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November 24, 2017
Day 12 [Fri 11/24/17] - Colola, Michoacán to Acapulco, Guerrero
I am alive and well and resting peacefully in the penthouse suite of the Hotel Elcano Acapulco in Acapulco, Guerrero, Mexico.
Starting Odometer: 7,753
Ending Odometer: 8,084
Distance Traveled Today: 331 miles
Distance Traveled This Trip: 3,461 miles [8,084 - 4,603]
(0 miles) Colola, Michoacán
(111 miles) Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán (111 miles total)
(61 miles) Zihuatanejo, Guerrero (172 miles total)
(158 miles) Acapulco, Guerrero (330 miles total)
My ride today will look something like this.
In the morning, the mosquitos carry me away from my cabana/cabinero/cabina. There's no air conditioning, which isn't a problem. But the mosquitoes are insane. So you sleep with this veil drooped over the bed to keep the bugs out. All night, they were waiting for me to wake up and serve them breakfast by moving the veil.
I get up and prepare to roll out of town.
Victor is rolling through town on his painted motorcycle. Always he is there, somehow.
I ask Victor....donde gasolina, amigo?
And he takes me around town, looking for the illicit locations that sell gasolina.
But the first one is closed. And the second one is out of gasoline.
Now, I'm about to roll out of town with about one gallon of gasoline in the tank (but still my 2.2. gallons of reserve in the red gas canister riding shotgun).
But then, Victor tells me this. In the next town you come to...in about diez o quince minutos....they have places that sell gasoline also. You will find them.
Do they have signs? Commo se llama signs?
Annuncions. No. No signs. But you will find them.
So, I take off for the next town, somewhat anxious about my gas situation. Yesterday, there were open Pemex stations everywhere, but now, there are none to be found.
At the next town, I see a sign that says "Gasolina"
And I pull over. I ask her to put in 14 liters, if I'm not mistaken.
So, she disappears into her little roadside shed and emerges with some plastic jugs and proceeds to pour the contents into my gas tank.
I turn on my bike, to see how full it is, and tell her to put in 2 more liters.
In the end she charged me $252 pesos for 14 liters of gasoline. So, I got 3.7 gallons of gas for $13.26,
So, she charged me $3.58 a gallon, which is a great deal when you consider the alternative....running out of fuel in a third world country known for drug smuggling.
But now the problem is that I'm following the coast, and just can not get over 30 mph. The road twists and turns and I'm never going to make it to Acapulco today at this rate. Not ever.
I try to remember what the signs mean as I ride. It would be nice to know what they say. What they're trying to warn me about. I understand them much better today than I did the first time I went through the Baja.
A herd of cows is walking down the highway, so I find myself driving through a herd of cows, and not a small one. Like..about 50-80 cows walking down the middle of the road, and bulls with horns, and I'm trying to figure out how to ride through them without getting killed. Somehow, I make it through, but it was not easy.
I see an abandoned Pemex station, and I stop to make some adjustments to my gear in the shade. This is what happens, it seems. They just abandon them and trash piles up in the place like a horror movie. In the USA, it would be torn down or a replaced by a new business. But not here. Just ghosts of failed ventures that live forever in perpetuity on the shoulder of the road.
At some point, I see a road leading down to the beach, and I roll down it to get some shots. It's a man's house, and I tell him I'm just taking photos. He tells me he used to work in the USA, but now he lives here. It's a stunning place. The police robbed him, recently. He says they broke into his house and stole $350 USD from him.
Hard to grasp how broken things really are down here. That's sad. Tragic.
But he tells me I can stay as long as I want and shoot. Or spend the night. It's no problem. But I ride on.
For some time, I have no cell coverage. So Waze is just sort of lost. But my GPS actually works fine, and shows the roads as I follow the coast. So, the Garmin is better when there's no cell coverage. And Waze is better when there is cell coverage.
After about 50 miles, the road gets somewhat better. And after I've gone about 80 miles, the road really opens up. Now, I can run triple digits, and I'm finally making some time. I decide not to stop for lunch at 100 miles, as I normally do, as I'm so far behind for today. Instead, I keep riding and decide to stop at 150 miles for the day's ride.
So I stop for carne asada at a roadside shack in some little town in the middle of nowhere. I'm on Mexico 200, following signs for Ixtapa Zihuatanejo. The town I'm in is Los Llanos de Temalhuacan. Lunch was less than $100 pesos ($5 USD). Coca Cola and carne asada for....survey says.....$70 pesos. So...$3.50 USD. Nice.
OK. I have to keep riding. 3:19 p.m.
[I mean...I'm not riding right now, obviously...I wrote this (above) at lunch. Am just trying to update my notes now. I'm going to get a shower because I'm absolutely filthy and seriously considering burning my clothes at this point.]
So basically, I ride all day. And the thing that gets me is that, in the United States, I could go 300 miles in 3 hours if I really wanted to. Just get on the interstate, open the throttle. In Utah, the speed limit is 85. So going 100 mph is just a rounding error, really.
But in Mexico, I'm stopping in every little town because of those fucking speed humps. Sometimes there are signs warning of them. Sometimes not.
And there are people crossing the road. So, you have these countless small towns, that impede your progress, and make what should be a simple goal of riding 300 miles a day nearly impossible. Nearly unobtainable.
I'm watching the clock, and watching the sun. I know I'm going to run out of daylight before I go 300 miles. I always do. Maybe I need to start getting up earlier. That's one option to consider.
My deeper concern is that I'm not going to be able to make it down to Tierra Del Fuego / Ushuaia before summer is over. If I can't even go 300 miles a day across Mexico, then I don't have a chance of making it down to Ushuai.
And my backup plan of running 1,000 miles a day if I get bored with the trip seems completely impossible now. Just a delusion, really.
Towards the end of the day, I'm able to open the throttle a little as we left the coast at some point. So I'm running balls-out trying to get to Acapulco before dark.
Before I get to Acapulco, for some reason, my cigarette lighter adapter quits working. It has a little blue light on it, that has gone dark for some reason. And now, my Garmin Montana 600 GPS is running only on batteries, and my cell phone dies completely.
My cell phone is dead, which means I can't use Waze. And I can't send texts. Or look for hotels on hotels.com. Or...anything, really.
I run out of daylight before I get to Acapulco. Finally, I roll into Acapulco when it is solidly dark, and start looking for hotel rooms. But guess what? It's Friday night.
And my cell phone won't work because it's dead from running Waze all day without getting recharged.
I stop at one hotel. No rooms. They send me across the street. No rooms.
I roll down to another hotel. No rooms. But now, I have a cab driver on my side. Oscar. Oscar is on the case. He knows where we can go and they will find me a hotel. So, one of the cab drivers offers to store my stuff in his trunk while we walk to a building to make a hotel reservation. I pass at the offer and carry my gear with me.
We walk in, and they talk for some time....Eventually, Oscar says....they won't let you stay in this one hotel that we looked at, because they want only people who are staying two nights. So, we can get you into this other hotel It is about 2 bocks away. They can put you in the Penthouse Suite.
"Quanto es?" I ask.
It is about $1,300.00 for the night.
"I'm like....fair enough. Let's get it." Like...sure....$65 a night sounds like a lot of money for a penthouse suite, but I'm exhausted from riding all day and I just want a place to crash for the night. Anything will work at this point.
So, the room is $1,300.00 for the night, but then I have to pay some $600 fee scam, so it ends up costing me about $100 for the night.
Oscar is trying to tell me that tomorrow, he wants me to take a different route instead of following the coast. It's faster and safer. And, I'm sure he's right. I haven't made a decision on my route tomorrow yet.
When we go to check in to the hotel, I tell him to come with me to find the place and help me check in. I'm so tired I don't even know what planet I'm on. So he helps me get checked in, and then I tell him that we need to go get me a Coca Cola light. And he's a cab driver, so we go to a nearby OXXO and we get drinks, which I gladly pay for.
He hands me his card and says to call if I need anything tomorrow.
And this is one of the greatest things about traveling. Finding people who will help you navigate through a foreign country. Huge help for him to get me a room, get me checked in, and take me for a Coca Cola light. He offers me lots of other things...women..etc, and I'm like....Oh no. I'm good. I'm going to crash for the night. I'll call you tomorrow if I need anything
Then, I get to the room. Top floor. Ocean facing. Huge penthouse suite on two levels. Really stunning. A home run.
I really don't want to get back on the bike tomorrow. I feel like I need to take a day off and check out Acapulco.
Posted by Rob Kiser on November 24, 2017 at 7:19 AM
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