Mexico – A country you’ll love to visit and hate to leave…

I expected to do Mexico within less than a month and it has been I think close to 2. It’s a country that has everything from Americanized big cities to raw looking small towns, from flat deserts to rain forests and giant mountains… and lets not forget the beaches on the Pacific, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean…

People in this vast country are really family oriented, quite religious, always there to help and over all some of the nicest people I have met on my travels. Out of all of Mexico, the only vulgar, demanding, unhappy and needy people I have seen were a few tourists in the larger cities. Safety wise, I haven’t felt in danger once. I haven’t heard gun shots, haven’t been threatened and haven’t met a single person who felt threatened. Even the police has been nice. Only had to bribe one set of cops 20$ for getting caught skinny dipping in San Blas with the other guys. I guess a bunch of guys going skinny dipping drunk in the middle of the night is Gay and illegal. Cops were happy to get 20$ and no harm was done. Besides that incident, I have been escorted by a police car at way over the speed limit for about 2 hours through the mountains while the officer would warn me of any dangers ahead on the road, would help me pass cars on double yellows and would show me if it was ok to pass on blind corners. We were also given a ride to a restaurant by an officer in Acapulco for free. Most of the police would show me thumbs up on the road and I even had the “Special Police” stop and talk to me before getting to the Guatemala border. Those guys looked like they came out of an action movie with all the gear and multiple guns. The road stops set-up by the army were hassle free for me. Some of the other guys got searched but really quickly. I got asked a few times where I was coming from and where I was going. Once I’d say Canada to Brazil, they would smile and show me to keep going.

There are a few things that don’t make sense in this country:

– A beer can be a lot cheaper in a restaurant than in a liquor store.
– Insurance for the bike would have been 200$ for a month, 170$ for 6 months but I only paid 120$ for the year.
– You can pay more for breakfast than for dinner and get twice as much food for dinner.
– Speed limits are there for…?
– Passing the police while they are doing the speed limit is OK.
– Speed bumps on roads where you can’t go more than 30km\h anyway.
– Hooker hotels are cleaner and cheaper than family oriented hotels, and they come with a free private garage.
– In this “poor” country, you can have WIFI on a long bus ride.
– I know I’m missing a few… I’ll update as I remember them.

For those people who like to go on Vacations in the US… go to Mexico instead. It’s cheaper, SAFER, people are nicer and the country is way more fun. There’s a place for everybody in Mexico.

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Sunsets

Staying right now at a really chill hostel in Puerto Escondido called La Buena Onda. They have cabins, dorms, and I’m the only one camping… for only 60 pesos a night (5$). The guys here built a really cool lil oasis. Taking pictures of it would be a bit hard but I may try later. For now, I will leave you with some sunsets from the past few days and a pic of Acapulco since I didn’t post anything about the party city… and a couple of pics from me camping in a small town right by the ocean again…

Acapulco:

Camping in a small town:

Sunsets:

And finally, here is my favorite.

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El Refugio De Potosi

El Refugio De Potosi

On the way to Barra De Potosi I was. About 250 some km to ride, meaning that with snack stops and gas, about 4 hours total. As I’m riding towards the beach, I come across El Refugio De Potosi. It’s a small educative refuge for animals, birds, insects and reptiles in need of attention and shelter. Since it was still a couple of hours before sunset, I decided to check it out. Laura is in charge or the refuge. She is the sweetest lady I have met on this trip yet. She tells me a bit about the refuge and hands me over to Tesie for a tour of the refuge. Tesi is super nice and knowledgeable. She is studying Biology in Victoria and doing her internship in Potosi. She takes the time to tell me about every living creature there.

After the tour, while talking about my trip, Laura asks me where I will be staying for the night. I was hoping to camp on the beach once again, but this town doesn’t have any campgrounds and everything seems to be pretty private. She offers me the option to set-up tent in the refuge. How can I refuse such an invitation?! It’s by far one of the coolest places one could camp at. I had access to clean bathrooms, a kitchen, hot showers, etc… And being surrounded by animals, birds and reptiles was awesome.

Once again Laura, thanks for your hospitality! It will be one of the best memories of my trip.

Here are some pictures I shot there:

So I realized while loading my camera that I forgot to post a couple of important pictures.

They kinda have a mascot. She is the cutest and weirdest porcupine I have ever seen. So cuddly… her name is Lala

And finally and most importantly, they have found the remains of a Sperm Whale. I am not sure if I remember this correctly, but I believe Laura said that it was the largest one found in North America. It’s a huge discovery and the only resources they have are what you see in this picture. 🙂

Mexican cocos on the coast

Left Puerto Vallarta, the great big American tourist town and now I’m sitting in Acapulco which feels more like Florida. In between these 2 larger super Americanized cities, I had great time to Relax.

Met up with these 2 really cool Germans in PV at the hostel, Linda and Wolfgang, and we all decided to meet up again in Barra De Navidad. Ended up renting a small apartment type room with a kitchen and everything for 500 pesos a night (about 43$) and stayed in Barra De Navidad for 3 nights. BdN is a smaller touristic town with a really chill atmosphere.

This guy was hanging out on the beach. Dogs and cats are everywhere here, but all the one’s I’ve seen on the beaches are really good. I only had to kick a really big one in the face once while riding as it went straight for my leg. Something about dogs and trying to bite bike rides….

Pacific sunset

After Barra de Navidad, I headed to Nexpa, a small surfer town of about 400 people. On the way there I met Daniel, riding an 800GS, who stopped to say hi while I was having a fresh coco on the side of the road. We rode together to Nexpa. He is going from Mazatlan to Guatemala, so I might see him there again.

Daniel: If you’re reading this, e-mail me buddy, I put your business Card in my swim suit pocket and went for a swim… so your contact info is gone.

On the road to Nexpa:

Camping once again right by the Ocean

Spent 2 nights in Nexpa and I headed south once again. Someone told me about Barra de Potosi so I thought I’d check it out. I had an awesome time there… info to come in the next post.

New Mexico Phone #

So I went out and got a prepaid sim. Only call if you’re in the area and wanna meet up or for emergencies pls as I only have a few minutes.

The # is: 315 110 3592

New Shoes

We left the small surf town of San Blas and it was a tough departure. Evan and Yosh left a day earlier to a volcanoe so me and Joe were headed that direction too.

Here is the main Plaza of San Blas that I haven’t posted earlier. Every town here has a main plaza, usually by the church, where people get to hang out. You can also find lots of cheap mobile food from vendors around this plaza.

We rode up to this extinct volcano that had a good sized lake in the middle. There was a nice camping site right by the lake.

The view from the campground:

Next to this extinct volcano, there was another one not so extinct. You could see vapor coming out in a few places around the mountain but no lava to be seen. 😦

The road up to the active volcano. 15km of stone road. Riding up was a lot easier than going down.

Had to go through a couple of these…. 1cm at a time…

The information center that once existed up there.

And the view… along with the lava rock…

Back at the campground, I noticed that the bike was sitting quite low… as in totally flat…

So I changed the tire by myself while Joe and Yosh went fishing… The old tire needed to be changed pretty soon anyway. So now the bike has new oil and filter along with a nice new knobbie shoe on the back. It wouldn’t sit right on the rim no matter what I would try to do, but after a few twisties, it adjusted itself. The handling also improved on the bike from having to pull the thing with a roap into the corners to holly mother of @#$@ this bike can actually corner! I also lost a few pounds by getting rid of a tire and 2.5L of oil.

After the camping by the lake, we all split up. Joe and Yosh went riding inland and I came up to Puerto Vallarta. It feels nice to be finally on my own again. The guys were cool and it’s been a great few weeks with them, but I do like doing things on my own as well. It’s nice to be able to stop wherever, do whatever… without having to make a group decision.

Here’s a pic from the road up to PV. As for here, I haven’t really taken any pics. It’s a huge tourist town, a bit more chill than Cancun but still full of Americans and tourist traps.

Stoners Surfer Camp

Short story short, we made it from Mazatlan to Stoners Camp in San Blas. Today I had my first surf lesson from the owner of the camp. No problems standing up on the board… lots of fun… the place here is paradise…

I’ll let the pictures do the talking…

2 More bikers joined in on the fun… Mark and Katie… He rides a honda 650 and she rides a KLR 250… Super chill and fun couple. They are doing this as kinda their honeymoon. 🙂

I think I got most of the pictures in here. The internet sux so I am just compy pasting stuff without seeing it.

Oh yeh, here’s a cool rock we saw on the way here…

Finally in Mazatlan….

So we didn’t take the ferry into Mazatlan. We did buy the tickets and then we met Joe at the ferry terminal who told us that the other route to Topolobampo is about half the price and half the time, only about 150$ per person + bike and 6 hour ride… so we traded in our tickets for the cheaper ones. Then guess who else showed up? Evan! Just in time too! Oh, and Morrie, an Australian guy riding a BMW 650. So there were now 5 of us!

Who’s Joe? He’s a super chill guy from the US from somewhere in the middle of nowhere, one of those states that noone ever talks about… Misoury I think. He rides an 07 KLR 650. He’s trying to make his way to Argentina on a pretty tight budget like most of us.

So from Topolobombo or whatever it’s called, we rode today all the way to Mazatlan. About 400+ km. We got caught a bit in the dark for the last 50km, which felt like 500.

So pics…

A ferry like the one we took:

Strapping down the bikes. Red KLR is Joe, White BMW is Morrie, and you know the other 2 already.

My bike loaded and kinda strapped in:

Evan rode for like 400 km to get to the ferry. He’s a bit tired…

Joe. I think he’s doing a Chinese photo peace sign and trying to let one out at the same time…

Gotta have beer:

After crossing with the ferry, it was late and we decided to find a nice motel. There was a Popeyes motel that looked really nice. For 200 pesos (about 17$) you can have a room for the whole night. It’s basically, every guy’s dream garage. We had an automatic garage door, and a bedroom right off off the garage with a king size bed, a stripper pole, free porn on TV, a 2 person shower, tiles all over the place… and it was super clean and secure.

These drive-in motels are really popular on the outskirts of larger cities here. Business man take their mistresses there or go and hire hookers. They are on the outskirts because most men don’t wanna be seen in the city with the wrong person. The garages are also there to conceal the cars. These motels are really “private” with great security. The best part is that they are cheap and super clean with AC. If you want, you can also get 1, 3 or 12 hour rooms.

The Garage:

The room with our “hot” stripper…

Wait, there’s something “good” on TV…

2 person shower:

As for tonight in Mazatlan, we found an old school typical mexican hotel for 280 pesos for a room with 3 beds. We’re gonna pick straws for who’s gonna be sleeping with who in the 3rd bed.

You can take a poo and a shower at the same time

Tomorrow, we’re gonna head to some Stoner Surfer Camping place about 150km down the road. I think it’s just gonna be me and Evan. It looks like Joe might have to fly back home for a few days as he just found out as I’m writing this that he’s grandpa died. As for Yosh, he is thinking of going to Mexico city to get some paperwork done as he forgot to get an exit visa from the US… and then he’s gonna head for the east coast.

Still in La Paz

Taking the ferry to Mazatlan tomorrow. The paperwork is done for the bike and we’re good to set sail. It’s a 12hr ferry ride to the main land. Meanwhile, we’re enjoying La Paz. Some pretty nice beaches, but I have to leave the camera back at the hotel locked up for security reasons as I can’t bring it out when we go swimming.

The other night, they had quite the party downtown to celebrate the locals going to the Baja 1000. Some amazing trucks, specially the trophy ones. Cheap picture shot with the iPhone:

And here’s a picture of some tacos. The one on the right is before you put all the stuff on it and the one on the left is fully loaded…

The Baja

We did the Baja! We’re currently in La Paz at hotel Plaza Boulevard. It looks like we might be stuck here for almost a week. We need to get a permit for our bikes in order to take the ferry. It’s a temporary import permit that we couldn’t get at the border because we went through on a Sat. The thing is that the Ferry is on Sunday, but everything is closed Sat. and Sun. so we wont be able to get the permit till maybe Monday. Because of Halloween, kids don’t have school on Monday and Tuesday, therefore, the GVT offices might be closed as well. So we might not be able to catch the ferry till next Thursday. The good news is that our hotel is only 250 pesos a night (20$), has a color TV, refreshing showers with “hot” water, the room is clean and the parking is pretty safe…. oh and it has AC! Not bad for 10$ a person… La Paz is a really nice little touristy town with some nice beaches. Should be pretty cool for HAlloween.

So back to the Baja. We have been camping up to now. Thanks to the great American propaganda, the campgrounds were empty and we got some great deals anywhere between 3-4$ a person per night. The beer has been costing us more than the place to stay. Besides that, what can I say about the 1600km or so of this desert. It’s dry and dusty. It kinda reminded me of Burning man, where within 24 hours everything you owned would be covered in dust. I would say that the highlight of the Baja is the observatory that’s about 2800 meters high and you can see both sides of the peninsula from up there. Really chilly at night though from the 2500m high camp. The campgrounds by the bay are also pretty sweet. The road is nice throughout the Baja. People are amazingly friendly. Many retired people = not much partying.

Pictures:

HDR from 2850 meters altitude:

Hornitos? Si! Por favor!

Had a bit of trail fun with the KLRs.

Sone nice folks at the campground fed us a tone of freshly caught fish and pizza:

The view from my tent at the campground by the water. Not bad for 3$ pp a night… 😉

We had lunch at a restaurant just before splitting up with Evin:

The view from the restaurant window… some jack ass parked his bike there… grrrrr…

Plants along the way:

Some really nice ladies we met at the taco stand. The lady on the left fed us some really good fish tacos:

On a 100km baja 1000 type dirt road, we found this “mission”…

We had this guy pump our gas today.

And finally, just tonight, in La Paz, we met a bunch of welcoming bikers at a fast food place. I think they made us part of the gang as I received one of these… now I just have to find a leather place to sew it on my jacket:
http://www.guaycurabikers.com