Real de Catorce

We're spending a few days in Real de Catorce - a beautiful former ghost town that was the home of a productive silver mine before the price of silver fell in the early 1900s and most of the people left.  Today it's growing in popularity as a tourist spot and is the place that Julia Roberts filmed the movie 'The Mexican'.  The ride down here from Saltillo was a lot of fun, with the last 25 km or so on a very rough cobblestone road that worked it's way up into the mountains.  The stonework was very nice, but it was not smooth like you would hope cobblestone streets would be.  We found it best to go about 60 km / hr and try to get the suspension to smooth it out.  You enter the town by waiting your direction of travel's turn to drive through a 2.6 km mine tunnel and we were first in line.  It was amazing fun to ride the bikes through this old tunnel as it got narrower and narrower and turned through the mountain.  Reminded me of a ride at Disney World from when I was a kid called Thunder Mountain Railroad...  Today we're going to hire a caballero to take us up into the mountains on horseback and go exploring in the old mining area (at least I think that's where we're going).  We are staying at a fantastic 3 room guesthouse called Refugio Romano, where they made us amazing home made Italian food - noodles made form the eggs in the yard, everything from the garden.  Homemade marmalade and local honey as thick as peanut butter for breakfast and a wonderful bottle of Mexican Cabernet at dinner last night.  If anyone makes it to Catorce, stay with Lucio and Mayra!!!  [ refugioromano.net ].

I'm going to post a bunch of pictures below.  The one where Marion is pointing at the tree is the site of her first crash!  The pictures don't come close to capturing the steepness of the stone streets in this town.  After making it through a lot of very difficult riding, Marion took a very steep line up the final driveway to the hotel and stalled the engine on a slippery, steep hill.  The bike stalled and fell over into the tree, and Marion was completely unharmed.  All the bike fortifications worked as we had hoped - the mirrors moved out of the way and the handguards protected the clutch and brake levers.  No damage to M or the moto!  Getting it back upright and down the hill so we could try again with more momentum was interesting, and probably wouldn't have been as smooth without Lucio helping by keeping us from rolling backwards off the edge.  Marion was embarrassed but our hosts were gracious and we went to the room and took Tequila shots out of our travel cups and that was quite effective.  Here are some pictures form the first day!  The one of the cathedral with the bikes parked in front is from Saltillo before we left.  -Davis