This was my fourth trip to Mexico on two wheels, and I had an excellent time. There were some mishaps along the way -- no Mextrek is complete without a couple, it seems -- but for me it was a welcome adventure out of the day-to-day and a swan song for my 2012 v-strom, which I'm selling (if anyone will buy it -- seems everyone wants something called a T7 these days
But my bike has been a warhorse, four Mexico trips and lots of hill country ventures. So it was goodbye to Lazaro.
Breaking down the trip:
Wednesday, Thursday, Oct 6, 7
Drove to the border after work pulling my bike on a trailer behind my Sienna minivan. The good thing about a Sienna minivan is that you could be dragging a corpse on the bumper and you would not get a ticket. Complete invisibility. And it's a Toyota. And that's about it. Found a lot of friendly, experienced riders already there at the hotel, eager to say hello and help get my bike off-loaded. This was the first time I'd come alone, without my own crew, and so I got to know other people a bit more, which was a plus. My assigned roommate was super nice, easygoing and owned multiple bikes and knew a ton about riding so it was great talking to him about fuel injection vs. carburation, Vortex ECUs, and other stuff that I pretend to know about but I'm mostly just English-major bluffing.
Next morning we were all up early and I went with one of the first groups across the Anzalduas bridge. TVIPs were acquired with the usual bureaucratic dance of Spanish, Spanglish, pantomimes, papers, and then we all blasted down the big highway to Santiago. For those who might be reading this and thinking about going for the first time, Santiago is an elegant down with multiple plazas, an old colonial church, very historic looking, with a big lake and the mountains rising up around -- and also a tourist destination for wealthy Monterrenos so it has some galleries and upscale restaurants. A very pleasant place to stay. There is just a calm feeling in these towns, a quietude -- even more so in Galeana -- that you feel on arrival.
In the afternoon a group of riders went up the Portrero Redondo route toward the tiny mountaintop hamlet of La Trinidad. I'd done this on a previous Mextrek and found it pretty doable, but it was dry then and it was drizzling and slick on this day and that made it harder riding, for me anyway. The route went up for a while then dropped back down some pretty steep rocky inclines. We got to a bridge where the group stopped. I was planning on turning around because I didn't want to drop, and I found that others were of like mind -- only a smaller sub-group went from there on to La Trinidad. Immediately after the turnaround point there was a nasty rocky uphill section and the guy ahead of me dropped and we had to help him get the bike up and get out. I managed to make it up but the bike was bucking over the rocks and I was paddling with my legs so it wasn't pretty. Then the rider behind me did it on one of the big 1200 Super Teneres, which speaks well of his riding skills.
We got through most of the rest of the dirt, then stopped to take some pictures. As we were about to get going again, a little pig came cruising up the road alone and at speed, very intent and serious to get where he was going (bet he made it to La Trinidad easily, mud not being a problem) and we laughed and took some more pictures because it's just not something you see in Round Rock or Austin or Dallas, and then jumped on the bikes and headed down another mile or so of rocky dirt, passing a bunch of ATVs or Razors on the way. I got down to the bottom and stopped with another rider to check my tires, which I'd aired down a bit, and found that I'd left my tank bag open and my tire pressure gauge and cell phone were gone. Somewhere back up the rocky dirt we'd just got off of.
I'll respect the privacy of other riders by not naming names (except Pedro). But I will say the rider with me, a large Moldavian man who could easily bear the nickname Skullsplitter, was completely unphased -- he shrugged and said, "we go back up and look." It was a pain to turn around and go back up onto the dirt and slick rocks again, but that attitude of his -- always willing to help out another rider -- is typical of Mextrek and was much appreciated by me. Amazingly, I found the phone very near were the pig had jetted by us. Stroke of luck. It hadn't even been crushed by the ATVs.
That night we all ate at a nice restaurant and some beverages were enjoyed and then I slept in the bunkhouse. Real good day.
Friday Oct. 7
We had all planned to take the Gold Standard route -- an absolutely stunning route that crosses the mountains on a high plateau called Mesa del Oso, which I'd done on previous trips -- but because of the rain and the possibility of very slick clay roads, all but a few riders opted to take a paved route, which in itself went through some gorgeous twisty mountain canyons on the way to Iturbide, and then some contouring high-mountain curves from Iturbide to Galeana. We rode through clouds of yellow butterflies everywhere -- very magical moments. Our Comandante Pedro El Norte blazed past me on his CBR 500 with knobbies, doing little controlled skids and shivers on his back tire, Moto-GP style. **** dude, you got some big.... let me rephrase that. You ride aggressively. Those are oh-crap moments for me.
We got to Galeana and decamped, ate, rested. As much as I like Santiago, I like Galeana even better. Where Santiago feels a bit more touristy, Galeana feels more like a traditional and working class town, and it is high up in elevation so the air is cold, the clouds often wrapping up the mountain peaks all around, and it feels to me even more peaceful than Santiago (at least it was until 20 bikers arrived and parked in zocalo). The day got on a bit, Comandante Pedro offered a quick clinic in tire-changing, and then a group of us set out for the gopher field on the Cienaga del Toro route. It was late afternoon. We got stretched out quickly on the pavement, and it started to rain again. When we got to the dirt turn off, I waited for the riders behind me so they didn't miss the turn, but after five minutes passed I figured they must have called off the ride (which they had) and so I went on up onto the dirt road, which was muddy and slick.
Shortly I came around the bend and encountered the major mishap of the trip: our Comandante had slid out on one of those striated concrete sections that they put on the sharpest corners and steepest angle of the otherwise dirt roads in this area, (and in my experience thse are more treacherous than rocks and mud). He was lying on his side, a camelback as his pillow, and chatting away with the other riders assembled. If you know Pedro, you know he is a good talker -- he knows a lot about a lot of things. He expounds. So he was chatting away happily, almost like he was lying on his couch and the Mexican peaks and valleys were some kind of Zoom background, except when he tried to move, then he was in great pain and we knew he would need some assistance getting out of there. The Mexican cops came and stopped the slowly assembling line of pick-up traffic -- they were very professional and courteous. Eventually we got Pedro's bike loaded on a local's pick-up truck, and Pedro got a ride down to Galeana to get checked out. It was a bummer way to end the day, but Pedro was cracking jokes and posting humorous and at times graphic updates on the threads -- an absolute model of unflappable good cheer and positivity in the face of a bad piece of luck. Sometimes your number comes up. And that is how you handle it.
Sat, Sun, Oct 8-9.
The next day was up in the air, with Pedro still resting up and a lot of riders breaking into different groups to do different things. I wanted to do El Alamar, a southern route that I had done a portion of as an out-and-back, from the little town of Pablillo, just a gorgeous old logging road through the mountains, across little streams and pastures, but I'd had to turn around that day long ago because we were heading to Real de Catorce, so I wanted to finish it today. I found a like-minded rider and we went down and started the route from Pablillo but it was slick as snot in the rain (again) so we backed-off and went on a plan B ride down a different dirt road to the town of Prieto on a more rocky/gravely road. Again, it's redundant to say, but the mountains were lush and beautiful, and you are passing through and over clouds, not under them, and the peaks are steep and stark. Just a fantastic area. We got to Prieto and met a nice woman and her kids where we had to turn around. She gave us some big shelled nuts (is there a theme here?) and told us that there was an "adventure" route that linked this town with Galeana, but you had to go on a ways .... "that way". Did someone say "adventure?" So we rode on further -- the other rider urging me on and scouting ahead of me, a very good experienced rider on a Honda 250 -- and we crossed a stream and went on some smaller two-tracks, across a big river bend, past an old man walking a donkey, past another old man walking a few miles to dinner, and he told us, "yes, go that way, there's a ranch, but go that way," but eventually we started hitting fences for private ranches and closely skirting planted crops, so we turned around.
On our way back we took another diversion up and down a long road of mixed dirt and striated concrete to a tiny mining town high up in the mountain. We later found out that only 50-60, mostly related, people lived there. We got off the bikes by a tiny church and looked around. There were homes but not a soul in sight. Windblown and cold, almost creepy, with a little rattle of corrugated aluminum somewhere, caused by the wind. We walked over to a little covered concrete soccer/event area. Beyond one goal there a twenty foot drop, a small house, and then a deep canyon below it. I was laughing because I play adult rec soccer and about 60% our shots on goal go over the crossbar. If we tried to play on this little "cancha" we would have to put up some kind of major net or we'd be rappelling into the ravine all day to shag balls.
Anyway, I digress. But Pedro had asked that some people take a bit of time to convey impressions, so that is what I'm trying to do.
So the two of us were just standing there and then we saw some figures come out of a house up the mountainside. I waved. They waved back. Pretty soon a little boy was running down to us. He said his father would like to invite us in for coffee. The other rider and I looked at each other, nodded, and up we went. The man came out to greet us and invited us into his humble, concrete home. His wife prepared us hot coffee which tasted delicious in the cold mountain air. He had five lean, friendly, fit-looking kids who eyed us curiously. So we had coffee under a painting of the last supper and talked. He talked about how messed up some things were in Mexico. We said some things were also messed up in the United States. We agreed that things could get pretty messed up. Then we talked about one of his favorite TV shows, Life Below Zero, on Nat. Geo channel, and how beautiful but
pinche cold it was in Alaska. Then he invited us for dinner and we politely declined, but not without genuine gratitude and appreciation for this man and his family's warm welcome. For all the amazing riding and cool people on the trip, that wonderfully hot cup of coffee in the mountains, with that kind family, will remain a highlight for me.
Sunday was a return to reality. We headed back to the border. After the incredible dirt ride to Rayones and the hairpin mountain twisties to Montemorelos, which I've described elsewhere and won't describe again now, it was a flat trot back to the border. Somewhere along the way I learned that I'd parked my invisible minivan in such a way as to block another rider's truck from departing, and the minivan was definitely visible now, and he'd been there for a few hours waiting. He was understandably pissed. I hadn't intended to do that, thought I left enough space, but apparently didn't. Oh boy. A locksmith was called to move another vehicle. Words were exchanged. I apologized and offered to pay. By that time the other rider was on the road and was over it. He said he'd take his payment in beer. I appreciated that. Beers are on me next time we meet for sure.
That's it. Those are my impressions. I'd be happy to hear others impressions as well. My desktop is not playing ball with my phone right now, so I'm going to share some pictures in a separate post. Cheers. Happy trails. See you next Mextrek. And if you've never been but would like to ... do it.
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. After the first night we all made our way to Galeana. My 3rd time there and a great location to jump off of for day rides. Each evening ended with a good meal, a few drinks and a lot of good stories and maybe some exaggeration the later it got.
