Report 3 - Oaxaca, Mexico

Mexico 2007 - This place is fun.

I may bore you with all the details but Mexico is so different from the U.S. If I had mentioned something about the weather being cold, those days are long gone. The weather now has been in the 70's to the high 80's. It reminds me of Moab weather in late spring.

We said our goodbyes to John & Mary in Sayulita and headed south along the coast, going past Puerto Vallarta and Manzanillo, ending up in the small ocean side town of San Juan de Lima. We had simple motel room with a pool in front, we jumped in as soon as we stopped, with the beach and the ocean beyond. Today was a 250 mile ride along the ocean and inland a bit, another lovely ride.

The next day we took off down the coast again, have I ever said Mexico has twisty roads? Another day of just fun riding, with magnificent views of the blue ocean. It was a short day of only 100 twisty miles, it seems this just gets to be our breakfast ride anymore. We stopped early afternoon in the small beach town of Playa Azul, just north of Lazaro Cardenas. We got a bungalow right on the beach with a courtyard and steel gates. The water was about 50 yards away. On with the swimsuits and into the ocean we go. The water and air temperature are almost the same, i.e., warm. After letting the waves break on us for a while, we cleanup and head down the beach to eat and drink. This place has been the most fun yet. It was an ocean side restaurant with palapas (thatch/palm covered) on the sand. So while we ate and drank for a couple of hours, our toes were wiggling in the sand. Sweet.

After we ate, we took a 4-mile walk down the beach and watched the sunset on the water's edge. Pretty nice to say the least. We walked back to our bungalow, donned our swimsuits again and went swimming in the dark. Did I mention the water was warm? This is living.

The next day we took off for Morelia, heading inland. This was a 240 mile day, guess what more twisties. We got into Morelia (pop. 600,000) around 4pm. Chris was getting tired for the last part of the trip, so for the first time, we took the autopista (toll road) from Patzcuaro. The autopista is fast and expensive. We made this part of the road, 45 miles, in less than an hour, usually it would be 1 ½ hours or more on the libre (free) road.
We got into this busy city, heading straight to center of town, the zocalo and cathedral. This city is very busy, with traffic we would find out, never stops. We decided to get away from the zocalo and look at maps for a place to stay. A couple of blocks away we pull over and in our rear view mirrors are two motorcycle cops. Oh god, what did we do wrong. It turns out they are inquisitive and want to know where we are from and what we are doing. Ok Rick, take a deep breath and calm down.

Chris, being our interpreter, asks about a hotel, they give us directions and we end back at the zocalo. We are barely parked and another traffic cop shows up, also inquisitive, he asked what we are doing and where we are coming from. Chris, again working as the interpreter, tries to converse, also asking for a hotel. We don't understand what he is telling us, so he takes her to a hotel, just a bit out of our price range at $190/night. I watch the bikes and Chris went hotel hunting, locating some a bit cheaper. While she was gone, our cop friend came back and tried talking to me. Wrong person senor, no entiendo(I don't understand). Chris came back shortly and rescued me and with numerous hand signs and gestures, we were able to convey we were looking for a moderately priced room. He finally understood and sent Chris to a street that had 3 hotels. She picked one and came back and got me.

One of the things we are always looking for is secure parking for our bikes, so she was able to secure parking behind locked gates right in front of the hotel, otherwise there was parking for other guests.

We spent the next few days here lounging and touring the sites. We were to meet Ken the first day at the zocalo at 5pm. Walking the back streets of Morelia we found him on a corner asking directions to our hotel in the early afternoon, so much for big cities.
In Morelia, we toured the usual big and gaudy cathedrals, big and bigger public buildings and old homes/grand mansions and ate well. I can only tour so many cathedrals and even though they are all spectacular in their own right, they are still buildings built by slaves (end of social comment).

From Morelia, we headed to Taxco, a 240 mile day. To get to Taxco, we had to skirt Mexico City. We were within 50 miles of Mexico city on the way to Taxco.
Taxco is the silver-smithing capital of Mexico, another centuries old city. I'm not a jewelry buyer but if you are, don't go anywhere but Taxco to find your goods. Chris and I hired a guide for 3 hours to show us around. Besides the old buildings, he took us to 2 awesome galleries. Unbelievable jewelry and museum quality displays, nice except I can only look at so much twinkling glitter.

Taxco is a city of 200,000. It is mainly built on a hillside. The hillside reminds me of Aspen Mountain, about 8 base areas wide. If houses were built all the way up the base to the cliffs, packed in real tight with very narrow (1 ¼ lanes wide), steep and very, very winding roads, you can get an idea of how packed in Taxco is. In Taxco, you either go up or down to get somewhere. Then add in about 200,000 dogs that bark all night, sleep all day, along with the 200,000 roosters that start crowing at 4am in the morn and you can get an idea of the constant noise. After we figured it out the first night, we put earplugs in so we could sleep. Taxco is not a city on my must see again list.

From Taxco, we headed to Huajaupan de Leon, a 200 mile day. Huajaupan de Leon is south and east of Mexico City. So we again got to skirt the City and go through the suburbs, fairly dirty, really busy and smoggy. At one point going through the burbs, we thought we saw some clouds above the smog. It ends up it was just some 16,000' snow covered dormant volcano,Volcan Popocatpeti. After getting out of the city, we got back into country roads and more pretty country sides.

The next day would be the best and worst day of this trip.

We only had 135 miles to Oaxaca the city in Oaxaca the state. This was the best riding day of the trip. After a month of twisty road training, this day was made in heaven for us. The twisty road was in great shape, going through mountains and hillside, with perfectly sloped corners for our riding pleasure and very little traffic. These roads wouldn't be very fun in the big American vehicles we drive but on a motorcycle it is heaven. Plus today, the 3 of us were riding in perfect sync, we were like a serpentine going through the mountains. It was totally a wahoo, wahoo kind of day. The weather was perfect and we were there. Together as a group, Ken rides in front to move out the traffic, I ride tail gunner to keep traffic behind and Chris rides in the cocoon we create for her. It also allows Ken and I to keep an eye on her. Riding tail gunner today was fun just being able to watch us as a group.

Then we got to Oaxaca. This city of 400,000 has tight roads with lots of traffic. Our nice riding temps got very hot as we rode into the city with all the buses and cars.
Oaxaca was going to be a motorcycle maintenance stop for us. We have now ridden 3,000 miles and it was time for oil changes on Chris's and my bike, and tires, oil and other general maintenance for Ken. So our first stop was the Honda shop for Ken. We had to drive to near the zocalo only to find out we needed to go to another shop some miles away. So we sent Chris off to find the zocalo herself while Ken & I went and found the Honda shop. It didn't seem like a big deal at the time, we had been to zocalo's for the past month. But when we got back to the zocalo, I walked around a few times including the perimeter surrounding blocks and couldn't find Chris. A serious uneasiness was starting to overwhelm me. I sent Ken out to try and retrace her motorcycle route from the first Honda shop and he came back empty handed too.

Let me digress briefly to say, Oaxaca in the last few months has been a city of political unrest and I wasn't sure I wanted to go here when we started the trip. The new president of Mexico sent thousands of federal troops into Oaxaca the beginning of December to quell the unrest.

So when Ken came back empty handed, I found some policemen and tried to explain I hadn't seen my wife for a couple of hours, and has been the case throughout Mexico, a local Mexican who spoke English came to help me. Jose was able to communicate what was going on and the policemen went and got this information on the radios. It was now 3pm with just a few hours of daylight left. Jose left to shop and said he would come back. While he was gone, 2 policewomen came by; one spoke English, and got more of the same information. At least now I had hope Chris may be found by dark. Ken went off to find a hotel and I stayed put as directed by the police. Jose came back and was telling me about himself being an indigenous local who spoke his own dialect, Spanish and English, and taught English at the local school. It had now been 3 hours since I had seen Chris. As I was talking to Jose, riding a block away was Chris. I told Jose and he went off to the next block to tell the policeman that Chris was coming. Jose stopped Chris and told her where I was. It seems while I was stressing big time and lots of indigestion, Chris had gone to the wrong plaza, ate some food and took a nap. Hmm. When she awoke she asked someone if where she was happened to be the zocalo, no senora. Oops. So when she got to me she was happy and rested. Ergg. Anyway a happy ending and the locals were unbelievably helpful again.

We ended up spending 3 days in Oaxaca. We toured Monte Alban, an ancient city as old as 1500 BC. We visited the mercados, 1 monster one and 2 smaller ones. We walked 4-5 miles a day and ate well too. Oaxaca the state is where mezcal is produced. Not the mezcal we are used to with the worm inside but very high quality mezcal. So we purchased a nice bottle of anejo mezcal and are enjoying it. Oaxaca the city/state is also Mexico's epicenter of artisans, so we toured some collectives looking at the fine work. Also as required we toured a couple of churches, I'm about done with them.

Bicycles, motorcycles and small cars. This sums up what the cities in Mexico are all about. Mexico is a pedestrian, bicycle and motorcycle society. There are very few big cars like America. Pedestrians are everywhere as are bicycles and motorcycles. The roads in the city are not very wide, 2 lanes at the most and many only go one direction. There may be a parking side of the road but if someone needs to stop and go into a store, they just double park. It's done all over the cities. Cars see motorcycles and let them in as the lanes merge. Buses allow motos (as we are called) to merge in. When a two-lane road merges to one lane and it seems the road is closing down on us motos, a space opens up.

Before this trip, neither Chris nor I had experience riding our motos in cities. Here in Mexico, riding in the cities is still a chore with our big, fully loaded bikes but the Mexican culture makes it easier. We ride around big buses on the wrong side, between lanes of cars and park in places no one else can. It is just allowed and a very accepted practice.
By the way, Oaxaca is now a safe and fun town. We would definitely come back here again.

Tomorrow we leave Oaxaca and start heading towards the State of Chiapas and then Guatemala. My guess is within a week, we'll be in San Salvador, El Salvador visiting a long time friend(and her family) of the Marriott family. They already have our time planned out.

I'm guessing in the next two weeks or so, we'll be riding some sort of boat/ship in the Panama Canal. We're still one big happy family on our motos. That's all until next time. Ciao.

Rick and Chris