Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Happy Thanksgiving day to all our friends and family!  It's always strange to be abroad for a US-only holiday but we're gonna try to make the best of it and have a feast tonight and give thanks for our loved ones.

I am also thankful that we were able to fix my bike today and we are hitting the road - finally - to head South in the morning.  In a few days we'll be in Oaxaca, where we both enrolled in a week of Spanish classes!

The SPOT tracker satellite thingy was stolen in Mexico City, so our real-time map thing won't update until we get another one.  Unless the long-shot of BMW Puebla having one in stock comes through, we should get another one next week by DHL from Marion's mum, Lynn.  Thanks Lynn!!!

pretty new shock from Holland!

In addition to leaking all it's fluid out, my old shock also destroyed it's bump-stop from bottoming out so often.

Installing the new shock after a hotel worker let us borrow a large ratchet and extension - Gracias Martine!

Here you can see our new appreciation of bike security.  Nothing to see here folks...

The factory that makes Jon's water bottle cradles in Cuernavaca was nice enough to accept our DHL package from Holland.  We got a full tour from the proud owner, Antonio, who also has a big operation building commercial spot welding machines for factories.

Posing with El Jefe, Antonio, with raw metal bottle cradles in the background.

Mexico City - Museo Templo Mayor

Woke up early this morning and took the Metro out to a motorcycle shop to pick up some really nice Motul oil for the Yamaha and got to experience the Mexico City rush hour commute for the first time.  On the way back the subway was so packed that I got pushed out as the doors were closing and my precious two liters of oil were still inside the subway car!  I managed to pry the doors back open and get the oil back as I was not about to let that stuff go.  Motul 300V Factory Line synthetic is precious stuff in any country, but especially rare down here.

After a nice breakfast we took the Metro down to the Museo Templo Mayor, on the excavated site of the main Aztec temple in Tenochitlan - what is now Mexico City.  Started in the 1300's, the temple was continually rebuilt as it sank into the ground.  I can relate to that.  Mexico City is sinking faster than New Orleans and it started a long, long time ago.  One of the photos shows how the city was built up in the middle of a lake with canals instead of roads.  And they say New Orleans was a dumb spot to build a city...  Actually, though, it was a highly defensible position in the middle of a lake so I guess that was pretty useful until the Spanish wrecked the place.  Amazingly, the site wasn't excavated until the late 70's and several modern drainage tunnels run right through the precious ruins.  I imagine the workers building the drainage pipes encountered the ruins (how could they not?) and decided not to say anything since it would delay their work.  A six foot section of brick waste-water tunnel runs right through the middle.  As the pyramid-shaped temple and associated patios sunk, they were continually rebuilt on top of themselves with more fill and wider, larger pyramids.  The effect is like one of those nesting Russian dolls with five or six temples built right on top of each other as they sunk.

The museum was really nice and had some beautiful mint condition artifacts found in various compartments in the  temples and some amazing statues, including one of a man dressed as an Eagle that was my favorite.  Here are some pictures.  The shock was delivered today in Cuernavaca (woo hoo!) so we're off to Cuernavaca tomorrow morning to see the city and meet up with the business associates of Marion's Dad who let us use their address.  Another simple pleasure:  All our laundry is clean.  Amazing!

PS - as a side note, the European sovereign debt crisis has momentarily increased the appeal of the US Dollar as a safe parking place for global capital (it all has to sit down somewhere each night, after all).  Even though this has next to nothing to do with Mexico, it has caused the Peso to cross 14 MXN to 1 USD - which is one hell of a rate.  It's a great time to visit Mexico, friends and family!

La Ciudad

We made it into Mexico City yesterday afternoon after some interesting navigation by yours truly (davis).  By setting the GPS to "avoid tollways" I saved us a lot of money - tolls are very expensive here and always x2 since we are on two vehicles - but we were led all over the place through outlying towns to avoid the interstate that virtually everybody takes.  We kept turning down these tiny, one way streets for a few blocks at a time while I told Marion on the intercom, "don't worry, this is the main route to Mexico City, everybody takes this route.."  Lots of traffic and both cold and hot as we descended from over 9000 feet into the valley where 20 million people live.  Today, November 20th, is Revolution Day - a major national holiday and the reason we had so much trouble finding a hotel downtown with a vacancy for the weekend.  The hotel our friend's husband found us turned out to be really great (and cheap) and we have free, secure underground parking for our bikes.  We are in a nice quiet part of town near all the big banks and embassies, just off Paseo de la Reforma.  At least it's quiet on a weekend.

Mexico City is awesome!  The city is beautiful, very wealthy in the center, and absolutely enormous.  We set out after breakfast this morning to walk around and head towards the centro to find out that most of the major streets were closed to vehicular traffic for the big Viente de Noviembre Revolucion Parade.  Virtually the entire parade is on horseback - we have never seen so many horses.  Probably a thousand horses, all with a checkerboard pattern combed into their rear ends with what looked to me like hair gel.  Here are some pics and hopefully Marion will post some good stuff soon!

Oh - and here's a link to an unfortunately slow-loading movie that we took, complete with sound!
http://gallery.me.com/roscotrading#100106/MVI_1847&bgcolor=black

Taxco update

We are still in Taxco, having a nice time.  At the request of Auntie Susan I'm going to add a link to some of the silver pieces in one of our favorite shops.

http://gallery.me.com/roscotrading#100105

Also, here is a picture of one of the pieces we could actually afford that I got for Meemo.  And also a super cool burro that was in the street.

Taxco!

We drove for two days on some amazing mountain roads from Barra de Potosi on the Pacific coast to Taxco, a beautiful colonial city in the mountains of Guerrero.  Taxco is the site of the first Spanish silver mine in North America, the oldest of the beautiful colonial cities we have visited so far.  We have to wait here for several days for the new shock to be delivered by DHL to Cuernavaca - so I'm happy that it's such a nice place.  Oh - I guess I forgot to write about the shock repair failing again two days later...  I think Marion covered that.  The BMW's rear shock is leaking again and the bump-stop destroyed itself.  So a new shock with a bright purple spring is coming from the Netherlands and we're hoping it will be in Cuernavaca by Monday or Tuesday.  So far, I've learned that the beloved American silversmith, William Spratling, who is honored all over Taxco as the father of their vibrant jewelry making tradition here lived at 624 Pirate's Alley with William Faulkner and Sherwood Anderson in New Orleans - right next to my old office.  Here are some pictures from our drive from the coast and the first couple days in Taxco.  Check out the view from Mexico Route 134!

November 10th San Juan de Alima to Zihuatanejo

November 10th Zihuatanejo

The drive from San Juan de Alima to our final stopping place near Playa la Ropa in Zihuatanejo was quite magnificent (I know you all are probably tired of me expounding on beautiful curvy roads but it’s true).  The first part of the ride took us down away from the mountain that had been literally looking down on us on the coast in San Juan de Alima and looking into the rearview mirrors it looked almost black.  The thing had been covered in dark fog from the moment that we had pulled into town the afternoon before until I could no longer see it in my mirrors today.  At first I thought that this must mean that we would be in for the first rain of the trip but as we motoed on D assured me that it was just like that, dark and ominous looking, but no rain in sight.  As no deluge moved down from the mountain to soak us, I eventually concurred.  The sight had only served to further the impression (if I may be a tad whimsical for a moment) that the deserted country curving road with flowered foliage encroaching in many places and pretty dappled sunlight was a bit magical, or at the very least could be inspiration for a children’s story.  The fact that no one was around to enjoy it but us, motoring slowly along, was absolutely lovely.  

This feeling of wellbeing was momentarily sliced away as we came up to a fortified military check point.  Surprisingly, it was the only one on highway 200 that we had come upon but D and I had mentally prepared ourselves (we were expecting more) and pulled neatly behind a four door pickup after passing the sandbagged machine gun emplacement to await our turn for questioning.  As the military personnel spoke to the driver and passengers of the truck in front of us, we were waved around.  We both, of course, immediately complied but as we were pulling away D asked me if I had noticed that all four doors of the truck that had been in front of us had immediately opened.  All I could think about were the hard eyes of the driver as they had been scoping out D and I in the rearview.  As we rode along through the same beautiful road conditions that we had been enjoying earlier, we relaxed again.  Our vigilance proved unnecessary, however, as we rode through Michoacan totally unscathed. In fact, the only close calls that we had that day were with animals.  We drove by a colt that had gotten out of his pasture (you could see his colty friends watching him from the pasture gate as we rode by) and D passed by without a problem and even warned me that he was there on the other side of a blind curve. D must have scared him, however, because the colt chose the moment that I was upon him to go back to his friends and safety.  He was young and beautiful and kicking up skinny legs and I slammed on the brakes (thanks very much to our awesome instructor Skip who taught me how to make an emergency stop during the MSF class that I had taken two years prior while getting my license- it was an almost textbook situation).  Later that same day, Davis ran over an enormous snake that had D drawing his legs well clear as the poor creature flipped and flopped in distress.  

We did pass a surprising amount of heavy vehicle convoys- both military and federal police- always with at least five trucks full of armed men with massive guns (the military had .50 cal machine guns)- and something that looked to be a military fort complete with gun turrets.  Despite this, I did feel safe.  Obviously, the federal government is waging war against the cartels in this region, but I wasn’t really afraid of being caught in the middle of anything and it didn’t seem that we would be hurt any other way.

Hot and sweaty and DIRTY we finally pulled into a hotel parking area near Playa la Ropa in Zihuatanejo that we had heard about from a guy selling coconut juice on the street.  As I pulled off my helmet at the hotel reception, D motioned that I had some dirt on my face.  I told him that I knew it and that he did too.  It wasn’t until we got into our room and I stepped into the bathroom that I understood the full extent of it.  Somehow I had managed to get covered while D remained relatively unscathed-- must have been from following D’s moto through construction sites.  It was a bit reminiscent of our days riding through Cambodia when we would end the day with red dirt ground so deeply into our faces that a simple wash wouldn’t change the color.  

Anyway, we had managed to stumble upon a relatively nice hotel for one of the cheaper rates that we had been able to find in this tourist area complete with pool, internet, and decent restaurant-- totally empty (thanks coconut guy!).

Unfortunately, I have no pictures to share.  Neither D nor I was very inspired by Zihuatanejo despite the awesome last scene of Shaw Shank.  It doesn’t really look like that here, or if it did, it’s on the map now and is no longer recognizable.

November 9th La Manzanilla to San Juan de Alima

November 9- San Juan de Alima

We said our good-byes to Rosemary, Sam and Kate and were off heading south on 200 by 9:15 AM.  It’s always nice to get back on the bike again after a few days off.  It’s the freedom of just going and not really knowing where you’ll end up.  D is very good about researching for the next day, figuring out the GPS route and finding possible places for us to stay that night so that we don’t roll into town dirty and exhausted trying to find a decent place at the end of the day (he knows how crabby I can get when I’m hot, tired and hungry).  It spoils me rotten because I get to just basically go along for the ride.  He’s a great tour leader, he could do it for a living if he wanted to...  Anyway, the point is, that even though we have been deciding at the very least the night before where tomorrow’s end destination will be, it’s all new.  So getting back on the bikes after a few days off is really just like starting a new adventure.  If you get bored you just continue on again the next day or do something different.

Unfortunately, we hadn’t gotten very far, just into Manzanillo when I requested a stop for breakfast that Davis realize that his shock had broken yet again (we’re thinking that perhaps the machining done on it when he first had it changed in the US was slightly off but who knows?).  Anyway, the bump stop- the donut shaped hard foam bit at the very bottom of the shock that serves as the last defense for perhaps straining or breaking important parts of the bike’s frame- was obviously compromised.  It was visually falling out of placement and cracked.  DAMN.  So, while I waited watching the bikes for security’s sake, D found a crappy internet cafe and e-mailed Hyperpro, a dutch company that makes excellent shocks.  He had already corresponded with them the first time the shock broke and they had assured him that they could have a shock out to us very quickly.  The next e-mail was to my dad to ask if it would be alright to have the new shock sent to a business associate of his in Cuernavaca that we had already been planning to visit.  It was important to get everything sent out now because we knew that we probably wouldn’t have internet access at our next stop.  

Between Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas, a major port city, there is very little.  We knew that the twisty coast road would probably take longer than we thought and because we would be driving through Michoacan, we wanted to be sure that we where off the road well before dark.  This meant that we would only have a few options on where to stop for the night. 

Perhaps I should mention a bit more about the situation in Michoacan before we go further...  Michoacan is a State in Mexico that is mostly controlled- to my understanding- by the drug cartel La Familia Michoacan.  They apparently started in the 80’s as a sort of vigilante group against other drug cartels and as time when on developed into a criminal organization of their own.  While they are known to be the most violent and fastest growing drug cartel in Mexico, they also have a philosophy based on a strict moral code.  

This is a snippet, verbatim, from Wikipedia, “On July 2009, Servando Gomez Martinez (La Tuta), the cartel operations chief, contacted a local radio station and stated: “La Familia was created to look after the interests of our people and our family.  We are a necessary evil,” and when asked what La Familia really wanted, Gomez replied, “The only thing we want is peace and tranquility.”

In 2006, after throwing 5 decapitated heads onto a dance floor, La Familia apparently also threw down a message that read, “The Family doesn’t kill for money. It doesn’t kill women.  It doesn’t kill innocent people, only those who deserve to die.  Know that this is divine justice.”  La Familia has apparently offered to disband if Calderon’s government would be willing to ensure that Michoacan stayed safe and secure.  Calderon has refused to do any deals with the cartel though and has apparently more or less declared war on La Familia.

So... while D and I were a tad nervous and D had read a report about a motorcycle support vehicle that had been commandeered at gun point only a month before along the same stretch of road that we were going to traverse, we decided to go ahead.  The support vehicle was taken because it was useful to those who took it.  At the end of the day, we are simply traveling through on relatively unremarkable motorcycles.  We didn’t anticipate that anyone would have any reason to pay us any mind at all.  We were of course careful and alert.  Looking in review mirrors to make sure that no trucks pulled out of shaded mountain side roads to follow us...  We had no trouble and the twisty mountainous coastal road was amazing and totally empty.  We stopped for the night at one of the earliest opportunities because we had spent much more time mucking around Manzanillo than we had planned finding the internet cafe and contacting the necessary people to deal with the shock problem.  

At San Juan de Alima we pulled off the road onto a cobblestone street and then a dirt road to go find the lodging that D had researched for the night.  It was quite simply incredible.  The surf was rough and the beach was totally empty.  Very nearly completely undeveloped.  Much of Michoacan coastline is like this, it’s heartening to realize that there are large patches of the pacific coast that are completely undeveloped, even if it is partly because people are too afraid to go there.  We had a surprisingly wonderful meal right on the beach at one of the only restaurants around and went to bed early in our $26 USD per night room, drinking a bottle of wine that we had brought with us from La Manzanilla.

The entry to our evening's accommodation

When we were getting the bikes ready to set off in the morning we spied a man leading his cattle down the beach through the trees.  It was pretty awesome.  Needless to say, we left that morning with good feelings.

November 6th Guadalajara to La Manzanilla

November 6th- Guadalajara to La Manzanilla

After getting a little lost we got out of Guadalajara and made our way to Mexico’s route 80, the beautiful winding mountain road that would take us to La Manzanilla and the pacific coast.  We were both giddy with D’s motorcycle fix and riding along the tight switch backs was a little like skiing.  The curves went on and on.  We stopped for lunch in Autlan de Navarro and found another taco stand that was outstanding.  It’s interesting, but by far some of the best meals that we’ve had have come from these taco stands.  The ladies there all have an amazing assortment of awesome salsas and toppings and it is so GOOD.  There is one salsa in particular, a soupy mixture of avocado/guacamole and lime that I could live on alone.  In some cases the taco is simply the vehicle for this amazing concoction.   

 As we got back on the road we found the way was even slower going and that there were indications that the road had been impassible not too long ago.  The further along we went, the more we saw signs of road devastation.  There was mud, gravel and sand on the road and obvious signs of landslides.  As we passed many a roadside shrine (as you do nearly everywhere we’ve ridden in Mexico) and the switch backs were getting a little more interesting with missing pieces of asphalt and road and sheer drops with nothing between the edge of the broken road and air, I began to wonder if D had any specific wishes for his ashes.  We’ve never really talked about it.  As we got closer to the coast, we came upon men working on shoring up parts of the road that were clinging to the side of the mountain and some small sections that had lost the battle to water and gravity and were simply gone.  It made me wonder what the engineering solution was.  How do you build a road on air?  Bridges, obviously, but it was just as clear that such construction feats were not in store for highway 80 any time soon.  As we were about halfway along this section of road, it dawned on me that this devastation must have been wrought by the recent hurricane, about a month past.  The amount of water that must have been released when the storm hit the mountains would have been incredible.  We saw further evidence of the strength of nature when we descended from the cool mountains into the oppressive heat of the lowlands and saw where a river of water had carved out a huge long section next to the road.  I found myself very glad that we hadn’t been around earlier to witness the storm’s arrival.  

When we hit the lowlands, we turned north onto highway 200, the coastal road that runs all the way to Guatemala.  Highway 200 took us directly into the small coastal town of La Manzanilla, just an hour or so north of Manzanillo.  There we found an interesting community of Mexicans and Gringos.  The town is small and though many expats have made it their winter home, it is obviously still very much a small Mexican village.  We stayed at Alegre Mar, a lovely little place right on the beach where the proprietress Kate lives above two very comfortable apartments, with a small studio above as well.  We shared our divided outdoor patio with Rosemary and Sam, an older couple from Vancouver (there are tons of Canadian tourists in Mexico) who are traveling companions.  They invited us for drinks one night and we discovered that between the two of them they have been just about everywhere in the world.   It’s very heartening to see people in their late 70’s and early 80’s who are still enthusiastic travelers- the kind that want to get into it rather than just vacation.  Rosemary entertained us with gritty travel stories while Sam, who was much more interested in comfort, regaled us with tales of driving the Autobahn in the good old days before it was ruined with traffic (Sam was originally from Belgium and had an interesting flare).

La Manzanilla was a wonderful and relaxing place but we wanted to move on to some place a little cheaper and different.  We decided to go down to the area of Zihuatanejo.  The trip there would take two days and would be through Michoacan, an area know to have heavy drug trafficking. 

We tried to get our large helmet heads as well as the amazing view in the picture- we weren't entirely successful.  D kept admonishing me to really smile, but with the helmet pads pushing on my cheeks, this was the best I could manage.

Unfortunately, the only place that we could safely pull off to try to capture the amazing mountains that we were riding through didn't really do the scenes that we were viewing justice.  Here you can see the road cut into the mountain.

We arrived at La Manzanilla just in time to relax, shower and take in the sunset from our beach side patio

The view south of our lodging.  You can see that the beach was a little ravaged from the storm.  La Manzanilla really dodged the hurricane well though, with most of the damage from the high seas.  The thatched roofs were all still intact.

The view from our cute patio, we've been enjoying hammock time.

Guadalajara Nov 3- 6 Marion's Version

November 3-6th

Guadalajara

Guadalajara is the second largest city in Mexico with over a million people (is it 1.8 million?) Anyway, it is big and it is cosmopolitan. It was actually surprising to me, after all of the small towns it was much less “Mexican” than I was expecting, although I didn’t really have any preconceived idea of it. I was actually interested to see Guadalajara as my friend Ruthie spent a semester there in college and had good things to say about the whole thing.

Davis and I headed straight for Xavier’s place after hitting town and dropping off our bags at the low priced but somewhat depressing Hotel Estacion (train station hotel- there are no more passenger trains in Mexico and so it is always a good bet that the old train station hotels will be cheap). Xavier was just what we were hoping- a lovely French expat who spoke wonderful English. He immediately started questioning Davis as to why we hadn’t both come on Yamaha 250‘s. Davis said that he had actually had that thought himself but that he had already had the BMW 650 single cylinder and that it was fuel injected so better for altitude and a bit more powerful etc. Xavier was not impressed.

He invited Davis and I to have lunch with him and his son and regaled us with tails of his travels through Africa on a 125 CC motorcycle in the 70’s. His shop was quite impressive with many employees and a motorcycle dealership upstairs. After assurances that they did much more difficult suspension jobs all the time (lowering BMW GSs for shorter Mexicans, for instance) we left with good feelings.

Guadalajara was basically the equivalent to some of our stops on road trips in the US when we indulge in typical generic stuff, like Outback Steakhouse. In this case, we went to an Argentine steakhouse restaurant (to celebrate of course) and a movie, In Time with Justine Timberlake (an interesting concept for a movie, not terribly well done but a good excuse to read Spanish subtitles and perhaps learn a little even while vegging). We did spend an interesting afternoon in the downtown area and have some interesting pictures.

I can tell you that riding in Guadalajara was an interesting experience and not something that I would replicate if I had the option. While we had no problems, there were a few moments of tension... It’s interesting. The driving style of Guadalajara actually changes depending on what day and what time you are out and about. The second day, we stopped by the shop at the end of the day to see how progress on the shock repair was going. It happened to be rush hour on Friday. After that, we decided that taking a taxi was a much more relaxing way to travel.