The incredible church on the plaza in Copola.

We left town and made our way to the Pacific Coast and to Mazatlan. After about an hour on the road I realized that I didn’t have my backpack and that I needed to turn back to look for it.
When we left town I somehow left my backpack, containing photocopies of all of my important documents, unfastened on top of my saddle bags. Most of them were photocopies, except for the original title to my motorcycle! I know, I know, I too make fun of people who do dumb things. Mistakes happen.

Ian and I talk things over. He is going to push on to Mazatlan maybe even going as far as Puerto Vallarta before dark. He has a much tighter schedual for his trip than I do. He needs to be in Ushuaia by January. I’ll try to catch him but I doubt it will happen. He rides fast and rarely stops. We exchange numbers and I am scorching the pavement back to Copala to try to retrieve my bag.

The bag is nowhere to be found. No one has seen it. At this point I try to asses the situation from a local’s perspective: A gringo leaves his fabulous backpack, full of who knows what. Do I turn it in? Nahhhh, he can afford another one!

After I convince myself that I won’t find it I decide to leave and cut my losses. I get ten miles down the road and realize that life would be a whole lot easier with that bag. I ride back to town and get a room for the night, now I can continue the search in earnest.

There are a bunch of local boys playing in the town square, they are all remnants of the parade. Their ages range from about 6 to 12 years old. I ask them to help me look for the bag. They start looking right away. I let them know that their will be 200 pesos ($20 USD) in it for them if they can find it and bring it back to me. All these little guys are fun, nice, and very inquisitive of my gringo ways.
After a couple of wild gooses chases there is no sign of my bag.
It’s Sunday night in this beautiful little town. There is a holiday the following day so no one has to work on Monday morning. The square is full of couples and kids. All of them are smartly dressed and in good spirits. This place has a nice feel to it.  We seem to have turned away from the town square back in the US.  I wish that was not the case.  It is the heart and soul of these communities.

One of the boys from earlier, Pedro, leads me over to the side of the church. He points to a weird stone built into the side of the church, about twelve feet from the ground. He tells me that this is the “Carra de Diablo” (the face of the Devil). Pedro instructs me,” throw a rock at the face of the Devil!” He then proceeds to demonstrate. When he hits the stone it looks a lot like a well practiced lay-up. I give it a shot. I miss and Pedro rapidly fires out a “Malo!” (bad). I miss a few more times. Each missed followed quickly by a stinging “Malo!” I’m cracking up at this point. They way he says “Malo!” is just perfect. I can just picture him and his friends, bored out of their minds, throwing rocks at the face of the Devil, each miss being severely chastised by his companions. I finally hit it and he takes me back to the town square where he rejoins his friends. For around three hundred years kids have been throwing rocks at the face of the Devil. It doesn’t even look like a anything anymore.  I’m glad I could be a part of the ritual.

I head off to a rather restless night sleep.

November 20th, Copala, Mexico to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico – 600km on route 40 and Mexico 200

It was a long day in the saddle. I’m not too sure on the mileage. I left Copala around 8am . I didn’t get in to Puerto Vallarta until 8pm or so.

I saw the very recent aftermath of three accidents today.
There was a huge section of the shoulder of the road covered in fresh shrimp, set out to dry in the sun. They were nicely sized. With no exaggeration there were actual tons of shrimp drying in the sun. I took some photos but I erased a couple of weeks worth of stuff reformatting my memory card.

I got myself massively turned around in Mazatlan . As an observation, all cities are easy to enter, but very tricky to leave. Even more so when you are in full riding gear and it’s 95 degrees out.
I stopped in Nuevo Vallarta to see if there were any boats in town that I knew. No luck. However, I did meet a cool family in the hotel lobby that let me check my email on their laptop. They were really enthusiastic about my trip. They even video taped my spiel about my trip and why I’m doing it.

The day started out in the mountains as it has been since the Tex/Mex border, really. At about mid day I was back to sea level with a dramatic rise in temperature. Basically, it got hot, I got sweaty, and I got diaper rash! Without going into too much detail, my arse was a bit cranky that evening. At least it was just the outside that was fiery. I don’t know if I could handle intestinal distress and diaper rash at the same go. I slept on my stomach that night.

November 21st, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

Laid low. I did get a lot of work done on my computer and my journals. I was lonely.

November 22nd, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico to Barra De Navidad, Mexico– 200km on Mexico 200

I left the hotel around 10am.

As I was leaving town I spotted a couple of fully laden bikes like mine. They were parked at a great overlook of Banderas Bay. I stopped in and said hello to Phillip and Claudin, a French Canadian couple that had ridden their BMW F650’s from Quebec. I told them about what a great town Barra De Navidad, Mex was and they quickly changed their tentative plans to head to Manzanillo, Mex for the night.

We arrived in Barra and after a lengthy search, found a not so reasonable hotel room. Along the way to finding the rooms we had a couple of beers and met another French Canadian couple. They run fishing charters out of Barra and convinced us to fish in the AM.
I stayed out late that night catching up with my buddy Arturo that owns the bar La Azotea. It had been a good five years since we had last seen each other so there were a lot of stories to exchange. Not the least of which was that Arturo and his new wife Amanda were pregnant with a boy! Congratulation dude!

November 23rd, Barra De Navidad, Mexico

Fishing was good times. Again I had some funny pics but alas they have been lost in the formatting process. We caught some tuna and a couple of beautiful Mahi-Mahi. There were some migrating humpbacks that made a brief but close appearance.

After fishing Arturo took me and my bike to his friend Chori, a local mechanic. His shop doubles as a parts store/scrap yard. It was AWESOME. These pictures were great, I am truly sorry that I erased them. Chori organized a new rear tire for me from Guadalajara. His sister would pick it up and have it bussed to Barra in the morning.

Claudin, Philip, and I marinated some mahi, made some salsa, crisped some tortillas, and drank a bottle of Merlot. It was a grand feast of freshly caught fish cooked on a camp stove in the parking lot of our Hotel.

November 24th, Barra De Navidad, Mexico

Claudin and Philip left this morning. I needed to wait for my tire, so I’d be a day behind them. Generally I ride faster than they do. So we figured that in three days I could make up the distance which would put us all in Puerto Escondido at about the same time. They are a lot of fun. We will ride again!

I wasn’t 100% sure what was going to happen with Chori and the tire today. So I planned on staying another night as to avoid stressing myself out. Plan for the worst, and hope for the best.
I met another guy on a similar bike to mine yesterday. He and I fiddled with my bike all morning. We didn’t uncover any Gremlins. We hope it is just bad gas that has clogged the injectors.

I found some spark plugs to replace my existing ones to try and figure out why my bike was running like shit. While Chori put my new tire on I replaced the plugs, changed my fuel filter, blew all the dust out of my air filter, and ran some injector cleaner through my gas tank. She still ran like a bag of hammers.

That night I said goodbye to Amanda and Arturo, promising to return on the Northern leg, and packed my things for the morning.

November 25th, Barra De Navidad, Mexico to Lazzaro Cardenas, Mexico – 400km on Mexico 200

Nice roads, beautiful water. I stayed at the Delphin in Lazzaro. They let me park the bike in the lobby.

November 26th, Lazzaro Cardenas, Mexico to Somewhere just South of Grand Cruz, Mexico – 300km on Mexico 200
Acapulco was a nightmare to get through. Tons of speeding traffic, mostly VW beetles. There was terrible signage. Since the city is basically built into the cliffs and curves of the coast there is little to no line of sight to help you navigate. I’m also realizing that the GPS is to be mostly ignored when travelling inside a city. The GPS maps are not accurate enough to rely on and usually encourage you to make incorrect decisions based on inaccurate information. You definitely need to figure out which cities lie along your route past the city that you are currently lost and hungry in. That way if you spot a sign that points in the direction of the next major city on your route you should be headed in the right direction. I’m sure that is what most people do who depend solely on maps for navigation. The GPS is a crutch for sure, but, for the trip in general I can travel faster (not stopping for directions after every turn) and get lost less often then if I were to use maps only.

I got a hotel room at a no-tell motel outside of Grande Cruz. The set up was cool. Sleazy but perfect for motorcycle travel. I could park my bike right under my room, pull a huge curtain across the entrance of the garage and take a spiral staircase up to my room. Unless someone looked behind the curtain there was no way to tell what type of vehicle was parked there. I think it was like ten bucks for a night.

November 27th, Somewhere just South of Grand Cruz, Mexico to Puerto Escondido, Mexico – 200km on Mexico 200

It was just a short run to Puerto Escondido today. I grabbed a hotel for 120 pesos a night and uploaded my first 6 journals. After that I went down to the beach and caught a spectacular sunset.
I met up with Claudin and Philip for dinner. They had met up with some other riders. Moises, who looks like a thin Santa Claus, was riding a Harley to Argentina. When asked if he wore a helmet, he said that he did not. We then asked him about all the bugs hitting him in the face while he’s riding. He said they were a huge help in keeping him from falling asleep while he was driving. Every time one would hit him in the face he would wake with a start! He was hilarious, with a lot of motorcycle travel and information. Bill was there with his girlfriend. He had left his bike in San Cristobal to travel with his woman for awhile. We might meet up down the road.

They made great pizzas at El Jardin. The owner is from Naples, Italy.
November 28th, Puerto Escondido, Mexico to Ixtlan, Mexico – 500km on route 190

I tried to make San Cristobal before dark but couldn’t do it. I kept going after sunset but had a hard time figuring out which road to take in the dark. My GPS was way off. So I stayed in Ixtlan at another No Tell Motel. They delivered my food, which I had to order over the phone, to the room through a trapdoor in the wall. That way the staff could never see the faces of the people that frequent these places. The whole place was kind of creepy. The woman who delivered, and I assume, cooked my food found it very amusing that I would show my face and have a conversation with her.

November 29th, Ixtlan, Mexico to San Cristobal Las Casas, Mexico – 100km on route 190

I stopped and had lunch just as I got into town. I met some police officers outside of the restaurant. I took some great pictures with them, but, they are lost.

I stayed here on the suggestion of Philip and Claudin. I’m very glad I did. What a beautiful town. Unfortunately I had to spend a lot of time on the internet trying to get my computer running smoothly.

I spent the day looking around the city, and shopping for Zoe. I miss her badly.

El Centro in San Cristobal.

I bought some jewelery from a friend of mine that I knew from Barra De Navidad, he goes by the name Bear. I met him about five years ago. He lives and works in San Cristobal now. This is a picture of his workshop. He displays all is work in a beautiful shop right on main street.

My buddy Bear and his Jewelery workshop.

I packed my things that night and got ready to ride through the final miles of Mexico and across the first real border into Central America.