December 3, 2009

Mazatlan – Tepic, Mexico
Moving Time: 4:15
Stopped
Time: 2:56
181 Miles

What a relief–it was warm when I woke up. Sunny, too. Almost hot. Wait, yes, it got hot. My my, I am so unused to that feeling I almost didn’t recognize it.

I decided to bypass Mazitlan. I’d stopped just short of Mazatlan the night before, and really today I just wanted to ride. My friend Pierre (who I met in the Badlands two summers ago) has been emailing me with lots of travel tips since he travels a lot on the motorbike in Mexico. He told me this was a great road.

I’d just started south when I saw three BMWs stopped, apparently doing some roadside repairs. I shocked them when I took my helmet off–all three stared in disbelief at the GIRL stopping to help.

The Road

The Bikers

I helped lend advice on the patch, told them that a llanteria was about 2 km up the road, and lent them my Mini Foot Pump (sold by Twisted Throttle of course!)

The did their repairs, packed up, did not say thank you, and rode off. Oh well.

I’ll tell the rest of the day with pics

And then I stopped for lunch–I was STARVING! First meal of the day–about 2:30.

What to eat? Well, everywhere Iw as seeing signs for camerones (shrimp) for sale… so I opted for camerones a la meicana.

With hand made made-to-order tortillas

I spent a lot of time in the kitchen with the lady cooking–talking, asking questions, etc. when she served my food she sat down with me and we talked more…and more…

until i needed to start riding again. Lidia Lorena brought me into the store side of her business, and talked to me about a bunch of the handicrafts. She ended up giving me two of them. I HAD NO SPACE! But I shoved them in anyway, thanked her, and reciprocated the only way I knew how: offered to send her a post card from the end of the world. She liked that idea, and wants me to come back so she can show me some of the many fishing lakes they have there.