Sharp Jolts of Recognition

Day 56-81 – San Felipe, Guanajuato, México to San Miguel del Allende – 12,380 km

A) San Felipe, B) San Miguel de Allende, C) Mineral
de Pozos, D) Xichú, E) Santiago de Querétaro

As we neared San Miguel de Allende, I began to feel a vague sense of déjà vu. It grew stronger as we entered the city and then it came in sharp jolts of recognition as we left the smooth tarmac of Carretera Dolores de Hidalgo-San Miguel de Allende and rumbled along the uneven cobblestone streets of the colonial city. The city is a maze of cobblestone and paving stone streets that may not be paved over – despite the locals’ preference to do so – because, as a World Heritage Site, any modification must be submitted to UNESCO for approval. These cobblestone streets are made even less comfortable on two wheels because many of the them steeply traverse the hillsides. But, also because San Miguel is laid out over the slopes of a hill, it is easy to orient yourself because from almost every corner of the city you can catch a glimpse of the colonial era parochial church and know exactly where the jardín (‘central plaza’) is. This was a huge relief for me as we entered the city because the narrow one-way streets of many of the colonial cities that we have visited in Mexico played tricks on our GPS so that the robotic female voice that we heard over the earphones frequently sound perplexingly like this: ‘Turn right then turn right. Turn right then right. Now turn right.’

San Miguel seen from the 'mirador'

            After parking our bikes near the jardín, we found a great hole-in-the-wall on Avenida Hidalgo that became our staple lunch spot during our time in San Miguel. After a lunch of quesadillas we strolled down hill in search of my friend Erssel’s gallery. I met Erssel during my first motorcycle trip in 2009 when I connected with him through couchsurfing.org as a way to meet people and save money on accommodations. During that visit I stayed with Erssel for about 10 days during which we brought in the New Year and when I finally left after one failed attempt it was with my bike on the back of a mechanic’s pickup truck.

After the death of his wife, Erssel first moved to Romania for a year and then, on his way to Ecuador, he stopped over in San Miguel, fell in love with the place, and never left. Erssel makes woodcarvings with a precision tool called a scroll saw. When I stayed with him in 2009 he had a few showpieces hanging in the boy’s quarter of the colonial area house that he was renting. After I left and he moved from that house, he hustled between local art festivals for a few months before he decided to open his own gallery. When we strolled up to Erssel’s gallery on Callejón del Pueblito, which is a few cobblestone blocks from the jardín, he was busily working his scroll saw in a series of intricate cuts into a block of wood.

            I recognized him at first glance and it was comforting to discover that he looked the same as in my memory and my photos especially since, as he presently explained, not many weeks after I left him last time he had three successive heart attacks.

            ‘When we arrived at the hospital they had pretty much given me up for dead,’ he explained that afternoon at a little shrimp bar as caught up on the last few years. ‘But my friend wouldn’t accept it and he forced them to take me to the hospital in León where they have a heart specialist.’

            He described the series of events from the heart attack to the ambulance ride to León and through the recovery during which a nurse sat bedside 24 hours a day for more than a week. We sat with blank stares but somehow managed to continue sipping at our pints the bottoms of which were strangely but not unpleasantly filled with large shrimps.

            At the end of the story I said, ‘I’m just glad that you pulled through it and, so that we’re clear, there will be no heart attacks when we leave this time.’

            ‘That’s fine,’ he said, ‘because I will keep finding excuses so that you can’t leave.’

            After finishing our beer and shrimp cocktails, we locked our motorbikes within the premises where Erssel’s friend Miguel lives and we went to Erssel’s apartment. Where the old colonial house had enough rooms to host several guests, the new apartment had only one bedroom and most of the excess space was filled with wood scraps and carving tools. At first we adamantly refused when Erssel insisted that we install ourselves in his bedroom but, when we realized that it would be a battle of wills, we soon relented.

'Músicos' celebrate Día de la Revolución

            ‘People in San Miguel love to celebrate,’ Erssel explained that evening. ‘Almost every week there is some festival or other and, if there isn’t one, people will come up with something to celebrate.’

            That night and during each of the 23 that followed, we heard intermittent fireworks set off from improvised batteries set up on nearby rooftops and soccer fields.

            ‘It’s worse than in Baghdad,’ I said only half joking the next morning.

            ‘Oh, when I first got here I had flashbacks to Vietnam,’ Erssel, who had spent two years there as a Marine in the early 70s, said very seriously and then he added more lightheartedly. ‘I tried to hide under my bed except the bed was only a few inches from the floor.’

And Jess thinks she is tall...

            During our stay in San Miguel there was also an official holiday to celebrate. On 20 November, Mexico celebrated its Día de la Revolución (‘Revolution Day’), which commemorates the start of the Mexican Revolution by Francisco Madero in 1910. The festivities had already started several days before our arrival and they continued for several days after. Besides the obligatory and ubiquitous fireworks, there were concerts in the parks and in the plazas outside the churches. At the same time the city celebrated a Festival de Lana y Lata (‘Wool and Brass Festival’), which brought together numerous local artisans and crafts-persons.

Parochial church and Christmas tree

Then as the Revolution Day and Wool and Brass festivities concluded, preparations for Christmas began in earnest. The trees in the jardín and other plazas were trimmed to near perfect symmetry, banners and lights were hung over the streets, larger-than-life figurines were placed on street corners around the downtown, and an enormous, lavishly decorated Christmas tree was erected in the jardín beside the parochial church.

Thanksgiving feast at Paula's house

In between these events, we also found an opportunity to celebrate Thanksgiving. Paula, a friend of Erssel’s and fellow retiree, cooked a traditional southern Thanksgiving meal at her beautiful home in the Independencia neighborhood and we stuffed ourselves to bursting on turkey and gravy, sweet potatoes, cranberries, Erssel’s famous deviled eggs, and assorted pies including pumpkin.

            But back to that first night – on that night we also discovered that the next-door neighbors raise fighting cocks in a pen on the rooftop just outside Erssel’s bedroom window.

            ‘I thought cocks are only supposed to crow in the morning,’ Jess said when we were both awaken in the middle of the night to the screeching and rustling of feathers.

            This too was another exhausting nightly feature of our stay in San Miguel de Allende.

The country around San Miguel

            In Los Angeles before embarking on the southern leg of the trip, Jess had discovered that San Miguel is a popular place to learn Spanish. It turned out that Erssel’s gallery was part of a much larger complex that Erssel’s friend Miguel and his business partner Luís rented as the premises for their Spanish language school for expats. For a number of years, San Miguel de Allende has been a destination for foreign artists and especially retirees because of the low cost of living, the pleasant surroundings, and the amiable, accommodating sentiment among the local people. Today there are thousands of expats – primarily North Americans – who live in San Miguel for several months or more out of each year and most of these make an hour’s worth of effort each day to learn some Spanish.

One of the trails around San Miguel

I take Jess's Moxie for a spin on the dirt

            For three and a half weeks we stayed with Erssel at his house in San Miguel while Jessica attended private Spanish lessons each morning. For the first week I brought the blog up to date with a few new installments and the second week I put together an article about our ride through the national parks of Utah that I am hopeful will be published in a future issue of Rider Magazine. During the third and fourth weeks, I got back on my bike and stuck out for several day-rides. On one of these trips, I went to Mineral de Pozos, which I had visited during my last trip and where I had had a pleasant time taking photos among the ruins of old farmhouses. On another of these trips I followed George from the San Miguel motorcycle club’s advice and I went to Xichú, which is actually easier to pronounce than it is to get to, if you take the southern approach as I did. It was a few dozen dirt road kilometers of ascent into the hill country within which Xichú stands out like a deserted island. The rest of these day trips had a direction but no destination because they were really just an excuse to go riding and to explore the dirt roads and trails while our bikes were so much easier to handle without the luggage.

            On one daylong excursion, Jess and I went to the colonial city of Guanajuato about 100 km from San Miguel. We went on Sunday after I had the bikes washed at a local autolavado (‘car wash’) and when Jess was out of class and Erssel was busy with the gallery. Guanajuato is the state capitol and it was initially founded as Real de Minas de Guanajuato after the Spanish found nearby gold deposits. Then in 1810 it was the site of the first battle between insurgents and royalist during Mexico’s War of Independence. For this rich history and for its narrow, winding streets, subterranean alleyways, and numerous plazas, churches, and colonial mansions, UNESCO named it a World Heritage Site in 1988.

Mummy of an infant girl

            In Guanajuato we experienced plenty of trouble navigating the narrow streets with our iPhone-based GPS, especial when traveling through the underground tunnels but with a little help from the street signs and a bit of luck, we managed to find the Museo de las Momias (‘Mummy Museum’) without getting lost. The Mummy Museum is located beside the municipal cemetery where in 1870 authorities exhumed the bodies of those whose descendents refused or failed to pay a burial tax. The climate and dry conditions caused the natural mummification of many of these bodies, which were eventually put on display in 1970. Like the Torture Museum in Zacatecas, this exhibit had Jess and I transfixed.

‘It’s just so strange to see them still wearing their shoes and clothing,’ Jess said and then went silent at the sight of the mummy of an infant girl who still clutched the desiccated remains of a toy doll.

After the Mummy Museum we went to the Casa de las Leyendas (‘House of the Legends’) on the recommendation of one of Jess’s Spanish teachers. It was a steep climb and then turn up to the parking lot beside the House of the Legends and here I took my first proper fall on my bike. I was looking too far over my shoulder into the blind turn as I climbed the hill and failed to adjust my balance against the camber of the road. It was barely moving when the bike went down and the crash bar and aluminum pannier caught the brunt of it with no damage to the bike itself.

‘It hurts the ego more than anything else,’ I said to Jess after I had righted and parked my bike and then descended on foot to ride hers up the hill and parking it beside mine. ‘You ride in on this expensive, hulky bike and then you fall over and the locals must be thinking, “who is this fucking clown of a gringo?!”’

Inside the museum we were introduced to our 12-year old tour guide who led us in a very professional and well-rehearsed manner through a series of animatronics dioramas that illustrated the region’s colorful local legends.

‘Look, he broke his tooth!’ Jess said, pointing to an animatronics gopher in one of the first displays of the exhibit.

‘That’s Señor Coco,’ I explained as I listened to our guide’s explanation and paraphrased it in English. ‘He was lazy and didn’t like to work but one day he was tunneling and he broke his tooth when he struck a vain of diamonds.’

‘Señor Coco,’ Jess said, trying out the name.

‘In the end Señor Coco, the gopher king, and all the gopher people became rich from their diamond mine and Señor Coco was able to buy a gold tooth and never had to work again,’ I said at the conclusion of several dioramas about this legend.

Me, Miguel, and Erssel have shrimp cocktails and beer

            Most evenings during our stay in San Miguel we had dinner together with Erssel at one of his usual places or at one that we had discovered in the course of our day’s activities. Sometimes Miguel would join us or would stop by Erssel’s to share a few beers with us. On these occasions one of his favorite things was to rib Erssel for his utter lack of Spanish after nearly seven years in Mexico.

            ‘He’s certainly not a good advertisement for your Spanish school,’ I said unable to resist the chance to take a shot a both of them at once.

Miguel and friends play at Spanish school's party

            One evening during our stay, the Spanish school held a party. Several students brought food, Erssel bought beer and made Jello shots, and Miguel and a couple of musician friends played popular Mexican and American songs. This went on late into the night until most had left and those hardy few of us that remained were completely smashed. On another evening, we joined Miguel, Erssel, and Erssel’s friend Susana for a drive to a fish farm where we ate imported fish because the farm’s stocks were too low. Another evening we went to the Teatro Angela Peralta for a Flamenco show and another time we went to St Paul’s Anglican Church for a classical violin and piano concert.

            Probably (but of course not really) for Jessica the highlight of the stay in San Miguel was the afternoon of our much anticipated visit to the estética (‘salon’) for a trim and highlights.

            ‘Ok, so we need to be sure that you know how to explain to them in Spanish what I want,’ she said with earnestness as we walked the block and a half from the jardín up San Francisco to the stylist’s.

‘I know what you want and I can explain it,’ I said.

‘Let’s just go over it one more time so that I’m sure you know it,’ she said.

‘You know my preparation for my doctoral dissertation defense was less rigorous than this,’ I said.

‘Yeah, sure, fine, whatever,’ she said. ‘Just one more time.’

When we arrived at the estética I explained it in good, clear, grammatical Spanish and the stylist understood it just fine. But, when she had questions during the procedure, she just asked Jess in English.

Jess in the Querétaro plaza

Finally it was time to load the bikes and resume the ride but first there was the matter of a day trip to nearby Querétaro. Erssel had an appointment with the heart specialist at the Tech 100 Hospital and we volunteered to drive him home because he would probably be exhausted after the battery of tests. The day before the appointment, Miguel and Susana decided to join us so now we were a band of four. The hospital had a clean, professional appearance and the attendants moved Erssel through the procedures with a minimum of interpretation assistance from me and Susana. The appointment was over before noon and by then Erssel was very hungry because he had been required to submit to the tests on an empty stomach. We drove to the historic downtown and then Jess and I scouted out a restaurant while our three companions smoked cigarettes. After lunch we took a short walk through the streets around the central plaza and among the market stalls. Here we finally found the right gift for Jess’s nephew, Xavier, who would celebrate his first birthday on December 21^st. It was a knit sweater with embroidered animals and Mexican desert scenes and I in particular loved the embroidered cactus.

Time once again to hit the road...

            The next day was our last in San Miguel. We did laundry and organized our gear, which had fallen into disorganization after almost a month of neglect. The next morning after an early run I felt a new sense of déjà vu as I dressed in my riding clothes and loaded the luggage onto my motorcycle. It was hard to say goodbye to Erssel who had been so hospitable and generous to us. Jess said her goodbyes and then he and I had a quick goodbye, which are always the best, and then we mounted our bikes and set off for the next adventure.

My Favorite Instruments of Torture

Day 53-56 – Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico to San Felipe, Guanajuato – 11,213 km

Day 53-56 route: A) Mazatlán, B) Mexiquillo,
C) Durango, D) Sombrerete, E) Zacatecas, F) San Felipe

‘I’m ashamed to because of how dirty they are,’ she said.

         ‘That’s the whole point!’ I said exasperated because she had used this same argument all throughout Baja California and again for the past several days on the mainland. ‘You wouldn’t need to do it if they were clean.’

         ‘I know, but it’s like I want to clean them before I let anyone else touch them,’ she said.

         ‘Well, I’m sorry but there will be no more putting it off,’ I said. ‘Your boots are filthy and it’s well past time to have them shined.’

         It was late afternoon and we were walking through the central plaza of San Felipe in our street clothes because we had decided to end the day’s ride a little early and stretch our legs a bit. San Felipe is a quaint, midsize town along Carretera 51 between Zacatecas and San Miguel de Allende. If it were a town in Baja California where the pickings are slim, I’m sure it would be a tourist attraction; but having the misfortune to be surrounded by so many exception colonial cities, San Felipe is generally considered unremarkable by those who live in the region or who pass through it.

         ‘¿Cuánto cuesta una polida?’ I asked the shoeshine man who sat relaxing beside his stand. ‘How much for a polish?’

         ‘Son veinte,’ he said and began to raise himself and take up his instruments. ‘It’s twenty.’

         ‘¿Treinta para dos?’ I asked. ‘Thirty for two?’

         He considered and then he replied, ‘Sí. Está bien.’

         I took a seat and placed my boots on the platforms and the shoeshine man, who had lately been so casually lounging, immediately began to show his vigor.

         ‘It looks like being in the stirrups when you’re at the gynecologist’s,’ Jess said from where she sat watching on the bench opposite me.

         The shoeshine man began by scrubbing the dirt away with a brush and soapy water and then he dried my boots and began to apply the black polish. When the first coat of polish was applied he buffed away the excess and then laid on a second coat and let it set. Then he buffed the boots once more and lastly he applied a clear waxy substance to finish the treatment.

         ‘To me, this is as good as any massage,’ I said to Jess as my boots began to transform before my eyes. ‘They do it so well and it’s been just this good every time.’

         I thought about this and it made me realize something that my mind had been circling around for the past few weeks.

         ‘I’ve noticed this with other things too,’ I said. ‘So many Mexicans that you see doing what seems like menial chores seem to take a lot of pride in what they do. Maybe it’s because it’s their own small business or maybe it’s for another reason. I know that generalizations are bad and all that but, if you watch them paving a road, or cooking tacos, or washing a car, you’ll probably see what I mean.’

‘It’s like they see it as their trade instead of just a job?’ Jess said.

‘Yes, I think that’s it exactly,’ I said and, considering this for a moment, I added another thought to it. ‘I think that’s what I really struggled with in Africa. You don’t get the same general sense of pride in doing a job. It’s like everyone’s just going through the motions and to do the full, proper job is the exception.’

         ‘Yes, love, I can see that,’ she said. ‘Like how you shine your boots back home but if you were to do it the way the shoeshine man does, you would have to practice at it.’

         ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘I like the idea of living in a world where a shoeshiner considers himself an artisan.’

Those were some filthy boots!

         I thought about this as Jess and I switched places and she placed her more slender but equally filthy riding boots upon ‘the stirrups’. When the man was finished shining Jess’s boots, we considered our footwear and decided that the boots looked better now than when we first bought them. As we walked through the plaza in search of someplace to take a drink, I felt this unusually strong surge of positive energy.

         ‘It feels really good to have your boots shined after you’ve dirtied them up from riding,’ I said.

         ‘Yes, love,’ she said, ‘but I was embarrassed for my boots.’

Into the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains

After the 17-hour crossing of the Gulf of California, we had disembarked at Mazatlan and by the early afternoon we were riding east on Carretera 40 away from the Gulf coast. As we ascended into the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains, the highway meandered from the dry, coastal landscape into lush, forested peaks and slopes to create a 100 km stretch of absolutely unparalleled motorcycling.

In Mexico there are generally two classes of highway. The autopistas are first class and these generally charge a toll because they offer the most direct route between the major cities and the tarmac is usually pristine. But, like our interstates highways, they are far less scenic and bypass the more pleasant small towns and fields that are so wonderfully experienced on a motorcycle. To my mind, all the other highways – state and national – comprise the second tier. Most are perfectly safe with all the signs that you would expect to warn you of sharp curves, icy roads, and when trucks or livestock might be crossing. But these highways will have – almost without exception – a crucial section that is under repair or badly in need of it and also they will be littered with topes (‘speed bumps’).

Doesn't she look awesome?

‘You will probably find them when you enter a town and when you leave it and at 200 meter intervals throughout it,’ I had explain to Jess back when we first entered Mexico and now on the mainland my words were becoming prophetic. ‘If you encounter one tope you should expect there will be another soon to follow it, and if you encounter a second you can be sure there will be a third, and so on.’

Jess rides the twisties like a pro

This was exactly the case on Carretera 40 Libre (‘free’) – the autopista, which runs roughly parallel is denominated 40D. After 100 km of gorgeous scenery during which we weaved in and out along mountain slopes, we suddenly saw signs for Tramo Bajo Reparación (‘Section Under Repair’) and our beautiful afternoon ride came to a crashing halt. We waited with engines cut off for twenty minutes while a tractor dumped fresh gravel onto our lane of the highway. When we were finally permitted to pass, the ride had sudden become a dangerous traverse of fresh, deep gravel through sharp curves, plummeting temperatures, and engulfing fog. This forced halt made what had been a gradual transition from warm costal climes into winter, high elevation conditions appear to be sudden and dramatic. We slogged along carefully for another 45 minutes to an hour until we reached the town of Ejido La Ciudad where the highway began to descend out of the mountains.

         It was a half hour or so before sunset when we arrived and we were tired and had seen very few hotels along the highway since entering the gravely stretch. So when we found a recreation area called Mexiquillo about 1 km outside of town where we could rent a wood cabin, we leaped at the opportunity. The cabin rented for 700 pesos (USD 65), which seemed quite overpriced for a local retreat during the offseason but by the time I had haggled them down to 600 pesos it was getting dark and the clouds were beginning to portend a rainstorm.

Us in the cabin with a big fire going

         At the cabin we unloaded the bikes and then I hopped back on Penelope and bolted down the dirt track back into town where we had seen a few small restaurants and a grocery. I bought four tacos to go at the restaurant and at the grocery I bought drinking water, milk, eggs, and bread for tomorrow’s breakfast. When I got back to the cabin, Jess had showered and collected enough wood for us to start a fire. Once the fire was burning warmly in the fireplace and we had eaten our tacos, I collected all the large pieces of firewood I could find and then Jess tended the fire while I showered. The rest of that evening passed like something out of a romance novel. We reclined together in a tight embrace near to the fire so that we could hear the crackling of the logs over the music from my laptop and feel the lapping warmth of the fire sweep like brushstrokes upon our faces.

The cascada ('waterfall') at Mexiquillo

         During the night it rained and the next morning it was still drizzling when I went plodding down the main path on my morning run. The fields were covered with puddles, which all trickled downhill and intermingled so that it was like a thousand new creeks had sprung up overnight. After a few kilometers I reached the waterfall, which was the highlight attraction of the Mexiquillo recreation area. On the way back the drizzle began intermittently to become a rain and, between the rain and the washed out landscape, my already poor sense of direction entirely failed me. I wandered into an area of tall, smooth boulders where a sign read Jardin de Piedras (‘Rock Garden’) and, after trying to cut through the boulders to reconnect with the trail, I suddenly came to a sharp descent into forest and high undergrowth. Eventually with the help of the GPS program on my iPhone I was able to backtrack enough to extricate myself from the tall boulders and return to the muddy trail that lead back to the cabin.

Jess passes the street-sellers without a glance

         It was a late in the morning before we emerged from the cabin because of the time I had lost during my run and then restarting the fire and cooking scrambled eggs and toast over it. Back on Carretera 40 we had passed the bad under-construction stretch the evening before and now it was mostly smooth tarmac for about 100 km until we reached Durango. Durango is a city of about half a million people, which was founded about 450 years ago as a center of trade for nearby silver and iron mines. This was our first visit to one of the many beautiful colonial cities in mainland Mexico and it was truly a breath of fresh air after the unremarkable cities and towns of the Baja peninsula. However, after more than a 1,000 km traversing Baja, we had become so accustomed to blowing through one uninspiring town after another that, when I pulled us into a parking space beside the 400 year old cathedral in the centro histórico (‘historical center’) of Durango, the first words from Jess after removing her helmet were, ‘Why did you park us here?’

         We ate lunch and took a short walk through the central plaza admiring the handy crafts and thumbing through a few books on sale at the market booths.

         ‘What is one important thing you notice here?’ I asked Jess as we entered the central plaza.

         She took a moment and then she frowned as she replied, ‘There are lots of places to get your boots shined.’

         ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘What do you say?’

         ‘I told you. I’m embarrassed,’ she said as she had said every time I had suggested it before.

         ‘Ok, I’m letting it go for now,’ I said, ‘but only because I’m ready to get back on the bikes.’

         From Durango the highway took a gradually sweep southward until we left the state of Durango and reached Sombrerete in the state of Zacatecas. What I didn’t realize before my first incursion beyond the border towns is that the Mexico we think we know is actually the Estado Unidos Mexicanos (United Mexican States) of which there are 31 states and one Distrito Federal like our District of Columbia. Often the states are named for their capitol city as was the case in Durango and now in Zacatecas but is not always so as we had seen in Baja California, Baja California Sur, and the day before when we disembarked from the ferry at Mazatlan in the state of Sinaloa.

Panorama of the plaza in Sombrerete

         Sombrerete is another 400+ year-old colonial town, which was founded by a group of Spaniards, Franciscan friars, and allied indigenous peoples, who chose that location among the surrounding hills because of the presence of a natural well and nearby gold mines. Here we pulled in shortly before dark, deciding to push on from the town of Vincente Guerrero despite the setting sun for the lack of a decent hotel. Sombrerete is one of the Pueblos Mágicos (‘Magical Villages’) and, unlike the disappointment we received back at Todos Santos on the Baja peninsula, Sombrerete was everything I had learned to expect of the Magical Villages from my first motorcycle trip through Mexico. In the evening we strolled through the uneven streets of paving stones and cobblestones to see the Templo de Santo Domingo illuminated against the night. In the plaza we each took a locally brewed artisanal beer in a small, quaint bar filled with a few antiques mixed with sundry, valueless old trinkets. Then we went across the plaza to a taco stand and stuffed ourselves on tacos al pastor.

We stopped for lunch in General Enrique Estrada

         The food stands and, in particular, those dedicated to tacos are one of the most pleasant aspects of Mexico and, to my mind, the country’s most important culinary experience. If at first appearance, one taco stand looks the same as all the others, a taste of the various tacos on offer reveals the variety in kinds and flavors. Throughout Baja and on our first night on the mainland, we had most frequently enjoyed tacos de carnitas, which is a cut of pork fried in its own lard, because that was what was generally on offer. But here we had our first encounter of the trip with tacos al pastor. The al pastor describes tacos that are also of pork but are given their distinctly rich flavor from the marinade of spices, ground chili, and achiote, which is a tree fruit native to the tropical regions of the Americas. The discovery of al pastor tacos gave this evening’s meal a note of distinction and I tried to describe the thoughts that had been formulating in my head since our first taco dinner back in Tijuana.

         ‘Where I have been in Africa the traditional food tends to be very meat heavy and without a good diversity of vegetables,’ I said as we shoveled one small, three-bite-size taco into our faces after another. ‘The natively grown vegetables are always so measly and expensive and it seems that few but the wealthier can afford to eat them. You can really appreciate why nutrition aid is so important because if children don’t get the variety of vitamins and minerals from vegetables when they are growing up, how can their brains fully and properly develop?’

         I ruminated on this for a while as we continued to stuff our faces but, as per usual, it was Jess who summed up the beauty that is the taco with characteristic accuracy and brevity.

         ‘I love that you get to put the salsa fresca and the salsa picante on yourself just how you like it,’ she said with the red and green tinted juice from each dripping down her lips and onto her chin.

         The next day my morning run was more like a Cross-fit session. It went something like this: run to the Templo de San Francisco de Asis, raise camera, take picture; run to the Jardin Zaragoza, raise camera, take picture, shuffle to other side of the jardin and repeat; run to Jardin Constitución, raise camera, take picture; and so on for 45 minutes.

         After a breakfast of milk and cereal in the hotel room, we loaded our bikes and made what was to be a quick stop at the Pemex for petrol. As we were leaving the parking lot, Jess waved to get my attention.

‘You’re rear tire look a little flat,’ she said. ‘Maybe you should check it.’

I ride past the cathedral in Zacatecas

On my first glance I saw that she was right and on my second glance I saw the small stone that had lodged itself in my tire. As I worked at it with my finger, I could hear the pressurized air seep out from the puncture. Unable to extract the deeply lodged stone with my finger, I fished my patch kit out of the pannier and worked it out with the metal awl. Once the stone was removed, Jess and I read the pocket instructions that came with the kit and I followed each step to clear the puncture hole, insert the rubber plug, remove the excess plug stem, and finally re-inflate the tire. The plug held securely throughout the morning ride and I felt good for having completed my first emergency tire repair. I also felt very much relieved that we were running tubeless tires because tubes would have required me to remove the wheel, break the bead, patch the tube, and then replace everything without catching the tube on the rim and tearing it.

The tools, my feet, and the plug in my tire

With my rear tire repaired, we made a beeline for Zacatecas about 170 km southeast along Carretera 45. Zacatecas is, in my opinion, truly one of the gems of Mexico and a highlight from my first Mexican motorcycle trip. We decided to end the riding day early here and then we changed into our street clothes for a stroll about the city. It was a Sunday afternoon but the streets were bustling with the many locals and mostly regional tourists who were out to enjoy the beautiful weather and exquisite colonial architecture. Zacatecas is another colonial mining town from the sixteenth century that was built among the ore-rich hills of central Mexico. In fact, one of these mines was lately converted into a discotheque into which you enter by a converted railcar, but it is only open on Friday and Saturday nights so we had to forego the experience.

Winded Jess pauses during the ascent

We began our tour of the city by climbing the stairs of the pedestrian streets up the hillside to the Teleférico, which, as I sat trying to think of the words to describe it is actually best said in Jess’s words: ‘It’s a car that crosses on a cable from one big hill to another big hill.’ The Teleférico gave us a spectacular view of the city, which was only bested by the view of the sunset over the city from La Bufa hill where the cable car let us off. As the sun set, we walked down the hillside and back into the historic city center where, quite by accident, we discovered the Museo Casa del Inquisidor.

The museum is barely noticeable as you stroll along the busy Avenida Hidalgo but turns out to be located within the very colonial building where many local victims of the Inquisition were judged. Jess noticed it first and my eyes lit up when she pointed it out.

‘Bean, this is perfect for you!’ I said. ‘You’re always choosing to read the news articles that talk about death, injury, and antisocial behavior.’

The entrance was 60 pesos (USD 6) for the two of us and, during the 30 minute guided tour, the docent lead our group through four rooms consisting of 25 torture devices and several well preserved mummies from the era. The tour guide provided a rapid but uncomfortably detailed description of each device and, unaccustomed to quickly switching between languages, I did my best to whisper a rough translation to Jess without losing my place. Among my favorite instruments of torture – if that’s not too perverse a way to say it – were these:

Jess (happily) submits herself to torture

The heavy iron Masks of Shame with spikes that gouged the neck and upper torso if the wearer let his head slump.

The Coffin Torture in which a metal cage immobilized the victim’s legs and torso so that he was picked and torn at by birds and the cage was not brought down until the very last bone fell through the metal bars.

The Saw Torture in which women accused of witchcraft were hung upside down by their ankles and then sawed completed in half from crotch to forehead.

The Head Crusher where a screw was turned to force a metal cap to gradually and excruciatingly compressed upon the head, causing first the teeth and jaw to shatter, then the eyes to squeeze from their sockets, and finally the skull to break.

The campo ('field') outside San Felipe at sunrise

By the end of our tour through the Museo Casa del Inquisidor, we had built up quite an appetite so we ambled through the bustling stone streets and alleyways until we found someplace to have dinner.

My favorite cactus picture

The next day we left Zacatecas somewhat reluctantly but feeling that we had gotten a good glimpse of what I think is one of Mexico’s most beautiful places. We took the long way out of the city along Paseo la Bufa because this offered similar views to what we had enjoyed on our way down that hillside the evening before after the Teleférico ride. Once out of the city, we followed a short stretch of Carretera 45 and then connected with the 144 at the town of General Pánfilo Natera because it offered a more direct route to San Miguel de Allende and bypassed the much larger city of San Luis Potosi. It also allowed us to pursue our own detours and, during the late morning and into the early afternoon, I led Jess down a series of rural roads, passing through the towns of Pedregoso, el Nigromante, and various others, and traversing intermittent stretches of dirty roads to add some additional excitement to the day’s ride. We returned to the main highway going into Ojuelos de Jalisco and from there we took the 51 into San Felipe where we decided to end the day and I lead us out in search of a shoeshine.

On Our Own And Far Away From It

Day 48-53 – Bahia de los Angeles, Baja California, Mexico to Mazatlan, Sinaloa – 10,586 km

Day 48 to 53 route

It was sweltering under the afternoon sun as he hurried through the sorting and arranging of his gear and clothing. It was packed in duffle bags, backpacks, and stuff sacks that were of various sizes, shapes, colors, and states of disrepair. These – of which there were probably a dozen separate packages – were tied down, piled upon, and hung from every possible location so that his raggedy, yellow Vespa scooter had swelled to maybe three times its original size. He took down one bag and then another, swapped some of the articles in each, then replaced one of the bags, took down two more, and then swapped the contents between the three. He continued this way for maybe 20 minutes, taking down bags, swapping the contents, putting bags back, taking down new ones, putting them back, and then taking old ones and new ones down again, until each of his dozen receptacles had been juggled into and out of the mix with its contents either being partially or entirely replaced.

We watched this frenzy of activity from under the shade of the control booth from which the dockworkers coordinated the loading and unloading of the ferry.

It’s like playing the carnival game where you try to follow the three cups to guess which one the ball is under, I thought to myself but I was too lazily comfortable in the warm afternoon shade to say it out loud to Jess.

Unpacking and repacking, and over again

‘What a circus,’ was the only part of the thought that I managed to say to her sitting just beside me.

She nodded and then we both fell silent again.

         We had arrived at the Pichilingue port near La Paz more than two hours before and now we had another two hours to wait before we could load our bikes onto the ferry for the gulf crossing. There were no berths left for the 17-hour crossing to Mazatlan when we arrived at the ticket office for Baja Ferries, which operates the barges that ferry people and vehicles between the mainland and the peninsula. This was a real gut shot to Jess who had many experiences of being seasick and was counting on having a berth with a bathroom to get through the crossing with some degree of comfort and privacy. There was a crossing scheduled for that same evening to Topolobampo, which is a much shorter 7-hour trip because it crosses due east rather than southeast from La Paz, but we were both reluctant to take this crossing because the ferry would arrive well after dark, whereas that bound for Mazatlan would come in during the daylight of the next morning. The third option was to secure a berth on the next Mazatlan crossing but that would not be for two days and, after brief discussion, we had no desire to sit around in La Paz for that long.

         Jess brooded quietly for a long time, which is her way of coming to grips with a thing that she doesn’t like, while I registered and purchased our fares for the Mazatlan crossing for that afternoon.

‘You’ll take your Dramamine and I’ll be there with you the whole time if you get sick,’ I said after the tickets were bought.

We rode into the port area and passed through customs. The agent was courteous and officious as she checked that we had the Temporary Vehicle Importation Permits, which had at first caused us so much grief back in Tijuana.

         ‘Toque el botón,’ she said when she finished reviewing my documents. ‘Press the button.’

         I pressed it and a green light signaled me to pass ahead. Then, after her documents had been reviewed, it was Jess’s turn to press the button and, when she did, it flashed the word ‘Revisión’ in red.

         ‘You’ve been selected for an inspection,’ I translated to Jess after the customs agent explained the meaning of the signal.

         Still brooding at the imminent seasickness that she would have to contend with during 17 hours in steerage surrounded by several dozen beer-swilling truckers; un-showered backpackers; and pooping, crying babies; Jess slumped at this further indignity before she pulled herself together and smiled at the customs agent while she went about opening her panniers and duffle bag.

         After the inspection, we pulled up to the scale and paid the port fee, which was a flat rate of 72 pesos per vehicle (about USD 6), and then we rode around the dock until we found the Mazatlan-bound ferry. We pulled our bikes past the 18-wheelers and the line of private vehicles and parked beside the control booth. It was hot under the strong afternoon sun, so we stripped off our riding jackets and we slumped down on a bench under the shade.

         ‘He looks like such a ragamuffin,’ Jess said a few minutes after my circus comment as we watched in a sort of daze as the man continued the confusing, almost frantic process of sorting through his luggage.

         ‘Makes me thankful that we only have two panniers and a duffle,’ I said.

         ‘I don’t understand why he does it in such a hurry,’ she said. ‘There’s at least another hour until we can go on the ferry.’

         ‘He’s got a Canadian flag sticker on his windshield,’ I said because I knew this would prick at her.

         ‘I know, he’s probably one of mine,’ she said.

Highway from Bahia de los Angeles

Five days earlier we had left Bahia de los Angeles after our long off road slog to reconnect with Carretera 1 from Puertecitos. We enjoyed warm weather and blue skies as we followed the 1 south across the state boarder and into Baja California Sur at Guerrero Negro. From there we began our fifth crossing of the Baja peninsula but made it only about halfway before we stopped for the night in a large town called El Marasal.

Jess rides the Carretera 1 desert

That evening, after eating tacos at a small, family restaurant, we sought out a laundromat because even our dirty clothes had become un-wearable. We sat on the steps of the lavandería as we waited for our clothes to wash. I wore only a t-shirt and bathing suit because everything else was in the machine. The locals who waited for their own clothes to wash took an interest in us and I conversed intermittently with an old man and his señora and then with a middle-aged man who was first a metal worker and now a glass-maker while he drank beer and smoked cigarettes.

Can this really be a desert?

We reached Santa Rosalia by midmorning the next day and then we stopped in the small town of Mugelé where we ate gorditas, which are like tacos only the meat, vegetables, and salsa are stuffed inside the tortilla as if it were a pita, instead of wrapped or rolled into it as in a taco. That afternoon we rode from Mugelé to Loreto and it was about 130 km of the finest riding and most beautiful scenery we had experienced in the whole Baja California peninsula. The highway meandered through costal mountains that were covered in bushes, shrubs, and cactus so intensely green that I was sure it could not be considered a desert. Then, intermittently the highway emerged from a sharp, high-speed curve and suddenly we were leaning out over a beautiful, turquoise coastline speckled with rocky coves, islets, and a few anchored yachts. It was as if this stretch of highway had been expressly designed for motorcycling, combining the perfect blend of speed, lean, and scenery so that I was completely lost in it. At intervals I would emerge from the trance of hard, smooth riding to realize that I had left Jess far behind.

Jess rides the costal mountains

We spent that night in Loreto, which is a pleasant seaside town that faces out towards the Isla de Carmen a couple dozen kilometers into the Gulf of California. The town has a nice boardwalk that runs along a kilometer or so stretch of the seafront and this made the fine course of several laps for my morning run. We set off midmorning after my run and breakfast and some time spent fiddling with Moxie’s oil level until we were satisfied.

Beautiful coastal mountains and sea views 

From Loreto, the highway continues to weave through the beautiful coastal mountains along the Gulf side of the peninsula, providing us with another 40 km or so of beautiful scenery and exquisite motorcycling. Then Carretera 1 swept us eastward to cross once again to the west side of the peninsula. Only this time the highway stops about two-thirds of the way and we followed it on its southeasterly curve inland through the sister cities of Ciudad Insurgents and Ciudad Constitución. Eventually its course began to take a more easterly bent and we completed another crisscrossing of the peninsula by returning to the Gulf side at La Paz where the peninsula narrows just before bulging again and then sweeps down and around to the Cape.

We covered this stretch quickly and with less excitement than we had that morning because the highway had left the lush, green coastal mountains and became dry, washed out, and generally unremarkable. In the late morning we stopped for fuel and then a snack break under the shade of some trees outside Ciudad Insurgentes and then again for fuel at La Paz. From the principle city of La Paz we continued south on the 1 and then left it to continue south on the 19 when the 1 suddenly swung sharply eastward to follow the Gulf coast down to San José del Cabo. At the end of 80 km we reached Todos Santos, which had caught my interest for being designated a Pueblo Mágico.

The Pueblos Magicos is a moniker granted to certain small and midsize towns across Mexico for their particular beauty and historical significance. In point of fact, during my first motorcycle trip through Mexico I had visited a fair many of the 83 Magical Villages. I had decided that, while I passed through plenty of towns of equal or greater beauty than the Pueblos Mágicos, I was usually not disappointed when I visited one. There are three Pueblos Mágicos on the Baja California peninsula. We had missed Tecate because we crossed at Tijuana and we had enjoyed Loreto where we had spent the previous night, so I was quite sure we would like what we saw when we arrived in Todos Santos just past sunset as the twilight was quickly fading into night.

We stayed the night at a hotel beside a laundramat, which was a convenience that we would have appreciated a couple nights before in El Marasal but was now mostly just a bother because it was noisy and crowded. In the evening we strolled through the town. We stopped for dinner at a taco stand and then bought sweets from a pastry shop but we decided we were generally unimpressed with Todos Santos as we walked back to the hotel.

         In the morning we rode the 80 remaining km of Carretera 19 to Cabo San Lucas at the southernmost tip of the peninsula. I called ahead the evening before to reserve a room in one of the less expensive resorts because the thought of a comfortable bed, strong water pressure, and a full spa treatment as a belated birthday present had been essential to getting Jess through the off road slog several days before. It was good tarmac all the way to Cabo but the ride was not particularly exciting or scenic despite good views of the coastline.

Pool side at the resort

We arrived in Cabo before our room was ready so we fished our swimsuits from our panniers and stripped off our riding clothes to spend the rest of the morning and all through the afternoon relaxing by the pool. In the afternoon when we were checking into our room a group of Canadian bikers of various ages arrived at the resort. They had shipped their bikes from Vancouver to San Diego where they began their ride down the peninsula. Arriving at Cabo was the climax of their trip and you could feel their energy as the dozen sundry motorcycles riding in loose formation pulled into the carport at the entrance of the hotel.

Evening in Cabo San Lucas

‘Look how big the guys with the 1200s are!’ Jess said. ‘Love, you look quite small when you stand beside them.’

As a reply I gave her my ugliest frown and after I had a short chat with a few of the bikers, the concierge completed our check-in and we went up to our room to clean up before dinner. That night we ate fish tacos and then had beers at a restaurant on the sand. Back in the hotel room after a few drinks, we sunk quickly and comfortably to sleep. The next day I went running by the restaurants and shops along the marina and then we went back there for breakfast. After breakfast it was back to the hotel room for the first of Jess’s naps while I went through our photos and worked up a story for the blog. Later she awoke and flipped through the TV channels and then she grew drowsy again and fell asleep for another blissful nap. In the evening we went for dinner along the marina and shared a surf-n-turf special and then indulged in an ice cream at the Häagen-Dazs.

Do you see the smile on Jess's face as she naps?

The next morning we pulled out just ahead of the group of Canadian bikers who were packing up and getting ready to begin their return ride to San Diego.

‘It must be hard to get out the door in the morning with such a large group,’ I said as we zipped on our riding jackets and mounted our bikes.

‘I’m ready to be out of Baja,’ Jess said. ‘There are too many foreigners doing motorcycle trips here. I want to be on our own and far away from it.’

I smiled thinking about what she said as we pulled away and I gave a quick wave to the few Canadians who were standing by their bikes waiting for their compañeros to finish their checkout. She is the same way here as she was in Africa and everywhere else she goes, I thought. She wants to be as far out there as she can and associated with as few other foreigners as possible. It’s her adventure and she’s very picky about who shares it with her. It’s like certain Harley riders you meet who don’t want to share the road with someone riding any other make of motorcycle, I thought. In South Sudan she was the only white face in the town where she lived and I’m sure she secretly took a whole lot of pleasure in knowing it. When I first met her all her friends were Africans and I think it was to her mind that she was making a great exception or maybe finally conceding her illusions to get involved with me. I thought about this for the first ten minutes or so of the two-hour ride north to the Pichilingue port up the coast from La Paz and then I turned my audiobook on and settled into the morning ride.

Moxie and Penelope wait to board the ferry

Eventually the man finished the unpacking and repacking and he settled down in the shade beside his scooter. He introduced himself to us and we discovered that he was German, not Canadian. He had shipped his scooter to Vancouver and from there he went up the coast towards Alaska and then back down through the United States and Baja California to reach 20,000 km later where we were meeting him now. His plan, he explained, was to reach the bottom of South America but he was in no hurry to do it.

         ‘I figure it will take me a year or more,’ he said with much excitement. ‘I make furnitures for yachts so I will stop in Columbia to work if I can. You know, I ride very slow on the Vespa so it will take me a long time. Also, I met the Vespa club in Vancouver and they gave me names and address for the other clubs so I will stop to meet them on the way.’

         ‘See! He’s not one of mine,’ Jess said when the man’s attention was grabbed by several Mexicans and gringos who showed interest in his scooter and its enormous payload.

Jess packs an overnight bag for the Gulf crossing

         It was more than an hour later after all the cars and most of the 18-wheelers had loaded that the dockworkers signaled us that it was our turn to load our motorbikes onto the ferry. We gunned our engines and I lead Jess on her Beamer and the German on his Vespa onto the ferry and then down the center ramp into the very bowels of the ship. After parking our bikes as tightly and securely as the space permitted, we pulled out some clothing, a few toiletries, and other sundries and then headed up to steerage to claim our seats.

         ‘It’s like sitting on a bus,’ she said when we reached our seats several decks up.

         ‘Yeah, but at least these are comfortable, reclining seats,’ I said. ‘And it couldn’t be anywhere near as bad as an overnight bus ride I took to Mombasa.’

         ‘Aren’t the waves going to be rocky?’ she said.

         ‘No, I don’t think they will,’ I said. ‘The Gulf should be calm but take your Dramamine just in case.’

We reclined in our seats for a short time but eventually our ears needed an escape from the volume of the sound that accompanied the movie playing on several large flat screens, so we went outside onto the deck. The sun was close to setting when the ferry finally pulled out from the port and began the slow arc around the nub-like protrusion of land before it could swing south towards Mazatlan across the Gulf. It was warm on the water so that the breeze felt good against the bare skin of our arms but eventually it got cool as twilight came and Jess found herself growing drowsy from the medication. I stayed on deck for a while longer and then I came in and we went to the mess for dinner.

Sunset over the Gulf of California

All through the evening they played loud movies in steerage so that we wore earplugs as we slept or just rested. Late in the evening the ferry began to rock from the larger waves of the open Gulf but it was not enough to upset Jess’s stomach or to overturn our motorbikes, which we had not anchored to the deck. She slept or rested through the night, while my sleep was more intermittent so that for a time around midnight I went on deck and joined several truckers in splaying myself out on the benches until the hard wood became uncomfortable and I could appreciate my recliner in steerage again.

The ferry pulled into the harbor at Mazatlan around 10 in the morning and it was another hour or more before those with vehicles parked on deck one were permitted to descend and disembark. We were filthy from passing the night with the stale sweat of the previous day but our bikes were gassed and loaded and we were well enough rested that we decided to ride out of Mazatlan and push as far inland as we could before the late afternoon. From the harbor we passed through the city and then onto Carretera 40 eastward toward the large colonial city of Durango. Once outside of the city we were quickly ascending into the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range. Here the highway folded into beautiful switchbacks and hard twisties.

We are on the mainland and alone in our adventure just as Jess wants it, I thought.

I flashed a thumbs up to Jess who rode a few meters behind me and just as I did a group of gringo bikers on two BMWs GS’s, a Kawasaki KLR, and a Suzuki V-Strom whipped past us out of a hard turn.

We’ll be on our own soon enough, Sweetheart, I thought as Jess flashed me with her high beams in an ‘All’s well’ response to my thumbs up.