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Hey guys, first ride report. Probably the first ride I've done worthy of a 'real' ride report, too. When I started riding 2-3 years ago, I was drawn in by the whole adventure-esque rides. (Long way away from home (relatively), unfamiliar areas, big sky, mountains, dirt roads, indefinite destinations, the whole deal. This trip to Mexico delivered.
I've known TerraX on the boards for a little while, and his great stories and reports really solidified my desire to go south of the border. I started looking for the opportunity, and it arose in the form of Mex Trek 2009. I think in February I saw the post with the details on MexTrek, and figured this would be a good 'gentle' first trip to Mexico. Later on, Terra posted a pre-Mextrek ride. I figured I'd take off a whole week, make it a real trip. Well, life happens, and the organizers (who also happen to be the only spanish speakers) end up not being able to make it. I send some PM's, make some calls, make sure the other two guys (ISurf and JThompson) signed up are willing to more or less wing it. And they are.
So I'm off. We decide to truck it to the border, meet up at Motel 6 and head across the border early the next day. I left at 4am, got there about 5pm. It was a long drive.
The terrain goes from flat to flatter. And different trees.
Very long drive. Anyway, I finally make it to the motel. ISurf has managed to beat me. JThomp is about an hour behind me.
ISurf is wearing a Flogging Molly T-Shirt. I can tell we're gonna get along.
I run and pick up a few last minute items, extra zip ties, a spare tube I had forgotten, and about the time I get back to the motel JThomp had made it.
We all BS'd for a bit, JThomp and ISurf talked XRL for a little bit, and bragged about who had fit the most stuff on their bike.
We dropped the trucks at McAllen Airport, and rode the bikes back to the Motel. We parked them in front of our room for safe keeping, and hit the sack.
Day 1
The evening before we discovered that we all needed the tourist permits. Since this is everybody's first trip to Mexico, it's definitely a learning experience. We heard from somewhere on the boards that we can get them at Los Ebanos. We leave around 8'ish in the morning and make the short trek to the crossing at Los Ebanos. It's the last hand drawn ferry crossing still in operation, and a heck of a lot more pleasant than dealing with crossing in Reynosa. We pay our two bucks, and hop on the ferry, squeezing in beside the cars.
After the 200 foot journey across the river, a friendly Mexican official meets us, asks us if we're carrying any 'Merchandise' with us, then bids us a good day. We ask him where we get the tourist permits.
"Uhm, we're supposed to have them, but... we don't."
Crap. Well, closest place to get them is Reynosa. And we thought we were being slick. =P
About this time it starts raining. We put on our rain gear, and head towards Reynosa in nasty drizzly weather on greasy roads. We make it into town, find the Banjercito place, head the wrong way down a few one ways, find somewhere to park, and head inside. After some head scratching, we figure out which windows do what, and get our paperwork taken care of.
Our exit from Reynosa was pretty exciting. I was very glad I was on a light dual sport as opposed to a 1200gsa, some cruiser, or anything that doesn't like to be flung around. Dodging people, buses, and cars was a necessity in this town. But we make it.
We hit the 20km checkpoint on the highway out. We present our vehicle import permit, and get waved through without a problem.
It's a pretty good bit of slab getting to Galeana. You go through some towns that appear to be kind of iffy, I'm taking it all in. I think, "Hrm, so this is Mexico." Terrain is still flat as a pancake. I keep thinking about all the pictures and whatnot I've seen of the area, and I'm wondering what the dilly is.
We make our first little tienda stop a few hours in. Some guys are hanging out front in an older jalopy VW Bug, they check out the bikes, give a thumbs up, nice folks in general.
About this time, the rain has finally let up. Still some clouds in the sky and in the distance. On the horizon, I see some very odd shaped clouds. They look like mountains, but it's so out of place. Huge and immediate. We get closer... turns out, they are mountains. Big'ns. And we're headed straight to them. Getting a little excited now. Keep in mind, before this trip, my record elevation was 2300 feet or so in Arkansas.
Shortly after our stop, we see our first military checkpoint. Lots of guns at the ready, one guy in a ski mask on a BIG ol' gun mounted on a truck. They're ready for whatever. Thankfully, they decide that the power ranger gringos aren't a threat, and wave us through before we even stop.
Then we see, our first mountain! Woot! It's amazing how terrain can change so quickly. The road from the border to this point was as flat as the road you see leading to the mountain. And then, out of nowhere, 2-3k foot tall mountain.
The road up and through the mountains was mostly paved, and curvy. Occasional potholes and steep cliffs encouraged you to keep your speed in check. Somewhere along this road JThompson tells us a story about when he was a kid, his parents brought him down here as a child. They were on similar roads in a old VW Aircooled Bus. They got to the bottom of a hill, and tried to make it back out. Veedub didn't have the power to make the hill. They tried pushing, losing weight, etc. Eventually dad figured out that reverse was a lower gear than 1'st. So, they reversed their way out. Funny stuff.
After some beautiful scenery, tight, winding roads, we come into Rayones. Oh, and by the way, the man on the beastly yellow DRZ is me.
The guy in red, is ISurf. Man sporting the safety yellow vest is JThompson. Apparently the vest worked, as he didn't get ran over the whole trip.
Something stung me.
We continue through Rayones, and hit our first bit of dirt heading to Galeana. It's kind of funny. I was already impressed with the riding since we hit the mountains. Probably some of the better and more fun riding I've done. Everything time I saw something that was 'WOW' worthy, there was something a little further down the road that blew it away.
This is also where I get to see my first glimpse of the skill levels of the guys I'm riding with. JThomp is pretty quick, smooth, and effortless. He maintained the same pace throughout the whole trip. Nobody ever had to wait for him.
ISurf has his spurts. He spent half the trip behind me. Not because I was faster, but because I wreck. Alot. =P Someone had to be the first responder. Whenever he did get in front of me though, he was hauling the mail. Point and shoot is how he took the turns, skidding into them and gassing it whenever he was pointed in the general direction he wanted to exit. On this loose gravel stuff, I couldn't keep up.
Somewhere before we hit Galeana, we see a guy standing at a 'T' in the road. Dark coat, hat, just kinda' watching. We wave, he kinda stares. I notice he looks familiar... Holy Crap! It's the same guy!
(Taken without permission from TerraX's ride report from a year ago.)
What are the chances? Anyway, we flex our awesome Spanish. "Donde es Galeana?" He points, we head out.
Shortly after, go down for the first time. ISurf gets in front and takes off. I'm getting left in the dust. I know you're supposed to throttle it in the corners, but on this loose gravel, I just *know* the front is gonna wash out. But, I start trying. Every turn, I keep on the gas a bit more, a bit more. I'm doing alright. I come around another corner. Hrm, mud puddl- *BAM*. Front washes out. =P I land face first in a mud puddle of unknown origin. I quickly pick my bike up. I'm covered in mud. First day, and I'm already down one pair of pants. =P I later also notice the kneeguards I was wearing are now broken, right where the kneecap is. Wonder what would have happened had I not been wearing those.
Anyway, since the DRZ is 10 feet tall and bulletproof, I pick it up and we go on about our business. Also, take note, there are no pictures of this incident, nor are there pictures of any of my crashes. Therefor, it never happened. I don't crash.
Panorama
We come into Galeana. Probably the nicest town I visited in Mexico during my trip, and currently my favorite place in my limited Mexico experience. We find our way to the town square, and park right beside this sign-
Hrm, wonder what this means?
A guy walks out the the Jardin hotel, and starts pointing to the sidewalk in front of the hotel. We park there? Sweet!
Meet Juan Hidalgo. Appears to be the hotel manager. We book our rooms, and we do our best to ask for a restaurant recommendation. And this is us doing our best to understand it. Pardon the low quality, I compressed it a bit too much.
Directions to Restaurant
We notice we are the only gringos in town. It's nice to get outside your bubble every now and then. The restaurant that Juan told us about (at least I think this is the one he was talking about) was great. We were blown away by the prices. In the four days we ate there, we never got a bad meal. The employees were patient with our no spanish speaking asses.
Stimulating conversation.
Afterwards, we walk back to the hotel, and hit the sack.
Day 2
If we had to pick an actual 'destination' for this trip, I think we would all three have agreed that Real de Catorce is where we wanted to go. So, we set out for it. We followed some of TerraX's tracks he provided us, but usually ended up branching off somewhere along the line. We took mostly pavement to Catorce. It's amazing, once again, how many terrain changes you go through. Flat nothing of Texas, greener flatness of Mexico, into the lush mountains north of Galeana, into the desert.
This shot of me provided by JThompson. It's big, so I'll link it.
Rear view shot.
I've totally forgotten what town we stopped at, but we found a little roadside stand that was serving I don't know what. Some kind of corn tortillas w/ various filling, all of which tasted pretty different, but very good. I think it was around 2 dollars for a full lunch.
Shortly afterwards, we saw a sign for gasolina, so we pulled off in this very small town. We found what looked like the gas pump, but nobody was around. I knocked on a nearby door. A child around 8 or so pokes his head out.
'Gasolina abierto?'
'Si.'
My awesome spanish skills at work.
A teen came out, pumped our gas for us. While filling up, a few locals came out to take a gander at the gringo power rangers. One gent brought his child, in a wheelbarrow, to check us out. I snapped a pic as they left.
We then got to the cobblestone entrance to Real de Catorce. There were lots of buses. Hrm. Don't remember anyone mentioning tour buses, or any pics of such buses on any of the ride reports I read. Oh well.
We head down this long cobblestone road. It gets a LOT smoother at about 70mph.
I don't think JThomp was too happy about the cobblestone, but ISurf was down for whatever, as usual. This cobblestone road is the one that leads to the ohso talked about tunnel entrance. We've got to go through the tunnel, right?
We finally reach the entrance to the tunnel.
Holy... Crap.... (pic provided by JThomp.)
There is a LOT (a LOT) of people. The tour buses were dropping people off, people then piled into the beds of old beatup trucks (PACKED in. Standing room only) who then drove to the actual tunnel entrance, who then dropped them off, where they then PACKED into carts, which were pulled by donkeys through the tunnel. No motorcycles or other non-donkey powered vehicles were allowed in the tunnel this day.
And besides all the people, we had these guys eyeballing us.
Actually, the military guys seemed pretty nice. While Jeff and JThomp wandered off for a minute to take pics and look at the tunnel, I stood guard of the bikes. Some locals posed for a pic w/ the soldiers. Afterward, while one was lookin' at me, I gave a short little wave. He happily waved back. Cool deal.
Anyway, lets get the heck outta here.
We decided to head around the mountains and make our way up the back entrance.
Probably about 10-15 miles more pavement. Mostly uneventful, aside from the fact that I nearly kill myself due to the fact I was paying more attention to a train paralleling us than the road. When I looked back, I was about 6" from the ~2 foot drop shoulder of the road. I was cookin' at about 65mph.
Approximately 5 minutes later, JThomp takes the lead and promptly overcooks a corner. He makes a graceful exit from the road, doesn't even lay it over. I stop, he's laughing quite nervously. He mentions something about soiled pants.
Anyway, now that we've got our near death experiences out of the way, we slow down, and finally hit the dirt heading to Catorce. This road was I believe about 10-12 miles long. It was approaching the 90's, it was dusty, dry, hot, steep, rocky, everything. There were SO many people walking this path up. Old men, women, children, everybody. One of the things that stuck in my mind was a young woman, probably 16-17 years old, carrying both of her infants.
It turns out that what all these people were going to was Festival of San Francisco de Assisi. (Jerry is the one who educated me of this later in the week).
The road up is absolutely fantastic. We had to keep it very civil due to the huge amount of foot traffic and the occasional Jeep. Halfway up you get to see some very old ruins in the valley below you. These ruins are built *into* cliffs. I can't imagine seeing them built in their time period, with donkeys and pickaxes.
Towards the end, it gets steep. Steep enough JThomp and ISurf are concerned about their ability to restart if they have to stop on the final hill. Not to mention that when you encounter a Jeep, you have to find a hole in the cliffside to tuck the bike into so the jeep can get around.
VIDEO
This is that final stretch.
We wait for a decent about of foot traffic to clear, and also to make sure no Jeeps are coming, and make a break for it. It's steep. MUCH worse than it looks in the picture of course, but not as bad as I thought.
JThomp coming around to final turn into town. Take notice of the dog above him.
We get into town, end up taking a wrong turn looking for the hotel. We're heading down what appears to be main street for vendors. Once again, we're talking standing room only in this street. PACKED with locals buying cheap chinese jewelry and trinkets. We end up having to walk the bikes through this crap. Talk about uncomfortable. My barkbusters are bumping Mexicans out of the way.
We got off that road as absolutely as quick as possible, I felt like a big enough arsehole as it was already.
Anyway, we finally find Hotel Ogarrio, which just so happens to be the name of the tunnel. I'm not sure if Ogarrio is spanish for 'Tunnel', or if it's a proper name.
Gated courtyard. Not bad. Most expensive room we had in Mexico at 500 pesos, but I really didn't feel like haggling and / or trying to find a different hotel.
This guy was in the courtyard.
Tried to snap a pic of a pretty seniorita, but no such luck.
We went out, wandered, had some great food at a restaurant that sadly I don't remember the name of. We tried to find something to take back home with us here. But absolutely every vendor had nothing that even attempted to be 'antique' ish. It was all literally the chinese bracelets you get in the dispenser machines in grocery stores, knock off Abercrombie clothes, or some other junk. And there were no white folks here. Just Mexicans. Is this why people came from all around? I don't understand, really.
Here's a blurry night shot of some vendors.
DAY 3 (Holy cow I'm lazy.)
Today is where it got interesting. We awoke in Catorce to explosions. I think a local told me they are still mining in the area, and the explosions were dynamite. We headed out to see if the crowds have died down, and they haven't. We find a place for breakfast, have some great heuvos while your stereotypical mariachi band plays INSIDE the restaurant. Very loud. We debate about heading up to the ghost town. The whole trip, I really tried to 100% go with the flow, no rush, etc. But I was ready to get outta' there. I am just absolutely not comfortable around that many people. I quietly voiced my opinion, and we headed out. I REALLY want to go back to Catorce, just next time I'm going to do some more research and be sure that we don't hit any festivals next time.
We head back down the dirt path leading to Catorce. Much less intimidating going down than up. Back onto pavement, remembering our near pants soiling experiences from our way in. Make it about 15 miles north of Catorce. The GPS tracks / route we have on hand are really fighting us, so we decide to more or less wing it. We want to avoid pavement, since we just about slabbed it the whole way into Real. We look at the GPS maps, at some of JThomp's paper maps, and find a trail leading north into the desert and across the bottom part of a dry lake bed. Looks like it should be able to get us to the highway pretty close to Galeana. So we goferit.
After a while we come across a small tienda, we decide to restock on water. I mention this stop for two reasons- It was my first transaction that was performed completely in Spanish.
Me - "Me puedes dar agua?"
Tienda Lady - "Si."
She grabs a few different sized bottles.
Me (pointing to the 1.5l bottle) "Dos. Quantas?"
She add it and a bag of chips or something on the calculator, I see the total. Hand over the money, and transaction completed! Woot!
On our way out, there's a young boy in front the store. He's interested in us and the bikes, but he's shy and / or nervous. He seems interested in JThomp's clear gas tank. We ask if he wants to sit on the bike, he shakes his head and runs behind his father's leg. I take out the camera, and say "Hola!!!" and give a big wave. He grins, they all wave back.
That pic gives me one of those warm fuzzy feelings. Nice people.
We end up following a pretty wide, mostly smooth dirt road. It had recently been graded, so there was a nice mound of dirt in the middle. I decided to transition from one side to the other. I headed to the left side of the road, swung it back right so I could get a steep enough angle to make it across the dirtpile in the middle of the lane.
Wasn't steep enough.
I go down at a solid 45mph. I roll, alot. Camelback breaks, flies off. Most of the plastics on the DRZ remove themselves from the body. Left side dirt bag ends up on top of the right dirt bag. Long story short, I'm very lucky I didn't get hurt or break something on the bike, or me. I was wearing pretty decent gear (Blue jeans, but I had boots and kneepads on.) So I manage to get up, quickly pick the bike up before the above picture was taken. I kind of shove everything back in place and fire her up, continue on like nothing happened.
JThomp is in front, me in middle, ISurf behind me making sure I don't kill myself. We go about a mile or two more, and I halfway try to signal JThomp I'm turning off. Brackets are loose on my DRZ from the wreck, and they're flopping around too much. I pull off into a little opening, ISurf follows me in. I disassemble the DRZ, reattach everything that came loose. Takes me a good 30 minutes or so to get everything straight. Towards the end, JThomp still hasn't came back for us. We assumed he didn't see us and is 20 miles away at this point. So we hop back on the road, DRZ as solid as ever, and start trying to catch up.
About one more mile down the road, we see JThomp, front end of the XRL in the air and wheel-less. Poor guy is sweating his **** off, had a flat. He had already reinstalled the tube and re inflated once, but it was still leaking. We found him on his 2'nd attempt.
He's patching as opposed to just swapping the tube. More patient than I. This man has a freaking dremel with him to scuff the tube. I'm amazed. Anyway, after us burning about 2 hours with wrecks and flats, we finally get on our way, hoping things will improve.
Fast forward about 10 more miles. We come upon the first small town we've seen in a while. As usual, JThomp in front, me in middle, and moto-lifeguard ISurf is in the back. He's about 1/4 mile behind, staying out of the dust cloud. Ahead, we see a couple of Mexicans stepping out of a building, beers in hand. They begin waving, signaling for us to stop.
Hm.
JThomp slows down, and comes to a stop. Me closely behind him. ISurf is still a little ways back. These guys start talking in spanish to us. Here are the keywords and gestures I pick out-
Dinero (rubs fingers together)
Policia (makes a phone with his hand, holds it to his head)
GTFO (they start pointing back the way we came)
I guess we stumbled upon a toll road. Now, these guys aren't officials. We're quite confident they're just trying to rip us. I wouldn't have a problem passing them a few pesos to buzz off, but if I open the wallet I wonder if they'll be happy with just a couple. Don't wanna get robbed out here. JThomp starts his bike back up. Yeah, he's thinking the same thing I am. We both turn around, and see ISurf pulling up. I say, "Follow us!" Brrraaapp. (That's a four stroke sound, right?) We haul **** around the guys, take a right, and get outta' dodge. I take a look behind me to see if they're in pursuit, but they're not. They just walk back into their building with their heads held low. Phew. That was interesting.
We continue heading on our chosen path. We come into some deep, loose, sandy two-track. I love it. JThomp, not so much. There are thorns on each side of the two track that have a nasty habit of sticking you. The center part of the track is about 1' deep loose sand. JT tries riding on both sides and on top, nothing is really working out for him.
I roll ahead to see if conditions improve any. They do, quickly. We start to come upon the dry lake bed. Open. flat, and fast.
After a short water break, we continue. It's probably about 1pm at this point. We're on our final stretch to the highway, or so it seems. Our roads start running out.
It's okay, there's another way to the highway just north of us. We backtrack, head north. Same crap. Peters out into nothing. It KEEPS DOING THIS. Over and over again. Until I hit reserve. We had just passed something that resembled a town. We stop and get our first gas-jug fill up.
I'm going to cut this short. We ask the guy for directions to the Hwy in our terrible, terrible Spanish. We draw out the highway number in the dirt, he nods and points this way. We go about 10 miles that way. This isn't working, trail is not going to the highway. We keep thinking, just around the corner, just on top of that mountain we should be able to see. It goes on and on.
It's now getting dark. We head back into town, and try to figure out if there's another way out to the highway.
We finally find someone who speaks English, and tells us to backtrack a little bit and try a different road. We're not sure if we want to camp and try again in the morning, or tough it out and try and get back to Galeana tonight. I ask her if it's a safe road to drive on at night, she says yes. We decide to try it.
It gets us to pavement. There's a path to the highway shown on the GPS just north a little bit. So, we head north on the pavement and look for it. There's nothing. We keep heading north, trying to see if one of these paths on the GPS is actually there. We keep going and going until there are just about no roads left.
We have to UTurn. It's now 10pm, dark, getting cold. We're too stupid / stubborn / close to give up now, so we backtrack probably 15 miles.
We see... a Pemex. Oh... my... god. We're saved.
Outside of the Pemex, I see this. I want.
Inside the Pemex was a sign for a Hotel (HALLELUJAH!). On the sign, it said 'Hotel Desierto'
"A solo 20 minutos de REAL DE CATORCE"
We were 20 minutes from where we started that morning. Awesome.
Day 4, sometime within the next month.
I've known TerraX on the boards for a little while, and his great stories and reports really solidified my desire to go south of the border. I started looking for the opportunity, and it arose in the form of Mex Trek 2009. I think in February I saw the post with the details on MexTrek, and figured this would be a good 'gentle' first trip to Mexico. Later on, Terra posted a pre-Mextrek ride. I figured I'd take off a whole week, make it a real trip. Well, life happens, and the organizers (who also happen to be the only spanish speakers) end up not being able to make it. I send some PM's, make some calls, make sure the other two guys (ISurf and JThompson) signed up are willing to more or less wing it. And they are.
So I'm off. We decide to truck it to the border, meet up at Motel 6 and head across the border early the next day. I left at 4am, got there about 5pm. It was a long drive.
The terrain goes from flat to flatter. And different trees.
Very long drive. Anyway, I finally make it to the motel. ISurf has managed to beat me. JThomp is about an hour behind me.
ISurf is wearing a Flogging Molly T-Shirt. I can tell we're gonna get along.
I run and pick up a few last minute items, extra zip ties, a spare tube I had forgotten, and about the time I get back to the motel JThomp had made it.
We all BS'd for a bit, JThomp and ISurf talked XRL for a little bit, and bragged about who had fit the most stuff on their bike.
We dropped the trucks at McAllen Airport, and rode the bikes back to the Motel. We parked them in front of our room for safe keeping, and hit the sack.Day 1
The evening before we discovered that we all needed the tourist permits. Since this is everybody's first trip to Mexico, it's definitely a learning experience. We heard from somewhere on the boards that we can get them at Los Ebanos. We leave around 8'ish in the morning and make the short trek to the crossing at Los Ebanos. It's the last hand drawn ferry crossing still in operation, and a heck of a lot more pleasant than dealing with crossing in Reynosa. We pay our two bucks, and hop on the ferry, squeezing in beside the cars.
After the 200 foot journey across the river, a friendly Mexican official meets us, asks us if we're carrying any 'Merchandise' with us, then bids us a good day. We ask him where we get the tourist permits.
"Uhm, we're supposed to have them, but... we don't."
Crap. Well, closest place to get them is Reynosa. And we thought we were being slick. =P
About this time it starts raining. We put on our rain gear, and head towards Reynosa in nasty drizzly weather on greasy roads. We make it into town, find the Banjercito place, head the wrong way down a few one ways, find somewhere to park, and head inside. After some head scratching, we figure out which windows do what, and get our paperwork taken care of.
Our exit from Reynosa was pretty exciting. I was very glad I was on a light dual sport as opposed to a 1200gsa, some cruiser, or anything that doesn't like to be flung around. Dodging people, buses, and cars was a necessity in this town. But we make it.
We hit the 20km checkpoint on the highway out. We present our vehicle import permit, and get waved through without a problem.
It's a pretty good bit of slab getting to Galeana. You go through some towns that appear to be kind of iffy, I'm taking it all in. I think, "Hrm, so this is Mexico." Terrain is still flat as a pancake. I keep thinking about all the pictures and whatnot I've seen of the area, and I'm wondering what the dilly is.
We make our first little tienda stop a few hours in. Some guys are hanging out front in an older jalopy VW Bug, they check out the bikes, give a thumbs up, nice folks in general.
About this time, the rain has finally let up. Still some clouds in the sky and in the distance. On the horizon, I see some very odd shaped clouds. They look like mountains, but it's so out of place. Huge and immediate. We get closer... turns out, they are mountains. Big'ns. And we're headed straight to them. Getting a little excited now. Keep in mind, before this trip, my record elevation was 2300 feet or so in Arkansas.
Shortly after our stop, we see our first military checkpoint. Lots of guns at the ready, one guy in a ski mask on a BIG ol' gun mounted on a truck. They're ready for whatever. Thankfully, they decide that the power ranger gringos aren't a threat, and wave us through before we even stop.
Then we see, our first mountain! Woot! It's amazing how terrain can change so quickly. The road from the border to this point was as flat as the road you see leading to the mountain. And then, out of nowhere, 2-3k foot tall mountain.
The road up and through the mountains was mostly paved, and curvy. Occasional potholes and steep cliffs encouraged you to keep your speed in check. Somewhere along this road JThompson tells us a story about when he was a kid, his parents brought him down here as a child. They were on similar roads in a old VW Aircooled Bus. They got to the bottom of a hill, and tried to make it back out. Veedub didn't have the power to make the hill. They tried pushing, losing weight, etc. Eventually dad figured out that reverse was a lower gear than 1'st. So, they reversed their way out. Funny stuff.
After some beautiful scenery, tight, winding roads, we come into Rayones. Oh, and by the way, the man on the beastly yellow DRZ is me.
The guy in red, is ISurf. Man sporting the safety yellow vest is JThompson. Apparently the vest worked, as he didn't get ran over the whole trip.
Something stung me.
We continue through Rayones, and hit our first bit of dirt heading to Galeana. It's kind of funny. I was already impressed with the riding since we hit the mountains. Probably some of the better and more fun riding I've done. Everything time I saw something that was 'WOW' worthy, there was something a little further down the road that blew it away.
This is also where I get to see my first glimpse of the skill levels of the guys I'm riding with. JThomp is pretty quick, smooth, and effortless. He maintained the same pace throughout the whole trip. Nobody ever had to wait for him.
ISurf has his spurts. He spent half the trip behind me. Not because I was faster, but because I wreck. Alot. =P Someone had to be the first responder. Whenever he did get in front of me though, he was hauling the mail. Point and shoot is how he took the turns, skidding into them and gassing it whenever he was pointed in the general direction he wanted to exit. On this loose gravel stuff, I couldn't keep up.
Somewhere before we hit Galeana, we see a guy standing at a 'T' in the road. Dark coat, hat, just kinda' watching. We wave, he kinda stares. I notice he looks familiar... Holy Crap! It's the same guy!
(Taken without permission from TerraX's ride report from a year ago.)
What are the chances? Anyway, we flex our awesome Spanish. "Donde es Galeana?" He points, we head out.
Shortly after, go down for the first time. ISurf gets in front and takes off. I'm getting left in the dust. I know you're supposed to throttle it in the corners, but on this loose gravel, I just *know* the front is gonna wash out. But, I start trying. Every turn, I keep on the gas a bit more, a bit more. I'm doing alright. I come around another corner. Hrm, mud puddl- *BAM*. Front washes out. =P I land face first in a mud puddle of unknown origin. I quickly pick my bike up. I'm covered in mud. First day, and I'm already down one pair of pants. =P I later also notice the kneeguards I was wearing are now broken, right where the kneecap is. Wonder what would have happened had I not been wearing those.
Anyway, since the DRZ is 10 feet tall and bulletproof, I pick it up and we go on about our business. Also, take note, there are no pictures of this incident, nor are there pictures of any of my crashes. Therefor, it never happened. I don't crash.
Panorama
We come into Galeana. Probably the nicest town I visited in Mexico during my trip, and currently my favorite place in my limited Mexico experience. We find our way to the town square, and park right beside this sign-
Hrm, wonder what this means?
A guy walks out the the Jardin hotel, and starts pointing to the sidewalk in front of the hotel. We park there? Sweet!
Meet Juan Hidalgo. Appears to be the hotel manager. We book our rooms, and we do our best to ask for a restaurant recommendation. And this is us doing our best to understand it. Pardon the low quality, I compressed it a bit too much.
Directions to Restaurant
We notice we are the only gringos in town. It's nice to get outside your bubble every now and then. The restaurant that Juan told us about (at least I think this is the one he was talking about) was great. We were blown away by the prices. In the four days we ate there, we never got a bad meal. The employees were patient with our no spanish speaking asses.
Stimulating conversation.
Afterwards, we walk back to the hotel, and hit the sack.
Day 2
If we had to pick an actual 'destination' for this trip, I think we would all three have agreed that Real de Catorce is where we wanted to go. So, we set out for it. We followed some of TerraX's tracks he provided us, but usually ended up branching off somewhere along the line. We took mostly pavement to Catorce. It's amazing, once again, how many terrain changes you go through. Flat nothing of Texas, greener flatness of Mexico, into the lush mountains north of Galeana, into the desert.
This shot of me provided by JThompson. It's big, so I'll link it.
Rear view shot.
I've totally forgotten what town we stopped at, but we found a little roadside stand that was serving I don't know what. Some kind of corn tortillas w/ various filling, all of which tasted pretty different, but very good. I think it was around 2 dollars for a full lunch.
Shortly afterwards, we saw a sign for gasolina, so we pulled off in this very small town. We found what looked like the gas pump, but nobody was around. I knocked on a nearby door. A child around 8 or so pokes his head out.
'Gasolina abierto?'
'Si.'
My awesome spanish skills at work.
A teen came out, pumped our gas for us. While filling up, a few locals came out to take a gander at the gringo power rangers. One gent brought his child, in a wheelbarrow, to check us out. I snapped a pic as they left.
We then got to the cobblestone entrance to Real de Catorce. There were lots of buses. Hrm. Don't remember anyone mentioning tour buses, or any pics of such buses on any of the ride reports I read. Oh well.
We head down this long cobblestone road. It gets a LOT smoother at about 70mph.
I don't think JThomp was too happy about the cobblestone, but ISurf was down for whatever, as usual. This cobblestone road is the one that leads to the ohso talked about tunnel entrance. We've got to go through the tunnel, right?We finally reach the entrance to the tunnel.
Holy... Crap.... (pic provided by JThomp.)
There is a LOT (a LOT) of people. The tour buses were dropping people off, people then piled into the beds of old beatup trucks (PACKED in. Standing room only) who then drove to the actual tunnel entrance, who then dropped them off, where they then PACKED into carts, which were pulled by donkeys through the tunnel. No motorcycles or other non-donkey powered vehicles were allowed in the tunnel this day.
And besides all the people, we had these guys eyeballing us.
Actually, the military guys seemed pretty nice. While Jeff and JThomp wandered off for a minute to take pics and look at the tunnel, I stood guard of the bikes. Some locals posed for a pic w/ the soldiers. Afterward, while one was lookin' at me, I gave a short little wave. He happily waved back. Cool deal.
Anyway, lets get the heck outta here.
We decided to head around the mountains and make our way up the back entrance.
Probably about 10-15 miles more pavement. Mostly uneventful, aside from the fact that I nearly kill myself due to the fact I was paying more attention to a train paralleling us than the road. When I looked back, I was about 6" from the ~2 foot drop shoulder of the road. I was cookin' at about 65mph.
Approximately 5 minutes later, JThomp takes the lead and promptly overcooks a corner. He makes a graceful exit from the road, doesn't even lay it over. I stop, he's laughing quite nervously. He mentions something about soiled pants.
Anyway, now that we've got our near death experiences out of the way, we slow down, and finally hit the dirt heading to Catorce. This road was I believe about 10-12 miles long. It was approaching the 90's, it was dusty, dry, hot, steep, rocky, everything. There were SO many people walking this path up. Old men, women, children, everybody. One of the things that stuck in my mind was a young woman, probably 16-17 years old, carrying both of her infants.
It turns out that what all these people were going to was Festival of San Francisco de Assisi. (Jerry is the one who educated me of this later in the week).
The road up is absolutely fantastic. We had to keep it very civil due to the huge amount of foot traffic and the occasional Jeep. Halfway up you get to see some very old ruins in the valley below you. These ruins are built *into* cliffs. I can't imagine seeing them built in their time period, with donkeys and pickaxes.
Towards the end, it gets steep. Steep enough JThomp and ISurf are concerned about their ability to restart if they have to stop on the final hill. Not to mention that when you encounter a Jeep, you have to find a hole in the cliffside to tuck the bike into so the jeep can get around.
VIDEO
This is that final stretch.
We wait for a decent about of foot traffic to clear, and also to make sure no Jeeps are coming, and make a break for it. It's steep. MUCH worse than it looks in the picture of course, but not as bad as I thought.
JThomp coming around to final turn into town. Take notice of the dog above him.
We get into town, end up taking a wrong turn looking for the hotel. We're heading down what appears to be main street for vendors. Once again, we're talking standing room only in this street. PACKED with locals buying cheap chinese jewelry and trinkets. We end up having to walk the bikes through this crap. Talk about uncomfortable. My barkbusters are bumping Mexicans out of the way.
We got off that road as absolutely as quick as possible, I felt like a big enough arsehole as it was already.
Anyway, we finally find Hotel Ogarrio, which just so happens to be the name of the tunnel. I'm not sure if Ogarrio is spanish for 'Tunnel', or if it's a proper name.
Gated courtyard. Not bad. Most expensive room we had in Mexico at 500 pesos, but I really didn't feel like haggling and / or trying to find a different hotel.
This guy was in the courtyard.
Tried to snap a pic of a pretty seniorita, but no such luck.
We went out, wandered, had some great food at a restaurant that sadly I don't remember the name of. We tried to find something to take back home with us here. But absolutely every vendor had nothing that even attempted to be 'antique' ish. It was all literally the chinese bracelets you get in the dispenser machines in grocery stores, knock off Abercrombie clothes, or some other junk. And there were no white folks here. Just Mexicans. Is this why people came from all around? I don't understand, really.
Here's a blurry night shot of some vendors.
DAY 3 (Holy cow I'm lazy.)
Today is where it got interesting. We awoke in Catorce to explosions. I think a local told me they are still mining in the area, and the explosions were dynamite. We headed out to see if the crowds have died down, and they haven't. We find a place for breakfast, have some great heuvos while your stereotypical mariachi band plays INSIDE the restaurant. Very loud. We debate about heading up to the ghost town. The whole trip, I really tried to 100% go with the flow, no rush, etc. But I was ready to get outta' there. I am just absolutely not comfortable around that many people. I quietly voiced my opinion, and we headed out. I REALLY want to go back to Catorce, just next time I'm going to do some more research and be sure that we don't hit any festivals next time.
We head back down the dirt path leading to Catorce. Much less intimidating going down than up. Back onto pavement, remembering our near pants soiling experiences from our way in. Make it about 15 miles north of Catorce. The GPS tracks / route we have on hand are really fighting us, so we decide to more or less wing it. We want to avoid pavement, since we just about slabbed it the whole way into Real. We look at the GPS maps, at some of JThomp's paper maps, and find a trail leading north into the desert and across the bottom part of a dry lake bed. Looks like it should be able to get us to the highway pretty close to Galeana. So we goferit.
After a while we come across a small tienda, we decide to restock on water. I mention this stop for two reasons- It was my first transaction that was performed completely in Spanish.
Me - "Me puedes dar agua?"
Tienda Lady - "Si."
She grabs a few different sized bottles.
Me (pointing to the 1.5l bottle) "Dos. Quantas?"
She add it and a bag of chips or something on the calculator, I see the total. Hand over the money, and transaction completed! Woot!
On our way out, there's a young boy in front the store. He's interested in us and the bikes, but he's shy and / or nervous. He seems interested in JThomp's clear gas tank. We ask if he wants to sit on the bike, he shakes his head and runs behind his father's leg. I take out the camera, and say "Hola!!!" and give a big wave. He grins, they all wave back.
That pic gives me one of those warm fuzzy feelings. Nice people.
We end up following a pretty wide, mostly smooth dirt road. It had recently been graded, so there was a nice mound of dirt in the middle. I decided to transition from one side to the other. I headed to the left side of the road, swung it back right so I could get a steep enough angle to make it across the dirtpile in the middle of the lane.
Wasn't steep enough.
I go down at a solid 45mph. I roll, alot. Camelback breaks, flies off. Most of the plastics on the DRZ remove themselves from the body. Left side dirt bag ends up on top of the right dirt bag. Long story short, I'm very lucky I didn't get hurt or break something on the bike, or me. I was wearing pretty decent gear (Blue jeans, but I had boots and kneepads on.) So I manage to get up, quickly pick the bike up before the above picture was taken. I kind of shove everything back in place and fire her up, continue on like nothing happened.
JThomp is in front, me in middle, ISurf behind me making sure I don't kill myself. We go about a mile or two more, and I halfway try to signal JThomp I'm turning off. Brackets are loose on my DRZ from the wreck, and they're flopping around too much. I pull off into a little opening, ISurf follows me in. I disassemble the DRZ, reattach everything that came loose. Takes me a good 30 minutes or so to get everything straight. Towards the end, JThomp still hasn't came back for us. We assumed he didn't see us and is 20 miles away at this point. So we hop back on the road, DRZ as solid as ever, and start trying to catch up.
About one more mile down the road, we see JThomp, front end of the XRL in the air and wheel-less. Poor guy is sweating his **** off, had a flat. He had already reinstalled the tube and re inflated once, but it was still leaking. We found him on his 2'nd attempt.
He's patching as opposed to just swapping the tube. More patient than I. This man has a freaking dremel with him to scuff the tube. I'm amazed. Anyway, after us burning about 2 hours with wrecks and flats, we finally get on our way, hoping things will improve.
Fast forward about 10 more miles. We come upon the first small town we've seen in a while. As usual, JThomp in front, me in middle, and moto-lifeguard ISurf is in the back. He's about 1/4 mile behind, staying out of the dust cloud. Ahead, we see a couple of Mexicans stepping out of a building, beers in hand. They begin waving, signaling for us to stop.
Hm.
JThomp slows down, and comes to a stop. Me closely behind him. ISurf is still a little ways back. These guys start talking in spanish to us. Here are the keywords and gestures I pick out-
Dinero (rubs fingers together)
Policia (makes a phone with his hand, holds it to his head)
GTFO (they start pointing back the way we came)
I guess we stumbled upon a toll road. Now, these guys aren't officials. We're quite confident they're just trying to rip us. I wouldn't have a problem passing them a few pesos to buzz off, but if I open the wallet I wonder if they'll be happy with just a couple. Don't wanna get robbed out here. JThomp starts his bike back up. Yeah, he's thinking the same thing I am. We both turn around, and see ISurf pulling up. I say, "Follow us!" Brrraaapp. (That's a four stroke sound, right?) We haul **** around the guys, take a right, and get outta' dodge. I take a look behind me to see if they're in pursuit, but they're not. They just walk back into their building with their heads held low. Phew. That was interesting.
We continue heading on our chosen path. We come into some deep, loose, sandy two-track. I love it. JThomp, not so much. There are thorns on each side of the two track that have a nasty habit of sticking you. The center part of the track is about 1' deep loose sand. JT tries riding on both sides and on top, nothing is really working out for him.
I roll ahead to see if conditions improve any. They do, quickly. We start to come upon the dry lake bed. Open. flat, and fast.
After a short water break, we continue. It's probably about 1pm at this point. We're on our final stretch to the highway, or so it seems. Our roads start running out.
It's okay, there's another way to the highway just north of us. We backtrack, head north. Same crap. Peters out into nothing. It KEEPS DOING THIS. Over and over again. Until I hit reserve. We had just passed something that resembled a town. We stop and get our first gas-jug fill up.
I'm going to cut this short. We ask the guy for directions to the Hwy in our terrible, terrible Spanish. We draw out the highway number in the dirt, he nods and points this way. We go about 10 miles that way. This isn't working, trail is not going to the highway. We keep thinking, just around the corner, just on top of that mountain we should be able to see. It goes on and on.
It's now getting dark. We head back into town, and try to figure out if there's another way out to the highway.
We finally find someone who speaks English, and tells us to backtrack a little bit and try a different road. We're not sure if we want to camp and try again in the morning, or tough it out and try and get back to Galeana tonight. I ask her if it's a safe road to drive on at night, she says yes. We decide to try it.
It gets us to pavement. There's a path to the highway shown on the GPS just north a little bit. So, we head north on the pavement and look for it. There's nothing. We keep heading north, trying to see if one of these paths on the GPS is actually there. We keep going and going until there are just about no roads left.
We have to UTurn. It's now 10pm, dark, getting cold. We're too stupid / stubborn / close to give up now, so we backtrack probably 15 miles.
We see... a Pemex. Oh... my... god. We're saved.
Outside of the Pemex, I see this. I want.
Inside the Pemex was a sign for a Hotel (HALLELUJAH!). On the sign, it said 'Hotel Desierto'
"A solo 20 minutos de REAL DE CATORCE"
We were 20 minutes from where we started that morning. Awesome.
Day 4, sometime within the next month.
come on
x bazillion
