Cactus's reaching for the skies in the Sierra De Pachuca's
As I got out of my bed and got ready for another day on the road, it was 6:30 am and once again the firecrackers were starting. I guess here as in many countries loud noises like fireworks are common with celebrations. For me I wasn't viewing it that way at all, and it reminded me I was in someone else's country with their own customs, even though I was having a hard time with fireworks at 6:30 in the morning.
As I got on my bike and started riding again I had to debate whether I was going to try to find a radiator shop and bank and try to fix my leak or just drive it to Texas. I had already driven it from Mexico City and it seemed to be doing alright. I thought if I ran into a bank and a radiator shop I would try, which in Mexico means neither will happen without effort, so I guess I was going to try to make it to Brownsville Texas. Though in these mountains there seemed to be a radiator shop in every town, though none appeared open first thing in the morning. Well I tried.... :)
The center top ridge is where I just came from and it is here I'm watching for the ever dangerous and annoying torch runners to come from so I can stay ahead of them.
It was very cold riding as I started out, in fact it felt like we almost had had a frost during the night. Most of the winding roads coming in and out of canyons were still in shadows in the morning and they weren't warming up too fast. I wasn't on the road 10 minutes it seemed when I ran into my first torch runners. Another long line of buses, cars and a police car with flashing lights. After the previous night of getting caught behind these slow moving caravans I had little patience for them this morning and seeing traffic was light up here in these distant mountains I wasted no time zipping around the whole mess and getting ahead of them. It was Friday and I would be passing different forms of Virgin Mother's celebrations all day.
I thought at first these might be Sequoia Cactus's but I'm unsure.
The drive this morning was just beautiful. The cactus standing high all over this high desert would give way to Pine Trees later which as I came down in elevation would give way to waterfalls and tropical like vegetation. It was going to be an interesting day for travel.
You can see the smoke rising from these fireworks set off down in the valley at a hotel on this morning. I would soon be passing right by it and heading up the other side of the canyon. The first of many to come.
It was also going to be a slow day for travel. My first 100 miles took me between 5 and 6 hours to cover. These roads were so winding and steep, with such sharp curves and at times torn up surfaces, that 10 to 15 miles an hour was the best you could hope for. The views were magnificent and riding along a ledge that had a drop of anywhere from 5000 to 9000 feet was not uncommon. I have been on many mountain roads before from the Western U.S. to the Appalachians to mountain ranges in Europe but seldom have I been on anything quite like this. I really felt like I was in the Swiss Alps again, or even somewhere in the Andes which is how I imagine them to look. With beautiful valleys and towns built onto the mountain sides, about the only thing they lacked was glaciers.
Its so hard to describe how beautiful these mountains and their passes are. I compare them to the Alps or perhaps the Andes.
As I passed thru one village after another, and one Virgin Mother Celebration after another, and out of one canyon and valley only to pass into another one, I was beginning to wonder if this road or the mountains were ever going to end. At one point I passed a village and shrine and then for perhaps the next 5 miles or so there were people walking up the mountain in the opposite lane towards me even as trucks came rumbling thru curves to spring quickly onto all these pedestrians. It was typical in the sense that any main highway in Mexico or Central America is also a main passage for the locals, their animals, and whatever else needs a clear path to walk on. Unfortunately all the fast moving cars and trucks share this passageway. It is considered normal here, a normal risk of everyday life, that sometimes ends up taking it.
One of the many Mother of Guadeloupe shrines along the side of the road where people come and have services, prayers and pay their respects.
I stopped for gas and a lady was at the pump selling me tacos. I hadn't had breakfast yet so I bought some, plus I really needed to warm up, it was cold. Everyone seemed to be dressed for snow up here, even though it seldom does, if ever. Still I knew I wasn't the only one that felt the cold. After getting back on the road the road continued to snake in and out of valleys next to huge rock faces and even some of the first waterfalls I had seen in Mexico. It was all very beautiful, and the mountains and the people all seem to say this is a very different part of Mexico then the rest, in fact it felt very different then any part of my trip so far. It also made me want to come back to it as well. Like it would be a safe place to explore, and much of it being a National Park meant you camp as well as hike in it. I think it may even be part of the Jaguar's range, though maybe a little high up.
One of the many passes and views in the Sierra De Pachuca's, at 9000 feet you could touch the sky it seemed.
After about a hundred miles, five hours and me wondering if I was ever going to get out of these mountains I came upon another huge valley and I could see the road snaking down towards the flats way down below. This is when I realized I had been traveling at about the 9000 foot altitude level. Pretty high up for a road in just about any part of the world, no wonder I was cold! I started the long descent to the valley miles below and with each passing curve downwards the temperature became warmer and the vegetation more tropical, until I was passing vendors selling oranges and pineapples again. Soon I was sweating and wondered if my bike really could handle the heat without any coolant. I knew my lazy side was winning, but I just didn't want to stop and have to deal with it, it had come this far apparently ok. Though I continued to look for a shop that might fix it along the way.
I believe this is either El Zoquital or Zacualtipan tucked away in the "Alps" here. It is hard to know sometimes since towns seldom have city limit signs coming into them.
As I made my way thru towns with names like Huejutla, Puaton and Tempoal, usually getting lost temporarily in each one, the road had straightened out and I continued to see more signs for Tampico. I didn't want to go into Tampico again, in fact I was looking for a highway that went around it completely coming out north of there, but I couldn't find it and knew really, I was lucky to have found the one I was on. Sometimes simply knowing where you are at is better then maybe looking for the shortest route and getting lost again! So it seemed I was destined to see Tampico again. The first city I had really gotten lost in coming down and had taken two hours to find the road out of it that I needed.
As the afternoon was wearing on and I stopped for gas, the sign said I was about 60 kilometers from Tampico, or about 36 miles. If I could get on the other side of the city with light of day to spare I could probably put in another hundred miles or so towards the Texas border. As far as I could remember Tampico was somewhere between 200 and 250 miles from the border. And it was a straight shot almost, no turns, only a couple of towns that weren't very big to deal with. Any where north of Tampico would put me in really good shape for the morning ride back to the states. Tampico felt like my last obstacle in Mexico, but something told me there probably would be something else. A country with military check points, police check points, immigration check points, weekend long festivals on the roads, speed bumps in every town, extreme heat and cold, winding mountain roads sometime blocked for hours by accidents, traffic jams and at times roads that can barely be called roads, it seemed yes there probably would be something else.
As I arrived in Tampico recognizing some of the roads I had previously been lost on which you think would of helped me get my bearings but really didn't, I pulled into a gas station to go the bathroom. They wanted one Pesos to use it, which I thought I put in but for some reason the door wouldn't work. I mumbling walked away as another guy got up to it and put some money in, I warned him it didn't work but he put his money in and it did. As he went in I jumped in behind him before the door closed. I had already lost enough Pesos in these bathroom machines and wasn't going to be denied here. Plus I had to go!
The views coming down from the high passes just kept getting better.
We started talking in the bathroom, he spoke very little English, and my Spanish while certainly better then when I came down is not conversational yet. Still I showed him my map and where I was going. He rattled off every town I had to go towards and thru to get to Matamoros (the Mexican border town) and the states. I didn't realize it at the time but this was incredibly helpful. Had he not rattled off all these names as I drove into Tampico I would have missed a number of exits that were labeled with some of the towns he told me. I'm sure he saved me an hour or so of being lost in Tampico again. Who knows maybe I would have run into that lady at the toll booth again!
This all brings to mind again that I could not have done this trip alone. From people following the trip and giving me encouragement on my blogging site to the many many locals who try' d their best to help me even though they didn't always understand what I was asking. Or when I wasn't sure how much they were asking for a product or service I would hold out some money and they would simply take the money they needed. I never felt I was ripped off this way, because for the most part I knew what the money was worth, just not exactly how much they were asking for. So again for all my and others fears of the danger of traveling down here, and there are some certainly like anywhere, for the most part it was the kindness or at worst the lack of interest of the locals that allowed me to pass and go about my business. Kind of an interesting phenomenon of foreign travel I think, this feeling of isolation in another culture and thinking that perhaps by some grace outside of yourself you are allowed to pass. A basic respect and tolerance by people for others that is more universal then a non traveler might think.
It was just a beautiful day for travel.
So after my conversation in the bathroom I headed for Tampico and found all the exits I needed from his directions and after paying one last toll booth (and no that lady wasn't there again, at least not in my lane) I made my way out of the city and began the last leg in Mexico. I had one last highway to find, that was 180 that cut off of 80 and would keep me from having to go into Cuidad Victoria, another large city, and also save me some mileage. After about 30 miles and thinking I had missed another highway there was a huge sign for the exit, its like you couldn't miss it. I was thinking why couldn't the rest of Mexico be this well marked. I know this was a well traveled route to the U.S. and Matamoros but still it was like reaching another country as far as the roads went, yet I was still in Mexico. Its why I looked at reaching this part of Mexico as if the journey south of the border was all but over.
With good roads and clear weather I drove into the night finally stopping at Tres Palos about 150 miles from the border. Finding a hotel for about $20 and then dinner for about $8 (I felt being close to the border I was overcharged for dinner. Also the waiter corrected me on my Spanish somewhat arrogantly I thought, however he did roll his r's beautifully and I had to for the first time appreciate how beautiful the language is when spoken so well), I then could go to bed knowing I would probably be in the U.S. fairly early in the day on Saturday.
Some farmland south of Tres Palos where I would spend my last night in Mexico.
That was a good feeling, but I had so much more to do and such a long way to go. I had come about 2600 miles from San Jose, Costa Rica in about 10 days which was kind of amazing in itself. Once in Texas I would still have about 2000 miles to go to get back to Michigan, and already in Mexico I was getting glimpses of how cold it was going to be up there. Following the weather in the U.S. as I could it looked doubtful that I was going to get that 3 or 4 day break in winter weather I would need to drive the whole way home. In fact not only had most of the U.S. got an early winter, it had stay' d without any real breaks in it either. The weather now in the U.S. was in the teens or below zero in most of the country. While I had been thru a lot on this trip including cold, I wasn't prepared to go 2000 miles in freezing weather and with the danger of ice on the roads.
I was to find out for what gear I had left and what little gear I could buy, 40 degrees and rain was about the most I could handle for hours on end. And that was by no means comfortable, but was doable.
Of course if this whole trip has taught me anything, its one day at a time, one town at a time, one storm at a time, one traffic jam at a time, one stretch of highway at a time and maybe most important, worry about tomorrow when tomorrow comes, all you can do is what your doing now. Still it was hard not to think about those arctic temperatures not even a thousand miles north.......
Tomorrow I'm back in the states......and also probably my next post will just be on border crossings, what I paid going down, and what I paid coming back, and possible strategies for all situations. I have had some positive feedback from people who are planning on or are now traveling in Central America in regards to posts that contained information in this area. So I'm hoping one of the goals of this site which is to provide useful information to others will do just that. Border crossings are such a big part of the trip down here ( I would say a third of how the trip goes centers around them), not only because you have to do so many of them, but also because they can take up a lot of time and money if your not prepared, and if you don't speak Spanish and have never done them before its hard to be totally prepared for what your in store for. Any planning and preparation you can do ahead of time can pay off ten fold in regards to borders, or really any part of your trip.
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