Wandering with Tedder and Tamara

We got off the ferry at about 9pm last night (only an hour late- not bad). There was a bit of chaos because the watertight door to our deck didn't open for a long time, so we couldn't get to the bike to start getting suited, undo the straps on the bike, unlock things, and then pack to get going. So we did all of that in about 4 minutes- quite a bit of chaos, because the workers were trying to move the hydraulic ramps to the lower deck. By the time we got going, we had to negotiate some interesting angles and a small dropoff. Much adventure.

We rode about 20 miles to Los Mochis, the major city. Actually we stopped before Los Mochis and stayed at a love hotel. It was a fairly safe (or consistent) option- much better then negotiating a working-class city in the dark.

Basically, a love hotel works like this: the whole property is surrounded by a tall wall (maybe 12 feet). The perimiter of the property has a road. Inside of that is the hotel- all you see is a long line of garage doors. There aren't any regular doors or even windows.

The garage doors are open- so you ride into one, then close the garage door behind you. The garage leads into the room- a fairly normal motel room, except for the king-size bed and stripper pole.

Yeah, I said that right, a stripper pole.

Theoretically, once you get into the room you can call the front desk, give a card or cash, and never see anyone. We had to talk to someone in person to figure out the rate to stay the *entire* night (usually you only stay for a few hours). Basically, it was double the rate, so long as we left by 6am. That was earlier than we might have preferred, but better than paying for another block, since the next day was a transit day anyhow. Their normal rate is 120P (about $11), we paid double that for 9pm-6am.

At 6am, there were several vehicles that left at the same time. So obviously we weren't the only people who chose that option.

In the morning, we got going, headed east to Los Mochis and then south to Mazatlan. After some initial confusion on the route, we found the highway to Mazatlan. It is a toll road; I think we spent about 350P ($30) for maybe 200 miles of toll road. Really, sort of a ripoff. Thankfully we won't be doing that everywhere.

Mazatlan was further than we had expected, and we dealt with fog for the first few hours. We were there just past noon. We went a little further to the small town of TODO and stopped in their town square. They had a nice little internet cafe (perfect way to relax for half an hour or so), then we went over to eat lunch at a small food shack. The food was fantastic.

Next was the leg from Mazatlan to Durango. Quick math said it was about 140 miles- not too bad, since we were ready to leave around 1:30. We knew it would climb into the mountains, but we ended up well over 8000 feet! In fact, the majority of it was above 6500 feet. That means very tight switchbacks on a narrow road. The semi trucks would use both lanes to make the corners- not because they were lazy, but because the radius of the corner was smaller than what the trucks could handle.

At one point I had to actually ride off the road to keep from being hit by the back of a trailer. It was a fairly tense moment- keep in mind there are *no* shoulders on Mexican roads, so I had to take a dropoff on a steep embankment, then climb back onto the road afterwards.

At another point, we came onto a queue of cars. There was obviously a wreck, and we could see a semi truck. Well, it turns out a gravel truck was going too fast through a right-hand turn, the trailer wheels probably climbed up the embankment, then the whole truck flipped on its side in the oncoming lanes. The diesel tank for the truck was drooling all over the road, which made me quite nervous. From what Tamara could see, it was most likely not fatal, but the road would be tied up for quite some time. (no pictures of this due to an ethical dispute)

We were headed around some sharp twisties when a V-Strom came our way. It was a blue 650. This was one of the only V-Stroms we'd seen since leaving the country, so it was kind of neat. Shortly after it was followed by a DL1000 with a hacked windshield and a Bronze4922 sticker on the front. I know that bike! That is Gustavo, who we had considered meeting in Copper Canyon!

We pulled a quick u-turn to catch up with them. I knew they were probably headed down the mountain in a hurry, but I could at least pace them and catch up when they stop for a snack.

As soon as I turned around, they showed up going the opposite direction. They obviously had the same idea. We ended up in a nearby gravel turnout. Eventually there would be four bikes- my orange DL650, Brian's blue DL650 (Tamara's old DL650, actually), Gustavo's DL1000, and Tony's KTM 950 Adventure. So two orange bikes, two DL650s, three V-Stroms. Kind of a fun grouping.

We exchanged pleasantries and pictures, compared notes on the roads and short-term plans, then they encouraged us to get going- the rest of the road to Durango would be similarly twisty. Since it had taken us 2 hours to go about 70 miles, we figured we should get going so we could finish the remaining 80 miles before it got too dark. It was unfortunate, because it would have been nice to hole up somewhere nearby with them- but “nearby” meant at least 70 miles in the wrong direction for one of the groups.

Their predictions were correct. We climbed into the mountains even further, quickly donned some warmer gear, then made it into Durango just as the sun was officially setting. That gave us just enough light to scout out a hotel for the night.

Durango is a neat town. We hadn't expected much, since most of Baja was so desolate and underwhelming, but Durango itself is pretty fun. We checked into an old hotel near the city square (250P/$22), went out for a great dinner (32P/$3), then wandered the town for some fancy European chocolate and candy (30P/$3), two hose clamps for the bike (7P/$0.60), and a big bucket of fresh popcorn (7P/$0.60).

You get the idea- everything is quite affordable here. It's quite the change from Baja, where things are easily twice as expensive if you can even find it.