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**seantully** · #16 10 Oct 2013

Been hanging out at the Pescadero Surf Camp for a couple days now.

I’ve explored the local areas.

Ate some damn fine tacos.

Adopted a new dog.

Michele got some work done on his whip.

I ate some more kick-ass tacos (this was all for only 44 pesos, less than $4)

And got a bit of lounging in.

Pescadero Surf Camp, you are a nice place. I like your chill atmosphere. I like your style. What I mean to say is, I really like you. But I also need to tell you something, you're great, but you're too comfortable. I'm a rambling man baby, and I need the unknown. I need excitement. I’m sorry, but I need the road. Goodbye for now, Pescadero.

A girl I met in La Paz and her friend are celebrating her birthday in Cabo San Lucas tomorrow at the southern most tip of Baja. I’m going to meet up with them there. I need to get my dirt fix satisfied first though. I picked up the GPX track files for a section of the Baja 1000 race route that ends in Cabo. I can pick up the trail about 10 miles north of where I’m at now and then ride dirt all the way down to Cabo. Saweeeeet.

I packed up my shit and headed north until the GPS told me it was time to get off the pavement and hit the dirt.

Right away I can tell taking this way to Cabo was the correct decision. This is going to be great.

The track is pretty remote, and runs north to south sort of near the Mex 1 hwy but a few miles inland from it. I shut my motor off to take a picture. It is beautiful and quiet here.

The first few miles are really pretty. The road is relaxing. Isn't this part of the Baja 1000? What’s so difficult about this section of the race? If I was unloaded I would flyyyyy down these roads, and I'm on a beater. They are nice and smooth, relatively solid. Seems perfect.

Oh, that's more like it. As soon as I got cocky, I got stuck in a rut.

I’m still running my 16 tooth sprocket aren’t I? Maybe I should swap out for my smaller one if I’m going to be doing more of this... I guess now isn’t exactly the best time. I unloaded the bike a bit instead to get some weight off the rear. This did the trick and got her to the top.

The route crisscrosses a few other tracks.

Again I got cocky with the weight of the bike and spun out around a corner on a down-hill section. The bike hocky-pucked on the pannier and spun around 180 degrees before stopping. I’m familiar with ejecting off a small and light dirtbike, bit different getting free of this little piggy though. I was wondering when I would start getting into some decent off road and start coming off a bit. Maybe today will be the day.

Bent the shifter underneath the case. Metal was nice and hot so I carefully bent her back into a shiftable position. Back to work little lady.

It’s really pretty here.

And real dry.

And real hot.

There are lots of little creak beds running through the area. They are usually full of deep sand, and no water.

As I got further south the elevation started to climb and drop quite a bit. The terrain got a bit greener too.

I started seeing signs of inhabitants. A little old lady came out and stared at me after I took this picture. I waved. She looked at me like I was a martian. I waved again. She stared more confused. Maybe waving isn’t a universal thing anymore.

More greenery, more elevation change.

The killer was getting tired and wanted another dirt-nap. This time she wanted it in deep sand.

Well shit, that’s fresh water right? Forgot what that looked like.

As I pushed further south the road opened up and hardened out. I could pick up the pace a bit. Hello horse.

Nevermind. More sand.

Like a junky diving into a pile of blow, my bike again couldn’t resist a lay-down in the soft stuff. This time she wanted me to lay with her and as she went into the sand she pinned my right leg underneath the right pannier. Glad I got these big SIDI boots. I pushed the bike up just enough with my left arm to reach around and awkwardly dig out the sand under my right leg with my other arm. Leg is perfectly fine. Good engineering SIDI. Get back to work bike, quit horsing around!

Is that a mirage, or is that pavement?

Yep pavement, hello Cabo.

Found the girls and the hostel. Hey Cabo, you like to party right?

**seantully** · #17 14 Oct 2013

I would like to be able to say that I saw a lot of Cabo over the last two days. I would also like to be able to say that I took a lot of photos to share with you. Unfortunately, I’ve spent the last two days inebriated in one way or another and have thus taken zero photos, and everything that I did see, was seen through a hazy blurry filter. Luckily though, the girls that I met up with (Caszara and Ariane) are far more responsible than I, and they were able to juggle the adult task of both drinking and clicking a couple photos. Really though, we were only able to manage a few.

I pulled into the hostel parking area and was greeted from the balcony by Ariane and Casz. “How was the ride? Hurry up and get cleaned up, we are grabbing drinks!” Get cleaned up? I only have 2 shirts anyways?

Package deal for 2 margaritas, 2 shots of tequila, and 3 lobster tacos to get each of us started? Deal

We then continued the party at a series of locations. I started to pull out my amazing neolithic dance moves. The local women naturally loved it. So we partied more.

Went to bed eventually, then woke up and brushed off the last nights haze with more tequila and a dip in the pool.

Followed by yet more tequila, push-up challenges for buckets of

, and wet t-shirt contests. Sorry guys, like I said, it was the girls taking photos, so we only get the push-up contest.

Rest was had eventually and my time in Cabo was complete.

This is a place where pretty much anything goes. It’s weird, funky, and fast paced. No matter what you pursue while here, eventually the stay goes by in a blur, one way or another. For most, it's not a long term destination. It's a place to be dabbled in, not a place to settle in. For me, I’ve stepped over and into the dark side for a bit. I even drank the cabo fever cool-aid, and let me tell you, it tasted pretty damn good. But what I’m left with is having my party itch scratched and I’m now ready to step back out of this weird alter-reality that is Cabo, and back into the real Mexico. I think I’ll head back to a place where there will be more locals than tourists. Maybe back to a place where the ATMs dispenses Mexican pesos rather than US dollar bills. Thanks for the good time Cabo, I’ve enjoyed my little vacation away from...well, my vacation. Now, back to Mexico.

**seantully** · #18 15 Oct 2013

After two days of partying I’m tuckered out and ready to gas up and hit the road. It’s Thursday morning (10/10/13) and I’m pretty sure that there is a freighter ferry leaving from La Paz to Mazatlan (on the mainland) Saturday afternoon. First though I want to check out a place called Canyon De La Zorra, which can be found roughly halfway between Cabo San Lucas and La Paz. There is supposed to be granite here, and waterfalls. Which means I can hopefully do some climbing and also jump off some tall shit into water. Yes, this sounds good.

First stop, San Jose del Cabo, the next major town east from Cabo, and where you switch directions to head north towards La Paz. It’s more laidback than Cabo, and seems to have itself a nice little thing going. It attracts the less intense vacationers that want the beach and the rays, but not the mayhem that is Cabo.

They even have a nice and relaxed eco building with plants growing on it. Aww isn’t that relaxing.

After I head north from San Jose Del Cabo the road becomes nice and curvy. The plays I’m heading towards is called CanyonDe La Zorra, so I guess that makes sense.

So much greener here in the South of Baja compared to the North.

After about an hour or so I turned west onto a dirt road towards the canyon.

Here I found a little town that had, no you didn’t guess it, a Zoo. Why there would be a zoo out here in the middle of nowhere is beyond me. Also the military. Maybe they came for the zoo.

I stocked up on some food and headed further west out of town towards the canyon.

Again I found sand.

After a few miles I also found a sign that reassured me I was actually in the right place. Looks like I’m close.

DAAAYUUUUMMMNNN, someone’s got a pretty driveway.

I got to the end of the driveway and found two evil looking dogs.

They were completely black and hairless, so all their coloring came from their funky sandpapery skin. They looked super fit, they demanded fear from you, but were oddly regal. They probably were birthed straight from the underworld and spend their days hunting souls to eat. I want one.

After I was done being intrigued by the dogs, I realized they were standing in front of a closed fence. I’m pretty sure that there were people somewhere on the property. But my bike isn’t quiet, and their isn’t exactly much else out here to make noise. So if they wanted me to come in and enjoy the Canyon they would have come to the gate. I waited for a while and enjoyed the dogs eary company some more. Nope, nobody is coming, alright, well I guess I’ll just go all the way to La Paz today. There’s a free beach that I can stay at there too. That’ll save me some pesos and help make up for all the money I spent getting silly in Cabo.

I headed back out the driveway and according to the GPS at the end of the driveway I was able to go left rather than turn back right and go down the way I had come. I don’t like backtracking so this was good. This road was much sandier though. Again I dumped the bike and again I pinned my leg under the metal pannier.

This time it was my left leg, which has my bum knee from a previous injury attached to it. It’s a very weird experience when your mental state changes gears so rapidly, things go from “everything is the norm” to “well shit”, very quickly. One minute I’m grinding along in soft sand thinking about my body position, thinking about what side of the sand rut will have better traction, wondering about what breed of dog that was back there, who actually lives all the way out here, can I make it to La Paz before sunset? Then boom. I’m forcibly thrown back into the present moment. I catch a particularly soft patch wrong and me and the bike are now down in the sand, pinned together awkwardly. I start assessing the situation.

Am I badly hurt?
No, nothing hurts, it was a slow spill. But I am stuck.
Is anyone else around to help lift the bike?
Mmm (I look around hoping yes). Who am I kidding though, I haven’t seen anyone for 3 hours.
Am I pinned against anything hot, is anything burning me?
No.

Cool, so I’m not in any immediate danger.

Alright, next, I can tell from looking at my leg that this is not good. How long can I stay in this position before it gets too painful and my strength to move the bike goes away?
I focus my attention on my left knee now. I can feel the pressure of the bike, and the unnatural angle of my leg, torquing on the surgical bolts that keep everything in place. My muscles and ligaments are working hard to keep shit together. Mmmmmm, not long. Maybe 3 minutes?

Alright then, it’s now or never. I’m pinned awkwardly enough that I can’t use my arms or core for any leverage to heave the bike up. Instead I need to use my pinned leg to leverage the bike up and wriggle free. I think for one last time, do I have any other options that don’t involve putting more strain on my knee and possibly wrecking it? Nope, if I wait too much longer, my window of opportunity to physically get out on my own is going to shut. I grit my teeth together and start to point and flex my boot as much as possible to loosen up the sand. I torque up on my knee and my leg starts to budge. I can feel all the ligaments working to their limit to stay attached, but after a few more seconds I am able wriggle free of the bike. With my knee back in line and the pressure and torque removed, I crawl away from the bike and roll over onto the ground. My knee is sore but nothing popped or went out so I’m golden. Relieved that I’m out now and the situation is resolved, I chuckle to myself. It’s funny how again, your mental shift can go back from the “well shit” seriousness of a situation, to the “hah, well that could have sucked” attitude.

With everything in the just peachy again, I stand up carefully and go over to pick up my bike. With the bike upright, again I chuckle to myself at the juxtaposition of how close a fun time and shitty time can reside. Glad I came out on the ‘fun time’ side on this one.

Irony aside though, having low-speed tumbles in the dirt is normal, getting my leg stuck under the bike (now twice) however, is not normal, and can be a serious issue if I’m all alone in a place like this. It’s something that really shouldn’t be happening. I thought for a while about what it was that I did when going down that caused it, and how I could possibly have done with my body position to prevent it. I have an idea of what to do differently for the next time, and I’m sure I’ll have plenty of opportunities to practice. Hopefully I won’t be writing anymore about getting stuck under my bike.

After several hours I made it to La Paz and made it to the beach just after dusk.

By the time I got in I was exhausted and my body was sore. It felt good to be on a nice comfy beach with a cool ocean breeze and soft sounds of waves lapping on beach. I layed down on the beach and put in my headphones to listen to a full Alt-J album and take in the killer night sky. The milky way galaxy is pretty clear tonight. The music flowed and my body relaxed. Hard to find a concert venue this good anywhere else. Not too shabby, mother nature. Not too shabby at all.

The next day I lounged at the beach.

At some damn good ceviche.

And accidently put a whole in my sleeping mat.

There are two ferries that go from La Paz to Mazatlan, one is predominantly a commuter ferry (more luxurious) and the other is a freight/cargo ferry. I decided to take the freight ferry as this seemed more interesting than a posh commuter ferry. It’s a 15 hour trip so maybe I can interact with the locals a bit more too.

The next day I went to the terminal and booked my spot on the ferry. There were some paperwork issues but I was actually able to work through it with my broken spanish. Holy shit am I learning spanish?? There was a guy that I met and spoke to for a while at the docks. He offered to just load my bike into the back of his semi trailer, pay the passenger fee, and then ride across with him on the ferry. In hindsight this would have been a good deal, but my spanish wasn’t good enough at the time to really understand what he was offering and work out the specifics. I aired on the side of caution and just paid the individual motorcycle toll instead. This is the exact reason why knowing more spanish can be so helpful. Next time, Jhonathan.

Here’s the water steed we’ll be taking.

Hey, look who else is catching the same boat. The Dutchies and their dog Dunya.

We loaded up.

The dutchies (Michel and Erica) black rig on the left looks so small compared to the other rigs.

Dunya seemed pleased with her spot.

I got my bike strapped in.

Got some goats for neighbors.

Looks like things are lax in terms of where you can and can’t go around here. There’s the other commuter boat.

We took a look around the deck and then the boat set off.

Dinner was basic ferry food, but it’s pretty hard to mess up tacos. Nom nom nom nom.

The ferry is a night ferry which makes the 15hr commute really reasonable. This is the cargo ferry and there are few actual passengers, the majority of the cargo is just semi containers without their drivers. This means there are no real passenger accommodations, and those that are on board just sleep in their rigs. I found a nice spot on an empty gangplank above my bike to sleep.

Pretty top-notch sleeping spot if you ask me. Even have an open air window straight out the side of the hull. It’s maybe 30ft off the water and the breeze is perfect.

Being an island boy it’s nice being on the ocean again. The slow pitch and yaw of the boat as it rocks across the sea is comfortable and calming. Relaxation sets in. With the boat now well under way, headed away from Baja and towards the mainland, it feels like I’m moving to a different place, a new chapter. Although I know I could easily spend MUCH more time in Baja, I’m ready to go to the mainland. The Baja peninsula has served as a great set of training wheels for me. Baja is sort of like a watered down Mexico. It’s super safe, it’s very easy to travel, and there are still lots of people that speak a bit of english. As a person who doesn’t speak much spanish and has never been to Mexico, These are all good things for me. By traveling Baja first, I’ve been able to slowly dip my toes into the culture and get a feel for how things are done. Baja has given me a preview of Mexico, and I like what I’ve seen. I want the real thing now though. Catch you tomorrow Mazatlan.

**seantully** · #19 21 Oct 2013

In the morning I awoke and found birds. Birds? Birds don’t live far from land, we must be getting close.

My camera battery was low so I went to swap it with my spare and plug the dead one in to charge. Usually I have it somewhere in my pannier or tankbag. Nope, definitely not in either of those. Yep, definitely left both plugged in to the wall in the Cabo hostel. The cabo wabo haze strikes again.

Because I had no charger or spare battery, this meant the end of my picture taking. When the ferry arrived several hours later I said by to the Dutchies and we unloaded the ferry. I wanted to get to Guadalajara and the Erica and Michel (The Dutchies) where headed some place near Mazatlan for the beach. Guadalajara is about 5 hours east of Mazatlan via the toll roads (cost money but are faster). By dusk I was in town, booked into a hostel, and eating tacos on the street with my new friend Farah. Guadalajara is the second biggest city in Mexico and is very multifaceted in what it brings to the cultural table. For one, it’s a historic city. It is full of big public squares, grand old spanish era buildings converted to museums, and lots of effigies to individuals involved in progressing Mexico forward. It’s also a lively place with lots of young and newly employed people which contributes greatly to it’s overall feel as well as it’s economic potential. In fact, a few years ago it was ranked as having the second strongest economic potential in all of North America and has been called “the city of the future”. This has helped bring a large number of recent foreign investment deals (according to Wiki) making it a very attractive destination for people on the up-and-coming and on the grind. The city feels like it’s bustling, hustling, and alight with activity. But this isn’t New York and people are still really chill and approachable, we are afterall in Mexico remember.

What this meant for me was that I could scope some old architecture, shop for the electronics I need, and feel like I’m a young professional again while reading the paper in a public square and sipping on a chai-latte-macchiato-soy-nesquik-cafe (or whatever it is that the cool kids are drinking now). After a couple days of walking through the city I found the charger that I needed, or a compatible knock-off that would work. At this time the weather showed me what my friends were probably seeing back home and reminded me what rain looks like for the first time since I left Seattle.

I didn’t get many pictures while my camera was out of commission, in fact, I got none (funny how that works). I also hate backtracking, so I refuse to go and take pictures of stuff that I’ve already gone to. Thus I only have a few photos to share.

Here’s my bike parked on the sidewalk outside the hostel.

Here’s a picture with some of the common architecture, also horses for bonus.

I spent a fair amount of time shooting the shit while grabbing food and drinks with other people at the hostel. This is a great way to practice my spanish and to get the lowdown on other places to check out in Mexico. I prefer to get my info through osmosis and some light internet research, I have yet to look at a lonely planet or other travel book. I like chatting with locals and other travelers about places they have been and what they liked. After I get a feel for what type of person they are I can then decide how I want to weigh the info they provided. It’s like reading 12 travel advice books rather than one, it may be slower but is more entertaining and engaging.

With all the youth the city is pretty hip and artsy, here’s some cool street art from the trendy Chapultepec area.

I had my camera battery for just a little bit before I left so this is all I have of Guadalajara. Farah, a girl I met my first night told me that I should definitely go check out a place called Guanajuato city. She’s the first person to mention the place but I trust her taste. I’ll head there next. On the road again.

**seantully** · #20 21 Oct 2013

After a couple hours of riding I made it to Guanajuato. I don’t really have any expectations as I literally know nothing about it. All I know is that a friend recommended it and that there’s NO availability in the entire town this weekend. Something about a 3 week long festival? I could only find one place that had one night available. Make do with what you have.

Hello Guanajuato.

Alright Guanajuato, that’s a little bit of a grandiose entrance don’t you think?

After entering the city I set out to find my hostel. I had my GPS but there is no normal city grid, so it took quite a while.

Lots of the streets are one way streets, and are small enough that you can’t just bomb down them and squeeze by if a car comes. This one is on the larger side for example.

The city is made of hills and terraces so there is a pretty neat tunnel system. The tunnels are also really old. Busses, cars, walkers, etc all use it and there are lots of little entrances to them throughout the city for walkers. Pretty rad. The problem for someone who doesn’t know them though (like me) is that they are elaborate enough to have stop signs in them and lots of options for turns etc. My GPS goes dead when I go into the tunnels, so I end up guessing which ways to go. I guess I’ll make a left here. I guess I’ll head up this tunnel, and down this one.

Most times I pop out in a totally different place than I thought I was going to. One wrong turn and the reroute adds 20 minutes to get you back to where you were ****ed up just so you can give it another whirl. Sometimes I make the same mistake, sometimes I make a different one. Getting lost is a great way to see a place though, and this one just happens to be beautiful. These streets are very old and very interesting.

Eventually I found the hostel.

And found a spot down the street for my bike.

After I got settled I started to learn about the location I had found myself in for the day. Guanajuato is a colonial-era city. Back in the day it had mines that did very well and made the city have a very affluent upper class. These people wanted to be entertained and have things to throw their money at so the city developed a rich cultural art scene. Plays were performed in the plazas and artists flocked here to perform their crafts. Eventually a festival came about called Festival Internacional Cervantino (FIC), mix in a lot of federal support to bring in international artists and you have what it is today, a three week long extravaganza of international culture and arts. FIC is seen as the most important international festival (key word is international, there are many other great festivals that are not international in nature) in all of Latin America. In addition, there are only 3 other major events of this type in the world. Fun fact, among other big Latin American sponsors, good ol’ Microsoft in the US of A is also a sponsor.

Alright then, looks like I stumbled upon a good place to be. I just have a night so I left to go explore. Although it feels like a city because of all the activity and interesting things to do/see, I should really call it a town. It has all the culture of a big city, but is very condensed into a relatively small area and population. Walking is the perfect way to get around.

Today is just a Thursday and only the second week of the 3 week event. Even so, performers are everywhere and it feels like a Friday night in any other big city.

Everywhere you turn there are alleys that lead to other areas, and little hole-in-the-wall bars and restaurants. The entrances to these places can be very small and obscure, but once you step through the door they open up and can be huge inside, sometimes with several floors and many rooms. Here in these places you can find a whole other world of people and activity. I follow the noise and keep my head on a swivel for alleys to go down and check out.

The night goes on and I meet up with some locals and new friends from the hostel. We grab more drinks at a locals apartment, getting a feel for what it would be like to live here. Later we grab more food and then head to a club type place. Buildings are packed close together and everything is built up rather than out. It’s hard not feeling like you are still in the colonial era, besides the bass heavy electronica music of course. Really cool to party in architecture like this. Whether in the colonial era or the modern day, we are still doing the same thing, getting drunk, meeting other people, and dancing the night away.

Bars don’t stop serving alcohol until around 3 or 4 in the morning here it seems. If the party is good and the drinks are flowing, they’ll keep selling them past that. I don’t exactly remember what time we headed back, but the sun wasn’t too far from rising. If this is on a Thursday, I wonder what Fridays and Saturdays are like? Although I just have the one night it was still a good one. Topped it off with some bomb food.

In the morning I woke up early to walk around more and see the town in the daylight. The girl that ran the hostel said she could show me the good spots to see the city from so we took my bike and went for a ride. Man is it helpful having a local guide for these roads. “derecho aqui”, “izquierda aqui”, etc, etc.

From a high vantage point I can’t capture the place in one photo. Is it a town, or is it a city? I guess I’m not sure. Here it is in two photos from right to left though.

She had to get back to work so I dropped her off and set out to see more of the area.

Everything is colorful.

Being a cultural arts hub, it’s a big city for art students, obviously, and there are several universities. Lots of young people.

Little corridors lead to places, all unknown. It’s impossible to see them all.

I met an older lady while walking around the steep streets. We chatted (still in broken spanish for me) and I walked with her as she went to the market. Really nice lady. She told me about the history of the town and what the different areas have. As we chatted she would constantly pause to greet other locals as they passed. An embrace with a kiss on the cheek was the most common. Everyone seems to know everyone here.

Eventually it was time for me to check out of the hostel and find a different place to go see. Maybe I’ll head SE to Queretaro, I heard it is also a pretty old town.

I brought the bike down the alley where my hostel is and parked it out front. My panniers are heavy and it’s easier to load the bike when it’s close. After finishing packing I came outside to leave and found a Honda 230 dirtbike parked near mine in the alley. A guy was standing next to my bike and we said hey and shot the shit for a few minutes. Said he had a KLR himself and just came to say hey. He asked how long I had been in town for, I said that everything is booked so unfortunately just the one night. He said that’s ridiculous and not enough time for Guanajuato. He said he grew up here and his parents have a place near town where he was staying for the weekend, I should just come stay there. Tomorrow he can show me around the area and show me the other side of Guanajuato that travelers don’t normally see. The offroad riding side :-)

Deal. Meet Jose, his amigo Dano, and his pops who just so happens to be an ex-competitive enduro racer.

Tomorrow, time to hit the dirt.

**seantully** · #21 22 Oct 2013

I spent the night at Jose’s parents beautiful home just outside of Guanajuato last night. Today I woke up to a delicious and traditional mexican breakfast prepared by Jose’s mom Laura. Our plan was to do some riding up in the hills around Guanajuato and get a feel for what the area has to offer in terms of dirt riding.

Taylor, Jose’s neighbor and childhood friend, showed up on his Honda 350 for the ride (he’s got about 15 bikes, mostly sweet classic road bikes. Also, if you are interested in some great quality riding boots, check out his families boot company Gasolina Boots, hand crafted here in Guanojuato). Jose’s dad hadn’t seen this one so he gave it a sit, he seemed pleased.

We took off and headed out of town, climbing higher and higher into the hills that encircle Guanajuato.

Once we climbed to the ridgeline we followed it into a small town and stopped for a bite.

The menu had Tostadas but they were only 20 pesos (about $1.50) so I figured I should order two. Definitely too much food. I love eating in Mexico.

Satisfaction

Just a mile or two down the road again we turned off and hit the dirt.

The riding was fun and the pace was good. The terrain varied quickly and widely. Some areas were full of green trees.

Some areas where much more open and scenic.

The bikes were happy and so was I.

Shit yeah, here comes the rain!

The shittier and more difficult the terrain the better, as far as I’m concerned.

It dumped rain for maybe an hour, and even hailed for a brief minute. We soaked it in and kept bombing. Eventually we came to what is normally a pretty dry creekbed.

All the rain had changed that though. Saweet, my first decent water crossing!

We walked it with a stick to see what the ground was like underneath. No big rocks just heavy silt, perfect. The water was about up to our knees so we cracked the throttles open and let em rip.

Bikes across. The locals waiting for the water to die down seemed impressed.

Taylors bike had lost some power so we stopped for a bit and let stuff dry out.

The sun came back out and you could see it baking the water right out of the hills again. Weather seems to change here pretty fast.

Taylor pulled the plugs, drained his carb, and had her running again lickety split.

We cracked the throttles again and burned back up in elevation towards the ridgelines.

Beautiful riding up here.

I see a telephone pole. We must be getting near town again.

Jose said this is the last highest point, from here it’s all elevation drop back down into Guanajuato. Having a blast.

Vanity shot.

A few more miles and we were winding our way back into town.

When we made it back to Jose’s house we were all both soaked and satisfied. I feel like this was the most fun day of dirt riding that I have had. I’m not sure exactly why though. If I look at it on paper it was a pretty straightforward afternoon ride through the hills. It doesn’t feel like a normal day though, I feel like I had an absolute blast. Maybe it was because we had a little bit of everything? Good twisty tarmac, good dirt, fun shitty weather at times, and problems to solve (getting lost, sucking water into a motor, etc). Maybe it’s the whole package of Guanajuato, the riding, and the people that is making it so good here. Or maybe, just maybe, Mexico is just starting to soak it’s way into my bones, and color everything slightly differently.

When we got back home Jose’s mom had cooked us up an amazing authentic mexican dinner. Thanks Laura! After dinner we shot the shit for a bit then rolled into Guanajuato to partake in the saturday night festivities. FIC was still going on so the place was packed. We found a little bar and knocked a few drinks back and laughed about the day. After a few rounds of mescal we decided it was best just to get a bottle (PS apparently I really like Mescal). Here the bottles are pretty cheap. It’s likely made and distributed locally as the bottle appears homemade and has no labeling of any kind. Once again, hard not to feel like you are in a colonial era pub. No way to know what it is until you drink it, but damn is it good stuff. Tastes like mildly spiced tequila.

The night went on and the drinks flowed. Eventually our bottle was done and it was time to head to a different place. Walking around the alleys and twisty streets there is a cacophony of smells from all the food stands that line the streets. With a head full of mescal, each stand is all but irresistible. We choose wisely and go with a Guanajuato staple. Apparently this lady can be found here every Friday - Sunday, without fail. All the food is cooked by her during the day and then brought down to the street in buckets. The types of meat and toppings are many and the combinations of the options are endless. We ate here twice before the night was done.

Well Guanajuato, tomorrow I am heading out. Not sure where yet, but the time has come. Thank you for the good riding, good food, good people, and good times.

Guanajuato, congratulations, you are doing it right.

**seantully** · #22 24 Oct 2013

Time to hit the road again, I figure I’ll head east right now (for the most part) towards Mexico city. This is about 5 hours away though and I’ve heard there is plenty to see in between. One of those places I heard I should check out is called Queretaro. So this is where I pointed my bike.

Catch you later Guanajuato.

The roadwork here can be fairly elaborate sometimes.

Key word is sometimes. Other times it’s just good ol’ el natural.

I think I made a wrong turn though somewhere. This doesn’t look like a major road.

Yep, made a wrong turn. Here we go, this is more populated.

I stopped off at a restaurant up in the hills for a road-sammy. $1.50 for fresh delicious bread and fresh ingredients, hard to beat.

Heading up into the mountains the weather was chilly. Still no need for another layer yet though.

The road was twisty and scenic.

I stopped off in a small town called Atotonilco, about 20 miles before Queretaro.

I’m told that it’s a cool old town and there is a church here with a cool painted ceiling. Psshhhh, I’m in no rush, sure why not.

The outside had a patio that must have taken quite a while to make.

Honestly, I don’t know much about this place, or the paintings, but as an opinionated person, I can tell you that they appear to be old.

And elaborate.

I’m told that the entire ceiling, and all of the paintings on the walls in here, were hand done by a single person.

Place also had some pretty old word-work on the floor.

Outside, there were several families milling about. They appeared to be here touristing the location as well.

As I’m mounting my bike I feel something gently tug on my pant leg. I turn around and find two little boys and their grandmother. The boys were too shy but grandma told me they wanted to come see the bike and say hey. She said that they loved motorcycles. Little kids are the shit. I picked both of them up and plopped them on the bike.

I chatted with grandma for a bit and then turned around again to see a bunch more people. This is exactly why I want to know more spanish, knowing even just a little allows you to interact so much more with people.

Again more people showed up, so we got another photo with everyone. Not sure if they all knew each other or were just friendly? Fun group though.

Leaving Atotonilco there’s some cool stonework.

The town seemed pretty historically rooted in catholicism.

A little while later after being back on the road I came into San Miguel. I had been taking my time and it looked like weather was going to start rolling in so I didn’t really do much besides blow through it. I’m told though that it’s another interesting place to spend some time in.

Much bigger than Guanajuato.

As I head further east and inland the weather seems to be on average cooler and rain a bit more. The greenery and lakes are good giveaways.

Coming in to Queretaro it seems smaller than San Miguel and has a small feel too.

I found a hostel where I could pull my bike inside and unloaded my stuff.

Queretaro, like many of the cities in this region, is a very old place. Back in the day people didn’t have facebook or the internet. So instead people would gather in plazas and squares to chat, eat, socialize, and get up to speed on the recent going-ons around town. The plazas still exist today, but now there is free wifi in them, so people seem to gather to use that instead.

Here’s one of the plazas, pretty empty at night.

There are still people that use the plazas for socializing though, especially the younger people. I took this photo on a Sunday night. These kids were practicing a form of Brazilian martial art called Capoeira. Capoeira was developed by slaves in Brazil back in the 16th century. Slaves were not allowed to practice self defence or develop fighting skills so instead they developed a martial art whose techniques are masked as dance moves. It’s very acrobatic and is practiced to traditional Brazilian berimbau music. As the two boys practice-fought with each other the others (on the left) sang and played traditional string instruments to set the speed/tone of the fight/dance. Very rhythmic and easy to get lost in watching.

There seems to be lots of respect in latin culture for scholars and revolutionaries who helped move the country forward. This is a statue of a poet that was near the hostel.

Over the next couple days I explored the city more and got a feel for what the place is all about. The historical district is where it’s at and as expected, there is lots of history here.

Some of the buildings are private residences though. The homes usually have a central open air courtyard in the middle, like their own little oasis in the heavily built historic district. This old lady was greeted by her rottweiler as she came back from the market.

The vast majority of the buildings are public or retail though. There are many small gardens and they usually are surrounding a central square or plaza.

The sound of church bells tolling and pigeons flapping away as kids chase them is a common sound here.

There is a strong shopping community here as well and the area is apparently a purveyor of fine leathers and shoes. Many housewives in heels roam the streets in this part of town, hands toting freshly purchased bags of clothes.

Food can be had everywhere, and because of the clientele there are plenty of more expensive sit down restaurants whose outdoor dining spots encircle the prime locations around plazas.

I’m on a budget though and prefer to eat what the locals eat anyways. I like street food and usually will order whatever I see that I haven’t seen before. This time, my taste buds tell me that this is some sort of fried chicken with potatoes and a chile relleno. Of course one never really knows though, but it tasted good. I sat and gorged myself on two more types of tacos after this and people watched in one of the plazas for a bit.

A brazilian girl who's living in the hostel while teaching portuguese in town found out that I was into climbing. She was kind enough to show me the one and only climbing gym in town. It was tiny, but had a rad underground vibe. The people here are definitely into the scene and really do a lot with the little space that they have. I’ve now been here in Queretaro for 3 days and I’ll be leaving tomorrow to head towards Mexico city. Should only be a couple hour drive. I wonder what the largest metropolitan area in the entire western hemisphere will look like?

**Danko** · #23 24 Oct 2013

I like your ride repot very much

**seantully** · #24 31 Oct 2013

I got into Mexico city yesterday after a pretty chilly day on the road. I finally put my other layers on and even put my winter gloves on.

The road into Mexico City (everyone calls it DF which stands for Districto Federal) was uneventful as I opted to take Mex 57 which is a major thoroughfare. See what you get when you are prioritizing getting somewhere quickly rather than enjoying it? I took Mex 57 in to cut some time as I wasn’t feeling so hot though, picked up a cold in Queretaro I think.

Coming into DF and the buildings start to become tighter together and the amount of large billboard advertising picks up.

Not sure if I hit traffic or if the city is just always packed, but it took a bit to a while to actually reach my hostel. I booked a place in advance and found one that had some sort of street parking available (the nicer hostels that are in a very popular area don’t really have any parking available). When booking though I should have taken notice of the quality of their website (probably not updated in over a decade). Like an exploding star that once probably burned so bright, this place was now but a flicker of it’s former self and was on the tail end of it’s existence. When I arrived the owner checked me in and showed me the digs. It was straight out of the 70’s, but not in a cool funky way. There were walls with hand written notes from many years ago, and bunk beds stacked 3 tall to the ceiling that appeared not to have held a single sole for many years. It’s as if there was a time that this was a thriving destination, yet I was the only guest here and it looked like that had been the case for a while. There was a family living somewhere on the top floor with a couple babies, I felt like I was staying in their home. The place seemed not to have been updated in several decades and the only thing it was missing as a shag rug. I stayed the night since I was already there but it was just as expensive (if not more) than most of the other places so today I left and found a new place.

This place is much better and also cheaper.

People must hate when I show up with all my dirty kit.

Because I’ve been a bit under the weather I’ve mainly been resting and eating an obscene amount of food (the latter probably doesn’t help the cold, I just like doing it). As Burninator mentioned, the pastor tacos are very good. *Shout out to Matty-boom-batty, these are my favorite tacos right now.

My new friends Jose and Dano (who I met in Guanajuato) just so happen to live in DF. Looks like they have planned some riding this weekend for us. Not sure what the details are, but I’m told we’ll be gone two days and that I should pack light for dirt. I’m stoked.

**seantully** · #25 2 Nov 2013

It’s Saturday morning around 6am and I’m heading out of the hostel I’m staying at to meet up with Jose and Dano for a weekend ride. They’ve planned out a route and I really know nothing about it, I’m always down to ride though, so don’t need much convincing. They say it’ll be a two day ride and told me to pack light for dirt. Sounds good to me.

I meet up with Jose at his place and we hit the road. We stop at a circus tent for some breakfast and to meet up with Dano. These tents are all over the freeway as you head out of DF (Mexico City, District Federal) and are accompanied by people waving flags to try and lure in customers. Each sells a slightly different variation of each others items.

This places specialty is biria, similar to beef flank that’s been pot-roasted. It may look like a lot of meat but each of those plates only has two tacos on them. They just come with a metric shit-ton of meat. I added the extra to the soup for the added flavor-flave. And yes, it was very cheap.

Dano showed up on his KLR as well. Check out this KLR bro-down.

We hit the freeway and headed north towards the state of Hidalgo.

After a while of heading north we turned off onto the more favorable secondary roads as we wound our way towards the mountains. Dano, the route planner for the weekend, said that we’ll be riding up in the Sierra Mountain range for the next two days. We are currently on the west side of them (the dryer side), and we’ll be crossing over onto the east side (the wetter side).

The first turn onto dirt. Mmmmm, I like dirt.

The road dipped and curved as we hunted around the Sierra ranges doorstep, looking for a place to enter her marvelous abode.

The roads were scenic and small communities dotted the area. I like the small single lane roads with stacked rock fences. Riding them is very relaxing, I could meander down them for days and days.

The cattle are less amused by the roads than we are.

In a river valley we stopped for a break alongside a creek. Dano and Jose road this trip several months ago in the dry season. They said it was incredibly hot and dry. Nothing was green and the route was absolutely covered in dust. I think I much prefer the current state of things.

Farming is the name of the life-game here and the communities that exist in the area flourish or flounder depending on it’s success..

The communities are all nestled into the base of the Sierra’s. They farm right up to the edge. I see solid walls like this and all I think is “climbing can be had here”.

In this small town we found our entrance to the Sierra’s that we had been searching for. We had been knocking at her doorstep for a while as we wound around through the foothills, now it was time to come inside. The road is just rural dirt route cut through the mountains but I feel like Bilbo Baggins from lord of the rings starting a journey into the mountains with his mates.

Here’s a shot looking down into town.

We dropped down a couple gears and began grinding our way through the twisty roads.

We got pretty high then started coming back down to drop into a valley.

When Dano and Jose were here several months ago this bridge didn’t exist. They chose to ride through the river instead. Sounds like fun, might have been a bit more difficult this time of year though.

This bridge, although less fun for us, makes it much easier for the two communities on either side of this valley to travel, trade, and communicate with one another. .

We headed out of the second town and climbed again in elevation.

The road was pretty wide with plenty of room for other traffic. Although we saw none while we were on it.

Lots of good vantage spots to look down on where we had been earlier.

Here is the river that we had crossed and the ridgeline behind it was what we had come up and over earlier.

Three happy bikes.

Here we got to the top of the second ridgeline. The weather was a bit chilly but no need for thermal gear.

After the second ridgeline we started descending again towards a small community. This place is centered around tourism of some pretty wild caves they have in the area. There are several large hotels to accommodate the influx of people. Not sure what way they come into the town but I’m pretty sure it’s not the way that we came in.

We went past the touristy section and out towards the back exit of town where we would pick up the road again. First we stopped for some mexican corn on the cob.

Boiled corn on a wood fire, rolled in cheese and chilli powder. ~.50cents.

The town is socked in by views like this. Really feels like the area is a very small pocket of human existence that mother nature is reluctantly allowing to exist right on her front step. The forest and hills seem to encroach on every part that humans stake a claim to.

Here’s the exit out of town and back up into the mountains.

With every gain in elevation the road got foggier and wetter. This road looked like it had recently been re-graded, maybe after a large rainfall had wrecked it. This meant that everything was nice and slick. Good fun.

The road doesn’t actually look that bad, but it’s like riding on top of a birthday cake. You ride on it for a couple hundred yards and it collects in just the best places (tires, suspension, chain, swingarm, etc).

Again we found ourselves in a small little village.

Wonder if the Shire is around here?

The bikes looked good here.

We took a left and headed back into the woods.

Jose’s bike had accumulated some water in his carb and was running a bit dodgy. We stopped to drain it. It’s handy having everything easy to access and simple on these bikes. Think a T-mod re-route for the carb is next on Jose’s mod list.

The sound and sight of big (for latin america) dirty bikes is not a normal occurrence around these parts. Anywhere you stop for more than a couple minutes people seem to come out to see what’s up. This guy was pretty funny, his kid was stone cold serious though.

The area here is super lush, supposedly they have had a lot of rain recently.

It was the late afternoon now and we were nearing our destination for the night. A small pueblo called Nicholas Flores up in the mountains.

It wasn’t quite sunset, but with all the fog and cloud cover things were starting to get darker.

We found pavement, must be getting close now.

As we came around another switchback we could see on the other side of the ravine there had been a massive mudslide. A wall of mud a couple hundred yards long had just slid right off the hill side and taken out the road. We came around the ravine to the start of the slide. There were several busses stopped here but none had people in them. This must have happened a while ago. There were tire tracks through the slide though, so we knew we could at least get further than the busses did.

There was some skid plate scraping and I tipped over at the start pretty close to the edge but we made it through. A guy on the other side seemed pretty surprised that we had made it through, even more surprised when I pulled my helmet off and he saw I was a gringo. We had some GoPros going so There’ll be a video of the entire weekend at some point, it’ll probably include a clip or two of this spot. There was one section that looking back on the video wasn’t exactly as safe as we thought it was, as two feet from where our tires rolled was a completely vertical drop. I believe it is denoted in the video with a “Holy shit?!” (7:50). Had we have tipped over there to the left we would have been dropped right off the edge, expecting to find ground to plant a foot but only finding open air. With a solid cliff face this wouldn’t have been that bad, but we were on a mudslide and the edge only existed because it had simply broken off and slid down the hill-side. It had been raining for as long as we had been on the road, who’s to say it was done with it’s crumbling? Glad it didn’t go while we were on it though. Here’s the uncut clip from my GoPro for this section.

<iframe width="853" height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/JtTwZLZPzKg?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Jose and Dano got their two bikes across, again with some skid plate scraping but no real trouble.

After this section it was another 10 minutes and we were into town with the bikes up on their kickstands. Proud of ourselves, and with a fun day of riding under our belts.

As with any small town, an outsider is easy to spot, and soon there are people from around the town talking with us, asking us where we are staying, and inviting us to partys. Apparently tonight is a special night for the town as there is a joint wedding and sweet 16 party. Sweet, I’ll take the food, tequila, and dance package please. In any order will do just fine.

**seantully** · #26 2 Nov 2013

After a night of free drinks and dance we awoke and rubbed the sleep out of our eyes. I’m glad it was dark last night, as my choice of clothing was pretty terrible. Jose said to pack light for the weekend, I took it literally and brought no normal clothes to wear while not riding. So I improvised and wore my motorcycle liners to the wedding and sweet 16 party last night. I used a GPS cable as a belt to keep my silky smooth pants up. Jose and Dano decided it was easier to just tell people I was from Germany so that other people wouldn’t question my clothing style.

We then went searching for some food. The climate and elevation here does cool stuff with the sky.

We walked to the town square where we were told there would be good street food for breakfast.

We found this lovely lady, and of course, she knew exactly what the **** was up with good tamales.

She had several different kinds, I tried one of them all.

She also had a magical green beverage. Can’t remember the name, it tastes like some sort of hot and thick juice drank, but apparently it is not juice at all but rather it is made with maize? Either way, it’s my new favorite hot beverage and I felt like a newborn champion after imbibing it.

Topped it off with one of these fancy things. Again, some sort of tamale.

Full and content we said thanks and walked around the town center. Didn’t take long as this is it.

There is a nice little garden though.

And here’s the big man himself, Nicholas Flores, the hombre the town is named after.

This is some sort of church I believe.

And here’s a statue of an important guy doing something important.

After walking and chatting for a bit we came back to the bikes and our rooms.

I apologize to the cleaning person, all my stuff was pretty darn muddy.

We packed up the bikes, and topped up on gas bought from the the place we stayed at.

We headed out of town and back onto the dirt.

The roads looked like they would be good.

And of course, they were.

The good roads looked like they would continue for longer still.

And again, they did.

Dropping down into the valleys we found small creeks.

And seemingly randomly placed churches.

There were bridges as well.

And kids going about their business down below in the river.

We also found a river without a bridge.

It needed to be crossed so we checked it for any big rocks that would dump us into the wet.

Here’s a little video of us crossing (0:41 sec).

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After the bikes were across we stopped for a wee snack.

“Hey look, it’s a cow-asaki” - Jose

The roads got bigger now and more open.

Still nice and scenic though.

We would come in and out of towns, some bigger than others. But none larger than a handful of buildings and maybe a small town square like this one.

We stopped here for a minute as Jose had spotted something unique.

In the town square there was a wall that was full of phrases and cool saigns. The wall says “Typical phrases and words that identify us”. Little places like this are exactly why traveling by motorcycle is so special. When you aren’t reliant on public transportation or tourist buses, you are able to slow down, make an effort to experience stuff outside the box and maybe even get out into some remote places. When you can do that, you will often find a unique experience and a cool view into the unadulterated culture of an area. Pretty cool.

A little while later and we found pavement again.

We were hungry and this guy seemed inviting, so we stopped at his restaurant.

They whipped us up some food pretty quick.

And we also tried some of their home brew apple wine. It was more rocket fuel than wine.

After eating we hopped back on the tarmac of what used to be the main highway through Mexico to Texas. Now that there are much better options this one happens to be pretty empty. It also happens to be absolutely ****ing radical. The number of perfectly cambered turns flowing into opposing and equally perfectly cambered turns is uncountable. In my opinion this is the best scenic curvy road that I have ever been on. The great part is that it’s not just a couple miles long, it’s at least a solid 1hr+ of exactly this.

In addition to the turns, the road sliced right along the side of some pretty drastic scenery.

After the turns subsided we began exiting the mountain range and coming back down towards the flatter plains.

On our final exit off the mountain we crossed a bridge and stopped for a view.

From here on we would be heading back towards the immense urban sprawl that is DF (mexico city) and away from the rural simplicity of where we had been throughout this lovely weekend. There are pros and cons to both, but I have very much enjoyed my little backroads trip through the state of Hidalgo. I’ve had a pretty damn good weekend in the dirt, thanks Jose and Dano for a great time. On the way back into DF I picked up a flat on the freeway. There wasn’t much of a shoulder and not much light to patch a tire with, but I didn’t really care. It’s hard to have a little ol’ flat sour such a fantastic weekend.

**seantully** · #27 7 Nov 2013

Jose put a video together from the footage that we shot throughout the ride into the state of Hidalgo. Thanks Jose for a fun visual memory of the weekend.

*looks like I can't embed the video right here so you'll have to use the link.

**seantully** · #28 9 Nov 2013

Back in the endless city of DF, Jose has been kind enough to put me in touch with one of his friends, Dante. Dante just so happens to have a spare room in his apartment and said I could flip him a few bucks and crash as long as I want. This would be cheaper than a hostel and I would get my own room? Deal. Dante lives in an area of DF called Tlalpan.

The apartment complex that he lives in is in all senses of the word, massive. There are 32 separate towers, each tower has two main columns of apartments. As you enter and progress through the area there are two separate security checkpoints and countless foot security patrolling the area, clicking in and out on their walkie-talkies. There are a lot of students and working class families that live in the towers. The place seems like a nicer place for people to live. Although it may be a little bougie for my tastes personally, the location is good, and I don’t have to worry about my bike being out on the streets at night, getting caught up in peoples tomfoolery. As a bonus, Dante is also a climber, and being in Tlalpan we are situated just about 20 minutes from some pretty damn good outdoor climbing. More on that later though.

Here’s the joint.

Insurgentes is one of the main streets that splits DF in two, from the north to the south. Tlalpan is located south of the centro area and is nestled right in at the southern tail of Insurgentes. It’s a relaxed area with a lived in feel to it. Sort of like the burbs, but with a bit more laid back cool and less highbrow. The area is a place for people to live that don’t want the mayhem and hecticness of the center of DF. It’s a place that university students and working class families live in and commute elsewhere for school and work. This demographic leads to a lot of people fluxing in and out throughout the day, and a busy bus system.

Here is the tail end of the vehicular river that is Insurgentes. Jump on this and soon it becomes several lanes wide in both directions and in 20 minutes you can be in the center of DF. IF you are on a motorcycle of course. Try to commute it in a car expecting 20 minutes and you’re gonna have a bad time. With so many people in DF there is alllllways traffic, having a bike allows you to split lanes, maneuver around the plethora of smog belching buses, and ride the occasional sidewalk to get through it all. Although I don’t do anything the locals aren’t doing, having a big bike and a foreign license plate is similar to painting a bullseye on your back in terms of police attention. A couple hundred pesos slipped into the passport usually gets you out of any infraction. Nobody wants to do paperwork, and everyone gets to get on with their day.

The community of Tlalpan revolves around the “Centro Historico” area. This is the perk of living here, as it’s laid back and full of cafe’s, small restaurants, and little bars.

In the center of the neighborhood, as with many places in Mexico, there is a main square and usually some sort of garden.

No town hall is complete without some entrenched protesters either.

There’s some cool street art to be found if you take the time to look.

This time of year (end of Oct. early Nov.) is important in Mexico because of Dia De Muertos (Day Of The Dead). It’s similar to Halloween but it’s history is rooted in indigenous culture and Aztec festivals. It does encapsulate Halloween though and is typically celebrated from Oct. 31 - Nov. 2nd. Explosions from fireworks lit from rooftops and sidewalks can be heard starting in the early morning and trickle on throughout the three days.

I’m not sure how much I’ve mentioned this, but I like to eat. In fact, I like to eat quite a bit. I would maybe even go so far as to say that I pick places to travel to partly based on the food that is available. Luckily, good food is easy to come by in Mexico. For example, my homeboy Ruben here slangs tacos at this stand all day long. 5 tacos of any kind for 25 pesos (less than $2) is the deal. Sometimes I come twice a day for snacks.

There’s also a nice sized indoor market if you are wanting a bit more variety. Pretty much anything can be found in these central food-hubs, every now and then mangos that are the size of your face.

On a good day I can identify 10% of the stuff sold, I’ll give most anything a try once though.

Sometimes I do want something more familiar. Something a little closer to home. I’m a fan of fruits, luckily baking with apples is a culturally universal thing in the Americas. Familiar treats such as this can be found at certain locations (~$1.50).

Eventually I do get bored though and blast into Mexico City centro to shoot the shit with Jose and Dano. Here we can go out and grab a bite somewhere else, for example maybe some rotten fruit that’s repurposed and baked into a delicious dessert.

This little morsel with sugar?/milk?/cream? drizzled on it, is similar to your grandmas baked bananas. Yes it looks worse than g-ma’s, but I believe it tastes even better.

After all the mud in Hidalgo, we needed to get the bikes cleaned and give mother earth her dirt back.

After cleaning the bikes, Jose showed me a neighborhood spot for some authentic Yucatan cuisine. It’s a good sign when you see lots of people outside patiently waiting to fill their face with whatever happens to be on the menu.

For us the menu included

with a bunch of salt, spices, and salsa. Feeling hung over? Drink this and then go run a marathon.

We had some sort of sandwiches as well. This one had octopus in it I believe.

I sampled a number of things here to try and get a variety of flaves. Now let’s be clear. I have never had Yucatan cuisine, and this place is on the fancier end of the continuum and thus possibly not completely indicative of what people eat on the regular. But lean a bit closer and let me tell you something. IT’S ****ING DELICIOUS. Whatever they have going on over in that peninsula, I want more of it. If this is an indication of the food I’m going to find when I head that way, ohhhh buddy help me now. If my belly wasn’t so full after eating this, I would have jumped on the bike right then and blasted out to the Yucatan, smothering my body in all of the food I could find along the way.

Soon enough though, soon enough. Right now, it’s time to work off all that grub and get out to do some climbing.

**seantully** · #29 12 Nov 2013

Being the second largest city in the world, DF has a lot to offer. From the various latin and foreign cultures that congregate here, a wealth of activities are born and the excuse of “I’m bored”, just doesn’t fly. As with any big city, you can find something new to do on any given day, usually you don’t have to look very far either. One activity that I am always in pursuit of, is climbing. Turns out though, there’s some pretty darn good spots that happen to be right at the edge of the city.

Much like adventure motorcycling, climbing is one of those activities that for the most part is completely selfish, and for all practical purposes, it doesn’t contribute anything to anyone else but those that are the ones doing it in that very moment. Yvon Chouinard - a famous climber, entrepreneur, and personal hero of mine, once called climbers “conquerors of the useless”.

It is an activity that is for you, and you alone. However, just like adventure motorcycling, climbing can be a good vector for teaching you important lessons about yourself, life, and the world around you. For me, the two addictions are about the same stuff. Challenging oneself both physically and mentally, putting yourself outside of your comfort zone and into new experiences, and through the process, hopefully attaining some sort of personal growth while having a bitchen good time.

My new roommate, Dante, said he’d show me some of the local spots, so we set out to see what DF had to offer. After weaving in and out of traffic we reached the very outskirts of DF where the smaller communities start to fade away into the mountains. Here we found what is technically a city park, and is contained within the governance of DF. It’s a place that seems transplanted straight out of the pacific northwest, and at 8k ft above sea level, the geography is surprisingly similar as well. We parked the car and started the hike in.

The hike in is less than a kilometer, but we gain 1k ft in elevation in that distance. Currently we are at around 9k ft, I felt out of shape pretty quick.

The trail to the location where we’ll be slapping some rock cuts off the main trail and heads straight up to the main walls.

There are 4 different areas in this park, we are headed to one called Segunda, it’s not the biggest area, but still has ~70 separate routes. Plenty for us.

We found the base of the wall that we were looking for, and I promptly got excited like a kid in a candy shop. This was the first bit of real climbing I’ve seen since I was in california.

We spent the early afternoon warming up and shaking off the dust on some warm up routes.

This is Dani, one of Dante’s friends, he also came to have some fun outside the city.

The views at the top of the routes were good. You can see most of DF in the background. Everything that isn’t concrete and steel is part of the park.

Dante said there was a really good route on another wall, so we went to go check it out.

Here we found our prize. This chunk of thick, vertical, dense useless rock may not look like much to most people, but this looks pretty damn sweet to me.

There were several routes on this wall, but the one that we wanted climb was the one that went right up the middle. I don’t remember the name of the route, or if it even had one. The rating was a 5.12a (if that means anything to anyone) and was a technical and fairly sustained face climb with small feet, crimps, and several two-finger pockets. The moves were fluid, and super fun. Here’s a quick vid I made of the route (~3 min).

Dani had been projecting this route and made his first ascent of it today. Congrats Dani.

Dante also jumped on and got’er done. Shit yeah Dante.

Eventually the end of the day came and we scraped together the last of the routes that we could. I was burnt, my fingers were toast, and the day was done. We ended up hiking down in the dark which wasn’t ideal, but the long day of good climbing made up for it.

20 minutes of driving later and we were back in Mexico City, drinking

and eating food. Haven’t been to a ton of places where I can spend a good full day climbing, not hike in very far, and be back in time for dinner no sweat. Cheers Mexico City.

**seantully** · #30 12 Nov 2013

Last week Jose and I hung out with our new friend Edgardo and did some maintenance on our bikes. We met him at a motorcycle shop a week or so earlier and after we got to talking for a bit he said if we had anything we needed to do, he had a shop we could work in. Meet Edgardo.

We all got some work done on the bikes, and it was really helpful having such a well equipped shop to do the work in. Beets working in a parking lot anyday.

Edgardo said we should go riding with him and his dad this weekend. They said there are some nice areas to explore if you like getting off road. Sounds great to me.

Saturday morning I met up with Edgardo and his dad, Riccardo. We were headed roughly North for a city called Toluco. It’s a growing metropolitan area and is also the capital city for the state of Mexico. This metropolitan part wasn’t the part we were interested in though.

Along the way we stopped for some tacos.

After getting through Toluca we turned into a pullout where we could start the dirt. The weather and scenery here is very similar to the pacific northwest, except we are at around 8500ft and technically in the tropics.

The riding was good and they showed me a bit of everything.

We had smooth wooded areas.

Wet and muddy areas.

Log crossings.

Wrong turns.

and plenty of spills. Well...just me. 14 if I’m being honest.

After the above tumble Riccardo said I’ve earned a

. Plenty more happened after this though….so more

for me right?

They showed me tight slick sections.

River/pond/things?

And fun undergrowth trails.

Every now and then they let me rest.

The terrain varied widely as we road through various areas. They both knew the region well and road here often. Everything was new to me and every turn brought something exciting. There were many different tracks and routes to turn onto, and sometimes no tracks at all. Then you could simply just go wherever you wanted to. Here we found a playground of rolling hills, mud, and water crossings.

Sometimes it got pretty deep, but none of the bikes got flooded. This pic was near the edge of a crossing so deep but not too deep to stop.

This crossing got a water level right up onto the tank, you can see the water grass stuck onto the pannier racks. Good fun.

I say “water crossing” like it was something that we needed to cross. We didn’t need to cross anything, it was just fun to.

It was a beautiful place to play for the day, with endless amounts of land, forest, and trails to ride.

I put together for the day. Thanks for running me through the ringer guys, I had a blast.

After we left Toluca we headed to a small tourist town for some afternoon grub before heading back to DF. The town explodes on weekends and is a very popular place for people to come to when they want to get out of the city. Today it was slammed with bikers for some reason. Mostly harleys and cruisers. We fit right in with all of our mud.

We parked our bikes out of the main line-up to not embarrass all the chrome.

We walked around for a bit, grabbed some food and shot the shit about the good riding we had sampled throughout the day. I had a blast today, and it was great fun riding with Edgardo and Riccardo. They showed me a dualsport wonderland and gave me a taste for what the area has to offer. They said it only gets better though, as there’s lots more to ride around here. By the end of the day I was beat but all I wanted was more. They said the riding today was a 3-4 out of 10 in terms of difficulty and of what’s available. I got dumped and spun-off the bike all day long like a baby on a bicycle (I counted 14 times I had to pick the bike up), and there’s harder and better riding to be had...shit yeah! I could definitely learn a lot from riding with these guys, I didn’t see them go down once all day.

I’ve caught myself several times now reclassifying the “best day of riding” that I’ve had so far. I’m going to hold my tun on this one, as I think I’m going have to just accept that there’s lots of good riding to be had down here.

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