Day 10 – San Blas to Mismaloya

Today is a short day, only about 130 miles, so although we were up a bit early(hard to sleep through those cool bells) we did bike maintenance, took pictures, and waited til 8AM for the opening of the dining room for breakfast. Very nice, most had a couple of eggs with bacon, mine was 2 eggs sunnyside and chorizo.

Leaving about 10AM, we worked our way back through San Blas, past all the vendors and outdoor smokeries with fish and other meats. Wonderful smells. We made our way out of town and followed the signs toward Puerto Vallarta on the very narrow two lane roads, slowing frequently in the villages, behind traffic, that had to make their way slowly over the topes.



Jim & Tom, finally catching up.. :-)




Wow1..!



Wow..2



This would be a good place to interject some of the Mexican road peculiarities, from an American perspective. Traffic enforcement: there is basically none. We've not seen any state type policia, as we have in the states, like CHP. Speed enforcement is done utilizing topes. Topes are basically speed bumps. They come in several different forms, but are inevitably placed at the beginning(from each direction) of any village, or town on the highway. They're also placed strategically within the town, all with the idea of slowing vehicles. Works well for 4 wheeled vehicles, but us wild bikers can slip over them with great gusto and use them as passing opportunities with slow traffic. Yellow lines in Mexico don't mean a thing. They're there, and positioned much more sensibly than in the U.S., where it seems lawyers are consulted for striping and anyplace that has the slightest risk, is double striped. Not so in Mexico, they use common sense and most double yellows, along with signage, designate areas that are actually dangerous for passing. The double yellows, however, are still just suggestions to all drivers, it seems, and if a passing opportunity presents itself that can be accomplished, the opportunity is taken. Slow traffic: there is a great diversity of traffic speed on most highways. Slow vehicles on major highways with room to the right, will generally pull to the right to allow passing. They will NOT stop and let faster traffic by as is more common in the U.S.. Truckers in that situation will pull to the right and signal with their left turn signal to indicate it is safe to pass. Weird, but effective. Basically Mexican drivers expect to be passed by faster traffic, wherever it is safe, and harbor no grudge toward those speeding by. Note, most of this goes out the window in the cities, where speed of action reigns. Still no ill will or middle finger salutes though. They seem to have an effective traffic flow system worked out that is very different from ours. That's all I can think of now, but more later as thoughts occur.

As we got closer to Puerta Vallarta(or PV), traffic increased and became slower and slower, with large trucks crawling over the many topes in some of the villages, stacking up 50-60 other vehicles behind.. Not much to be done except, when an opening, take it..

Into PV and onto 5-6 miles of cobblestones. Not fun on the bikes. We stopped for gas and Roger found the storefront for the zipline company he'd been hoping to find. Back on the bikes, we continued through the very narrow bumpy streets dodging the many buses and some aggressive drivers, past an unending line of shops built for turistas, past the solid line of cars parked on both sides of the road, til we got to fresh concrete. The road was just as narrow, but we were out of the business district and into the area of hotels and condos. After waiting several minutes for road construction lengthening the two lane concrete strip, we continued past some really impressive condos with walls of orange bougainvillea to our right, on the west side of the road. Beautiful, but to get there by car or from the airport(on the North side of PV), you have to go through that town and it ain't no fun.. I'd imagine for a vacation there, flying in and taking a bus South is the only sane option.

Passing by numerous beautiful buildings and landscaping, plus some abandoned, some under construction we arrived at the hotel Mar Serena around 2PM and disembarked the bikes to find our rooms. That presented a couple of problems. The floors of the hotel had been renumbered and the 2^nd floor was now the 1^st. Most room numbers were unmarked, so the clerk came down to direct the room hunt. The lobby is at the top and the hotel descends down the face of the cliff, with floors numbered in ascending value and the floors descended from the lobby. Makes an odd sort of sense.



Right on the highway, in front of a verrry steep drop..

 

Another Wow!



And again!!

We finally got settled and those wanting to do the zipline headed off to the zipline park, or whatever it's called. I was fried from going thru PV and wanted a shower, beer and a sit down to do some writing, so that's what I did. Motorcycles give me what I need, don't need no steenkin' zipline.. The guys all came back and talked more about the tropical menagerie of scorpions, tarantulas and boas than they did about the zip line. Jim's statement. “It was fun” (enunciating “fun” somewhat less than enthusiastically than “It was”).

Dinner was next, but no restaurant at the hotel, so all in the truck and off in search of a good meal. A couple hundred yards down the road was The Kliff Bar and Restaurant. An amazing place with thatch covered deck perched out over the cliff's edge with a full ocean view. I had a pork loin that was very nice, Roger and Ken went for the gusto and had a sea food platter that included lobster and deep fried calamari plus other goodies. As we were eating, several long nosed, long tailed critters came up from below and were begging food, Coatimundis! They're related to racoons and are known fondly as Mexican racoons. A pretty unusual experience for us Californians.



A Coati in "the wild"

That about did it for all of us. We piled in the truck and headed back to the Mar Serena for some Z's and another day.

Day 9 - El Salto to San Blas

Today would be a long day and we started with a breakfast back in the dining room about 7:30, bacon & eggs was common.
 Afterward, we got some pics of the cool old steam engine outside, probably a mining transport. It was built in Erie, PA, close to Tom's home.

We got underway about 9:15

and proceeded to Camino del Diablo, the Devil’s Highway. I decided to try out the video mode on my new Canon camera, so I affixed it to the Ram mount, just behind the windscreen and was easily able to turn it on and start recording while moving. Unfortunately, the battery only lasts about 20 minutes and died just as we were getting to the entertaining(twisty) part of Camino del Diablo. After viewing what I'd recorded, later in the day, it was clear that mounting the camera to the bike created way to much movement and jitter to be acceptable quality. Guess I should have gotten the sports video cam(Drift, like Go Pro) I'd been on the fence about. It's mounted to the helmet, and the head is a natural stabilizer. Live and learn.

Back to the road, it went on and on and on and on for almost one hundred incredible miles, like six Palomar Mountain rides back to back. Our ride was down the mountain and had started at a very chilly 8500'(or so) and the Devil's Road took us down to a warm 3,000' before it leveled and straightened out. The road down was not particularly crowded, but there were, trucks and cars to pass, some rough surface and decreasing radius turns to deal. The scenery was mostly all pine forest, until we got down to the straighter flat sections below the Devils section. Out 25 miles from it's end, we came upon an accident where two young men on a small 50CC Honda motorcycle had crashed into a truck while descending. Roger had stopped and had seen one fellow staggering on the side of the road. Another was laying in the middle of the road, bleeding from a head wound and still as we passed. Roger said the fellow had raised his head as he was observing. We passed on, and parked a bit down the hill, not knowing what kind of trouble an American could get into as a good Samaritan in Mexico, but people were all standing off to the side of the road beside the truck that was hit and no-one was making an effort to help either of the kids. Sad... Luckily an ambulance arrived just as we were leaving.

We passed on down into a town below, gassed up at the Pemex and crossed the street for a great rotisserie chicken lunch at a little mom run street cafe'.

The rest of the trip to San Blas was uneventful and continuing thought the town, off toward the bay we ended up at the Hotel Garza a bit off the beaten path.

 A beautiful inner courtyard garden, restaurant and lobby. The rooms were very nice and there was no fireplace, so we were golden for a smoke free night of rest.

Dinner in the dining room was very nice. Mine was a beef steak( don't remember the cut) that was tender and had a mild sweet red chile sauce that was to die for.... A quick read and writing session was soon aborted for sleep, which was punctuated by a 3 canon salute, sometime around midnight, evidently signaling the end of a local festival downtown. Morning came on the ringing of the town(or church?) bells starting at 6AM and continuing every 15 minutes or so til about 7AM. A new day and on to Mismaloya.

Day 8 - Hidalgo del Parral to El Salto

 This was pretty much a “transfer stage” as they say on the Dakar Rally, just a transport day to get to the next real rally stage. After determining that there was no hot water in the room for showers, we headed to the lobby for a Continental breakfast. Cereal and a few waffles were consumed with HoJo “American Coffee”.

We got off a 9AM and had a rather unmemorable ride except for a stop at a little cafe that specialized in shrimp dishes, out in the middle of nowhere.

Grtting ready for dom Camarones(shrimp)

Go figure, Jim & I had a Shrimp Ranchero. The other dish of the day was Camarones del Diablo, or Shrimp of the Devil. Tom was looking for Rolaids about an hour later. It was all good though.

We ended up at El Salto, working our way through the wood smoke and found our Hotel Real del Bosque.

After checking into the rooms and raiding the beer larder in Ken's truck, we relaxed for a bit and then had an urgent discussion about firewood. Seems there is no heat in the rooms other than fireplaces. Apparently that's the reason for the pall of smoke we coughed our way through on the way into town. Our rooms each had a stash of wood, but Roger & Ken advised it wouldn't be enough to last the night if we were to keep the fire stoked at regular intervals. I started a fire in our fireplace, one match of course(applause) and gave it enough wood to last, while off we went to dinner in the hotel dining room. Grilled steak, enchiladas and other house specialties were consumed that weren't super, but not bad either. We requested firewood and were told additional supplies would be delivered within the hour. Well it was, within a couple hours, but that worked.



One match!!

 After a bit of reading and adjusting the fire, we slid under the 4 or 5 nice wool blankets supplied and drifted off. As Roger suggested, I consumed mucho H2O to ensure regular bathroom awakenings that could be used to keep the fire stoked and going. It's my habit anyway, but some additional consumption guaranteed waking sessions at 12 AM, 2 AM, and 4 AM to keep the room “toasty” at about 62 degrees. While sleeping, I had my earplugs in and was oblivious to the Saturday late night party that apparently was going on outside after the bars had closed. I did hear our next door neighbor get a phone call about 4AM, the decide to turn on the TV and watch a movie. With the earplugs in though it was but a whisper. The other guys weren't as fortunate. Come morning, we arose to temperatures outside in the 20s, but that's another story, for tomorrow...

Day 7 – Guachochic to Hidalgo del Parral

A late start got us to breakfast at 8AM at last night's Cafe Cappucino. Eggs and choice of meat(mine ham) worked for the group.

We lounged a bit until 10AM, didling with the bikes and took off for Hidalgo del Parral. The road took us on a roller coaster ride of twisties thru first scrub forest then just scrub, but colorful rock formations all around. A very pretty and entertaining ride.

We eventually stopped in a little town about 80 miles into the ride, and after a quick word with the army guys at the military checkpoint, we stopped at a little restaurant they recommended, we each ordered a lunch of a burrito and juice. The burritos here are much smaller, about an inch in circumference using an 8” flour taco and mine filled with beans, beef and mild chile.

Back on the road, we banzai-ed the last 25 miles to Hidalgo del Parral. Weaving through the traffic of this rather mixed city(commercial on the street, with very colorfully painted dwelling boxes in back, on the hillsides), we made our way to the local Hojos(Howard Johnson’s for the younger crowd). After check-in, we were going to relax by the pool, but 40 degree water, with debris and no working pool pump changed our minds. No problem, it was in the low 80s and the rooms were cool.



Howard Johnsons in Del Parral

Roger and Ken made a Wal Mart run for supplies and Mexican suds which were conservatively sipped until 5 o'clock and dinner at Jim Long's, a nice Chinese restaurant about a half mile walk away from the hotel. We all ordered a different entree and had a great time sharing all the different tastes.

We're hunkered down in the room, online for the first time in several days and will be up at 7AM for breakfast at 8AM to be ready for a 9AM departure for El Salto, a 312 mile day...

Day 6 Batopilas to Guachochic

What a day... The last of our eggs and bacon made up breakfast. Out of the scrambled eggs, fried eggs, bacon and refrieds, I managed the two fresh fried eggs and bacon, with a few beans.

Roger, enjoying the morning feast..

And Don pleading for more ..:-)

Fortified, we left for the longest, and most difficult stretch on dirt of the trip. The section of dirt consisted of mainly single lane(some wide, some narrow) roads, from scrub to pine forest. There were some very knarly uphill sections, and the same for the downhills. The main obstacles were rocks of all sizes, ruts, holes(in shaded areas), silt, and trucks. The trucks were all sizes, from logging trucks to small Nissans. Uphill traffic has the right of way and you need to watch for dust ahead to mark the impending arrival of some type of vehicle. It's amazing most of those vehicles can be used to navigate those “roads”. This went on for about 30 miles, and was a tiring, but exhilarating exercise for all.

Starting out in the morning, waiting for all the heavy traffic to pass...



Jim & I photo'ing each other




The bottom is down there somewhere..




There it is.. Gulp!



Wow..



A stop by a roadside monument with metates in the forground..



and the metates..

Take care of the forest..

 We stopped in a village for lunch. Don dismounted and  desperately  barked out "BANYO"(bathroom) for all the staring locals to hear. No one answered. Seems like protocol, which Roger eventually satisfied was to approach the fella who was obviuosly the one in charge(mayor?) and give greetings. Banyo was not on the approved list of salutations.. :-) .. Once that was all straightened out, we retired to the home of a woman who served us a very nice peasant soup with tortillas and beans(I think, memory fades).



Don taking photos of the village dogs after his banyo break..



Kenny carried a 50 pound sack of dogfood, just for the hungry mutts.
What a guy!

After about 30 miles the road became less difficult and mostly "lane and a half" of relatively obstacle free dirt. There were still logging trucks to pass, on their way out of the forest with their haul and rutted areas with water crossings in a few isolated villages, but we made it out to the freshly asphalted highway by about 2PM.

From there it was a straight shot to Guachochic and the Hotel Las Cumbres. Guachochic is a pretty small village and the hotel reflected it. Beds were OK, no bottled water or glasses in the room, the toilet seat was on the floor with the nylon bolts that attach to the base, broken off. It was a challenge to use.



Checking in..




Where's the banyo??



Made it!!

Once we arrived, Ken started working on the truck again. Evidently, the truck wheel would turn 3 turns to the left, but only 1 turn to the right. The still bent steering arm was removed and Roger strapped it to his bike. Off he went to a machine shop he knew and returned an hour later with a straight steering arm. We delayed dinner until 7PM, so Ken could reinstall the adjusted parts and get the alignment close...

Dinner was at a Cafe Cappucino next to the hotel and most had tacos of different types and a Negra Modela beer. We'd had Modelo Negro before, so not sure what the relationship is. We retired and read, or wrote, until about 9PM, then lights out.