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The Mexico Motorcycle Trip
Baja and
Mainland Mexico - 1997
This is the story of our motorcycle adventure in Mexico during the 1997 Christmas break.
We had an incredible vacation, and my intent here is to share the high
points with my friends.
This is actually the first
travel report I ever posted on the Internet, and I did so about 10 years
ago. At the time, I scanned the prints with a cheap scanner to get
the photos in a digital form I could post. Recently, I had the
negatives professionally scanned, and not surprisingly, the image quality
is quite a bit higher. I revised this trip report to include the
updated scans as well as a few more photos.
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The two adventurers: that's me on the left, and John on
the right. It stopped raining just long enough to take this picture
on the first stop of our trip at La Bufadora.
We spent our first day
getting soaked by the tail end of the El Nino storms.
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What
Was It Like?
First, answers to the obvious questions about the
equipment and the trip:
The Photography Equipment. For you photography
fanatics, all shots were made with my Minolta X-700 and Fuji film (mostly
100 and 200 ASA). I used three lenses (the standard Minolta 50mm
1.7, a Vivitar 28mm 2.8, and an older all-metal Sigma 70-210). I did
not use any filters for most of the shots, and most shots were made in either the program or
aperture mode.
The Motorcycles. For you motorcycle fanatics, John
rides an 1100cc Yamaha Virago, and I ride a Harley Heritage Softail.
If you have to know, the Yamaha is a much faster and much smoother
motorcycle, and I would have preferred to be on it rather than the
Harley. Wherever we stopped, though, you can guess which bike drew
the crowds.
The Travel Itinerary. Simply stated, there was no
itinerary. We had a rough idea when the La Paz to Mazatlan ferry
ran, but that was about it. We basically didn't care how much or how
little we covered each day. We ended up covering about 3,200 miles
in 12 days. Most days consisted of about 250 miles on the
road. Neither bike ever went down (knock wood). The only close
call we had was when I stupidly pulled out in front of a car in La
Paz. Fortunately, the driver was more on the ball than I was, and he
screeched to a halt before turning me into a hood ornament. You
can't say anything bad about Mexican drivers as far as I am concerned.
The Food. For you food lovers, the food was incredible
and we never got sick. I believe the food in the Baja and in
Guadalajara was the best I have ever had in my life.
The Hospitality. We had no problems of any kind in
Mexico. The Mexican people treated us like kings, and made us feel very
welcome. A big part of that was probably due to the fact that for
most of our trip we went where few tourists go. I think the people
we met were impressed with how beautiful we found their country.
Enough background information...let's get on the road! |
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The first day we blew through Tijuana and rode through the
rain to Ensenada. Our first real stop was at La Bufadora (way outside of
town to the southwest). La Bufadora, I'm told, means "the
blowhole" in Spanish. It is a natural opening in the rocks, and when
the waves from the Pacific come crashing in, it shoots a spray about 150
feet in the air. It rained almost our entire first day, so the extra La
Bufadora spray didn't bother us at all. We were already soaked. No doubt
about it, we were a couple of crazy gringos. |
| We did about 270 miles down the Baja the first day, and it
rained so much we turned in early. We were caught in the tail end of the
El Nino rains, and we were soaked to the bone. About 5:00 p.m. I was so
cold I was afraid I couldn't ride safely, so Welker and I stopped in this
little hotel. I remember feeling the water seeping through my leather
jacket and shivering so badly I could hear my teeth clattering even over
the Harley's exhaust note. Even while soaked and freezing, I couldn't
remember when I had ever felt better or more alive.
We opted for a room with a private bathroom in this little Baja Hilton.
Our hotel room was $12 that night (we splurged the extra $5 for a private
bath). The hotel had an old-fashioned register you had to sign when
checking in. I was shivering so badly I couldn't sign my name. |
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My Harley the next morning, still soaked, with all my gear
loaded. It had stopped raining and we wanted to let the air dry our
things.
Our natural drying approach worked well enough.
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| Here I am about 100 miles down the road the next morning,
after the breeze dried us out a bit. |
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A typical
scene in one of the agricultural towns between the wine country and San
Quintin.
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We stopped in a small town so Welker could buy an o-ring for
his Yamaha, and these three kids immediately came over to check out the
motorcycles.
When I asked them to tell me their names, they did: Julio, Ignacio, and,
of course, Bob.
We weren't the first gringos to pass through these parts… |
Whoa....It's
Desolate Out Here....
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After about the
first 300 miles, things really started to get desolate. We had
entered the true Baja...
Soldiers were everywhere due to the problems Mexico had in
Chiapas. I asked this fellow at a Mexican Army outpost where the next gas
station was (the distances between towns, gas stations, etc. in the Baja
are great, and were already running on reserve). He smiled and pointed
down the road.
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| Here's what our FN-equipped friend pointed to....this fellow
in a little Toyota truck with a 55 gallon drum of GASOLINA and a hand
pump. Capitalism rules! |
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| Down the road a little further, and we spent our second
night in Guerrero Negro ("Black Warrior" in Spanish, the name of
a ship that sank there more than a
hundred years ago).
Guerrero Negro marks the halfway point down the Baja
peninsula. It is about 500 miles south of the U.S. border. I learned that
this is the largest salt-producing region in the world. The Mexicans have
an interesting way of mining the salt. They repeatedly flood shallow
plains with sea water, allow it to evaporate, and then they scrape off the
salt. It made for interesting riding conditions through muddy salt flats.
The salty mud, we later learned, was not too kind to the chrome plating on
our motorcycles.
Just outside of Guerrero Negro, we rode about 25 miles on dirt roads
(actually, they were salty mud) through the salt flats to reach Scammon's
Lagoon. I didn't realize the roads would be quite this bad. We were
in mud up to the axles, but the motorcycles both pulled through with no
problems. We'd pick a rut, stay in it, and slowly rumble through. In
some cases the mud actually rose up over the exhaust pipes. Made the
Harley sound kind of strange.
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We rode out
about 25 miles on muddy, salty dirt roads to Scammon's Lagoon, which is
one of the places the California gray whales migrate to each winter.
We arrived a bit early, though, and we couldn't see any whales from the
shore. |
| Here's John playing motocrosser on a fully-loaded 1100 cc
road bike. If you bring a car here, make sure it has car
insurance. This rough muddy trail along the vast
desert expands extensively and may require vehicles more suited for rugged
road conditions.
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I almost dropped
my Harley at one point when the front wheel got crossed up in the sand. |
| The white color
of the mud in the background is actually salt. This area is one of
the largest salt producing regions in the world. The Mexicans allow
the shallow sea plains to flood and evaporate repeatedly, and then they
bulldoze up the salt.
I found out later this was
really tough on the Harley's chrome.
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| Taking a photo
break.
Somehow that Cardon cactus
managed to grow in this salt-laden soil.
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When we returned
to the main highway, a Mexican infantry platoon stopped for a break and we
chatted for a while. |
| The Mexican
troops were interested in the motorcycles.
Here, the platoon leader is
checking out John's Virago.
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| That's me, with
the platoon leader's Rottweiler. |
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Moving on to
San Ignacio...
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| Shortly after leaving Guerrero Negro, and on the way to San
Ignacio, we saw something you don't see everyday where I live - a small
herd of wild burros. There's horse in there, too. |
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San Ignacio was a little further down the road, about 100
miles past Guerrero Negro. San Ignacio is one of the most beautiful
and interesting towns in the Baja.
Here are some pictures of the working mission in this palm-lined,
date-producing village. The San Ignacio Mission photograph is a
classic for anyone traveling through the Baja peninsula. It is a
magnificent old church. |
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Here's another
shot of the San Ignacio Mission. |
| The San Ignacio
Mission's front door. |
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A shot inside
the mission. |
| Here's another
photo inside the mission. |
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After pulling
out of San Ignacio, we stopped at the Pemex to top off the
tanks. This fellow tried to sell us a package of dates.
When the Jesuits built the mission in San Ignacio several
hundred years ago, they introduced date farming to the region. It is still
there. One of the locals wanted to sell us a package of dates when we
stopped to top off the motorcycles.
The Baja peninsula has great riding conditions and even better
photo-opportunities. This was really turning out to be a great vacation,
and we were only 3 days into it. |
| The mountains off in the distance appeared shortly after
leaving San Ignacio. These three mountains are known as Las Tres
Virgenes, or the Three Virgins.
One is a dormant volcano.
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When we first attempted this trip
a a few years earlier, this is the
spot where Dick Scott died in a motorcycle accident just below Las Tres
Virgenes.
The cross in the center of the picture is a memorial John put up for Dick shortly after the accident.
We stopped, said a
prayer for Dick, and we were on our way.
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| Just after Guerrero Negro, Mexico Highway 1 (the
Transpeninsular Highway) stops following the Pacific coast and cuts across
the Baja on a southeasterly angle to head over to the Sea of Cortez.
Shortly after leaving the crash site, we rode over small group of
mountains and descended to the town of Santa Rosalia on the Sea of Cortez
(you can glimpse the Sea of Cortez on the horizon).
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We saw a rainbow out over the water, which we
took as a good sign. You can just make it out between the
motorcycles.
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| We
didn't spend any time in Santa Rosalia on this trip, which was unfortunate
because it is a beautiful and historic town. I cover it on some of
my later trips in Mexico. Santa Rosalia is definitely worth a stop. |
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Muleje was the next stop on our trip. It was an
interesting little town. We stayed at La Hacienda, and the hotel
manager let us park the bikes in the courtyard.
I'm looking a little tired
in this photo, I guess. I sure wasn't bored, though. This was
a great ride.
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| The food in Muleje was incredible (as it was
almost everywhere in Baja). There's a little restaurant called
Danny's that had seafood that was beyond description. Ever try
shrimp tacos in Muleje? Take it from me, you don't know what life is
all about until you've had shrimp tacos with a Tecate at Danny's.
Mulege is one of Baja's
oases. There's a river in Mulege called the Rio Santa Rosalia. A signed warned people not to swim or drink in this little creek.
My Spanish was good enough to figure out what "Peligro -
Cholera" meant.
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| Mulege also
raises dates. Here we are, standing on a hill in Mulege, above the
date groves. |
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John makes a friend in Muleje. |
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The mission in Muleje. |
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A crypt in the Muleje mission cemetery. |
| One of these
days I am going to get some better photos of Mexico's sanitation
department.
Yep, vultures.
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Here's a shot
stretching the capabilities of that old Sigma 70-210 to the max.
These guys were perched on tree in Mulege, but you see them all over
Mexico. |
The Sea of
Cortez and Beyond...
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| On the Transpeninsular Highway south of Mulege. That's
the Sea of Cortez's Conception Bay. We spotted an RV park (the only one we had seen).
The scenery in this area was some of the best in the Baja, and that's
saying something (it was all beautiful; this area was exceptionally so). |
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| Shortly after
this shot, we passed two guys struggling up the hills on
bicycles. Check out Pete and Charlie below, who caught up to
us a half hour later when we stopped to watch a whale. Pete and
Charlie were traveling from British Columbia to Tierra del Fuego (the
southernmost tip of South America) on bicycles! |
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We didn't know what the concrete marker represented when we
stopped, and we didn't stop to examine it. We had traveled about 20
or 30 miles south of Mulege on Highway 1 along the Sea of Cortez, and we
pulled over because we saw a whale swimming about 200 yards off
shore. We watched the whale for a while, and then we examined the
concrete marker. Were we ever surprised! We were on the Tropic
of Cancer!
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After leaving Pete and Charlie, we turned inland (to the
west) on a dirt road, and traveled 49 miles over three hours without
seeing another human being, automobile, utility line, or any indication of
anyone ever having been there, except for the dirt road we were traveling
on. Desolate doesn't begin to describe it. |
| Taking a break
in the middle of nowhere. |
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My 900-lb
dual-sport. |
| Yep, there
wasn't much out here. |
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We saw one small
ranchita on this 49-mile stretch of dirt road with a few goats. We
didn't see any people. |
| A scene
overlooking one of the valleys on this portion of the ride. |
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Here's a closeup
of that mesa you can see in the distance in the above photo.
It's a mini Devil's Tower.
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Our next stop was La Paz. It was okay, but not great. La Paz
is a larger town (one of the largest in the Baja peninsula), and for
Americans, it is a machine designed to separate you from your money. We
spent 2 nights there, with one day being devoted to riding the extra 100
miles to get down to Cabo San Lucas (the southernmost tip of the Baja
peninsula). Both Welker and I were anxious to continue our journey, and
not to stay in La Paz.
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| Here's another little church we saw in the jungle on the way
down to Cabo from La Paz. |
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Looping
through Cabo San Lucas...
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| This is it....the end of the line in Cabo San Lucas.
It was a pretty area, but it was another tourist trap. We only spent a few
hours in Cabo. We had been spoiled by the real Baja. |
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The
tip of the Cape, the southernmost point of the Baja peninsula. |
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On the way back from Cabo to La Paz, we stopped for a quick
bite to eat in Todos Santos, another small town. Here's John after
another satisfying Baja meal.
As you can see, this is tough work.
Hey, somebody's got to do it! |
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Crossing the
Sea of Cortez
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We took the ferry from Piche Lingua (just
outside of La Paz) the next day. Getting on board was an all-day affair.
After being bounced from window to window at the ferry office, I finally
told a guy we weren't going to pay anybody any bribes to get on the boat.
"Oh, okay, then you need to go to that window."
A few minutes later we had our tickets and joined the line to board the
"Puerto Vallarta" for the 19-hour ride to Mazatlan on mainland
Mexico. |
| That green BMW
in the photo above belonged to a German guy. He and his girlfriend
were doing the same thing we were.
Here we are getting ready
to leave Baja. See how calm that sea is? That didn't last
long. I got in my bunk and stayed there until the next morning,
trying not to throw up.
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We woke up the next morning to find that we were arriving in
Mazatlan.
We had a quick breakfast at the Playa Norte in
Mazatlan, and then it
was onward to points south….
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| Winding our way through one of the many small towns on the
road to Puerto Vallarta, a guy popped out and tried to sell me a
parrot.
Do you think I could have
carried him on the Harley? |
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| We stopped in Aca Poneta to check out their
church. We were lucky. We arrived just as a wedding
ended. Not bad shots. I remember that I used my 28mm Vivitar
lens for these shots. If you look carefully, you can see the rice in
the air over the newlyweds in the photo on the right. These are two
of only three shots on this page that I did not have professionally
scanned. I couldn't find the negatives, so I used my original scans
from the prints. You can sure see the difference in quality. |
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| This is one of my favorite pictures: The church in
Chapallila, Mexico.
We saw the twin steeples from the main road and meandered through the
village until we found the church.
I shot this with an older all-metal Sigma 70-210 lens.
The X-700 Minolta does good work, especially considering it had been
bouncing around on the back of a Harley-Davidson for a few thousand miles.
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| A closer shot of
the church in Chapallila. |
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When we parked across from the church (all of the roads in
Chapallila were dirt), these two young ladies came out to look at the
motorcycles.
Check out the mud caked on the Harley. My motorcycle had never
seen this kind of duty before. It performed flawlessly.
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John and I, as you have probably already guessed, like to
eat. One day, on the road to Guadalajara, we saw this guy grilling
chickens in his front yard. Goats all over, chickens scratching the
ground (apparently unaware of what was happening to their buddies on the
grill), and things that would probably not get the establishment an
"A" rating from the people who rate restaurants in Los
Angeles. It was generally not an environment conducive to fine
dining. That didn't slow us down, though.
Those chickens sure looked good, though, and
we were
hungry. John tried to ask the guy for chicken and beans….
"uh, pollo….."
"uh, pollo con ……."
"uh, pollo con beans…."
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| The cook took us in with a single look and had but one
question (in English, of course):
"For here or to go?"
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| Here's one of the many roadside stands along the road
through the jungle (their equivalent of Carl's Jr, I guess) except the
food probably has a little lower cholesterol rating.
The people are very photogenic.
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| Yep, we were
having fun. |
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| This guy let me
take his photo, and then asked for some money. I was glad to give it
to him. |
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| When people are killed in automobile accidents in Mexico
(and many other countries, for that matter), it is customary to erect a
small roadside memorial. Usually, the monuments consist of a small cross
and some flowers. The fellow memorialized by this structure must have been
one important dude. It's not a church. It was the biggest memorial of its
type I ever saw. It had a lot of traffic during the 10 minutes we stopped,
but I never did find out who it memorialized. |
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On the road in
mainland Mexico, shot over the Harley
windshield.
The black ridge on the right is a lava field.
There are active volcanoes in Mexico.
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| Another shot of the lava fields.
"Curva Peligrosa"
means "dangerous curve." |
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| We arrived in Puerto Vallarta on Christmas day with no
reservations.
Hey, I never claimed to be the brains in this outfit!
We probably tried 15 or 20 places before we found one with a room for
$365 (for one night). This was it: The Krystal Palace (or
something like that). Actually, I liked the $15-joints we had
been staying better, but, we were beat and as the saying goes, any port in
a storm. Puerto Vallarta seemed like a nice place, and I will
probably return there via air sometime with my wife.
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| A courtyard shot
of our uber-expensive hotel. |
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Another photo of
the Krystal grounds. |
| We spent one night in Puerto Vallarta, and then
we were on the road again, headed to Guadalajara in the heart of
Mexico. On the way out of Puerto Vallarta we traveled to Tepic
through the jungle. The area was much more interesting as we left
the turista traps behind and melted into real Mexico. The jungle
outside of Puerto Vallarta was beautiful, as were the villages and the
people in them. This is the area in which Arnold Schwarzennegger
filmed "Predator" and a few years before that Rich and Liz did
"Night of the Iguana." These jungles are the real deal. |
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A street through
the center of Guadalajara. |
| I shot this picture on our first night in Guadalajara.
We stayed in El Centro, the historic district in the center of town.
This was an evening puppet show put on by and for the locals. If you
could imagine picking up London and placing it in Mexico, you would have a
pretty good idea of what the El Centro district is like. We knew the
town was going to be different when we saw a new Jaguar dealership on the
way into town. |
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T'was the night after Christmas, and Joe and John are
settling down into the best French dinner I have ever had. You can notice
the sunburn and windburn we both have.
Seven courses, fine French dining
in the middle of Guadalajara, and a really great restaurant. Total cost,
with drinks and tip: $27. I hope the tourists never discover this place.
I guess I focused on the
wrong spot. I like the photo, though.
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| One of the many
squares in Guadalajara. It is a beautiful city. |
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Huichol Indians
in Guadalajara. These people are direct descendants of the
Aztecs. There are about 18,000 of them. |
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Modern art in
one of the Guadalajara city squares. |
| John enjoying
the art. |
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| These two
fellows were rocking out on a xylophone in one of Guadalajara's squares. |
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A Huichol women selling jewelry in the market square.
This is one of my favorite pictures. |
| Huicho l jewelry for sale. |
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Horse-drawn
carts in the El Centro area, catering to tourists. |
| The El Centro
district had one or two churches on every city block. They were
impressive. |
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Inside one of the many
churches.
Guadalajara has magnificent
churches. |
| Another photo
showing the stained glass. |
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This one is a knocker on a church door in Guadalajara. |
| Mexico takes
bank security seriously. Surprisingly, this fellow had no problem
with me taking his picture. |
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This little guy was taking in the action on a busy
Guadalajara street.
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Refreshments for sale on the street. |
| If you ever need a sombrero, I know this great shop in
Guadalajara…. |
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Two motor cops in Guadalajara.
I asked the guy on the Harley
how he liked his motorcycle. He shrugged his shoulders, uttered an
expletive, and then added "but it runs…"
This photo made it into the
The Complete Book of Police and Military Motorcycles (see the bottom of
this page).
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| Guadalajara has
a massive bazaar in the center of town, all under one roof. It's
comparable to Istanbul's Grand Bazaar.
This fellow is chopping
sugar cane. |
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The bazaar in
Guadalajara also has a bird section. If you are ever in Guadalajara,
you have to see this place. |
| A pretty red
parakeet. |
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A couple of
parrots. |
| This is inside
the Governor's mansion in Guadalajara. It's the capital of the
Mexican state of Jalisco. |
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| A sculpture in
the Governor's mansion. |
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| Artwork on the
ceiling in stairwell in the Governor's mansion. |
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| After we left Guadalajara, I was anxious to get
back to Los Angeles in time for New Year's eve (one night away).
Speed time!
We made it back to LA in two days, running on mainland Mexico's toll
roads at 80 and 90 mph all the way. The Harley and John's Yamaha
never missed a beat. Well, almost. There was one
incident... Coming
out of the jungle, heading north on a Sunday, John and I stopped for a
moment when I notice his front tire was low. Wow,
getting a flat in the jungle on a Sunday morning in Mexico...this did not
look good. John
examined the tire and he didn't seem too concerned about it.
"I'll just ride for a bit....something will turn up," he said. Here
we were, in a real jungle, on a Sunday morning. There was nothing
around anywhere. Even if there was, I thought, it would be closed on
a Sunday morning. We
rode around the next corner, not even a half mile down the road, and there
was a tire shop. Open. On a Sunday morning... |
| John topped off
his tire and we never had another problem. |
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We spent our last night in Mexico in a town called Navajoa, and stopped to
fill up the motorcycles as the sun was just starting to come up the next
morning.
There was a Mexican donut shop across the street, and sure enough,
there were two Mexican cops enjoying what must be a universal police
tradition. They came over to talk to us. One guy wanted to sit
on the Harley, and I think he really enjoyed it when he did.
The two Mexican motor cops gave us a police
escort out of town, which was a nice way to end our 3,200-mile motorcycle
journey through a really beautiful country. John grabbed this shot
with his point&shoot Olympus camera on the road as the sun turned
night into day.
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Oh, and in case you are wondering...I arrived home safe and sound (and
tired and sore) at 11:45 on the 31st of December. We rode 950 miles
in one day, the most I have ever covered in one day on the ground...
It was a whale of an adventure.
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