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.

In The Shade Of The Tall Rocks

Days 45-47 – Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico to Bahia de los Angeles – 9,278 km

‘Bean, I’ve really made a mess of your birthday!’ I said.

         She was sitting on a rock in the small shade made from the taller rocks and the low afternoon sun. She had gone down twice today already – both times in sandy patches – and there was still at least 20 more hard kilometers of rock-strew dirt road before we would reconnect with Carretera 1. The first time she had gone down was about 15 km in from where the tarmac ended at Puertecitos and where we had camped at Gonzaga the night before.

I was riding up ahead and she was riding slowly and carefully behind me until I next glanced in my rearview mirror and saw her pinned under her bike. I pulled off to the side carefully so that we wouldn’t have two downed riders and then I hurried back to where she was. When I got there she had freed herself from under the bike and was walking to meet me.

‘Are you ok?’ I said when I reached her.

‘I think a rock bruised my thigh but it’s ok,’ she said. ‘What about my bike?’

Moxie Thumper was splayed completely on her side and with the weight of the side cases and the top-heavy weight of the large duffle across the seat, we struggled to right her during our first two attempts. As we worked, a rider on a light, unloaded KTM pulled alongside and helped us to get the bike right side up. The rider was gone, blazing down the dirt road, just as soon as we thanked him. Reviewing the bike, I found that one of the brackets on the right pannier was broken and this made the case unsteady on the rack but we didn’t worry about it because we had dealt with this after Jess’s first fall back in Utah at Capital Reef National Park.

         ‘Don’t bother with it now,’ she said a little disheartened from the fall but still mostly in good spirits. ‘I’ll probably just fall and break it again.’

         After that fall she had continued on cautiously for another 8 km or so until she hit another sandy patch that got the better of her and she went down again, this time on the left side. This time there was no rider who magically appeared to help us but we used our legs more than our arms and we got Moxie back on her two wheels and kickstand. This time the left pannier had been damaged. The force of the fall had knocked the internal slider off its track so that the expanded cased hand crushed down to a retracted position. As I opened the case and began to replace the slider onto its track, a four-wheel ATV racer sped by at high speed and kicked up an enormous cloud of dust.

‘The Baja 1000 race begins next week so you might see some of them with their support vehicles practicing the course,’ the English-speaking man who owned the petrol station near Gonzaga had explained earlier that morning. ‘They are tearing up the middle of the road but you should be fine if you stay to the sides.’

I easily popped the slider of the plastic side case back onto its track and, despite the new scratches, the pannier was as good as ever before. But now with this second fall and still some 40 km or more to cover at what was proving a snail’s pace, Jess’s was beginning to look defeated.

‘The next time you see a truck I want to put my bike in the back until we get to the tarmac,’ she said.

I rode her bike out of the sandy patch and up a sandy rise past where I had parked my bike and until where the ground was firmer. There she remounted and we continued to press forward. Both of us were running road tires, which made the many sandy patches extremely difficult so that we were both quite stumped by it. I had several very close calls but managed to keep Penelope upright through each of them and kept both of us from dumping into the sand.

I rode ahead at between 20 and 30 km/h and Jess trudged slowly behind in first gear at about half that speed or less. For her, the slow speed made the distance interminable, while for me it was the short burst of forward progress followed by the waiting for her to catch up and worrying that she not go down again. We had left the coast after the first few kilometers and now we were riding inland through the heat and rocky, sandy wastes of the Parque Natural Del Desierto Central De Baja California.

About 20 km in the road undulated into alternating dips and rises. Now and then a truck or an ATV racer would scream past us and we would shut our helmet visors and hold our breaths until our lungs would burst and the dust began to settle. We took breaks at intervals of 10-15 kilometers and it was at one of these breaks about 40 km in that Jessica sat on the rock in the shade of the tall rocks and the low afternoon sun.

‘Greg, this water is terrible,’ she said. ‘From now on I’m buying bottled water!’

I had been insistent that the least we could do to lessen our carbon footprint on this trip was to avoid buying bottled water. Instead we had brought a SteriPen, which emits UV light from a bulb that is dipped into the water to kill any pathogens. I had used it previously while backpacking and when living in Africa. It works quite well for its intended purpose but it does nothing to improve the taste and we were only now discovering just how horrendously potable drinking water can taste.

‘That’s fine, Bean. We tried but you’re right – this water tastes truly awful,’ I said after reluctantly swigging a dry mouthful.

She was silent for a time and I sat quietly beside her.

‘This is not what I wanted for my birthday,’ she said suddenly.

‘I know, Bean. I really made a mess of it,’ I said.

‘When we get to Cabo I want to stay in a nice place,’ she said defiantly.

‘Sure, Bean,’ I said. ‘We’ll stay in a nice resorty place and we’ll get you a nice massage.’

Since we had sorted our vehicle permit issue three days before in Tijuana, we had traveled south down to Ensenada where we left Carretera 1 and began to traverse the peninsula on the 3. We covered about half of this distance that day and then halted for the night in Valle de la Trinidad where we stayed at a cute little hotel and ate excellent tacos at the neighboring restaurant. In the morning I went running through the dirt roads of the town and then out amongst the lanes along the farms. This began a ritual of morning runs lasting between 30 and 45 minutes that have given me a wonderful way to see a bit of where we are and keep myself in form.

That day we covered the rest of the distance across the peninsula until we reached Carretera 5, which we took it south to San Felipe. San Felipe is a pleasant seaside town that looks all set to host several cruise ships of tourists but is only missing the tourists. Here we sat on a bench on the boardwalk and ate a snack while we talked to a couple who had traveled down two up on a Harley.

From San Felipe we followed the highway south, stopping only for fish tacos at a restaurant beside the highway, shortly before the tarmac ended at Puertecitos. It was late in the afternoon when we stopped for lunch and the owner of the restaurant suggested a nice place for camping at Gonzaga, just a few off tarmac kilometers past Puertecitos. The short stretch of off road was an exhilarating way to end a fine day of riding and our second since resolving the issue with our vehicle permits. At Gonzaga we paid 150 pesos – about USD 15 – for a palapa, which is little more than a hut roof held up by a large central pole. We pulled our bikes under one side of the palapa and pitched our tent opposite them under the roof. It was high tide and the sound of the waves was very soothing and we were the only people to be seen for at least a couple kilometers.

‘Happy birthday eve, Bean,’ I said. ‘I feel very bad that I don’t have a big surprise gift for you but it has been nearly impossible to get away from you long enough to search out something!’

‘It’s fine and this is a wonderful place to spend my birthday eve,’ she said.

That night we walked the couple kilometers inland beside the airstrip to the general store and taco stand beside the dirt road that continued from where the highway had ended. We bought a bottle of red Chilean wine and when that was finished we drank Mexican beers until we were rather well lit. Then we ate tacos to fill our stomachs and drank more beer to wash it down. Jess practiced her Spanish and local men came from the road and stopped for dinner and then went and some stayed a while to watch television in the courtyard. It was a very late eight o’clock when we staggered back along the airstrip a couple kilometers and then another kilometer up the beach to our camp.

‘I’m so cold that I have tunnel vision and I’m not even paying attention for coyotes,’ I said as we walked because we had seen what we thought was a pack of three coyotes earlier on our walk to the general store.

‘Greg, I don’t want to be eaten on my birthday,’ she said.

We fell asleep to the sound of the waves and the breeze against the reed roofs of the palapas. In the morning I laid the solar camp shower in the sun and then I went for a run along the airstrip. When I came back, I hung the solar shower from a nail on the palapa and Jess took the first shower. Although there were no other people to be seen, we were showering in the open so Jess modestly wore her bikini. But I was not so modest and I thoroughly enjoyed the feeling of standing naked under the trickle of water that remained in the shower bag when it was my turn. 

‘I didn’t even condition my hair,’ she said when she realized that she had left me so little of the four liters that had been in the polyurethane bag before her shower.

We scrounged another half liter or so from our water bottles and Jess held the spigot so that we could conserve every last drop as I soaped and mostly rinsed off before the water ran out.

After showering and packing up our bikes, we stopped at the roadside general store to fill our bottles from the tap and then sterilize the water with the UV pen. By then it was around 10 o’clock and we took to the dirt road that our map showed would reach Carretera 1 after about 60 kilometers.

‘Are you sure you want to do the off road?’ I asked before we set off and then again several more times before we were too far in to turn back.

‘We’re not going all the way back to San Felipe and then to Ensenada just to come back down again!’ Jess said.

Then after a pause she said, ‘We’ll see if I’m still saying this a few kilometers in.’

A few kilometers further on after we had drunk the foul tasting water and rested in the shade of the tall rocks and the low afternoon sun, we reached Coco’s Corner. Coco is an old Mexican with no legs and a few words of English mixed into his sentences. He seems to spend most of his time strapped onto an ATV, which he uses to get around. His – Coco’s – Corner is a flat expanse that is like a junkyard of old vehicles and other sundry odds and ends. Here they sell cold beer, sodas, and water to those who pass through and want a rest and cold drink.

‘Ask him how the road is up ahead,’ Jess said as she rested slumped on a plastic chair and drank from a glass Coca Cola bottle.

‘Quedan 20 kilometros but la terrecería no es like antes. It’s más duro,’ Coco said in his mix of Spanish and English. ‘There remains 20 kilometers but it’s not dirt like before. It’s more difficult.’

I began to explain what he said to Jess but she had understood him.

‘Is the road sandy?’ she asked.

‘No, son big piedras and boulders,’ he said. ‘El camino rises y baja por las mountains.’

‘The rocks are better than the sand,’ Jess said.

‘Bastante peligroso, señorita,’ Coco said in a very serious tone. ‘Quite dangerous, young lady.’

After we finished our drinks, I bought two more cold waters to go and we struck back out onto the road. It was as Coco had said. The road was not sandy but it quickly began to rise and dip and wind through the dry desert hill country. Rocks and broken boulders were strewn across the road so that, not only did you have to avoid the loose stuff, but you also had to navigate the biggest and sharpest of those boulders or you might puncture a tire or take a nasty fall. Also, through most of it’s meandering through the hills, the road seemed to cling precariously to the slopes so that missing a turn or going down on the wrong side could mean a steep tumble.

Jess continued to plod along slowly but steadily and without any further mishaps. Seeing fewer sandy patches, I worried less about her safety, except on those particularly precipitous turns where even her good, cautious riding might not be enough. Also, now I worried less about her resilience because she had the experience and success of covering more than 40 km. I knew that if she was going to give up it would have been in the very beginning. Now, despite the treacherous final kilometers, I knew that the road would have to defeat her to stop her because she would keep going so long as the bike and the daylight held out.

We covered the final 20 km more quickly and adeptly than we had the first 20 and at least I was beginning to very much enjoy the experience of riding off tarmac and using my motorcycle for what it was made for. After the mountains, the land flattened and the road straightened and a few kilometers later almost without realizing it we were suddenly off the dirt and back onto the tarmac. At the junction we pulled off where there was a llantera, tire repair shop, and we used the portable electric pump to re-inflate our tires after we had spent the day on low pressure tires for better stability off the tarmac.

Now the off road adventure was over but it was late in the afternoon and the sun was already near setting. With our tires re-inflated for the tarmac and our chains greased to clean off the dust and gravel, we considered our options. The owner of the petrol station in Gonzaga had told us there were few towns and possibly no hotels for a good distance Guerrero Negro and at Coco’s Corner a local traveler had suggested that Bahia de los Angeles was a good place to spend the night back on the gulf side of the peninsula.

We decided to strike out for Bahia and, despite the dust in our eyes and the deep exhaustion in our bones, we hit the highway with speed and purpose. The sun set before we reached the junction where the highway branched towards Bahia. From here it was 66 km of good tarmac as the twilight was overtaken by darkness. When we arrived in Bahia it was the fullness of night but the village streets were quiet and it was a short time before we had traversed the town and settled on an overpriced hotel to spend the night.

‘Happy birthday, Bean,’ I said as we lay in bed collapsed from fatigue.

There was no answer. She was fast asleep.