Death by Misadventure

After hours in the saddle, my seat was in dire need of some R & R.  This is the only part of me that gives out; otherwise, I could ride indefinitely.  Fortunately, Mexico 200 is scattered with plenty of dusty little dives selling tacos, quesadillas, and the cheapest, coldest, tastiest bottles of beer you’ve ever been blessed enough to spill down your throat.  I stopped at one.

I can’t remember the specific whistle-stop or the name of the establishment, but Ramon and his family served up two much needed Pacificos and were very welcoming besides.  Ramon, taking a break from simmering an animal (that still included its skull) in a blackened pot over an open fire, was kind enough to give me a tour of his backyard orchard where he grew oranges, guava, coffee, and something he swore had properties akin to Viagra.

 I learned a few things with Ramon.  Coffee beans do not taste very good at all when they are fresh, raw, and “off the bush.”  They are one of the few “fruits” that benefit immensely from being left to dry in the sun, ground to bits, then drenched with scalding water.  Guava is delicious off the tree.  And you can eat oranges before they’re actually orange – a green orange; I ate it if only out of appreciation for the dissonance and contradiction.   

Further south I pass banana and coconut orchards.  They’re planted together to maximize land use.  Each banana tree produced only a single bunch at a time, with each bunch wrapped in a protective cocoon of newspaper and white plastic.  The coconut trees grow much higher than the banana trees, so don’t block their sunlight.  I happen upon a small mountain of coconuts and a dozen or so people working them.  I gotta see what’s going on with this.  I pull over to investigate.

Turns out, these are not coconuts for eating.  George, the foreman, spoke pretty damn good English and explained to me that these coconuts were destined for shampoo, body lotion, and other assorted beauty products.  Barefooted men and women split the husks by hand with axes.  Then young women used a special hand tool to scoop the “meat” from the husks.  The husks were collected in a large truck and carted away for use as fuel.  Nothing went to waste.

Farther down the road, I see a sign denoting Playa de Oro 7km– Gold Beach 4 miles.  I can’t pass this up; I really should have.  The road to Playa de Oro was at first deceivingly navigable.  It soon degraded into a near impasse of deep ruts and rock-strewn  washouts.  My bike bumped and bounced through nine miles of this grind never getting out of first gear, stalling twice, and almost falling once.  I had no business whatsoever taking this motorcycle down a road this hard but was loathe to turn back once I started.  Finally at the end, I found a deserted, pristine beach with waves crashing…. blah, blah, blah.  Yeah whatever, the sun was falling fast, and I still had to get back to the blacktop.  I didn’t like this ride at all and would find out soon enough that my bike liked it even less.

I finally reach Tecoman, immediately south of Manzanillo, after sundown.  Traffic through town is heavy, and I’m forced to slow considerably as I make my way to the first hotel I can find.  I always stay at a hotel situated on the town plaza.  This makes finding my way back and forth much easier.  Parking outside the Hotel Maria Ines, I notice a thin streak of fluid marking the same path in the street I’d just traveled to stop my bike and slowly back into the curb.  A large puddle is growing under my bike.

At this point I have to confess to being wholly without the two primary skills someone riding a motorcycle through Spanish-speaking countries needs to possess.  First, I have no real working knowledge of Spanish.  I know just enough to stumble awkwardly through a few questions or pat phrases.  The replies come back to me as some lightning-quick rhythmic Jabberwocky.    Second, the process whereby my motorcycle converts the energy stored in the bike’s gas tank into mechanical motion propelling it forward mystifies me.  I have even less knowledge of what mechanical parts play a role in this  process, how they interact with one another, and, most importantly, how to fix them whenever they stop doing whatever it is they’d done up to this point to get me this far.  It really is amazing just how far you can get on balls and resolve.

I need someone with at least some amount of mechanical aptitude and who can understand English at least well enough for me to explain to him what happened up to this point – enter Francisco.  Franciso and his family own by what all appearances is a very successful business manufacturing and distributing beauty supplies and cosmetics.  Their storefront is just two doors down from my hotel.  Francisco also loves cars and motorcycles enough that he races cars and wrenches on both.  Finally, thanks largely to three years living in Salt Lake City, he speaks English so well he has almost no accent.  Francisco has a pretty good idea what’s causing the problem but wants a mechanic he knows to look at it to be sure.  First thing the following morning, I follow him to the mechanic where he translates for us both.  The problem is relatively simple and straight forward; my bike is ready later that afternoon.  Francisco’s help proves to be invaluable; he gives me his phone number and says, “call if you need anything.”  I have no doubt I will.  Rain  fortunately keeps me in Tecoman for two more days.

Most towns I’ve seen in Mexico of any size at all are organized around a town square or plaza.  The plaza usually contains a sizable church along with park space, a statue or two, and often a fountain.   It is filled with people throughout the day and serves as a focal meeting point for many town events and festivals. Surrounding the plaza are small businesses selling an array of essentials; bread and pastries, fruits and vegetables, meats, clothing and fabrics, shoes, and medicines – individual proprietors all vested directly in their town’s vitality.  When’s the last time you were in a candy store?  This town has three.  Oh yeah, and not a single chain establishment. No strip malls. No big-box retail. No Sprawl-Mart. 

I’ve never been a fan of suburbia, what it is, what it fails to be, and the devastation it brings to towns and cities. Seeing someplace like Tecoman organized around a centuries-old planning design that still works so well only serves to reinforce my disappointment with what we’ve settled for in America.  All this said, the following morning I would have given more than I should have for a decent cup of coffee from Starbucks.

Continuing south on Mexico 200, I pass acre after acre of lush sugar cane growing tall like thick green grass. Trucks stacked high with dried cane rumble past taking their cargo north.  Small fires burn to clear harvested fields. Their smoke washes on the wind across the road.

Soon I reach Puerto Vallarta.  My earliest memory of this resort town was as a kid when someone guessed the correct price of the Grand Showcase and Bob Barker awarded them with “an all-expense paid trip for two to sunny and beautiful Puerto Vallarta!”  

It was immediately clear that I had left Mexico.  Giant hotels and condominiums surrounded by golf course lagoons stand shoulder to shoulder on the very last edge of developable land – a glass and concrete phalanx blocking Vallarta’s famous beaches. Pasty white Americans and Canadians amble down narrow streets lined with T-shirt and knick-knack kiosks.  U.S. dollars are accepted as readily as pesos and English is spoken as commonly as Spanish. 

My clothes had not been laundered in days and some unmentionables had been called into service more than once.  I purchased a T-shirt for the equivalent of $7 after haggling with a young man who’d promised to, “give a special deal to you my friend.” He did.  I returned to my room where I exchanged my filthy blue-jeans and dusty riding boots for khaki knee-length cargo shorts and Keen sandals.  I peeled off a musky Triumph shirt and replaced it with a fresh cool Corona T-shirt.  With this change of clothes I felt for the first time in two weeks, absolutely invisible.

I stepped out onto the small street fronting my hotel and was immediately indistinguishable from nearly everyone else – just another gringo on a two-week furlough from the suburbs in the North.  Most of the restaurants, with names like “Nacho Daddy,” had the first triple-digit menu prices I’d seen in nearly two thousand miles.  I walked out of one and happily found the nearest taco stand where I was able to order entirely, albeit crudely, in Spanish.  Apparently the dust I’d picked up in Baja wouldn’t wash off with just a shower.  The next morning I was rolling south again on Mexico 200, and soon back in Mexico.

Bienvenido a Agua  Caliente de Garate.  I couldn’t pass up a sign welcoming me to a town whose name translates to “Warm Water,” especially when that sign is inlaid with tile into a thirty-foot high concrete arch over the town’s entrance.   Immediately off Mexico 200, just south of Mazatlan on Mexico’s Pacific coast lies a town that doesn’t appear on the map.  And why would it? 

The residents there seem to have little interest in visitors and certainly belied the invitation on their arch when I rolled into town.   Both the spectators and players at a neighborhood soccer game stopped and stared at me immediately after I turned off the main road.  Making my way along the bumpy and uneven cobblestone streets, I met with similar stares from everyone I passed; old women sweeping the sidewalk, old men in cowboy hats sitting on metal folding chairs outside of a social hall, and everyone sitting on their front porch.  Most of the town seemed to be sitting on their front porch.  Even a dog gave me the stink-eye,  quickly giving chase and running alongside my bike while barking at me in Spanish.    The only welcome I got was from a group of children playing on an old car at the end of a dead-end street.  They seemed particularly amused once I realized it was a dead-end street and was forced to slowly turn my bike around in the dust where the pavement came to an end.  They waved and laughed as I rode past a second time.

It soon became clear why these people felt guarded and suspicious.  Agua Caliente de Garate is an absolute gem.   Small brightly painted concrete houses lining cobblestone streets.  Children playing on the steps outside of an old-folks home unabashedly adorned with a painting of an elderly woman knitting in her rocking-chair while a small white kitten snoozed at her feet.   A magnificent pink and white Catholic church dominating the town plaza.  Inside, amidst ornate icons, rare relics, and softly flickering candles, three women chant quietly in homage before a statue of the Virgin Mary.  Outside, hundreds of small green, blue, yellow, and red flags hanging from lines strung across the streets.   I leave Agua Caliente with no plans to ever return,  but thankful that such a place exists at all.

After the desolate desert  of Northern Baja the towns along the Sea of Cortez are welcomed oases.  I rolled into Santa Rosalia expecting to find another  town on the verge of extinction but was greeted instead by brightly colored wooden houses, shops, cafes, parks, and children in plaid school uniforms – a proper town.  Santa Rosailia sprang up around a cooper mine owned by the Rothschilds; rusting skeletons of abandoned mining equipment and machinery can still be found on the edges of town. 

I left Santa Rosalia for Mulege and hit the first bad weather of the trip.  Heavy rain made navigating the twisty roads and step descents a bit nervewracking, especially once it got dark.  The bike turned squirrelly a few times, but I made it to Mulege without incident. Mulege sits along a river lined with palm trees and draws many of its vistors for this reason.  It became popular with expats decades ago and remains home to a sizeable population of Americans and Canadians who have no plans of returning north.

South of Mulege, in Ligui, Mexico 1 turns almost due west and cuts back into a mostly flat and barren desert.   The road runs laser-straight for many miles before disappearing at the horizon – a blacktop gateway into the sky.  I lean forward onto the tank behind the bike’s windscreen, tuck in my arms and legs, crank the throttle, and blast ahead chasing unreachable shimmering mirages in the road as the needle dances wildly at 110.  Riding flat-out like this burns way more fuel than my small tank can afford, and I stop at an autoparts store to buy gas in repurposed 5-liter antifreeze jugs.

I reached La Paz, and the end of the road, that afternoon.  The following day, I loaded my bike onto a ship to cross the Sea of Cortez into mainland Mexico.  It docked in Topolobampo late last night – the first leg of the ride completed.

South of El Rosario, Baja California becomes other-worldly.  A few scattered towns cling desperately to the main road every fifty miles or so.  Some are virtual ghost towns nearly uninhabited save for a handful of entrenched diehards standing vigil as their town slowly and inexorably dissolves back into the desert.  Starving curs run frightened through the weed-choked parking lots of long-forgotten garages, motels, and gas stations – lonely and hollowed ruins faded in the baking sun.  Vast stretches of highway completely devoid of proper gas stations prove impossible to cross without men selling gasolina by the liter out of battered and rusting 55-gallon drums strapped in the back of pickups. 

The road itself  such a thin and trivial slip that with no imagination at all you can see it disappear and with it any indication that people have ever existed in this land.  Even the sky, free of contrails, shows no signs of human life.  I pass a lone wild horse grazing at the road’s edge on scrubgrass and wonder if this is a descendant of one of the horses that carried Poncho Villa and his men through so many pages of our history books.

 I gotta get some rest.  We ride again in the morning.

Leaving Ensenada, I continued south on Mexico 1 through a rider’s dream – a mostly empty two-lane twisty cutting lazily through open desert and flowing along the foothills of mountains covered in lush green scrubgrass and tangles of brush.  Recent rains have washed sand, mud, and stones into low spots in the road.   Fresh rectangular track patterns stamp the red soil where bulldozers have cleared  away the small mountains of debris.   Mexico doesn’t bother bridging these gullies in advance of regular rains.  Just deal with it when it becomes a problem.  In some places entire roadways have been washed out and traffic is rerouted into the desert.

With the sun falling fast, I’m forced to stop for the night in San Vicente.   This small town has only a single paved road, Mexico 1.   Cars creep along wide roads riddled with divets  and navigate through giant mud puddles.   Even the parking lots in the business district fronting main street are dirt.  These one-story block buildings sell an amazingly disparate array of merchandise.   Four dozen brown chicken eggs alongside a single napkin holder and three plastic cups. Art supplies and a 60 minute, high-fidelity, Sony cassette tape still in its cellophane wrapper.  A few rat traps next to a single child’s shoe.   Plumbing supply fixtures and fighting roosters.  Fighting roosters?!  Oh, I gotta see this.

Gill sells gallos.  His name is Gill and he sells, breeds, raises, and trains fighting roosters, gallos.  He was kind enough to show me his operation just behind his plumbing supply (and saddlery) shop.   Dozens of roosters housed in crude makeshift wire pens awaited their turn in the pit.   They were each placed with a gallina, female chicken, or two to.  If they got along well enough to mate, she would lay her eggs in a crude nest made from an upturned five gallon bucket.  Gill was proud of his chickens, the care he took in raising them, and the animal husbandry skills necessary to raise champion fighters.  He gave me a flyer advertising a “derby” he had won just the night before.  His winning rooster was recuperating in a sort of chicken infirmary just behind his office.  The loser was killed in the fight. 

Chicken fighting is quite violent.  It exploits the birds’ natural tendency to fight – an instinct augmented by attaching a small rubber “boot” to the chicken’s left leg.  This boot serves as a mount for a single razor sharp hook roughly an inch long.  “Careful! careful!” Gill cautioned when he showed to me his small wooden box containing dozens of sharp hooks. “You don’t want to cut yourself.”

I spent my first night in Mexico in a hooker hotel.  I was one of only a few quests not paying for his bed by the hour.  While I didn’t know this until the following morning, El Conquistador Gentlemen’s Club, directly across the street from my hotel and visible from my room window, should have given me some indication that I wasn’t amongst the prudish or celibate.  Additionally, all manner of meds available in the States only by prescription could be had at any one of the many pharmacies outnumbered only by bars and nightclubs.  Viagra, natch, being the most popular and boldly advertised – ten bucks for the real deal or just five for the generic.  What!?  Since when was this magic available in generic!?  But, I digress… 

Welcome to Ensenada.   If Baja California is a gringo playground, Ensenada serves as its southernmost outpost.  Here dollars are accepted as readily as pesos, English is commonplace, reservations are verboten, and inhibitions are abandoned.  Ensenada appears on the cruise-ship circuit.  This cursed blessing brings boatloads of money into the local economy but irreparably alters its identity and authenticity.   The cruise-shippers, for their part, get to return home to their cul-de-sacs duped into believing they actually visited a foreign country and meet the natives.

I happened into Ensenada between two cruise-ship visits and missed them both.  The town was relatively quiet and peaceful, the bars empty, and hotel rooms, hookers and johns notwithstanding, mostly vacant.

“Too bad for you,” Rudy the bartender told me.  “We got ones come in Thursday… thousands of peoples.”

“Thousands huh? Ahh”  I replied. “Not my scene at all buddy.”  I’m riding a motorcycle solo across six countries; crowds clearly ain’t my thing.  Besides, I’ve got to get movin’ and don’t care to wait around on cruise-shippers.

“You like this scene.”

“Yeah? How’s that?”

“Lots of young womens from L.A., thousands on two ships.  They come here to get drunk,  party, have good times.  Walk around with they tatas out.”

“Hmmm… Thursday huh?”

I left the next morning.

They’re tried and true wintertime fun!

Go find yourself a snowy (preferably icy) parking lot and go nuts! Watch out for cops, and know your car. Donuts, J-turns, bootleggers, have fun!

P.S. If your car is front wheel drive, please skip the donuts and go straight for the J-turns, or I will laugh at you.

I left San Diego this morning for Mexico.  I was as prepared as I could be given how unprepared I truly was and could see no reason to delay this trip any longer. 

International Border 2 Miles reads the sign overhanging Interstate 5, “The Five” in Californianese, just south of San Diego.  This imaginary line with very real consequences is so much more than a geographic division. It is a separation of peoples, cultures, economies, systems of law, experiences, and expectations.

Rolling into Mexico is effortless. Traffic is funneled into two lanes and forced to slow as it flows around a few barricades and passed a handful of Mexican officials. I was never questioned, searched, or even stopped.

Getting out of Mexico couldn’t be more different.  On the other side of the road, behind an impenetrable barricade, four lanes of cars slowly inch their way north.  US Border Patrol and Customs agents scrutinize each car passing into the States with an array of equipment, man power, and dogs.  Mexico doesn’t seem to care what comes in; the US is obsessed with what comes out.

Having visited Tijuana twice before, I was more than happy to skip the T-shirt shops, begging children, and titty bars and head straight for Ensenada – if only.  TJ’s tangle of poorly marked streets and avenues coupled with an incomplete roadmap proved and immediate hurdle.  After an hour of literally riding in circles I found it – Mexico 1, the road to Ensenada.  Soon, the lights, traffic, and buildings fell away.  A large sign thanked me for visiting Tijuana.  I let out the clutch, rolled on the throttle, and rocketed free and easy down el camino.  The trip has begun.