Days 55-57
Mexico City was an altogether very friendly experience for us. Whilst we were looking for our hotel when first arriving in Mexico City we joined a queue of traffic right behind a local BMW Adventure – a slightly bigger version of Ric's bike. This was quite exciting as we have only seen a handful of BMW bikes since entering Mexico. Within a couple of changes of the lights the rider of the said bike, Juan Jose, had made friends with Ric, given us his number to meet up the next day and offered to lead us to our hotel – off we went, through a few police road blocks (apparently they don't apply to motorbikes), a few turns our GPS probably wouldn't have known about and we were there (well, we thought we were – there then ensued a search for a hotel with parking, but that's a different story).
Th
e following day we went to see the nearby awesome Teotihuacan pyramids, dating back thousands of years. We met up with Juan Jose and his friends Andres and Ernesto (all BMW riders, and with Ernesto on a mint-condition 1956 classic), plus girlfriends that evening and were treated to a great French / Italian dinner. There we made plans to meet Juan Jose again the following day so he could show us a few sites around Mexico. After a drive around and a second delicious meal with our new friends we were really very sad to leave that afternoon - unfor
tunately the schedule must be obeyed at all costs, or so we were thinking until we were still trying to leave Mexico City a few hours later (in Friday rush hour and rain) and doubly wished we'd stayed!
Andres is in fact the editor of Mexico's only BMW bike magazine and happened to be doing a feature on women riders, so Emily might even appear in the next edition! We also now have a few contacts in other places in case of emergencies which are invaluable, so we're altogether extremely grateful for this fortuitous meeting!
Apparently Juan Jose makes a habit of meeting tourists on motorbikes and befriending them so if anyone's reading this and about to go to Mexico City, look out for a shortish guy ( :o) sorry Juan Jose!) on an Adventure and you won't want to leave!
Days 58-60
From Mexico we rode to Puebla and then onto Oaxaca, the food capital of Mexico. Exhausted, we were pleased to have scheduled an extra day here and took advantage of the time by doing a one day cookery course, so hopefully we can recreate some of the culinary delights when back home. One of the specialities, grasshoppers fried in chilli, onion and garlic, is not something we'll be trying at home, though actually it was pretty nice... We'll stick more to the also-traditional dishes made with chocolate (both sweet and savoury) – yum!
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We met you in the north rim of the Grand Canyon, Raz and Eloise on the Harley d. from Ontario, Canada. From there we went to Bryce Canyon and then Moab, hitting some very hot weather. Loved Bryce and Moab! We returned home about August 23, lost our book with your contact in it and found it today, hence we were able to check your blogspot. Seems like you are continuing to have an exciting time, (sometimes too exciting with the road conditions) and envy you for being able to continue into South America. Great that that family took you in in Mexico, what great luck to find such hospitable people. One question we have is... you said the road tolls were very expensive, how expensive were they, and how expensive is accommodation and food down there. Are you still camping? our e-mail address is: raz_giancola@yahoo.com Looking forward to hearing from you.
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