« Day 12 Photos | Main | Day 14 [Sun 11/26/17] - Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca to Puerto Arista, Oaxaca »
November 25, 2017
Day 13 [Sat 11/25/17] - Acapulco, Guerrero to Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca
Update: I am alive and well and resting peacefully in the Habitaciones Villa on the shores of the Pacific Ocean in the seaside village of Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico.
Starting Odometer: 8,084
Ending Odometer: 8,345
Distance Traveled Today: 261 miles
Distance Traveled This Trip: 3,481 miles [8,345 - 4,603]
(0 miles) Acapulco, Guerrero
(155 miles) Pinotepa Nacion (155 miles total)
(87 miles) Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca (242 miles total)
My ride today will look something like this.
Fools Rush In
In the morning, when my alarm goes off, I just turn it off and go back to sleep. I've decided that I'm not leaving. After spending a restful night in the nicest hotel room I've ever seen the inside of, I've decided that I'm not going anywhere. I'm tired of racing through the jungles all day. I've decided I want to swim in the ocean.
The room is unbelievable. I've never seen anything remotely like it. It's two stories, with both rooms facing the beach one side, and facing the mountains on the other side. So, from either level, you have panamoramic views of either the mountains or the ocean.
I put on my swimsuit and head down to the beach with nothing but a towel and my room key.
I put the room keys and my towel in one of the lounge chairs, and go for a swim in the ocean. The temperature is perfect. Not too hot. Not too cold. Just right.
The waves are a little bit rough. The bay is almost completely enclosed by land, but the waves are about equal to San Jose Del Cabo, IMHO. But I was able to get in and out of the ocean without drowning.
I check with the front desk, and they tell me that they're booked solid and don't have a room for me for tonight. Great. I'm in a world-famous resort community, on a Saturday, and somehow they're all booked up and I don't have a reservation. These are the perils of traveling by the seat of your pants. I never make reservations in advance, and for good cause. But this is the downside.
My problem with this journey is that I can't ride more than 300 miles a day. It's nearly impossible. The reason is that between the towns, the roads are, at times, winding, poorly maintained, or infested with livestock. Add to that the fact that you're going through some tiny town with massive speed bumps every 12 km, and you start to get the picture. The country is beautiful, in its own way, but it's nearly impossible to drive across.
After my swim, I return to my Penhouse Suite (PH2), dry off, and then start my daily tasks. Record my expenses, upload my photos, all of my silly daily tasks, and there are many. Then I go down to the bike, and oil the chain in the parking lot. I do this by riding in circles while spraying the chain with my left (clutch) hand. Somehow, I manage to do this without crashing.
Then, I have an issue to deal with. The cigarette lighter adapter that I ordered off of the internet for $10.00 stopped working yesterday. And, I'm not clear why. But, without it, my cell phone and my Garmin Montana GPS won't work all day. They'll only work for a few hours, then they stop working. Which is an issue, obviously.
So, I root around in my CC Filson tank bag and find 2 other cigarette lighter-to-USB adapters. (Don't say I didn't come prepared.) But when I plug these in, I get the same results. Nada. I know what the cigarette lighter adapter came with an inline fuse, so I decide to check the fuse. Lo and behold...it's gone. So, apparently this little plastic "box" that once had a fuse in it now no longer has a fuse. So I root around for my spare fuses and, yes I have several, so I put a fuse in and we're back in business. Problem solved.
A couple comes out into the parking lot. They are on the BMW motorcycle in front of mine. I tell them that I rode down from Colorado, and the dude nearly chokes.
Now, I'm so far from home that it starts to be fun to tell people where you're from. Like...very few people would ride a motorcycle 3,500 miles from home to come to some little tiny village in Mexico. They're both laughing.
Chain oiled. Fuse issue resolved. Now I head out of town, but as I'm leaving town I think, "Fuck....I forgot to gas up." LIke...this really is a journey for someone smarter than me. It really is. I'm clearly operating well beyond the normal boundaries of my abilities. Just because I'm attempting this journey doesn't mean that a) I'm qualified or b) it's a good idea to begin with. But this is where we are.
So I stop at the next Pemex I come to and I tell her, " Lleno rojo, por favor." This is what I say when I'm thinking clearly. It means "fill it up with premium". If you say "Lleno rojor" or "Lleno verde" and they know what to do. But when I'm really tired, I say "Rojo verde", which is literally "red green", because I'm so stupid I mix it up sometimes.
So I get away very late, due to the fact that I thought I was going to spend another night here.
I've planned a somewhat shorter route today of about 242 miles just because I'm so exhausted from riding every day. As usual, the first 50 miles is really slow with lots of curvy roads and lots of little towns. But after about 50 miles, it finally opens up some and I'm running about 70-80 mph whenever I can...between towns, of course.
Sometimes the road is really nice. Sometimes the road is really bad. I've seen potholes that would take the wheel off of a car.
In the town of Pinotepa
Because I got away so late, I won't stop until I've gone at least 150 miles. So, at Pinotepa, I've gone 160 miles, so I stop for gas. I now know how to ask for a receipt. "Recebo por favor". (Not clear the spelling is right, but that's what they say...Reseeboe).
So I get my receipt and then take off for Puerto Escondido. I can already tell that I'm not going to get there before dark, so I don't bother with eating breakfast or lunch. To be honest, I really don't eat much. At all. Ever.
So I'm screaming across the Mexican mainland. Skint back, going as fast as the road conditions allow.
But then, I slow down when I come into towns. In one town, this morning, God as my witness, I saw a man bend over and start drinking water from a puddle in a muddy/dirt road like a dog. I have never before seen this in my life. Not exactly uplifting, as it were.
I'm shooting occasionally, but not a lot. And I packed away my 100mm-400mm lens today. The reason is that there's not really room for them on my CC Filson tank bag, and one or the other keeps falling off. They don't go anywhere because they're strapped around my neck, but after juggling them all day long yesterday, it pissed me off enough that today, I packed away the 100-400. I hardly shoot it anyway, especially from the saddle.
Now, because I'm running so fast all day long, I try not to stop and take photos. I try to shoot form the saddle while I'm going down the road. And, at this one location, I see some nice palm trees, and I'm shooting from the saddle, riding with no hands, and when I look back in front of me, I'm in the wrong lane, and a car is about to hit me head on. Somehow, I move over a frew feet. He moves over a foot or two. And we miss each other by inches.
That scared me pretty good. I've been justifying my rolling photography in thinking that I'm saving time by not stopping, but it's certainly not worth dying over. So, either I'll have to stop more to take photos, or else I will just have to take less photos.
One other issue with the bike is that it seems to have a "coon hunting" headlight. Meaning, the headlight shines up too high, and once it gets dark, lots of poeple will flash their brights at me. At which time, I show them the fury. Like...you think that's bright....here....let me show you bright, sparky.
So, I really don't like riding at night because 1) it's dangerous and 2) my headlight is too bright. I will look online and see if there is an adjustment I can do to lower the headlight beam before I leave in the morning.
It also occurs to me that I need to start getting up earlier. At the equator, the sun rises and sets every day at 6:00 a.m. So, one solution is for me to get up at 6:00 a.m. and start getting ready for my day's ride, so that I can get away by 8:00 a.m. instead of 12:00 noon. That's one potential solution.
Now, we cross into the Mexican state of Oaxaca, and I notice that each state is different. The last state I was in they had signs everywhere saying "Curva Peligrosa", but now, there's really no signs at all to speak of. So now, you really have to pay attention because, if you're going into a curve, it might be a very sharp curve with no signage at all.
So I run skint back all day, and then it's solidly dark by 6:30 p.m., and I've still got about 30 minutes to go. So I ride in the dark for 30 minutes, although it's not something I like to do. It's not like I have a whole lot of options. I could stop in one of these smaller towns, and certainly they have rooms available, but I'm really wanting to see Puerto Escondido, because I had a couple tell me that it was a really cool place and I would like it. Some people I met on the road said this.
Finally I roll into town and I'm never real sure where to go, but I'm rolling around, looking for the giant hotels on the beach like in Acapulco, because I'd like to have another penthouse suite tonight. But I don't see any hotels like that really. I roll through town for a bit, and then I cross over a bridge, and I see a big hotel on the right (near the water), so I pull in and ask for a room for the night. $750 pesos. Ouch. That's almost $40 USD. Hmmmm. OK. I'll take it. Sold.
So I check in, and then roll around looking for dinner on my bike. What I find is an outdoor bazaar....or fair...not really sure what to call it. But there's a LONG sort of outdoor market where they sell all sorts of trinkets to tourists. This is like....one street off of the beach. Pretty cool little market. I walk down the length of it, and I see one guy is selling shirts that say "Puerto Escondido". I wnat to buy one, but everyone down here is 5'2" tall, and they've never even heard of a size "Extra Large".
I park my bike and sit down for dinner at a restaurant near this market.
Stray dogs and homeless Mexicans come into the restaurant off the street to beg for food.
Some gringos walk by, and I call them out...."Like...how in the hell did Americans find out about this place?" I ask.
"We're Canadians," they reply.
"Oh....I'm sorry...I didn't know."
"We're from British Colombia," they offer.
I have met lots of Canadians from British Colombia on this trip. My theory is that they're so far north, it makes sense for them to winter down here. I see scads of them.
Then, this one guy starts telling me that they have this recycling program where they're recycling everything now and I'm like..."dude....I just rode my motorcycle 3,000 miles across Mexico, and they're burning piles of trash on the side of the road in every town I rode through. They're not recycling shit...unless you call "burning" - "recycling", which I guess in a way it is, but not a very pleasant one.
Then, the one guy starts telling me that I need ot be careful and all of this nonsense. And basically, what I say is this: "I'm fucking this bull...you just hold the horns." Like, I don't need white people painting their fears into me. I really don't. I've ridden my motorcyle alone through every country in Central America without a map - without a cell phone - and somehow I came out alive. And guess what? I don't need you telling me that I shouldn't be here...or shouldn't have my laptop....or my cell phone. Just STFU. Seriously. I'm doing just fine. I'm riding through the most dangerous states in Mexico and guess what? I'm going to make it. So, thanks for your concern, now STFU.
One of the Canadians says he's going to drive down to Costa Rica. I tell him that he'll be fine, just not to drive at night.
And he thanks me, and they leave.
Posted by Rob Kiser on November 25, 2017 at 10:11 AM
Comments