The varying degrees of Mexico

I did it again, I know I knew better but I let the scare mongering get the better of my first hand experience and judgement. Purely for opening times and facilities I researched the border crossing into Mexico and that's when the bombardment of horror stories started, most of them surely posted by people who hadn’t actually done it, people who watched Fox News and then relayed their ill-informed factless fear onto threads of innocent enquires. There is no point in walking blindly into a troubled area but trying to find facts on crossings from the US into Mexico is like trying to find facts in religious beliefs. So bravely with firsthand experience of a stress free crossing a year ago I rode to the border town of Presidio. From Big Bend National Park, I was told the road following the river which separates countries was a spectacular ride, but one mans spectacular ride is another’s commute. It was though, despite my scepticism it lived up to the hype. There were canyons, hoodoos, and extreme undulations, down into tight bends. It was not unlike the Laguna Seca circuit at times over a blind hump and speeding down into a cork screw bend. If only I had not opted for cheap Kenda tyres, if only I had a fork brace, if only I didn’t have the bike loaded with luggage, if only it was a Ducati. Still it was an enjoyable journey to a shitty destination, Presidio was perhaps designed to encourage you to keep going and cross into Mexico not that I needed any encouragement. A stunningly easy transition. Into an inspection bay for a brief check of my documents, ‘You will need I vehicle permit’ ‘I know, where do I get one?’ ‘Just there señor, your bike will be safe here’ First through a basic immigration formality then to a photo copy booth for a helpful, friendly and perfectly reasonable price I got my copies and was processed with ease efficiency and professionalism. I was free to go. It’s a rare border crossing that is a comfortable temperature, no traffic, no queues, no touts, no confusion, no shouting, no rip offs, no delays. And contra to the forums of fear I was not gunned down by infighting drug cartel. So out of the customs compound and onto the street of food stalls, souvenirs vendors and all things other than a bank. I have no local currency but that is the only concern I have. The road to Chihuahua is barren and brown, sparsely populated by both the permanent or transitory. It’s a little daunting. More from what I’ve read than from what I see or experience. But my tank is full; my bike is running well and its less than 3 hours to the big city. There is a check point, unlike the boarder patrols on the north side of the boarder; this one has smiles, no alarm or supplication, no paranoia or fear inducing authority, just a little inquisitiveness, a little welcome and a blasé bon voyage. And that's all the contact I have until I'm waved through the next check point and the only negative experience I have is my annoyance that once again I had my judgement swayed by the been-no-where ignorant; their loss. Into the Centro of Chihuahua, and a bank which spews pesos’ into my fingerless gloved hand before an unattended bike can become a victim of the opportunist. In fact its appears to go unnoticed by the early evening city shoppers. I can’t find the recommended hotel I'm looking for and the low sun is in my eyes. The hotel I do come across has a homeless bum of clear mental instability sitting on the step. There’s budget accommodation and then there is plane undesirable. After 3 laps of the one-way system I give up on my guide book map, made all the more complicated this year by the donning of glasses to read the bloody thing. I put the book back in the tank bag, hit the side streets and look through my open visor for a sign, and within a few blocks I've found a hotel, in a few more blocks I find a better one. The bike is not off the road but 24 hour reception will keep an eye on it for me. And the day is done. That's how you change countries, with a little common sense, a little awareness, and lot of smiles and a relaxed and gracious attitude. Now for the little things on the list, I need a shower and shave I've been 6 days in the desert. Then it’s time to hit the town, as I pass the receptionist, I get a nod of approval at the transformation that just occurred in the bathroom. I need some thin socks for the imminent upcoming heat. The sock shop epitomises the Mexican hospitality and helpfulness, they split a pack for me and even give me a calendar.

At the convenient store on the way home for a hot chocolate I’m asked a question I don't understand by the young checkout girl, her boyfriend leans on the counter and is keeping her company through her shift. He could be seen as an intimidating youth, he shows me a plastic bag, oh right, I see, no I think I’ll just take it in the cup thanks. My bike is still covered from the ice and snow dispelling nasties that are put on the roads up north. But a short push from the hotel in the morning is a car wash so my cold engine doesn’t crackle and steam when I squirt the high pressure water over it. No soapy bubbles because I can’t read the choices on the dial. Wow now I remember why I brought it, it looks gorgeous when it’s all clean. Whilst it drip dries I address the challenge of going to find, and order breakfast. it’s not so tricky, I know the sign ‘desayuno’, and I know what I want; Huevos rancheros, the restaurant owner, a tall thin man with a permanent smile has travelled all over the country and speaks English to me, he is an electrician, I’m not quite how that lead him to own a one table breakfast diner in a northern city back street, he didn’t say. He wants to talk about women he's known, and what beaches he found them on, I'm not about to interrupt. Contra to the cactus and sombrero symbols of Mexico there is a lot of it that is high altitude snow and ice. Especially in December. For some stupid reason I ride up to Creel at 7000ft. Why? Because I sort of promised to revisit the place I stayed in last time. It was a big mistake, the guy I made the promise too isn’t even around. He had helped with the production of my website last year. The room is expensive, cold, no hot water, no free coffee in the morning, and the restaurant isn’t even open. You should never go back, so on an empty stomach I go forward into the cold but deserted roads of Copper Canyon, I stay on the paved bit, but 200 miles of scenic twisty roads is worth the uninviting self imposed invitation.

I'm wearing the 4 layers top and bottom I left Denver in, it’s a high altitude, low temperature ride 100 miles of which are before breakfast, the same breakfast as yesterday. In a restaurant with the biggest log burner I’ve ever seen.

I've ridden this road before, I'm sure I have but not a single thing I see is familiar. Yes it is, the military check point at the T junction I remember that. But I'm waved through, they are preoccupied with a bus they have just pulled over. It’s going to be one of those ride till dusk days. A mileage eater a destination achiever. The sun decides to revel itself today just as its going down which is just when my road had turned to face it, but that's fine the best scenery of the day had coincided with its decent and misty hills are the last view from my visor today before my helmet is placed on the concrete floor of a perfectly reasonably priced cell for the night.

I walk the street, find a stall selling something that smells good and is freshly cooked, yes I think I’ll point at that and nod enthusiastically. It’s a good choice and once I've scurried back to my cell the smell of grilled meat and melted cheese distract me from the four walls of chosen accommodation. The amber tint window shows a shadow of my mirror on it from my bike parked outside so I know it’s there. Well the mirror is at least, possibly stuck into a bit of Plasticine on a table top. But its comfort enough to induce good sleep. The last of that dinner doesn’t look so appealing this morning and unrefrigerated I think it will not be left overs best just left alone. So back on go the layers, minus one as I'm sure I will be dropping in altitude today, I pay a quid to miss Durango and use the toll road. (Despite what my spell check thinks I did not give a local beauty queen a pound) A pound well spent all the same, the toll road crosses ravines and cuts through mountains. But best of all its smooth and new not a single red light, nor unfortunately a fuel station. Today I've done 120 miles before breakfast. Perhaps that's why I'm feeling a little down. I pull over for a protein bar; it’s over a year old and is all crumbs and crunch. But I need to put something in my noraing stomach. I'm stopped for 5 minutes, no longer and surprisingly I even have reception on my phone, I discover this because it rings, a very short call from a lovely ex. It was all I needed though, I feel ok again now. Food for thought or mental distraction but I move off the toll road and indulge in ‘La Espinosa del Diablo highway’, one of those prestigious mountain twisty roads that will provide adrenalin all the way to the coast.

I really need to eat something though if I'm going to enjoy this. I stop at ‘Fanny restaurant’, there are so many joke possibilities I’ll let you insert you own here.

Annoyingly it was one of those places that questions your presents in their establishment and all I could get was coffee, the stomach kept churning. But they all came out to wave me off. The tires continued to handle with as little confidence as a hungry gringo in a restaurant who can’t speak the language. However the traffic was light and when I dropped through the tropic of Cancer it was time for a change of clothing.

How it all changes when you leave behind the death of winter, the transition to jungle green, chirping and swarming, flying and crawling, I got bitten just taking off me thermals. Do I care? Better than frost bite. Warmth at last, cloths strapped on all over the place, a little gap between the tank bag and dri-bags to fit my skinny arse in. And I wallow the last of the highway in the last of the light, to a place where I can call home tonight. There was a strange noise in the morning, not heard that sound since England what is it again? Rain, bloody rain, I battle snow, and extreme cold; I conquer bland brown lifeless planes. Blind hairpins on reluctant tyres and what do I get? Bloody rain and a forecast for the same for the rest of the week. It’s one of those easy decisions that isn’t easy till you voice it out loud. The bike is under cover, I have Wi-Fi, I have satellite TV, I have a supermarket across the road and how hard will it be getting a room on New Year’s Eve? I’ll stay una noche mas. Just like the end of the world and Christmas this other significant time on the calendar passes by without any real acknowledgement just chatting with like minded biker on an internet chat thingy. The first ride of the year, especially after a day off is all the more enjoyable. And I've got warmth at last, cloud cover but warmth, that turns to rain and stays that way all the way to the the recommended ‘well kept secret’ of a resort. Which turns out to be an utter shit hole, my room overlooks a sewage works that noisily and smellily pumps all night.

Americans to rich or lazy to walk, ride the streets in golf carts and I can’t wait to put my feet into wet boots in the morning and get out. With an open jacket, what festered in the night is beginning to dry in the morning breeze but then I ride into torrential rain. Was that a speed camera just got me? No it’s lightening; when I stop for fuel I hear the thunder.

The road is flooded, the fields are flooded, the rivers are flooded. There are rock falls on the road; I let a car pass me just before I aquaplane across an unseen dip in the road. Oncoming cars project spry at me with such force I feel the darts of water pierce my jacket. I can’t get wetter, I'm breathing in water from my scarf across my face. Monklets weight tripled and he hung like a ‘bad un’ from the bark basher by his cable tie tether, but kept smiling. Another rock to avoid, it has legs and a shell it’s a turtle crossing, it’s too wet for photos, but a turtle says it all, it’s wet and that's all there is to it. In these situations you have to have optimism, you have to assume you will ride the storm out despite no end in sight. It can’t really rain this hard for the whole day. It’s too extreme and after 3 hours its subsides, well I’m riding dry roads at least it’s still raining, so I can be pretty sure its following me. But I'm leaving it behind along with the hills, the road leads back to the coast.

It’s turned into a nice evening, so pleasant and enjoyable in fact I've gone onto reserve and left all towns behind, I was so wet that when I finished my water and didn’t bother to replace it. So now even a wild camp is out of the question. How can I constantly manage to do this to myself? It’s the most annoying aspect of my own company, I have a firm talk to myself but I'm not really listening, I can justify anything. In a one horse town there is no need for a fuel station but I find a man with a hose and a cleaver little siphoning technique who sells me 5 litres of mileage and I get some water too. Phew, 2 miles later is a camping sign, I ride onto the beach under a cabaña. For £2.50 I have a legitimate place to pitch my tent and somewhere to hang my cloths in a sea breeze, funny how in the space of 10 minutes a dire situation can become a scenario that couldn’t turn out better if it was planed. Sleep by the ocean, wake by the sun rise; soft panniers are drier maps less damp, mozzie coils less soggy, only the boots remain wet.

Today for breakfast I stop at an OXXO, it’s a national convenience store, I get yoghurt and press the button on the coffee machine, it fills my cup...and keeps going, I grab another cup...it too fills and the flow continues...on grabbing the 3rd I call for help, I should have filled my cup from the dispenser the machine is designed to fill up not the machine itself. luckily I know the word for sorry, but not the words for ‘that I've spilled coffee all over the counter, the floor and made a load of unwanted extra coffee no one will drink and now have 2 other cups of the stuff getting cold’ but they can see it wasn’t deliberate. I was looking forward to sitting on a stall in the air conditioned shop to drink it but now I'm too embarrassed and sit outside on the curb by my bike. I'm riding with my cuffs open, it’s a net basically I've made a net out of my jacket, I've cast it and eventually I catch something, a bee, it gets to my elbow and upon discovering there is nowhere left to go it stings me. I'm lucky I don't react to such things, well only in so far as perfuse swearing to stop from screaming like a little girl. I stop at a pharmacy, ‘Do you speak English?’ ‘More or less’ ‘Oh, in that case I’ve been stung’ but was willing perform the mime I have rehearsed in my helmet to back up my simple sentence I'm given the cream that isn’t in my extensive first aid kit. And I’ll hang onto the mime until I have, in the next game of charades to silently illustrate an actor, yoga enthusiast and lead singer of a major 80’s pop group. (No not B.B. King)

Today the road had lots of wildlife, vultures preying on bloated road kill dogs; the sickly stench of death is recognisable before the signs of opportunist prey. Lots of lizards sun themselves on the hot tar; even a tarantula crosses my path.

I'm not going to Acapulco, I have not the slightest need to go to such a touristy place, OK I have a little need, I would like to witness the cliff divers, but I'm not going to ride into town in this heat with such a loaded bike, find a room, unload everything, get a taxi to the cliff, pay tourist prices, get hearded and hustled, it just seems like too much effort. I take the bypass, in the hope of finding a place like last night, I don't. I find a rip off little hovel, with a sweet little old lady who would be all the sweeter if she hadn’t just charged me so much for my room without so much as a toilet seat, which makes it a squat really. And the final push, 6 hours 400 kms to Puerto Escondido, I get stung again, not by the money grabbing little old lady, another bee, it flies through my visor and when I stick my hand in to find where it went it leaves its calling card on my cheek. Out with the cream, I'm getting used to it now. I continue to the place where I will stop, where the plan begins, today seems to be about the destination not the journey, I ride erratically, everyone is driving badly, there just seems to be a madness in the air today. Inevitable it ends in crumpled metal and bloodshed, not mine but sobering to see all the same, not that I've had a drink this trip 16 days on the road and no alcohol. Mainly because, well I just want to see what it’s like. I want that delayed gratification feeling of the first beer on the beach. A bridge takes me over a wide, clear, fast running river, it’s too attractive to ignore. I take the track down to it, onto the sandy bed that I'm not sure I can turn round on. That, for me puts the adventure into biking, doing something you wouldn’t do on ya commute to work, stopping by a river and having a wash, spinning out on the sand and standing on the pegs up the track back to the road. That's what you do when you go away on your bike.

OK it’s not actually ‘adventurous’ but it is I think the definition of the freedom of the trip, self contained, independent and taking the opportunities that come your way. Not preconceive, not researched, just an on the moment impulse that needs no explanation. It occurs to me about a month too late if I had looked at the picture from last year, I could have seen the name of the place I stayed, called them and reserved the room I wanted, the one with the ocean view, great to think that now I've just got within 20 miles of the place. I know I'm getting close I start to see white people on mopeds, any other part of the journey this site would have at least have provoked a wave. Now I have become one of many, no acknowledgement needed. So two weeks to ride 3800 miles, from snow, through baron frozen lands, storms, humidity and heat; now I've made it to my beach of choice. I'm recognised, remembered. ‘One room left’ ‘I’ll take it’ ‘The lock doesn’t work amigo’ ‘I’ll fix it.’ A bargain price for a month’s stay, I unload the bike, shower and take a ride to the super market, I know the isles, where everything is. I get my washing powder and supplies and come home to do my laundry and as calculated I go to my local off licence for a 6-pack of Modelo while it soaks. I'm back; in the evening I wander without knowing I’m heading there, to the Split Coconut where the ribs are barbequed. The toilet block has changed since my last visit. I pop my head inside the new thatched hut and am handed a joint. I sit at my table, sip my beer listen to the music, Led Zeppelin is followed by Boston, I push my toes into the sand, I lean back on my chair so my hair falls away from my neck, I look up at the canopy of palms above me and I feel that feeling, more than a feeling, it says this is where I wanted to be. I remember now. Sometimes it’s OK to go back.