September in Houston found me packing my bags for what I hoped would be a long working vacation living in the exotic sounding city of Kuala Lumpur in the paradise-on-earth country of Malaysia. With almost two months of free time before I had to show up in Malaysia and a KLR 650 sitting in my garage, there seemed only one thing to do - ride from Houston Texas down Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, cut across to mainland Mexico and ride back up the Gulf Coast. And why not? The bike was pretty much good to go – some saddle bags, a Pelican case as a top box, tank bag, a bunch of after market bits and pieces mainly designed to let me get my feet to touch the ground and my good luck mantre “DON’T PANIC” stenciled down the fairing in large friendly letters. A visit to the local bookstore for a set of maps and a copy of Motorbiking in Baja and it was time to hit the road.

Of course I’d heard a lot about the Baja 1000, and even seen some video’s of Baja riders screaming along desert roads in a cloud of dust at 100 plus dodging rocks and jumping ditches with ease. A quick look at the maps showed that a lot of the regular Baja 1000 dirt road sections were easily accessible from Mex 1 that ran down the length of the Baja peninsula. This was going to be great! I would ride down Baja Mexico doing as much of the Baja 1000 course as I could get away with. At this point the fairy godmother who was sitting on my shoulder shouting “danger, danger” was told in no uncertain terms to shut up and go away.

Only one small problem occurred to me. I’d never ridden a bike on anything more demanding than a forestry road before and I certainly hadn’t ridden over anything like what the Baja roads looked like. No problem, Big Bend National Park, one of the meccas for off road trail riding in Texas is on the way to Mexico so I could get some practice in before starting my personal Baja 1000.

Three days later and I was in Big Bend coming very quickly to the realization of two things. Firstly my trusty KLR was in reality a 400lbs, top heavy, overloaded dirt bike on steroids with less than ideal duel purpose tires; and two, I had absolutely no idea how to ride a bike off road. The whole standing on the footpegs idea just didn’t seem to be working no matter how far forward or back I leaned or how hard I tried to jam my legs against the tank. I made it 9 miles down River Road at what I later calculated was a speed a little over walking pace before eventually calling it a day staring down a 50 yard stretch of track with a terrifying 20 degree slope and the occasional fist sized rock. Hey, don’t laugh, I was gripped. I took a lot of pride in the fact that I hadn’t actually dropped the bike yet.

Five days later and I was crossing into Mexico through the little border town of Tecate. I took it as an immense sign of good fortune that my border crossing bore the same name as the I would be drinking for the next three weeks. Back in Houston most of my biking friends had expressed outright horror when I told them I was taking my bike into Mexico. Comments tended to range from the fairly self-explanatory “you’ll die” to slightly more bizarre situations involving bandits, drug cartels and the local law enforcement. The actual crossing into Mexico turned out to be about as complicated as shopping at Sainsbury’s, except with very friendly people to help. Enough said!

I was in Mexico, on a bike, with six hours of daylight to make the 110 miles to Ensenada. The road was awesome, winding through scrubby granite hills on an endless series of open bends. Time to debunk the next gringo myth. The Mexicans are actually pretty good drivers. Stories I’d been told about Mac trucks with bald tires slewing randomly into oncoming traffic on blind bends just never happened. Ok, there was the occasional boy racer in a burnt out Honda Civic who put a tire on my side of the road, but I defy you to find a country anywhere in the world where that doesn’t happen.

My first real day of riding in Mexico and it was certain to be memorable. 6.00 am, still dark outside, no time to waste, no time for breakfast, grab a coffee and go. From Ensenada the map showed a 60 mile ride east along Mex 3 to the turn off for Mikes Sky Ranch. The book glibly described Mike’s ranch as being 22 miles south of the highway along an easy to moderate dirt road. “The Book” also claimed that someone had once made it into the ranch on a Goldwing. Seriously, the dirt road is not that bad, and for someone with a few years of dirt riding under their belt, maybe a Goldwing could make it. The first 8 miles were a breeze, nice flat hard packed dirt with big friendly signs pointing the way. The last 8 miles scared the living bejeebus out of me. My first real off road experience. The track dived steeply down into small valleys, crossing the thankfully dry stream beds at the bottom before climbing steeply out over sections of road that seemed to be made mostly of football sized boulders. As I still hadn’t yet discovered the art of standing on my pegs, me and my luggage were thrown around the bike like rag dolls on a Home Depot paint shaker. I cringed a couple of times when the rear shock bottomed out with a thud after dropped into a foot deep pot hole or bounced over an unseen boulder. I silently prayed that I wouldn’t break my bike on my first time out. How embarrassing would that be? And how the hell do you get a broken bike out of Mexico anyway?

Mikes Ranch comes into view like a mirage. Several gleaming white buildings, poplar trees, green grass and a swimming pool set half way up a spectacular river valley. Honestly, I’d been expecting a few tin huts with a semi-detached barn. This place was the Baja Hilton.

By three in the afternoon I was still the only guest at the ranch, starting on another by the pool and smiling to myself while reminiscing about my first days ride in Mexico. Life was good. I heard the sound of several dirt bikes coming down the valley and what looked like the Honda factor team was showing up. Eight red Hondas with riders all wearing identical red helmets, jackets and pants complete with red off-road Armour. Impressive. Turns out that they were a group of US developers out on their annual working vacation being led down sections of the Baja 1000 route by some guy called Chris who was running a tour business for off road bike enthusiasts. After steaks on the barby (they have really good steak in Mexico) and a few more beverages we were all sat in the bar watching the latest Baja 1000 video, oohhing and argghing at the obvious skill on display. One of the developers was telling me about his latest multi-million dollar scheme to import millions of tons of limestone from Honduras into Florida to make cement (I kid you not) and I was asking him about Chris’s riding tours. How long they would be in Baja, where they were heading, had they had any flat tires, how the hell you stand on foot pegs anyway, the usual chitchat. The developer quietly mentioned that Chris was in fact Chris Haines who has won the Baja 1000 numerous times and came in third last year, a mere 3 minutes behind the race winner. Blink, look at video, blink look at the quiet guy sat at the bar. I was in the presence of greatness and suddenly watching the Baja video took on a whole new dimension. The next morning Chris offered to look over my maps with me and offer his advice on where I planned to go. As it was to turn out Chris’s advice probably saved by bacon. I had planned to ride over to San Felipe before turning south for 124 miles of dirt road along the Sea of Cortez to Las Arratras and Coco’s Corner (another classic Baja 1000 stop). Chris took one look at my bloated KLR with its wimpy duel sport tires and suggested I take an alternate route back through Valle De Trinidad to pick up Mex 1 again. Still 60 miles of dirt trail, but a lot easier on the bike. Chris reckoned that the coastal road would probably eat my tires and if I got caught with a flat out near the coast I could be in real trouble. Out on the coastal trail it would be blazing desert heat with no shade, no water supply and almost nobody around for the 100 plus miles. It wasn’t until almost a month later that I realized how right he was. The first rider I met, Allan, came down the San Felipe coastal road on a GS650 blew out his rear shock and spent the last 25 painful miles bouncing on a pogo stick at 10 mph before waiting two weeks in La Paz for a new shock. A few days later in La Paz I met a second rider who ripped a 3 inch gash in the sidewall of his rear tire and pinched a hole through the inner tube. He managed to limp out and connect back to Mex 1 on a patched up bald rear tire and his spare tube. Thanks Chris! Moral of the story, always listen to someone who knows what he’s doing, especially if you don’t.

The Valle de Trinidad road was an absolute hoot. At the marked turn off from Mex 3, I learnt how you ask for directions in Mexico. First whip out the 1: bazillion scale map that looked pretty good back in the Houston bookstore and stare hopefully at a compass (having previously refused all advice by my friends to take a GPS, “Please take mine” they said). Next, realize that the thin red lines on the map don’t really resemble anything on the ground because maps are drawn from a godlike perspective whereas my perspective is exactly 5’6” off the ground. Next, ride along a wheat field to a four-way intersection of four identical wheat fields and try out my appalling Spanish on the local school kids who smile and laugh because neither of us can understand a word each other is saying. The 6 year old kid who I was trying to ask for directions kept getting distracted because his 8 year old sister kept punching him in the arm because (I think) he was telling me the wrong way. “No, No”, she kept saying shaking her head and added another bruise to her brother’s arm. So after a lot of vague pointing and Anglo-Mexican semaphore I climb back on my bike and ride 300 yards down to the next wheat field junction and point at my map with a group of farmers while saying “San Isidro, por fe vor” and thinking to myself that this would have been a lot easier if the British Empire had got here before the Spanish. Now I come to realize just how useless the map is. The small towns marked on the map that I point to in the hope of directions don’t in fact exist. The towns marked on the map are in fact single mud huts that most of the farmers call “the house where uncle Pedro lives” instead of the slightly grander title of San Isidro that is printed on the map. The wheat field boogie continues for an hour and is actually quite a lot of fun as I end up going in squares passing the same group of bemused farmers or local school kids many times. Eventually one of the farmers recognizes the place that I am asking about and with a broad grin points his arm at a dirt road about 3 miles away that snakes up and over a hill side.

“Mex 1”
“Yes, yes senior, Mex 1”

I jump on the bike, lock eyes on the designated road and ride around a dozen wheat fields until I brake to a stop looking up the valley side, front wheel pointed at a dirt track that takes off approximately west. That’s how you navigate in Mexico, no GPS required.

It took almost three weeks to reach Cabo San Lucas at the Southern tip of Baja Mexico and with all honesty, the ride was quite simply the best. Of course what made it the best was that it wasn’t all good. Early in the ride I wondered why I wasn’t seeing many other bikes on the main highway. The reason of course was that October is early in the season, and the Baja central desert gets hot, damn hot. One of my first off road sections was to an old Mission called San Francisco de Borja Adac that was described in the book as a not to be missed site. It was 22 miles of cobbles and stretches of 6 inch deep loose sand. Not bad, but with my fledgling off road skills, not a cake walk either. By half way I actually thought that my helmet must have melted and welded itself to my head. I had drank the two and a half liters of water I was carrying in an hour flat and I was desperate to get my bike jacket off despite the vicious looking cactus that said in no uncertain terms that it would be a very bad idea to crash into one sans jacket. Being slowly cooked, riding alone on a bad desert trail eventually started to mess with my head. Questions that after the fact were heat induced just paranoia, kept popping into my head. Was I on the rite trail? Had I missed a fork in the road, was I now hopelessly lost riding into the middle of nowhere in a desert with no water? The thought of having to fix a flat tire in that heat without any shade was definitely starting to worry me and I found myself making stupid moves on the bike to avoid anything that looked like a sharp rock. The KLR had almost a 300 mile range and the trip meter was showing only 70 miles from the last fill up. But suddenly even running out of gas on a 54 mile round trip seemed to be something worth worrying about. So with my brain about to go cuckoo the Mission came into view. All right, it was an impressive sight built out here all on its own. I can only imaging what it must have been like for the mission priests back in 1762 living out here, waiting for the next donkey convoy re-supply. Just as I climbed off the bike a little kid came running out to tell me that the Father was away and so the mission was closed. Ashamed to say, I threw a tantrum like a 3 year old in front of the confused kid who thankfully didn’t speak my version of English. But of course, looking back on it that was really just another great day in Baja.

Cabo San Lucas at the southern tip of the Baja peninsula is a real estate developer’s wet dream and the Las Vegas of Mexico. Two nights in Cabo was enough for me and I was screaming to get out of the place. After three weeks on the bike in rural Baja, the culture shock is extreme. After being offered coke, blow or crack for the third time in 100 yards outside my hotel I decided that enough was enough and it was time to have some fun at the low life drug dealers expense. Try this out next time your in Cabo, it’s a hoot.

“Hey, senior, you want crack, blow, women, anything you want”
“Sure, good idea, give me half a kilo of coke”
Bug eyed, bewildered look from the drug dealer. Is this gringo mad, or has he just scored the deal of a lifetime?
“Half kilo senior?”
“Sure, half a kilo, you take AMEX, yes…..”
Then turn and walk off leaving the sorry bastard thoroughly confused.

The previous week I had met a few other riders in La Paz just north of Cabo who told me about a Horizons Unlimited bike rally that was taking place in Creel. Creel was on the rim of the Copper Canyon in mainland Mexico and I was planning to visit the Copper Canyon anyway, so why not hook up with a bunch of like-minded riders for a while? Since I’d ridden down Baja mostly on my own, the idea of riding in a group seemed like a good cure for my going home blues.

What followed was definitely a cure for the going home blues, and then some. I met up with Mike at the La Paz ferry terminal waiting to catch the ferry across to Los Moches on the mainland. Mike was a South African riding a painfully orange KTM 950 on his way down to Terre del Fuego. On the ferry ride we spent time looking at maps to decide on a route to Creel. The obvious route was to take the main roads north to Ciudad Obregon, then head east to Mateos before cutting south into Creel. It was a recommended ride with great roads for bikes. A few hundred miles of curves, bends and hairpins through spectacular mountain scenery of Mexico’s Sierra Charamusca. Unfortunately the Copper Canyon was directly east from Los Moches and we figured that if we rode directly through the canyon to Botapilas we could ride out of the canyons north rim straight to Creel. Suddenly, riding around three sides of a square just to get to Creel didn’t seem like enough adventure.

The map showed a road heading into the canyon from Los Moches and a vague road going to Botapilas. Once at Botapilas we would be home free, as we knew that a good gravel road ascended the north rim to Creel. Total distance on the map from the head of the canyon, a little under 100 miles. Total time it took us, two and a half days! The first 30 miles towards the canyon were on reasonably good tarmac roads and we whipped along in the pre-dawn light at a steady 65. The first junction we came to wasn’t on the map. No worries, we cruised up and down the road for 20 minutes asking a variety of locals before we found the road leading into the canyon. Now on some good dirt roads we felt great. This was it, off on a grand adventure ride. Lots of stops for photos, plenty of time to ride slow and look at the amazing part of the world that we were riding through. We had filled up our tanks at the last Pemex station, but I soon came to realize that Mike’s endurance had nothing to do with his bikes tank capacity. Mike rode best between regular two hour stops and he had an uncanny knack of finding someone to sell us at the most unlikely places. Any collection of mud brick and tin roofed houses on the side of the road and Mike could find cold . Sheltering from the sun in a cool dark shack in a village with no name, drinking a cold Tecate and practicing miss-communication with the local Tarahumara Indians and Spanish ranchers. This was a new one on me, bloody marvelous. We reckoned that we should be in Botapilas by late afternoon. A quick overnight stop, then onto Creel. The Copper Canyon lived up to its expectations. The scenery is just so stupendously big. Cliffs seem to go up for miles all around, the canyon stretches out in front of the tire forever. 15 Miles into the canyon the road we are following begins to take hairpins. The bottom of the canyon is incredibly narrow so the road hangs on to the steep valley sides. To make it over one ridge the road might take dozens of switchbacks up one side and down the other. Distance traveled by the bike, about 15 miles. Distance as the crow fly’s, or as the map is drawn, about 1 mile and so therein starts the fun. By mid afternoon we had come to the realization that we probably weren’t covering as much ground as we had planned. Traffic on the road was non-existent and we were pretty happy to see a couple of guys in a utility company truck. We stopped to ask them where we were and how far it was to Botapilas. For some reason they didn’t seem to know. How could the utility guys, who were presumably out here fixing or installing something, not know where they were? At the next beverage stop we asked the girl who was serving us another cold one how far it was to Botapilas. The girl pointed back down the road we had just ridden up. Humm, that can’t be right, lets ask someone else. But no one seemed to have heard of Botapilas.

How can that be, its on the map, in the canyon, they live here and Botapilas must be just down the trail. Must be our bad Spanish. No problem, Botapilas must be east of us, so if we just keep heading east we can’t miss it? At four in the afternoon and we come to the first junction we have seen since we had got lost at the first one. The junction has a signpost with arrows giving directions to two towns, both of which are not on the map. I whip out the compass and try and figure out where Botapilas might be. This is utterly futile since both roads disappear over hillsides within 500 yards and I have no idea where they go after that. Mike decides to go back down the road a couple of miles to a village and ask directions. I stay put to ask any trucks that might come along. It’s a long shot since apart from the utility truck three hours ago we have seen precisely zero traffic. But it’s a hell of a nice spot to hang out, no worries. Mike rides off in search of directions and much to my surprise a beaten up pick up truck pulls over and I say “Botapilas” while waving my hands and shrugging my shoulders in what I hope is the international semaphore for asking directions. The driver immediately points back down the road and twenty minutes later Mike rides up. An old guy told him about a track that goes to Botapilas, but he said it was a bit rough. We head off back the way we just came and find the track leading off into the trees. Its no wonder we missed it, it’s a donkey trail. We know it’s a donkey trail because the first traffic we meet is a line of six donkeys laden down with huge bundles of fresh smelling star shaped leaves. Two miles down the track I see Mikes bike stopped at the banks of a river. Its 150 yards across, knee deep and moving pretty fast.

We both grin and laugh; this is just too much fun. We offload the luggage and Mike walks the bikes across in first gear with me balancing the other side. The riverbed is basically rounded cobbles but Mike manages to keep the momentum going and it’s surprisingly easy. No bikes dropped, dry luggage and only wet feet, no problem. What’s more we now think that we know where we are since the river is marked on the map with a road crossing it just 15 miles south of Botapilas. It’s getting on for 5 pm; we are going to have to boogie to make Botapilas before it gets dark. After the river crossing the trail just went to crap. I had never seen anything like it and I had serious doubts that a bike could actually make it over what laughably passed for a road. The donkey trail continued on its endless series of steep hairpins and switchbacks but now the track seemed to be made up almost entirely of chair-sized boulders mixed with fist sized loose rocks. Traction was almost no existent and stopping the bike usually resulted in bike and rider sliding back down hill dragging the front wheel with a locked up front brake. The only way to keep the bike upright and moving was to gun the engine in first gear, feet and butt flying around as the bike did a wild fandango up the trail. But going round switchbacks, up hill on loose rock with the throttle open was way, way beyond my skill. One switchback I can still picture in my mind clear as day. The straight section into the turn was mental and I thought I’d done well just to keep the bike moving. After the straight the trail turned almost 170 degrees, and the only line that looked like it had any hope of traction was up a 40 degree slope with a tree growing across it 4ft off the ground. I somehow maneuvered the bike to give myself a straight shot up the slope and gunned the engine. The bike took off and shot through the corner while I butted tree branches out of the way with my helmet. But I was going way too fast and the brush with the tree had thrown me off balance and I simply piled into the bank on the far side of the road and went down with the bike. The trail didn’t get any better for the next three hours and I ended up dropping my bike four times while Mike dropped his twice. I wrenched my back picking up that stupid fat overweight piece of cr*&p bike (I loved that bike really, just not at that particular moment in time) and once while we were picking up Mikes bike it decided to spontaneously launch itself downhill. I swear the bike actually took off like a Harrier jump jet while I got the hell out of its way on the lowside. And then it got dark and there we were, pitch black sitting on the side of the trail next to the bikes. We both had tents but we were just too exhausted to put them up so we pulled out sleeping bags and flopped onto the ground.

Twenty minutes later we hear the grinding of truck engines. Mike and I stare at each other in disbelief. No way can anybody be out here. Ten minutes later we see the headlights coming up the trail. For obvious reasons, Mike’s South African survival instincts are a bit sharper than my English ones. I mean the last time anyone did a roadside hold up in England the vehicle in question was pulled by four horses and it was Dick Turpin shouting “stand and deliver your money or your life”. In a heart beat Mike is out of his sleeping bag and in a flat run into the trees while I am sitting there wondering what the hell to do. This is Mexico, the middle of nowhere and its pitch black. Why would anyone be on this road after dark (apart from idiot gringo bikers). I decide that I am just too tired to get up and anyway my back is bloody killing me. Trust in the good nature of folk I think to myself. Two minutes later, two beaten up half ton trucks pull up filled with local gaucho’s wearing massive panama hats and spotless white shirts. They point and try to ask me questions while I sit there in my boxer shorts, white skin glowing in the headlights, not understanding a word. I go through my entire repertoire of emergency Spanish - “No problemo, e noches”. They smile and talk amongst themselves for a few minutes before waving, wishing me a good night and drive off slowly down the trail no doubt confused by what crazy gringo’s do for fun. I just sit there and giggle hysterically to myself. Way too much drama for me. I just drift off to sleep because lets face it, after that, what else could happen that’s worth staying awake for?

Botapilas turns out to be a really neat town with steep narrow cobbled streets and old Spanish colonial buildings built along a 1 km stretch of the Rio Botapilas. Originally founded and made wealthy by copper mining Botapilas now maintains its wealth through growing and exporting marijuana. The thought of riding out of the canyon to Creel that afternoon seems like way too much work and besides, Botapilas looked like too nice a place to just ride through without stopping. Mike and I are both totally fried from the ride through the canyon so we park the bikes and find the nearest bar. We spend the afternoon joyfully building a Tecate tin pyramid and chatting with the locals using our mixture of mangled Spanish and arm waiving.

As it turns out today is a fiesta in Botapilas and by 11 pm after speeches from the local big wigs the plaza is packed and hopping with couples dancing to a band playing salsa and merenge. Everyone is dressed up to the nines, and the local costume for men includes the most extravagant cowboy boots you will ever see. The actual boot must at least 4 to 5 inches longer than the foot inside, appears to be made of some exotic endangered species and come in bright green, red, sky blue and hot pink. Later on in Creel I check out the price of a pair of these wonder boots. Lets just say that your average farmer isn’t going to be able to afford a pair of these wonder boots unless he is growing a particularly high value crop.

The road from Creel to Durango is flat and open as it hugs the eastern side of the Sierra Madre Occidental and just what was needed after the Copper Canyon. This is the old stomping ground of the Mexican hero Poncho Villa who from 1900-1916 turned from bank robber to revolutionary successfully using the Sierra Occidental to evade government posse’s sent to capture him before he was finally gunned down in the town of Parral in 1919.

The stretch of Mex 40 from Durango to Mazatlan on the Pacific coast is called the Devils Backbone. Named after a section of jagged limestone cliff that lines one side of the road, the Devils Backbone is often described as the best road in Mexico. While not having ridden every road in Mexico, what I can say is that the thought of riding the Devils Backbone again is all the inspiration I will ever need to jump on a bike and ride to Mexico. The actual Devils Backbone section of the road starts at the lip of the Sierra Occidental mountain plateau at an elevation of 8300ft and begins a descent to Mazatlan at the Pacific coast. The engineer who designed the Devils Backbone must have been a biker because the road is simply magnificent. Almost the entire 74 miles stretch has been blasted out of steep mountainsides. The longest section of straight road is probably 300 yards longs and I swear that there isn’t more than half a dozen straights on the whole road. The rest of the road is an endless series of tight downhill curves and switchbacks with a crazy road camber that will make you feel that you are riding a corkscrew.

The road is so good that you have to make a very deliberate effort to slow down. The bends are very readable and I found myself pushing faster and faster through the bends and the KLR in 3rd gear is plenty fast for these roads. It’s downhill all the way and accelerating is definitely not a problem. Eventually of course you go into yet another perfect hairpin too hot and swing out into the oncoming lane. Catch a breath, its time to slow down for a while, there’s plenty of road left. The road is made all the more spectacular by the changes in scenery as you dive down towards sea level. Pine forests give way to tropical jungle complete with thousands of purple and yellow flowers on the roadside. Going over the lip of the plateau the Sierra Occidental Mountains stretch almost all the way to the coast and reassuring grass verges give way to the Devils Backbone on one side and jaw dropping 3000ft cliffs on the other. This is not the sort of place where you want to run out of road on a bend.

The local traffic makes the road even more memorable. 18 wheelers use the Devils Backbone as a main route to Durango from the coast and the road is just too tight for the big rigs so they use the whole road to get round hairpins. Sling shooting out of a hairpin on the gas and seeing an oncoming truck grill 20 yards away counts high on the road hazard meter. For even more entertainment value, these big rigs unbelievably also use the few short straights to overtake each other. The first time I saw two oncoming trucks side by side while I was making a poor attempt to ride like Barry Sean out of a bend almost required a change of underwear. But no, its not really that serious. There isn’t that many trucks on the road and the maximum speed they can go is probably no more than 15 mph, leaving you plenty of time to hit the brakes and get off the road. Once you get used to dealing with these motorized hippos it’s a whole lot of fun. Of course one of the best things about the Devils Backbone is that once you arrive at the coast, the best way to get further south in Mexico is to turn round and do the road all over again back to Durango.

So from Durango the second time around my route took me SE along Mex 45 towards the old colonial town of Zacatecas. Doing my usual not-paying-attention 65 mph speed limit I did a double take when I saw another KLR closing fast in my mirror with what appeared to be a coffin strapped sideways to the back of it. The coffin bearing KLR turned out to be ridden by Andy, a barman from New York who was on his way to Argentina, and on closer inspection the coffin turned out to be a massive brown packing case being used as the world largest top box. Andy insisted he had the address of a really good and really cheap guesthouse in Zacatecas. He had the street address and our trusty guidebook showed exactly where it was. We completely failed to factor in that the downtown Zacatecas cobbled streets are a maze of one-way alleys and tunnels designed over 200 years ago for donkeys. We spend a hilarious half hour zooming up and down alleys trying to get 50 yards closer to the guesthouse which we could occasionally see but never seem to get to. The cobbled streets just kept getting narrower and narrower until Andy skidded to a halt looking down a flight of six stone steps that lead through a tunnel less than 3 ft wide that would have neatly removed his monster top box. Bugger this for a game of marbles I thought and I pulled up at the next hotel and liberally applied the mastercard. The hotel manager kindly insisted that we pull the bikes off the street so that they would be safe and the hotel turned out to be about as posh as Zacatecas gets. The bikes spent the night in an indoor Spanish Colonial courtyard on saltio-tiled floors surrounded by potted plants and fresco paintings. Not bad at all.

From Zacatecas I took Mex 45 south through the city of Leon (I won’t be doing that again if I can help it) before heading east on some great roads through upland pine forests to the town of San Miguel de Allende. San Miguel De Allende is a seriously nice place. The whole town seems to me made up of restored colonial buildings all painted in typically Mexican colors and each window sporting blooming a flower box. Plazas in old Mexican towns are the center of a towns cultural life and are nearly always lively places to watch the world go by, all be it at a subdued Mexican pace. San Miguel De Allende is definitely no exception, except more so and the cathedral, which overlooks the plaza, is a site to behold. It’s magnificent like a mad confectioners wedding cake, and its made entirely of pink sandstone. The first time that you walk into the plaza and see the cathedral you feel an overwhelming desire to sit down at the nearest plaza café, order some wine and watch the next 10 years go by. Which is of course what a lot of American retirees do. Much of the towns current well to do nature is funded by affluent snowbirds who over winter in Allende, spending there time drinking gin and tonics and going to art exhibitions.

But no matter how nice a place is, after two days of pizza, red wine and pink cathedrals it was time to hit the road again.

My last stop before making a run for the Texas border was the house of Edward James just west of the town of Xilitla. Rumored to be the illegitimate son of Edward VII, friend to Picasso and Salvador Dahli, Edward James lived in self imposed exile in Mexico where he spent his life building gigantic monuments to surrealism. Edward’s monuments and what can loosely be described as houses only because they have a roof, stretch up a jungle valley side for almost half a mile. What Escher did with wood cut prints and Picasso did with oil paints, Edward James did with reinforced concrete. Quite literally, Edward’s creations are giant scale surrealist monuments and statues that will boggle your brain. Waterfalls diverted into a series of reflecting pools, suspended walkways 60ft off the ground, bazaar archways that resemble stylized flamingos and spiral stairwells that lead to nowhere all painted in reds, blues and greens. You have to smile and laugh, its just too cool.

So my Mexican odyssey was coming to an end. One day’s dash to the Mexican border along Mex 101 to Brownsville and yes, I had found a crap road in Mexico. It’s the one back to the US border. The one with all the Winnebago’s on it. Unbelievably I was also hit by my first day of bad weather on the entire trip, welcome back to Texas.