South – Tepoztlán

They say altitude sickness resembles flu, or a hangover. What they don’t tell you is the swirling, odd dreams. Under the shadow of Xinantecatl, the Naked Mountain, I slept a restless night with Nahuatl patterns behind my eyes, with smoke in my nose and the sounds of animals and shaking pine needles of the trees around me in my ears.

Waking up in the shadow of Nevado de Toluca is interesting.

It’s December 30th, my sister’s birthday. Stuart was comfortably huddled in his sleeping bag. The temperatures were low — literally freezing, actually. Even the stray dogs around our campsite huddled up for warmth together under a small roof.

We’d spent enough time in Toluca and the area of México City – so once Stuart was up, we decided to set off with a just a little coffee. The road out is a nice, fairly well packed dirt road and is a blast to ride. We saw two other riders on their way in, wheeling heavy 1200GSes over the gravel. We stopped in Toluca for a quick bite of the most Mexican of breakfasts: bread with sugar on it.

They did have a beautiful painting of Nevado de Toluca, though:

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We want to spend New Year’s Eve in a nice city that isn’t México City, and we had a fun idea for a ride: from the volcano campsite, we could pop down by Tehuantepec to visit the Nahuatl mountaintop ruins of Tepoztlan, allowing us a night in a hotel before crossing the Pass of Cortez (Paso de Cortez) between Mexico’s biggest volcanoes: Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl. The road down from there is a fun if somewhat technical sand and dirt road that eventually rolls into Cholula (yes, that Cholula, from the hot sauce!) and on into Puebla City, our New Year’s Eve spot of choice.

Our route today:

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It was a pretty nice route in, about three hours of riding.

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I’d found a hotel that wasn’t completely full (most hotels were sold out, likely for festivities?) and this one sounded just fine. We were slightly surprised to find our cheap hotel was… a tube.

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Not the most secure parking for our bikes but it’ll do.

The main attraction of Tepoztlan, the small town south of the grandiose basin of México City, is El Tepozteco. The town itself cowers in the view of a near-vertical range of mountain cliffs, which is in turn adorned with a temple at the very top. Dense forest covers the tops of the cliffs like some sort of dense vegetative foam. We were here, we might as well lock up our stuff and start hiking up.

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Tepoztlan is now mostly surviving on tourism, so as you walk the single pathway to the mountaintop, the town gives way to small shacks for a mile on end selling all manner of products. Indigenous woodworks, beads, jewelry, food… ah, food.

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We love the cutting of sweet fruits with lime and chili on top. It was hot, absolutely sweltering tropical heat, a strange change from freezing temperatures in the morning. We were melting, and the cool fruit gave a welcome respite despite its spicy kick.

The trail up wasn’t too hard – perhaps a few miles, and tons of people were hiking up. It made us happy, as a trail like this was unlikely to see this much traffic in the US. A fairly steep climb made it somewhat unfriendly to families, but we saw tons families with kids and teenagers hiking up. Once at the top, a small manned gate demands your dineros before letting you into the site. It allows for a free hike up (a rare thing) and a smart upsell: you came all this way, you might as well go see the temple…

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Even without the temple, the hike is worth it. Not only is the climb up a crazy, jungly affair of long tangled vines and vegetation, the panoramic views atop the mountain are gorgeous.

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It takes little imagination to see how the sheer jagged cliffs could be the birthplace of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent god.

The temple itself was once the shrine to Tepoztecatl, an Aztec god of booze. Particularly, pulque, the agave pulp drink you can find in Central México. I’m not a huge pulque fan, but the Aztecs believed it was one of the best things you could imbibe and even had an entire god dedicated to it.

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Disheartening and obnoxious to see people systematically ignore signs put up to prevent further wear to the ruins and climb on the 1500 year old carved stones. We could yell them down, but masses more would come up to take selfies. Not the ancient ruins or meticulous carvings or the views: no, their own ratty faces. It’s unfortunate that sacrificing youth isn’t a DIY affair at these places today.

We spent a few hours up there, as the sun was setting late.

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It was the last sunset of the year, and we looked as the mountain ridges all around us shone, glowed, and finally bathed in the blood from the reddened sun that was impaling itself on the ridges. Purple light cast on the face of the pyramid, now quiet from the crowds, and in the jungle around the warm rock life began to stir.

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We were the last ones up there when a park worker came to yell at us to leave.

As we turned down the path to the town, a majestic gradient of peach color cooling into cobalt blue dominated the sky. On the cliff above us, the temple lay there, with the resplendent grace of petrified gods.

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When we got down, our warm night was spent walking through town and its old, central market. It contrasts heavily to the tourism-centric main streets, which are thinner in crowds and sees more backpackers and resettled hippies. We sat and chatted with one, which was kind enough to brew us some delicious tea to cap off our night as we talked about paths, travels and living all over the world.

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Somewhere, a feathered serpent shrugged.

Categories
Mexico Motorcycles Photography Ride South Travel

Ride South: Guanajuato & México City

Before hitting México City, we’d decided to make a stop in Guanajuato. Guanajuato (pronounced a bit like ‘wanna hot dog’ without the ‘g’ part of ‘hot dog’) is, like Zacatecas, a city with rich history and beautiful old architecture.

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Much like small Iberian and Italian towns it is largely free of cars, as its narrow windy streets carve narrowly into hills and don’t allow vehicles to go up and down them.

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However, rather fascinatingly, the city is built on an extensive network of tunnels, where cars do go.

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Thus, walking and riding to and through Guanajuato is going through an underground spiderweb of tunnels and underground intersections.

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It’s incredibly cool, and the city above it all is gorgeous and labyrinthine.

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Exploring it at night shows all of the warm wonders of a Mexican winter night in a town: zero tourists, outdoor book merchants and small food stands vending tacos or other treats, couples kissing in every corner of the beautiful parks and children playing everywhere.

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There is a warmth and careless kind of energy in these towns that is incredibly inspiring and a joy to be in and around.

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On the ride to Guanajuato (which was rather… uneventful, and full of grim industrial landscapes) Stu found his bike to be making some strange sounds.

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Entirely unrelated to this, some of his left-side handlebar controls came loose…

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Which was a quick roadside fix, but the noise persisted.

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What’s worse, the sound was coming from inside the engine case.

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We decided to hurry up and diagnose it in a good spot. We rode the Cuota (toll road) all the way to Toluca, which was close enough to México City, where we’d meet a local and ADVRider forum member that offered to host us during Christmas.

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We were hoping to diagnose and fix the issue with Stu’s bike and ride up the majestic local stratovolcano, Nevado de Toluca, but once we cracked open the engine case we came to a stop.

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Uh oh.

This is not good. This particular spring is a coil spring, an essential part of the bike’s timing mechanism. Without the spring, the engine could fail catastrophically. It had already been rattling around inside the engine — though fortunately not doing too much damage — and now we needed some rather specialized parts to fix it.

We were stuck here for a bit.

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After deliberating (and walking around Toluca eating delicious tacos – for science) we met up with Garry, our host and fellow rider, and Stu decided to just ride it to México City to fix it up there.

Sadly the KLR wasn’t starting.

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… but, after some help of the local hotel, some failed bump start attempts and one pocket battery jumper later we had it running!

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We rode the hour and a half-or so into town until we arrived at Garry’s and enjoyed some downtime over the holidays… as well as awaiting our getting hands on the parts and tools needed for a fix.

Many thanks to Garry and his family for being such an infinitely helpful, patient and fantastic host in México City. Not only did he help us by meeting us in Toluca, he let us store the bikes, work on them, and rode us into town and to the airport. What a guy.

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We returned with parts and tools in tow, and a renewed lust for fixing the KLR and new adventures.

Volcanoes await!

Categories
Mexico Motorcycles Photography Ride South Travel

Ride South: Zacatecas & Guadalajara

From La Cuidad it was a short (and now sadly, fairly straight) drive to Durango. Here, the Libre meets up with the Cuota, teasing you with its perfect pavement.

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… before actually merging into one road. Careful, you do have to get off where it is indicated that the ‘Libre’ continues or you’re going to have to pay the full fee for using the Cuota.

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The last stretch of road to Durango takes you up and down various hills and through beautiful canyon lands where old Westerns were filmed. We’re told there’s old movie sets to be found here, but we didn’t find any.

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In Durango, we had a much needed coffee and lunch break before heading to Zacatecas, a historic city that was fairly nearby. The drive there wasn’t incredibly scenic or exciting, as both lie on the higher plateau of central México. We arrived at nightfall… only to find the hotel we were planning to stray at was long since closed.

We settled for a nearby hotel in the historic center and spent an extra day exploring local cuisine and sights. It’s a beautiful town.

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The colonial part of the city is a World Heritage Site, due to the Baroque and other structures built during its mining days. Indigenous cultures mined metals from the area even before the Spanish arrived.

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Once they did, it grew as a wealthy city. Its beautiful architecture shows this.

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Zacatecas is often called one of the most beautiful cities of México.

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From Zacatecas, our next stop would be Southward, to Guadalajara. Guadalajara is one of México’s largest cities, surrounded by epic canyons. As far as riding motorcycles go, taking one of the longer roads there is highly recommended.

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Once again, a beautiful twisty mountain road.

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You know you are closing in on Guadalajara when you see the — sometimes burnt — piles of trash on the side of the road and the air quality drops rapidly. It’s shocking how much trash is piled on the side of the road here.

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It’s tempting to simply frame this out of the photos we share but it is the reality of the country.

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Guadalajara itself is a beautiful city, however. Getting into town was a bit stressful — Stu had a stray dog jump in front of his bike at highway speeds, and the traffic is just fairly insane. Buses jump in and out of traffic with zero regard for other vehicles, fast cabs try to weave through it all and every inch is filled with scooters, bikes or other motorized vehicles. Fortunately, you get used to it quickly.

My bike ran rather hot, so we took a break or two before we arrived at the home of our Couchsurfing host. We spent a two days with him, exploring the city, working on the bikes and being taken to a party that was thrown by him and his friends.

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Exploring the historic downtown was a pleasure, its beautiful architecture reflecting the evening light beautifully.

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When here, absolutely visit the downtown area. The cathedral alone is worth seeing.

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Oh, Stuart got locked out of our hosts’ home and had to ride sans-helmet. Fun times!

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The generosity and kindness of our host and his family can’t be overstated. Thanks so much, Edgar! I hope you are reading this!

Categories
Mexico Motorcycles Photography Ride South Travel

Ride South: Espinazo del Diablo to Durango

Mazatlan can at times treat you to a fantastic sunset.

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Sunsets like this can really ruin your plans of getting up early…

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In the morning, we found ourselves leaving somewhat later than expected after breakfast and hit the turnoff for the MEX-40 ‘Libre’ (free) around 11.

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México has an elaborate system of ‘Cuota’ and ‘Libre’ roads, often designated with a ‘-D’ suffix behind the route number. Cuota are well-paved, well-maintained but pricy toll roads. The Cuota to Mazatlan was said to be a true engineering marvel, as it has one of the highest suspension bridges in the world. Nevertheless, we stuck to the ‘Libre’.

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Not only is the road free, but it also is one of the most twisty (and dangerous) roads in México, with incredible hairpin turns at high altitude with sheer cliff drops.

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Somehow, this type of road just never gets old.

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We were absolutely gasping non-stop at the views and delighted with joy at the pleasure of riding such a curvy road on the bikes.

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Fun fact: we crossed the Tropic of Cancer while on this road, as we wound up going a bit North onto the backbone of the Sierra Madre Occidental. It would be our second time crossing it, and not the last time…

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I think the Devil’s Backbone is easily one of the best roads for motorcycling I have ever been on.

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From the Libre, the Cuota is at times visible, sometimes as a massive overpass…

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Or intersection.

But sometimes fairly far away. We caught a look at the incredibly impressive suspension bridge at one point:

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Around 4:30 we stopped for some food (delicious, tiny local burritos) and assessed the remaining light.

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Stuart also assessed the puppies of the area.

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While our pace was pretty high, with our plentiful photography stops we did not have enough time to make it to Durango before dark.

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We have agreed not to ride at night — far too dangerous with poorly lit vehicles, wildlife and possible local cartel activity — so we had to find a spot to camp.

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A short, beautiful ride later we found ourselves at a military checkpoint on the Sinaloa – Durango border and asked the soliders if there was a place to stay nearby. They recommended Mexicillo. As the last light slipped away we rolled into the town of La Cuidad.

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La Cuidad is nestled in a valley at the top of the massif of the Sierra Madre Occidental. At its high altitude it is encircled by thick pine forest and rocky outcroppings, trapping the wood fire smoke of the town. The entire town seemed to be in a blanket of blue smoke.

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We asked around and got conflicting information about a possible campground or hotel.

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… but eventually two boys hopped on a scooter and rode us into the forest to the local ‘Parco Turistco’.

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We thanked them with a few pesos. A gregarious old man waved us inside his cabin and we warmed up a bit next to his fireplace as we inquired about the prices for cabins.

The cabins were a bit out of our price range, so we opted to camp for the night, instead. Once we set up the tents we headed into town to find food and spent the entire evening at a fantastically kind family the invited us inside by the fire and cooked for us and brought us beers.

We retreated into our tent filled with delicious Mexican mountain food and passed right out after an exhausting day on the road.

Categories
Mexico Motorcycles Ride South Travel

Ride South: The Baja Ferry

From Baja, we departed for the mainland of México.

First came the task of getting the bikes out of our hotel:

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It took some moving, shifting, and rolling, but eventually we made it out of the courtyard. Never a dull moment.

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The ferry from La Paz to Mazatlan is fairly pleasant. It departs from a port slightly north of La Paz. For our ferry line (there are two – one is a bit less comfortable), the ship’s three decks accommodate many trucks and cars, and motorcycles are kept on the top deck where you strap them to the railing.

If you’re considering taking this ferry, it might be worth to note that you need to bring your own tie-down straps — we’re glad we brought a set!

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We’d gotten our paperwork in order a day before departure, which I’d recommend — in all, it took us about two hours to get our Temporary Vehicle Import Permit (TVIP) processed before we were even beginning to look for ferry tickets. The TVIP is a permit you need when you are traveling by a motorized vehicle through México, and requires you putting down a deposit of 200-400 US dollars depending on the model year of your vehicle. Do double check it when you receive it — the clerk made errors three times issuing mine, and it has to be 100% correct if you want your deposit back!

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The TVIP is issued at the Mexican federal bank (Banjercito) at the ferry terminal, and tickets are also sold nearby for the ferries. We had to buy separate tickets for ourselves and our bikes.

Returning the next day, we rode the beautiful road snaking out of La Paz to the port again (slightly slowed down by a bicycle race that was going on that day) to get on the ferry proper.

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These kind of ferries are an effective bottleneck for travel and as such make great places to meet other travelers. No exceptions here: when we passed a customs check (which uses a button to randomly select whether or not you get searched fully — I was unlucky enough to get the full search) and our papers were checked out we lined up to board and ran into Matt.

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Matt (Dawson) is traveling to Tierra del Fuego as well, but by bicycle. Pretty badass! We chatted up a storm in line and a few minutes got waved onto the top ferry deck where we boarded with two other motorcyclists; a couple riding from Utah and a friendly fellow BMW rider from Guadalajara.

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The ferry left (predictably about an hour late) and all in all took about 18 hours to cross the Sea of Cortez to Sinaloa. We spent the time socializing and drinking beers with a group of bicycle travelers (including Matt and his friends Shane and José, from Australia and México, respectively) and sleep.
I made myself popular with the strip of Dramamine I brought aboard, which I judiciously handed out like candy to people who got sick on the rocking boat.

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While you can buy a cabin for cheap, the ferry had no more available when we checked in and we were forced to sleep in our designated seats. The seats are fairly big and comfortable, but the cabin is so cramped that you’re almost always sleeping an inch away from seven other people crammed onto the floor and in seats around you. Cozy! At least there’s free dinner and breakfast.

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Around 5:30 AM I went to the top deck and watched the night turn slowly to a dim glow…

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and eventually a beautiful sunrise.

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Shane and a few other guys had spent the night sleeping up here on the sun deck, which I wish I’d had the insight to do as it was a perfectly pleasant warm night.

Dreary and sleepy we socialized up here with our new friends. Juan José, the BMW rider from Guadalajara, bought me a michelada to introduce me to Mexican beer cocktails. Verdict: not bad.

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By the time we rolled off the ferry we were hungry and tired, and so we met up with the bicycle gang and went to find ceviche and beers, rather successfully. Altogether we finished off a bunch of buckets of Pacificos and three huge servings of ceviche.

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When here, indulge in seafood. Mazatlan has fantastic seafood.

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We said our goodbyes to the bicycle travel troupe and rode into town.

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We checked into a hotel in the historical centre of Mazatlan for the night, hoping to get out early the next day to forego our planned route to Guadalajara and instead riding what we’d heard was a beautiful ride inland known as ‘El Esponiza del Diablo’ (the Devil’s Backbone).

Categories
Mexico Motorcycles Ride South Travel

Ride South: Baja California, Part 2

After coffee with Coco, we zipped up our jackets and got on the bikes to ride… the road. The Road We Were Warned About.

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The road was certainly rough. Parts were sandy and gravely, but by far the greatest annoyance and danger was large rocks and rocky sections that were very bumpy.

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We made it over fine, and it wasn’t a very easy track, but it certainly wasn’t too hard either. I’d say it’s a stretch to say it was ‘the worst road’ — we’d seen far worse in Alaska in roadworks, and it’s not a jeep trail by any means.

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Having crossed the ridge of mountains separating the Sea of Cortez from inland Baja, we started encountering more plant life again. Cacti, Boojum trees and shrubs popped up with increasing frequency and before we knew it we were muttering ‘whoa’ into our headsets as a cactus forest revealed itself after a turn.

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We were in for a long day. We really had to make miles now, to compensate for our playing in the dirt which eats time in exchange for adrenaline and sheer joy. And miles we made: we actually left Baja del Norte, and saw a whole host of landscapes.

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The road was straight for long stretches but there were some fun turns, too. On top of a particular windy hill we took some awesome shots of the landscape. I was almost blown over by the wind.

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Hello, Baja California Sur!

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So many beautiful landscapes, and so many cacti gave way for some sheer vast emptiness for a brief moment.

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Roosting vultures only accentuated the desolate area.

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Entering Baja California Sur at Guerrero Negro, the temperature went way up. Finally we got the hot desert we’d been expecting.

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We also reveled in the many plentiful open and functional Pemex stations everywhere. The Mex-1 is clearly one of the main (if not the main) road through Baja, and it shows.

Our goal that day was San Ignacio, a historical mountain town but we made it even further, into Santa Rosaliá.

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We stopped to take photos of the volcano that popped up on the Horizon…

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And proceeded to find it.

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The final drive from San Ignacio to Santa Rosaliá is insanely beautiful. It goes by the huge Volans de les Tres Virgenes and subsequent twisty, mountain roads, dipping down to the coast. Much appreciated after the straight roads inland, and gorgeous around the golden hour.

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We rolled into Santa Rosaliá tired and intensely satisfied after 260+ miles on the odometer for the day, about 20 of which were rocky dirt.

Fun fact: we’d started the day essentially on the coast of the Sea of Cortez, had ridden all the way to the Pacific Coast, went over 150 miles South and then went all the way back to the coast of the Sea of Cortez. What a day.

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Great hotel, too!

A quick lunch and maintenance in the morning. Chain lubing for Stuart, mostly, as the dirt roads get the chain nice and dirty — no such issue on the BMW shaft drive. I practiced my packing, which is getting better (slightly) by the day. Washboarded and rutty dirt roads rocked my fuel cans so loose they were on my seat, so I was now tying them down much more directly.

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It wasn’t quite as necessary today.

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The road from Santa Rosaliá to Loreto was an increidble road, easily in my favorite rides of all time. The beautiful coastal road reveals cactus forests, deciduous patches of trees and incredible views of rocky coastlines and beaches with vivid blue waters.

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Perfect pavement made it highly enjoyable.

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We stopped a few times to shoot photos.

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This always tends to add an hour or more to our estimated travel time: stopping to take photos, riding, stopping… more photos, more riding. It’s worth it, though.

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The road eventually turned inland, snaking through an interesting rough mountain landscape of low, eroded peaks covered in vegetation rising up from an epic prehistoric looking forest. Baja had turned lush.

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Astonishing.

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Despite being over 150 miles away, we were in Loreto before we knew it.

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Loreto is a nice, friendly beach town, but we weren’t sticking around. The first few days of December, the nearby mountain town of San Javier has an immense festival where thousands of local ranchers go to celebrate the local patron saint and dance, sing and get massively drunk.

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The road to San Javier was only fairly recently paved, but was incredibly beautiful.

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We stopped just kilometers in for this view.

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It only got better from there, with beautifully windy roads leading into a dense canyon-like landscape.

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A small portion of it was still dirt, but this was quickly washed off the bikes in the many slippery water crossings. At many places in Baja we’d seen the sign for dips in the road possibly being waterlogged, but here they actually were. Some were slippery enough to make the bike slide around quite a bit, but we kept them upright and (more or less) dry.

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Arriving in San Javier, we immediately stood out like a sore thumb. As the only non-Mexicans there, the locals looked at us with a combination of awe, confusion and interest. I immediately built a fan base:

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These boys (and one cool girl!) were all interested in the bike, us, our clothes, our story… and were incredibly polite and patient through all of it. I only speak a bit of Spanish, but the pack leader (Guillermo, red shirt) was extremely patient with me and broke down his questions in words he knew I understood.

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After we set up our tent — everybody camps at the town, which is essentially just an old Mission — he offered me a tour around the entire fiesta and I couldn’t turn it down.

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Fantastic local music, arts, delicious food and lots of good times were had. I learned a lot speaking with the kids (… the mountains were so eroded due to their soft, pumice like volcanic rock!) and talking to the locals, and we got great photos.

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We turned in somewhat early but the party went deep into the early hours. As I was shivering in my sleeping bag in the cold mountain night at 3 AM the music was still going strong, even after the generator was turned off.

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It was time to say goodbye in the morning, and I gave the boys some stickers. They promptly surprised me by returning with a silver piece of jewelry their family had made, insisting I have it.

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Incredible people. Really, it was such an experience to see how these people live. A profound sense of frontier-like mentality and living permeates their culture, and they still proudly live on the land here. Many rode up on their horses, as is tradition.

On the way out the air was chilly, and I got myself pretty wet in some of the water crossings.

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Beautiful views of the valley and Loreto ahead on the way out.

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Quick lunch in Loreto (beef head — Cabezas — tacos). Fantastic food.

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After Loreto, we rode out through some of the few mountain curves and got on some of the perfectly straight, rather boring roads out to Cuidad Insurgentes and Cuidad Constitucion to the South Cape of Baja Sur, where we’d stop at La Paz to catch a ferry to the mainland of Mexico.

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And that’s where I’ll leave this report – as I am writing this, the ferry is rocking gently on the waves and we are well on the way to Mazatlan. Baja treated us incredibly well, and we’re sad to leave with so much yet to see. La Paz (and the incredible hotel Yneka) was a great way to say goodbye.

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I spent an extra day exploring La Paz, and Stuart spent his day riding around the South Cape (famously known for Cabo San Lucas and other well-visited tourist towns). Mexico has far more to show us.

We’ll update you when we get to Mexico City. For now: Adios!

Categories
Mexico Motorcycles Photography Ride South Travel

Ride South: Baja California, Part 1

It was a warm San Diego morning next morning, and after some of the previously mentioned maintenance work we headed to the border crossing at Tecate.

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The ride there is a beautiful, twisty road, opening up to views of green pastures and rolling hills.

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Lovely.The border came up quickly.

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I stayed with the bikes while Stuart and his friend Tristan did their paperwork. At the border, you can typically just roll through (no checks of documents done whatsoever!) but in our case, we wanted the tourist card. The Mexican tourist card, or ‘FMM’ is required for longer stays in Mexico and any trip to the mainland. It costs about $20 (US).

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We were losing light fast, and after all the border paperwork we headed down the Mex-2 to find our turnoff to the first dirt trail we could find. Out of light, we opted to camp at a campground instead of riding the dirt South more.

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I know deserts can be cold, but this night surprised us. The wind was already whipping us and as the sun dropped and we ate some roadside tacos and drank Tecate tall boys (of course) the temperature dropped from the low 50s to about 45, and kept dropping.

We approaching freezing temperatures that night. It was really something. With no real fire pits we just turned in for the night and slept.

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The next morning we finally got up to do what most motorcyclists come to Baja for: trails and off-road fun. Our campground was mere miles from the turnoff to the nice and fairly easy Compadres trail, which connects the roadside town of El Hongo to Ojos Negros, on the Mex-3. It’s a perfect way to connect from Tecate to Ojos Negros and get further South towards the Mex-5 on the coast of the Sea of Cortez.

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The Compadres Trail is an immediate showcase of the diversity of biomes in Baja California. Many think (– myself included) of a place full of stereotypical cacti*, plain desert and many rocks.

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In reality, the variety of landscapes is astounding. As we crossed the 100-or so kilometers of the trail we saw high desert, steppe-like plains, deciduous and pine forest and many zones in between. It was beautiful.

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* (in Baja, this would be the Cardon cactus. They get huge, as they are the tallest cactus species in the world! I hugged one.)

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And an incredibly fun ride, too! Some somewhat gnarly parts involved sandy washes, roots and rocks but nothing incredibly challenging. A perfect introduction to Baja dirt riding.

We came upon an entirely burnt down area, too, which made for otherworldly landscapes.

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Ojos Negros was reached and we had some (incredibly great — probably my best ever) roadside al pastor tacos before slabbing it on the highway to Valle de Trinidad. Light was essentially gone by the time we rolled in into a dusty road to the hotel where we happily charged our devices and showered some dust off.

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Still hungry for more dirt, the next day we set off to head to the motorcyclist staple spot in the nearby mountains known as Mike’s Sky Ranch.

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The road to Mike’s famous rancho is about 31 kilometers of pure unadulterated dirt fun (unless it’s wet, in which case it can be a bit of a nightmare).

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While may rip on it with much lighter bikes at higher speeds, we still ripped it up pretty good.

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Stuart got off his bike to take a photo and his bike promptly took a nap in the sand. Whoops.

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Deep ruts of sand, rocky turnouts, downhills, and even a little creek crossing at the end. We were pulsing with adrenaline. It was awesome, even on our huge, heavy loaded bikes. Mike’s was sadly completely empty save for us.

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We put some stickers with its new (and plentiful) companions…and ate some lunch and had a beer before heading back the same way, now even faster.

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From the highway, we made it to San Felipe before we lost all the light, which is a cool if somewhat touristy beach town with a beautiful lighthouse.

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After stopping I broke out some tools to ensure all bolts were still properly torqued after all the bumpy dirt roads. I’d lost one bolt in my bash plate already!

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San Felipe is on the Mex-5, a road that isn’t yet fully paved. It runs by the coast of the Sea of Cortez and eventually connects with the Mex-1, and was a significant leg of the old Baja 1000 off-road race track.

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We had some great fish tacos (Baja is made of great, fresh fish tacos) and toured town taking photos. It seemed really apocalyptic with boats on dry land and many derelict buildings.

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The next day we rode down the Mex-5, treated by incredible views of the Sea of Cortez from the volcanic landscape.

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Incredible landscapes.

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It’s unreal how some parts of this coast harbor absolutely no life, just sharded rock and pumice from long-dead volcanoes. Some beach spots (Puertecitos, for instance) still have hot springs that you can dip into at low tide, emanating that classic sulfuric smell.

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Incredible turn after turn on this freshly (and excellently) paved road. We stopped at the oft-visited Alfonsina’s at Gonzaga Bay. Gonzaga Bay seems to be a quirky community, complete with its own security guard, runway and airplane.

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We met a few other travelers, including a Canadian couple driving this beautiful 1953 car up and down from Canada to Baja and back.

Great fish tacos here, too (no surprise there).

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The Pemex gas station (Pemex is the state-run and only gas station company in Mexico) at Gonzaga Bay was completely out of gas, and we decided to just push our luck and head down the road.

We’d heard some horror stories of the unpaved section of this road connecting with the Mex-1. Some people at Alfonsina’s called it bad — so bad, in fact, one man told a story of a girl traveling North from Argentina who supposedly called it the worst road she’d ridden, ever. We did find the spot the road ran out, and gave way to dirt:

Mexico’s working very hard on it, it seems; I’d be surprised if it isn’t all paved by next year. It was a pleasure riding some of it on dirt.

We made it to the turnoff for the connector to the Mex-1, and right there it was:

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Coco’s Corner. A famous stop of the Baja 1000 and of many trough-travelers. Coco has lived here for 26 years and is an incredibly friendly, generous man. We lost most of our light and really loved the desert scenery… and started debating if we should make it over the worst part of the road.

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Coco chimed in and said we could stay in one of his trailers for free. Incredibly cool. Thanks, Coco.

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It gave us a chance to shoot desert sunset…

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… and the crisp, clear desert night.

And we even recorded some time-lapses. Coco seemed to really enjoy the company so we watched a movie with him — the hilarious 90s erotic thriller ‘Fear’. We ate some ramen he offered and turned in early.

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(Coco also collects underwear and other garments. Yup)

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At the crack of dawn Coco invited us inside to drink some coffee. We paid him some cash for the beers, water and hospitality to reward his generosity and chatted a while. He offered another movie but we had to be on our way… the rest of Baja awaited!

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Until next time, where we go over the pass and explore Baja California Sur.

Categories
Motorcycles Photography Ride South Travel

Ride South: The Beginning

We’ve finally set off on our journey South. After riding North to the Arctic last year, we’d been talking at lengths about riding South. And so it began. In late November, we packed up the bikes and rode out.

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Day 1, we were joined by our friends Jason, Michael, Tristan, Jake, and Alex, as well as my girlfriend who would accompany us to our first campground in Big Sur. After day 1, my girlfriend would come down to Santa Barbara / Los Angeles and bus back while we continued on to Baja, Mexico.

We all gathered at Four Barrel coffee. Stu and I looked like serious spacemen with our new Rev’It suits, pristinely clean and attention-grabbing bright white/grey color scheme. They’d soon lose their pristine shine, fortunately.

A diverse ride out, much like our ride out last year: a Harley-Davidson, a Triumph, a V-Strom, a KLR 650 and Stu and I’s bikes completed the set. Jake and my girlfriend rode pillion.

I discovered pretty early that my kickstand is too long with the bike is all loaded up, letting me not kick it down when the bike is on an incline a certain way. It’s… still that way as of my writing this in La Paz, Mexico. I’ll see if I can find a welder on mainland Mexico. Stuart’s is a bit too short. We also forgot a few things but all in all, our planned departure time was only exceeded by about an hour or so.

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Wasting no time, we rode 280 to the Pacific Coast Highway, following beautiful curves to some lunch in Santa Cruz. We stopped at Burger, a place off the highway where you can get a burger sandwiched between two grilled cheeses. Yup.

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The bikes were holding up great. Load-wise, I think we were a bit lighter than last year, and I had no problem riding with my girlfriend on the back.

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After an absolutely superb ride on the twisties of the highway, we stopped near the Bixby Bridge for some photos around sunset.

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This is a great place to view a superb section of the Big Sur coastline.

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It was getting dark quick — unlike last year, winter means shorter riding hours, and so we found a nearby campground where we drank, grilled and exchanged stories at our campfire huddled between towering redwoods.

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We had a brief ride to the Esalen Institute the next day (to drop off Jake, who was hitching a ride with us to there) and said our goodbyes to our riding partners. We were on our own now.

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We had an absolutely perfect ride down the coast that day. Some of the best riding in California is the Big Sur stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway (the ‘1’) when traffic is mild, and traffic was surprisingly mild for most of it.

The 1

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Hitting Morro Bay, we pushed on until twilight when we pulled over to take off our sun-visors and sunglasses and find a route to Stu’s family in Santa Barbara.

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We took the mountain pass there and arrived well into the night. It was a bit dicey on the curvy road and it’d been a long day riding, so we happily ate dinner and drank a few beers and slept in the next day.

Santa Barbara was a major stop for us — not just to spend Thanksgiving, but also to test our setup so far and fix some minor issues.

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Stuart spent some time tearing down his bike and I mostly tweaked the loading setup, attempted to mount new locks to my side cases (unsuccessfully, I might add) and did other minor modifications.

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(also, who knew there’s some great Nepalese food to be found there?)

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Lovely town to be ‘stuck in’.

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It also helped us plan the road ahead. I rode my girlfriend to LA and back — a nice test of the bike unloaded — and we left shortly after Thanksgiving.

We spent Thanksgiving with Stuart’s lovely sister Lena, basking in our last bit of California sun.

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And we were off for San Diego! Had to stop for lunch at, where else:

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A brief stop in San Diego and we caught up somewhat unexpectedly with Tristan, who’d previously accompanied us on the first day. He would ride through some of Baja with us.

I indulged in the local speciality, the California burrito (a burrito with french fries inside). Crazy American food! We’d miss it. Or would we?

The next morning, we spent some time adding some to the thumper bikes and mounting some new hand guards on my HP2 Enduro from a local Powersports store we headed to the border at Tecate… to México!

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Categories
Motorcycles Reviews

Ride Review: Ducati Multistrada 1200S (2015)

I must admit, I have always been attracted to Ducati bikes. My first bike in the US was a 1997 Ducati Monster 750, and its character, sound and good looks are things I still love today. I rode a Ducati GT1000 to the Arctic last year, but like my Monster of old it was a street bike, and not a touring bike per sé. I’d be lying if I wasn’t interested in how Ducati’s flagship touring bike would hold up on a solid long road trip. Can Ducati make a true touring bike that holds it own, without losing what makes a Ducati so damn fun and exciting to ride?

I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to ride Ducati’s latest and greatest bike — the 2015 Multistrada 1200S — for all of August through Europe, riding through five countries and thousands of kilometers to answer this question once and for all.

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The basics

Staying true to its brand and formula, the Multistrada is powered by a 90° L-twin dual-spark engine shrouded in bright red (or optionally white) plastics and aggressive styling. Since a while back, Multistradas are liquid cooled, but riding it you can still feel some serious heat coming from the top cylinder. It’s a hot-blooded, red racehorse of a bike that just happens to have all the requisite farkles for comfortable touring.

Ducati Mulitstrada 1200s 2015 review (13 of 29)

Design

At first glance, the new 2015 Multistrada is visually quite similar to the previous model. There’s a few areas where the aesthetics have improved; the ‘beak’ is a bit downplayed, some lines are smoother and more continuous. The biggest changes are apparent to the rider; the new, much improved instrument cluster and handlebar controls and the engine between your legs.

The Multistrada seems to have people split on its design: some truly love it, others seem to find it offensive.

Ducati Mulitstrada 1200s 2015 review (2 of 29)

No matter which camp you are in, it certainly looks modern — and strikes a fine balance between the aggressive curves of its superbike sister, the Ducati 1199 Panigale and the hooligan-oriented upright-posture Hypermotard, all the while adding comfortable touring features. In Europe I received a lot of compliments on it from all sorts of motorcyclists. If anything, it looks fierce.

A highly appreciated change Ducati made was the simplification of the cluster and its controls. But the changes to the main instruments don’t just end with the appearance of the cluster; the actual main display featuring your tachometer, speedometer and more basic information moved from traditional LCD technology to a true transflective LCD. Transflective LCD technology is fairly new, and has a serious advantage on motorcycles: it is incredibly bright in sunlight. I found it an incredibly nice experience, as a motorcycle rider that has always preferred traditional gauges over digital displays.

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The cleverness of the instruments don’t end there; if I rode through a tunnel or the sun set, the display inverted its color scheme and became dark, making sure I wasn’t getting blinded by an all-white LCD screen. The cluster also has accommodations for media controls as well as GPS from a Bluetooth-connected phone, but sadly at the time of riding the ‘Ducati Link’ app that enables such functionality wasn’t yet available.

All in all, it added up to one of the best instrument displays I’ve seen on any bike. A bit of a shame is that Ducati has deemed it an extra: the entry-level, less-farkled non-S Multistrada 1200 has a much more basic greyscale LCD instead.

 
  
 

Performance

Coming from the 2014 Multistrada 1200S, the engine has been slightly upgraded: there’s 10 more claimed horsepower on the bike, which is a nice addition in a bike with little to no noticeable weight change.

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A first for Ducati is the introduction of DVT, or ‘Desmodromic Variable Timing’. While variable valve timing has been a thing in cars for a while, Ducati has debuted it in its Multistrada — arguably to improve its engine character and performance on the lower end of the power band in first gear, while also improving the fuel economy. Bundled with the most advanced engine Ducati has put out yet are a host of electronic systems: an Intertial Measurement Unit (IMU) coupled with ABS, which can adjust braking power and application even while the bike is leaned over while maintaing stability.

Things get even crazier: the IMU can send data to the on-board computer so that as you lean the bike, the headlights automatically light up more of the turn you are turning into. It’s kind of insane when you experience it, and yet incredibly easy to get used to. The lights themselves, regardless of where they were aiming, seemed good at their job. If anything, a bit too good: by EU spec, seemed rather bright and aimed a bit high; I often got flashed by oncoming cars at night, which made me double-check if my high beam was on. (it wasn’t)

Throttle is ‘ride by wire’, which means that almost every aspect of the engine character and throttle response can be controlled by the computer. This enables the four riding modes, but also the sub-settings of each which you can tweak if you’d be so inclined. Features include Ducati Wheelie Control, Traction Control and about a dozen more settings. I played a bit with the basic settings, but found myself often staying with the ‘Touring’ setting which strikes a good balance of control, performance and comfort.

I did have moments, however, where it felt a bit like the ‘ride by wire’ created a bit of a disconnect between my inputs and what the bike was doing. It was a bit jarring, and it’s hard to put my finger on exactly when it kicked in, but perhaps I am simply too used to a Ducati being a bit aggressive and raw in its performance. The Multistrada felt — at times — a little too smoothed, as if the computer tried to average my inputs rather that respond to them. Something that could be fixed with adjustments of the many settings on board, possibly — but I found it apparent even in the supposedly untamed ‘Sport’ setting.

Ducati Mulitstrada 1200s 2015 review (17 of 29)

The bike is tall, as many bikes in its class, but thanks to its narrow, sculpted seat which is practically carved into the shape of the bike, it is easy to reach the ground. It’s certainly shorter than the comparable Triumph Tiger or BMW GS bikes in its class, in part thanks to the seating position putting you ‘in’ the bike rather than ‘on’ it. It makes for a well-planted position that lends itself well for aggressive cornering as well.

Touring

While the views expressed in this review are exclusively my own, the touring comfort aspect was also tested by my girlfriend in Europe who rode on the back. Pillion provisions are exceptional with the factory luggage option: the top hard case has a little back rest for your passenger, and the general geometry of the bike is such that your passenger will have a ton of space behind you to sit and move around.

After about three weeks of riding around Europe, we both reached the judgment that the Multistrada was easily the most comfortable bike we’d toured on. In its ‘Touring’ riding mode with full adaptive electronic suspension and the stock seat, it was no issue riding on it all day long. If you feel like it, you can even adjust the height of the seat.

Ducati Mulitstrada 1200s 2015 review (9 of 29)

The seat may be a bit secondary, though: it became instantly obvious how much comfort the suspension provides when I turned off the ‘Touring’ mode and switched to ‘Sport’ for a day. My butt was seriously hurting – I almost felt like it was bruised. Back to ‘Touring’ and the DSS (Ducati Skyhook Suspension) adaptive suspension made it nice and comfy again and my behind took the subsequent kilometers in stride.

Stock, the bike comes with a windscreen and hand-guards; the handguards, like the Ducati Hypermotard, have integrated turn signals which clean up the bike’s appearance nicely.

Ducati Mulitstrada 1200s 2015 review (8 of 29)

Other niceties are the one-hand adjustable windscreen and cruise control. While these are pretty standard features on a serious touring bikes, the implementation was superb. Compared to the equivalent BMW 1200GS — possibly the current highest-selling touring bike — the cruise control and windscreen controls were simpler and easier to use.

Ducati Mulitstrada 1200s 2015 review (10 of 29)

As a cherry on top of the almost-Science Fiction levels of technology in the new Multistrada, the bike comes complete with a keyless ignition system. There’s a key in case you need it, but much like modern cars you can just keep the key in your pocket and hit the starter to take off. It even automatically locks when you walk a certain distance away from the bike.

Luggage

A touring bike isn’t a true touring bike without solid luggage options. In the past, Ducati offered a standard touring kit with hard panniers and this year’s model is no different. The case set is made by Givi and consists of a hard top case and side panniers.

Ducati Mulitstrada 1200s 2015 review (20 of 29)

While I am told it has been improved from the last year’s set, the Givi cases still fall short in several places. The side cases are side-loading, which means you have to open them up with the lid facing outward instead of being able to load them from the top. This usually results in most of your stuff falling out, even if you use the internal stowing straps. While likely a limitation of the ‘aerodynamic’ profile of the panniers, it’s just a deeply impractical design for more than minimal touring.

The aerodynamics of the cases is nice, but the general aesthetic is reminiscent of the hard luggage often seen on scooters, and clashes with the overall aggressive styling of the bike.

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Fortunately there’s plenty of aftermarket luggage options available by now — though, do check fitment, as luggage mounting points have changed from the 2014 to the 2015 Multistradas.

Conclusion

Modern sport-touring bikes have departed from the mid-90s notion of being heavy and bulky thanks to Ducati’s practical reinvention of the category with its aggressively road-oriented Multistrada. With the 2015 1200S model, it adds enough features, technology and comforts to make BMW owners swoon — and the Bavarian company too, perhaps, as it recently entered the market by introducing its S1000-XR Multistrada-lookalike. However, Ducati shows its future vision in the new 2015 1200S: it is a solid update to an already impressive bike.

Ducati Mulitstrada 1200s 2015 review (6 of 29)

Whether or not the Multistrada is for you depends on what you want out of it. If you want the sheer, raw power and pleasure of a Ducati that is unforgiving, demanding and forces you to become a better rider, it is possible to work your way through the complexities of the Multistrada and peel down the layers of technology to reveal that yes, indeed, there is a high-powered race bike hidden in there.

But you shouldn’t — what this bike is perfect for is those people who want to take their time exploring well-paved parts of the world while still feeling like they are riding a sporty, aggressive bike that corners fantastically.

Where the BMW 1200GS is the motorcycle equivalent of a pocket knife, the Multistrada is designed for a specific purpose, much like a chef’s knife: touring the highway and carving the civilized, tarmac mountain and coast roads of Italy and beyond, where it will never fail to give you a comically big grin all day long.

 
 

Thanks for reading!

 
 

Categories
Alaska Motorcycles Ride North Travel

Ride North

Previously: Ride North

We rode our motorcycles North, until the road ran out.

 
 

In 2014, we ( — Sebastiaan de With and Stuart Philkill) rode our bikes North from San Francisco, until the road ran out. On this incredible trip we created a unique visual narrative with the intention of inspiring others and show-casing the natural and cultural beauty of the Northernmost West-American country.

It was featured on Buzzfeed, CNN, HLN, PetaPixel, The Blaze, Reddit, People Magazine and many more websites. We spoke on Reddit’s Upvoted podcast as well as giving a TEDx talk about it!

 
 

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Our image gallery got almost 4,000,000 views, and tens of thousands of comments on imgur and Reddit, becoming the top shared image post of 2014.

Read some of the reactions here — or, listen to our interview with Reddit’s Upvoted:

We’re honored with the fantastic coverage of our journey, and were inspired to start Ride Earth, the website you are on today.

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You can register for the second run of books online here, get a print or get a shirt from our online store.

 
 
 

Still want to read more about our Ride North?

Read about Sebastiaan’s Ducati GT1000 Adventure preparation!

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Or read Sebastiaan’s detailed blog posts, full of images taken by him and written stories:

Week 1

San Francisco to Oregon

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Week 2

Oregon to the Canadian Border

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Week 3

Vancouver, and the road North.

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Week 4

The Yukon and Alaska.

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Week 5

Further North in the Yukon and Alaska

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Week 6

Alaska, the Arctic and the Dalton Highway.

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Thanks for reading!

 
 

Categories
Motorcycles

Our Bikes

What we ride

Currently, as we are preparing for our Ride South, we are riding and preparing these bikes:
 

Sebastiaan – BMW HP2 Enduro (2007)

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Sebastiaan’s new bike (he previously rode a Ducati GT1000) is BMW’s lightest-ever 1200cc bike. The HP2 Enduro wraps a seat, tank and some suspended wheels around the hex-head engine from the well-known R1200 GS adventure bike, but leaves behind excess weight and any electronics.

Modifications include an expanded capacity HPN gas tank, crash bars, valve covers, luggage rack, side cases, passenger pegs, an aftermarket seat, improved front lighting, upgraded suspension and a small windscreen.

The bike was purchased from an ADVRider member in Joshua Tree, and in true ADVRider tradition you can read about Sebastiaan’s short ride from Joshua Tree to San Francisco here.

 
 

Stuart – Kawasaki KLR650 (2001)

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Arguably the most versatile and well-loved bike on the planet, Stuart’s nineties-red KLR650 has previously taken him to Alaska, and many other places. He first acquired the bike in 2014 in San Francisco and has tricked it out since, with a throttle lock, luggage carrier and custom-made Pelican side cases, subframe reinforcements and several reliability improvements like the famous doohickey replacement.

More details on his modifications and glam-shots of the KLR will be coming in future posts.

 
 

Thanks for reading!