Day 3

It was gorgeous. Why didn't anyone tell me Mexico looked like this? Clear skies, hills, pastures, trees, mountains. Warm weather. Ooooh, this was going to be a great day. The only problem was butterflies. They were trashing my shield, grossing me out. I had to stop and wash my helmet every two hours and I certainly attracted the stares. I was 10 inches taller and ten shades of skin tone lighter than anyone--and the only shaved head in Mexico, or so it seemed to me.

As I sat on a curb and drank bottled water, a friendly man pulled up in a pickup. "Frrong hrrrrm barrrow perro aqui?"

"Lo siento. Yo no hablo Espanol."

"No hablo Espanol? Nada?"

"Nada," I replied.

"Where you come from?"

"San Franciso."

"Sahn FrrrahnCEESco? On MOTO?"

"Si."

"Where you go?"

"Acapulco."

"NO!!" (Look of shock.) "On MOTO?"

"Si." (Big smile.)

"Cuota no. Many pesos. Libre."

I had no idea what he was talking about. We tried Spanish, we tried gestures, we tried it again in English. I didn't get it, but I smiled and thanked him. He grinned from ear to ear and shook my hand. My shaved head seemed okay with him.

On the way out of town, the road forked. Same highway number, but one way said libre and the other cuota. I remembered: cuota no. Many pesos. I went libre, which I guessed had something to do with liberating. I had no map. Couldn't find one in any town, but through gestures I learned maps are called planos. No plano, Senor.

What libre really means is narrow, two-lane, winding, hilly, and full of semis too cheap to pay the toll. Aha! So cuota means toll. And libre also means: remember your 750-mile goal? Fuhgeddaboudit. No wonder the toll roads have so little traffic. Many pesos.

How Mexican truckers navigate twisty, hilly, two-lane roads where the lane width is 6 inches wider than their truck is a mystery to me. All I know is it didn't seem right to ride a powerful German machine at 5 mph up hills behind the smelliest trucks ever. Are there no emission-control standards in Mexico?

So the next 150 miles became a thrilling cat-and-mouse game of "can you really get by that truck before an oncoming one takes you out?" I needed every bit of acceleration and braking das uber machine could deliver.

And I learned something crucial. Turn signals don't mean what you think. They don't get used much in Mexico to signal a driver's intention to change lanes. When the truck in front of you turns on his left signal, it almost always means "I can see ahead and it's okay to pass me now." If they turn on the right one, it means "try to pass and you'll be squashed like a bug."

But you have to stay on your toes. Because occasionally, the left turn signal means "I'm going to pass the guy ahead of me, and if you're passing me while I'm coming into your lane, you're going into the ditch."

A sick feeling swept over me when I saw the sign with a gas symbol and "85 km" printed below it. I could make it that far, I thought, but it might be tight. 85 km later I wanted to vomit when I arrived at an abandoned Pemex station. Now what? Stop somewhere and beg? Hitchhike? I stopped accelerating around trucks and managed to limp another 26 km, but I was down to my last few vapors. I saw an open-air restaurant and stopped for help.

"Gasolina," I asked?

"No." He shook his head. My stomach turned. "Pero tres keelometers mas," and he gestured down the road. I brightened up. "Tres kilometers?"

"Si."

I exhaled and pantomimed my relief, and he laughed.

3 km further I found another abandoned Pemex station and decided the time had come to thumb a ride with one of those truckers I had blown by so rudely. I hoped they had a sense of humor and didn't mind shaved heads. But...wait...There was a kid pumping gas from the back of what had looked like an abandoned station. He filled my tank with the only grade available (low) but as long as it got my bike to roll, I didn't care.

Mazatlan was The First Great Disappointment. I had pictured a luxurious resort town, but it was Galveston. Cheesy, touristy, tasteless. The beach was nice. I enjoyed the sunset, looked for a plano (no luck), bought some film, and decided to ride away in the darkness.

My long-lost guidebook had offered a stern warning: never drive at night in Mexico. It's not like the U.S. Nothing is lit. 80% of accidents occur in the darkness. But I still had Belize on my mind and I wanted the miles. I promised myself I'd be extra careful. I had a vague memory of seeing a good toll road out of Mazatlan marked on a map.

I rode out to the airport thinking "surely I can buy a plano there." Wrong. But an old map taped to a wall indicated that I should follow the signs to a city named Tepic. Fine. Off I rode into the blackness. Not even a moon or stars. This time I chose the fork marked cuota and was rewarded with the single best road I have ever seen in any country. Smooth cement with reflectors everywhere and not a single vehicle besides mine on it. Broad shoulders with fences to keep animals at bay. This was my lucky night.

For 30 kilometers. Then it dumped me onto the nastiest two-lane road crowded with trucks I have ever seen. I've seen scarier roads, but none with trucks on the loose. I couldn't lift my shield because bugs would take out my eyes. But it was impossible to see past oncoming trucks with absolutely no reflectors on the road and butterflies fouling my shield. I couldn't tell if a curve was coming until I was clear of oncoming headlights.

I decided to stay at the very next hotel, no matter what. 100 kilometers and 90 minutes went by. No hotels. I wondered if a Mexican family would take me in if I knocked on their door. I stopped at an open-air restaurant, a horribly shabby-looking place with 20 trucks parked in the dirt out front, and like everywhere else in Mexico they smiled and brought me a wonderful dinner. What it was I couldn't say. It came in a bowl with rice, beef, peppers, onions, beans, salsa... Delicious.

Into the blackness I rode, vowing never to get caught on a road like this at night again. At the bottom of a long, winding hill a police car directed traffic around a sobering crash scene. A semi had missed a turn and plunged 150 yards down a hill, smashing into a creek. I wondered if it contained the body of one of the truckers I saw at the restaurant. Next hotel, Chris. The very next one.

It was 130 km away in the city of Tepic. Only 600 miles today despite the late night. I finally decided to believe the guidebook and get real about how many miles I could travel.

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