Report 5 - Sayulita, Nayurit, Mexico

Mexico 2007 email report 2 February 4 SuperBowl Sunday.

Since the last time I reported, things haven't been quite as exciting but not boring. We left Creel the next day after my last report. We waited until 11am to leave and it was a pretty nice day. The roads in Creel were mostly melted from the snow and the temperature was pretty decent. So off we went. We found out right away though, the dark parts of the road were plenty icy. So we had to be very careful. The first 50 miles were fairly warm but as we started the second 50 miles the temps again plummeted, even though the sun was out. We were also gaining altitude and we crossed the continental divide. Living in Colorado, we thought the continental divide was way behind us, but as we are finding out, the divide is part of our trip.

It was only 110 miles to Guachochi from Creel but the day got much cooler as we rode. Ah, winter has not escaped us yet.

Good for us, Guachochi had heaters in the motel rooms, they just don't leave them on when the rooms aren't rented. Ah, conservation of energy is good, we just wished they knew we were coming. All in all, Guachochi was a good town. The best part was finding 100% agave tequila for $5, very impressive.

Next we went to Hidalgo de Parral. What was noticeable on this day was finally riding to lower altitudes and what did I notice first was the smell of feed lots. Mm, mm, good. We were finally warming up a bit. Parral is a big city, so Ken was the leader in finding a place to stay.

From Parral, it is off to Durango. This riding day was our longest yet at 250 miles, not huge but it wore us out. The day still was a very nice riding day but not a lot to see. It was riding in a big valley.

Durango the city is the capital of Durango the state. Mexico has many city/state combos like this. I'll have to check when I get back to Colorado to see if there's a town called Colorado. Durango is a very large city and is many hundreds of years old. We visited a couple of the cathedrals, one of which the pope visited in 1990. I'm not a religious person but the magnitude of the main cathedral built during the 1700's is very impressive. Ken went off in his own directions visiting the monuments. Chris & I found the main central Mercado/marketplace and spent some hours touring the place.

If we happen to end back here again, we'll spend more hours at the mercado. One of the things we read about this mercado was you can find lots of scorpion key chains. In reality, you can find millions of scorpion knickknacks, from scorpion key chains to scorpion clocks to live scorpions. Would you like us to send you a live one?
All of this area we are riding is around 6000' so we still see cool weather or frost in the morning. Where o where is the warm weather.

After a nice day layover in Durango we are on a mission to get to the beach. We figure we'll ride about 20 miles out of Durango and the weather will start getting warmer. We were wrong. From Durango, we head towards the continental divide again and as we do, guess what, it starts getting colder. So we stop and re-suit up for colder weather. Dang, is it ever going to get warm on this trip?

Of course, we had looked at the maps and knew Mazatlan was only 200 miles away. So we figured, we would be on a beach with a margarita in our hand by 2pm. Ha, ha. If we would have taken a better look at the maps, it also said it was a 6 ½ hour ride. Half of this ride is what's known as the Devil's Backbone. I had heard about the road but never had paid attention because I didn't think we were going to be on it.

In the last report, I mentioned the nasty, twisty little road. The Devil's Backbone makes the first road look like a training ride. The Devil's Backbone is 70 miles of pure twisty 1st & 2nd gear riding, if we ever got into 3rd it was for upwards of 100 yards before we downshifted. Maximum speed was 15-25 mph. The road itself was in get condition, the twists were wild. Many of the corners were near 270 degrees, heading down or up, and around the corner would reverse the camber and head the opposite direction. It also is a major east-west connection for semis & buses, so we never knew what was coming around the next corner. This road took all of our physical ability and mental concentration.
The good news was as we finally started dropping out of the higher elevation, the temps did start warming. We left the high alpine forests and started seeing more and more green vegetation. Oh this was nice. We started opening vents in our coats to get some cooler air, nice. But the twisties continued almost all the way to the ocean. What a day.

Once we got down to sea level, we knew the beach and margaritas were close. We didn't want to stay in the resort town of Mazatlan, so we asked for less populated beaches. We were told there we some south. More haha. Yes, we saw a beach looking through a palapa ( and serving margaritas) but there were no hotels to be found. Argh. We kept riding and it was just dark as we found a place to stop for the night in Rosario, not near the beach. Foiled again on the beach and margaritas but we were at sea level and warm climes.

The next morning, Ken left us for a week to head back up the Devil's Backbone and to view the inland colonial cities. Chris and I will hook up with him around Feb. 7th in Morelia.

Chris & I want to be on the ocean, so we say our adios's and head our separate ways.
This day, we head to San Blas, a fishing village about 140 miles south. More casual twisty roads and more highway traffic but a pleasant ride nonetheless. Now the riding is just downright pleasant. I switched to my mesh (fully vented) jacket. We found a nice hotel a half a block from the bay and set up camp for a day and a half. They had a fresh water unheated pool. I jumped right in, the water was great. We walked down to the bay and put our feet in the water. Now we are living. We met a German couple at the motel and planned a tour the next day to the jungle. Then off we went to the town square to eat and drink.

The next day, we did the jungle tour by boat with the German couple and a couple from Alaska, the boatman and our guide. We left early and were the only ones on the water this morning. San Blas has two major fresh water springs with big waterways and lots of exotic birds and iguanas. Plus, there is also a crocodile rearing farm out there. The farm has pens with male/female crocs. The females lay eggs and the farm workers collect the eggs and hatch them. There are 100's of baby crocs in pens. They release only a few locally, the others are shipped to various places in Mexico and the world. We also saw 2 crocs in the wild. Good for us the crocs weren't hungry this morning. This was about a 3 hour trip. The rest of the day we napped and then went downtown to eat and drink more. We love these layover days.

The next morning we headed to Sayulita, just north of Puerta Vallarta. This is a town that used to be quiet but now has more tourists and is a surfing mecca. Also, some friends in Carbondale (the Lincicomes), live here in the winter time. But at this time they were on their own Mexican adventure but they invited other Carbondale friends, the Matchels, to come down and dog sit. Our plan was to find the Matchels and hang out for a couple of days, only we hadn't brought the phone number or the directions to get to the house. Chris ended up calling Erica in Billings, MT to get directions somewhat in the neighborhood. There was a trailer park with bungalows in the neighborhood that knew where the Lincicomes lived. John and Mary didn't answer the phone, so we figured they were at the beach. So we rented a bungalow, got settled in and headed out to find the Matchels. Just as we were coming around the corner, John was coming to find us. This worked out good. We spent the night with them having more fun. The really good part was the Linicomes neighbors were not in town and their house was offered to us. We totally went for this offer. The house is like having our own little villa just a couple of blocks from the ocean.
So we've spent a couple of days with John & Mary, cruising the beaches and the town and, of course, eating and drinking. Last nights dinner and tonight's dinner is fresh mahi-mahi and fresh shrimp. We are cooking at home and the meal each night costs us about $15 for 4 of us, not bad.

Yesterday, we made margaritas and took them to the beach, along with our Ipod and speakers. We were finally able to do what we had been planning, eat your heart out Ken, it was fun. Tomorrow, we'll head on out and down the coast. It will be a good three days on the road to get to Morelia, plus the road atlas tells us we have another very twisty section of road that takes near 6 hours for about 120 miles of road.

So for all of you watching the big game, enjoy. John, Mary, Chris & I will all drink at least one margarita for you.

Rick & Chris