The Sea, The Highlands, And Into The Big Smoke

It's been quite a while since our last post, and we've been pretty busy, so brace yourself for a fairly long one...

Days 49-50

After recovering from the Copper Canyon we rode to Mazatlan, on the coast of the Pacific Ocean – our first ocean sighting since the Arctic! We had a fun couple of days looking around the colonial old-town, chilling out on the beach, and eating some fantastic seafood which we're hoping to repeat at our next seaside stop. The only downside of Mazatlan was the heat and humidity which had us arriving at the hotel literally pouring with sweat!

It was in Mazatlan that we had the first indoor parking for the bikes. Indoor being inside the hotel itself. We were a little surprised at being invited to bring them in, but since then we haven't been at all phased about riding them up pavements and into doorways off busy streets. It's so nice to know that they're safe, even if there probably isn't any real danger for them outside.

Days 51-55

We headed back into the mountains to visit some old colonial centres on some beautiful twisty roads, including “The Devil's Spine” - a road on a ridge between two expansive valleys meaning some amazing views. We've since been on a plateau at about 2000m above sea-level, which is much cooler, and also home to quite a bit of British-like drizzly rain. In each of these towns we found random celebrations in plazas, marching bands, and more, so despite the rain, or maybe partly because of it, we've felt relaxed and right at home.

Surprisingly Durango, our first stop, has a desert like climate and was the home of many a John Wayne western in it's hay-day. We stumbled across a bus in town that took us to an old movie set, and had to watch some Mexican gun-slinging type entertainment before being allowed back into town (it was quite fun really, and the spanish-speaking people all thought it was very amusing)!

We then stopped at the old silver mining towns of Zacatecas and Guanajuato. In Zacatecas we were able to go down an old mine which was pretty cool as you could see the mineral seem in the rock go from the top to seven floors down. We also got some culture at a rather scary masks museum – full of old masks used in theatre, carnival and other celebrations and ceremonies. Unfortunately we forgot the camera this day, which is a shame as the museum was also in the grounds of a beautiful crumbling old convent.

Guanajuato, which for many years produced 20% of the World's silver, was our favourite town. Its pretty plazas and colonial buildings were on a par with the other towns, but with a university of 20,000 it has a really young and vibrant feel. The only downside of it was that with a complicated one-way system of tunnels in old river-beds running under and around the city centre and the general uselessness of the GPS (more on this later) it took us 1.5 hours to find a suitable place to stay!

Last on the list was Morelia. Bigger than the other towns its centre was the grandest and it was wandering the streets of Morelia that we made a decision: to go to Mexico City. We had decided not to do this because of the whole 20 million people / 4 kidnaps per day / swine flu central type of warnings but Emily got it into her head that we should just go there and see it for ourselves, so we did. It was surprisingly easy to get here though we spent a small while looking for a hotel where we could park the bikes safely. It wasn't until afterwards that we realised our guidebook has parking symbols next to hotels with car parks! Hopefully none of the scary warnings will be realised – certainly it seems ok so far...

Navigation, the roads and drivers

Since being on real roads again we've come across a few surprises about driving in Mexico. Firstly, they have very good roads! Unfortunately a lot of these are very expensive cuota or toll roads, often working out at about M$1 per km for each bike, meaning we've often paid about the same in tolls as we have for a night's accommodation! These roads are also boring motorways, but trying to find the more interesting libres (free roads) is more than a little tricky, and apparently more dangerous, due to an increased risk of roadside robberies and corrupt police who might flag you down and ask for money (though we haven't seen any real evidence of that actually happening).

Our GPS doesn't know about a lot of the cuotas and generally gets lost trying to find the right way on the libres. It also doesn't know about one-way streets, or about steps, and the fact that vehicles don't generally want to drive on them. We've managed not to turn up any roads made of stairs, but have made it part way the wrong way down some one-way streets (they don't seem to have no entry signs here) and have been directed up and down some pretty scary cobbled 45 degree inclines for no good reason, which is tedious (and a little frightening in the rain).

It's not just the GPS that's out to get us though. Our next biggest opponent is the left-indicator. We were a little surprised in Alaska to discover that in American cars the brakes and indicators often share the same lights. So what looks like the car in front braking a bit is sometimes the car in front telling you he's about to turn left across all the traffic. Here in Mexico we have encountered a whole other meaning of left indication - when a car or truck is driving particularly slowly on a single lane road they'll put their left indicator on when there's a gap for you to overtake. This is kind and helpful but you must use it with care. They could mean “overtake me now”, or the more traditional “I'm turning left”, or, often in Mexico, “I'm braking erratically and my right brake light is broken”. Since arriving in Mexico City it often just means “I forgot / can't be bothered to turn my indicator off as I'll probably want to use it again soon anyway (and it doesn't seem to cancel automatically)”. But don't be too sure – sometimes when you think it must mean the latter it actually means “I'm a complete nutter and really do want to overtake you even though it's a blind corner... please will all other traffic, yes oncoming too, move onto the hard shoulder so that I can get to where I'm going one minute faster”.

So we read the left indicator light with caution these days!