+ Week 3 Bad Hombres Go South Of The Border to Copper Canyon, Mexico

[Yinzer Moto]

Day 9 video

 

[Yinzer Moto]

Day 10: 210KM

Cerocahui to Creel

Singletrack mind

The hotel room included breakfast, so we all went in around 7am and sat down. We had a great conversation with VTbeemer. He has been to some far away places and I hope to get that opportunity someday. We were not in a big hurry because it was pretty chilly out this morning. The sun was out and doing its job. We said our goodbyes to VTbeemer and set off.

We blasted the pavement north to Bahuchivo and were there pretty quick. Coming out of Bahuchivo we turned on the famous low road. It was a nice ride, better than the asphalt on the high road.

We stopped at the adventure park to take in some sights.

VTbeemer suggested a turn off that went to a nice town. We thought we took at turn off but then the road necked down into single track. I just went with it and kept riding it. It was a really fun section of trail. Eventually it led to a house. I stopped and grandma came running out to greet us. Then she started talking about cerveza, it was like 10am, we were not really in the mood. She ran back in and came out with a bucket with some type of fermented drink in it that she makes. I did not dar to drink but Danny took her up on the offer. It was served out of a wooden ladle. The whole family came out and shook hands with us.

Then we asked if we could continue the direction we were going and she said yes and pointed that direction. I lost the trail and circled back after a minute. Grandma ran down to sho us where the trail was. Once on the trail again, we were good to do. We rode a bit more trail and then found our way to the highway. Creel was a short ride up the road.

Once in Creel, we grabbed lunch. There were a bunch of BMWs in front of one restaurant, so we bought it might be a good place. After lunch we found a hotel in town. We still had a lot of daylight left, so we headed out for some more exploring. We found even more excellent single track and rode to some pretty remote areas. This was my favorite day of riding yet.

Ron had a bit of trouble on this ledge.

 

[LtCrashDan]

Day 10, Ron's famous last words on that ledge coming down (this is the one in the pic, he was upside down at first) - "Its always easier going back up than it is going down"

The ride out was still chili, I put on my heated jacket, but it didn't last long. The low road out of Bahuchivo was pretty nice, it was not super challenging, and I would say this is certainly doable on any adventure bike.

The adventure park had some nice views, but I still prefer those above Urique:

In creel, we had lunch at Restaurant La Cabana, this is where we saw the Beemers outside. I think this is where I had my first torta, i'm not sure why the guys waited so long to tell me how good those things are:

We checked hotel casca, but they were a bit high at 900 a night for two beds. It did include breakfast, and we would have stayed if they threw in some cerveza's, but they would not. We headed to the Taramuri hotel on Dan's suggested, and scored $500 a night for 2 nights with 2 bedrooms and 4 beds, plus hot water and working heat. This was good for me, because it was my turn to sleep on the floor.

The family at the house was awesome, the lady was so excited to have visitors. The bucket liquor wasn't so bad either, it was a bit watery though. I thought it was pulque, but later realized it was corn based as she said maize. She wanted to cook us lunch too, but we had just eaten not that long ago.

We would also hit some farm area along a river. We started climbing a pretty steep rock road, it was almost cobblestone, except there was no mortar. We quickly came upon a group still building the road, they told us to turn around. Jason believes maybe it was a road to a grow operation, as there was no roads leading up to this one.

Back in town was another failed attempt at finding Mezcal (it was from Oaxaca, but not good stuff), but we did get some decent tequila and tecate's. I also picked a natural remedy up for Jason:

We had another run-in with a shady character following us into the hotel room:

 

[Yinzer Moto]

Day 10 video

This is my favorite video so far.

 

[Yinzer Moto]

Day 11: 170KM

Creel day trip

Yesterday we had run out of planned route for our trip, that we wanted to do. There were a few loops but they had some really remote and unknown sections and we wanted to be back in Texas tomorrow. So we had booked 2 nights in the hotel in Creel and today we were just going to go exploring. I looked at the GPS and found places were the elevation contour lines were very close together and we tried to ride to this places.

We started off the morning by heading South West out of Creel to a spot that was rumored to have some hot spring pools. A short way down the dirt road was a toll booth. He wanted $100 each to pass through. Danny's negation skills got him down to $120 total, actually Danny got him down to $150 and then the guy just asked for 120.

When the road started to drop into the canyon, they had paved the road with rocks, it was extremely bumpy, worse than any rocky road. I ended up with a front flat. I am running the 1st gen tubliss and it has a design flaw on the rim lock where the allen head bolt is raised above the rim lock. It acted like a hole punch and knocked a clean 6MM hole right through my tire. My sticky rope plugs were covered in dusty dirt and would not work. So I pulled the tubliss and put a tube in. I put a strip of duct tape across the hole in the tire.

Once back on the road, we defended to the bottom of the valley to the hot springs. They were really warm springs. It is an interesting spot. I just love the thought of water that is heated by the molten core of the earth and is coming out of the side of a mountain.

After this, I had seen some really close contour lines on the GPS and it indicated a creek or river was passing over that area. So we decided to try and follow foot paths over that direction to see what is over there.

It did not disappoint.

Continued...

 

[Yinzer Moto]

Day 11 continued....


After a good bit of nice single track, we came across this viewpoint.

We could not see the waterfall yet but the GPS said we were close. So we rode around a bit more and then found a good view of it.

This is another that I would love to see during high water levels.

Looking at the GPS, I could see a dirt road leading to what appeared to be a very remote village at the edge of the canyon. We decided it would be fun to ride out there. Danny had thought he maybe heard of this village before, it took a little convincing to get him to do the ride. It was a really scenic ride. Danny ran out of water during the ride there. The ride out was a maze of foot paths and dirt road. At one point, Danny was in the back but took a shortcut and ended up in front of us. Without us knowing. We had Sent radios but they really dont have good distance and quickly lost communication. It took 20-30 min but I figured out he was in front of us and Ron and I hauled ass to catch him.

We got to the village and it was in a really spectacular lunar landscape and positioned right at the edge of the canyon.

Once in the village, we found a small store where were able to buy cokes. I refilled my camelback from the rain barrel. For this Mexico trip, I had installed a water filter on my camelback hose. So I could fill it anywhere. I forgot to ask why but Danny and Ron did not and they relied on getting bottled water. This caused several issues during the trip and just seemed like an inconvenience.

We saddled up and headed back toward Creel. The trip back went a little faster. At least until the GPS map started failing us. It said there were roads in the area and there were not. There were foot paths, it was getting late and we needed to get out of there. Eventually we backtracked to where we had seen a small town and asked. The directions we got were not on the map but they worked like a charm. Soon we were back in Creel.

We stopped at the small cave house outside of Creel for some souvenirs.

Then back into town for what would most likely be our last night in Mexico

 

[Yinzer Moto]

Day 11 video

I know I keep saying it but full screen for the best viewing. The scenery is unbelievable.

 

[LtCrashDan]

I forgot to mention the day before

I woke up this morning and went outside and took a picture to send to a coworker to let him know I am also now the owner of a Harley Davidson:

Oil has started sneaking past our field repair, it would get worse over the next few days, but luckily (or maybe not luckily) we only had 2 days of riding left.

The springs we went to were called Recowata. It seems people typically drive to here, and I read some reviews stating the road is extremely sketchy. I don't know that I would want to drive a car on this road. At one point we passed 4 crosses on the side, 2 big ones and 2 small ones and Jason and I mentioned on the comms how eerie that was. The funny part about the negotiating the rate is, when we got to the bottom a guy asked to see my ticket. I looked at it before putting it back in my pocket and it read estudiante $20 (so the guy pocketed 20 each too and gave us a student rate).

The spot itself though was really cool:

I had seen the Cascada de Rukiraso on the map, so we decided to try and find it as we were so close. It took a couple side paths, but we would eventually find it. It was a pretty cool canyon to see. I snagged a couple pics of the falls, and a picture of the Canyon facing the other direction:

and of course one with the bikes:

I had only plan to ride part of the day and head back, after the falls, but the other guys convinced me to keep going. It did end up being a really fun riding day. The funny part about me getting ahead, is locals were working on the road. I stopped and in my poor spanish asked if there were 2 Motorcycles that had passed through. The lady responded Si and pointed foward, so I rode for another 15 minutes at a slower pace not seeing any tracks. I couldn't help but remember other ride reports where locals will say, yes this is the road you need.... We continued along the top of the valley to a town that only seemed to have a school and a couple small farms with fruit bearing tree's. The cool part about this town, is you could pretty much see EL Divisadero on the other side, at least where the eco park is that we visited.
The following picture I have listed as getting this day, which I think may have been a small village on the way, if it wasn't from the previous day. From this spot, I remember we saw a pretty large looking fire burning in the distance, it was very dry the whole time:

The rock formations in this area were really cool too. There were a lot of mushroom style rocks which unfortunately I didn't get a pic of, but got some on video. I did get some cool ones across the canyon though:

We then got back to creel to do a little touristy shopping, and had dinner at a restaurant a lot of locals were eating at. I may have gotten my two restaurants mixed up, and it was actually Restaurant Cabana this night, and Montados La Sierra the night before. I had a really good meal (possibly my favorite dinner) with steak, guac, beans, peppers, and some enchilada sauce, and I got a side of garlic mushrooms. Also I got my favorite beer of the other trip. It was from Cerveceria copper and it was a porter. I would probably rate this beer in my favorite top 10:

 

[Yinzer Moto]

Day 12 550KM

Creel to Ojinaga

The Beginning of the end...

We were up early again and packing the bikes for our long ride back up to Ojinaga. Creel is pretty high in elevation and the bikes were usually covered in frost. We jockeyed them around into the sun. Aired the tires up a bit more for what we thought was going to be an asphalt ride.

Danny's Harley/Yamaha seems to be leaking a bit worse these days but it just has to make one more day.

Not too far into the day, the roads turned to dirt, it was pretty nicely maintained for the most part. There was maybe 10 miles that necked down to a narrow rocky section. These more populated roads are were we saw more odd police and possibly cartel activity. I stopped at one point and was waiting for Danny and a couple trucks coming the opposite direction stopped and started trying to ask me questions. They had radios on their shoulders. Then the guy noticed and commented on the camera on my helmet and took off. I don't know what he was up to but when he saw the camera, he decided it was time to go.

A little further up the road, on the main highway into Chihuahua, we encountered our first police road block. They waived Danny and I though but then everyone started yelling and pointing when Ron rolled up. Fortunately, they were concerned about the truck that was being him.

Then we saw what VTbeemer described as a Cartel convoy, 6-8 nicer pickup trucks, driving in formation.

We rolled into Ojinaga around 5pm. I was concerned about the amount of mud on the bikes and the possibility that US border patrol might want them cleaned. I have had that issue at the Canadian border but did not know if they cared much down here.

We hit a couple car washes until we found one that was willing to just do a quick light wash on the bikes for $100. The other thought we wanted the bikes spotless and wanted $300 for all 3.

Then we hit a liquor store for a few bottles of tequila.

There are some good ones there and one bad one.

Crossing back across to the US is easy. First stop at the drive up booth, right when you enter the secure area and cancel your TVIP. If you used a credit card, you are done and will get the refund in a few days. If you paid with cash, you go inside to the cashier and they will give you cash back. Then stop at the Migration desk and cancel your migration paperwork there.

Next is a toll booth to cross the Rio Grande bridge. 13 pesos for motorcycles.

Back in the US! it was 6pm south of the border but is now 8pm in Texas. We were asked a few questions by the border patrol and I claimed my Tequila. I did not have to pay tax because the liquor control lady was gone for the day. Then we hit subway for a sandwich to go and found some beer at the gas station. Then over to the Loma Paloma RV Park for the night. They have a little clubhouse where there is laundry and a game room. As well as a shower. We asked permission to just sleep on the floor and they were fine with that. That saved us the work of having to set our tents up.

We chowed down on our sandwiches and talked about how much fun we had over the last 2 weeks. Well into the early morning hours

 

[Yinzer Moto]

Day 13, driving home.

We got up and loaded up. Ron was riding back to El Paso TX, so he had another long riding day ahead of him. We got the truck loaded and were on the road by 10am or so. The highway patrol had different plans for us, a short way out of town.

7mph over the speed limit. He was just fishing for bigger offenses. Danny's insurance card was expired and of course we did not have cell service to prove coverage. So he got a ticket for that. a few miles down the road, we had coverage again.

The drive went smoothly until then next morning when the dashboard warned of a low tire. We found the object but decided to leave it in place and just air the tire up and finish the next 7 hours back home.

I put a plug in when we got home, i am glad we waited. The cords in this tire made plugging a little tough and my larger plug kit at home worked better

 

[Yinzer Moto]

I would like to add a few words about Mexico.

Crossing the border: it is intimidating but the people are helpful. Have a couple copies of your registration, title, and passport. If you don't have the copies, you can make them there. Budget a bit of time, it took us about 2 hours.

Not all businesses have signs. Gas and food is available almost anywhere. Even the smallest villages. We had a 1 gallon rotopax on the back of the bike and never needed it. I dont think we ever went more than 150 miles without fuel. Usually it was well under 100 miles. We dumped our rotopax in our bikes around day 9. It was night and day difference in the bike handling. Having that 6 pounds of fuel hanging off the back of the bike really effected the handling negatively. The empty container and mounting hardware weigh a good bit too.

Like I mentioned earlier in the report, the $ sign is used in front of their prices, that took me 3 days to figure out.

For me, the best way to go for the cell phone was to buy the SIM card for 200 pesos, I had pretty good phone coverage and data worked in the larger towns.

In the hotel rooms, look for a little rubber cover for the shower drain, they do not have P traps on their showers and the room will fill with sewer gas without it. We had one extremely stinky room without it. I remember seeing it sitting on the opposite side of the room.

Lastly, everyone is extremely friendly and patient with us. They would always try and talk with us and figure out what we needed. I only spent a couple weeks of studying Spanish, a couple extra weeks would have made a larger difference. DuoLingo is a great, free, learning app

 

[Yinzer Moto]

Bike damage report: Danny had 5 or 6 flats. We never found a cause. I know what pinch flats look like, they looked more like punctures. I checked the tire many times. I got one front flat.

Dannys racks took a beating and the mounting points kept loosening up. The mounting points on Dannys subframe for the rear racks broke off or were getting ready to break off.

I bought the AltRider Hemisphere rackless bags for this trip in order to eliminate my racks, they worked great. I really liked that I could have the bags off of the bike to take into the hotel room within a few seconds. Putting them back on took a little more effort but not more than 2-3 min.

Danny has a hole in his engine case that is patched with JB weld. It will need to be removed and patched a little better but should be fine for the life of the bike.

I lost a bolt securing my muffler. I think it was missing for quite a while, I could hear a little rattle but checked my bike many times and never found it.

Rons bike was perfect, it worked so flawlessly that I don't think he even need to add gas. He would just act like he added gas just not to make us jealous.

 

[LtCrashDan]

A couple notes from me about my Sandman case saver and Dirt Rack's that broke. Ivan from Sandman actually sent me a special bolt so I could still run the rest of the case saver without the outer piece. Super cool guy, and I still think a great product. It was just a freak thing that broke. Also Dirt Rack's offers a lifetime warranty on their product, and they actually upheld that when I contacted them about my broken rack.

One damaged part Yinzer missed was my headlight shroud. I broke that trying to keep up with Yinzer on some woops, I someone managed to land the bike on that shroud...

 

[staticPort]

Epic report, Yinzer Moto; thanks for posting it here at the git go! Ride reports are the heart and soul of a place like this and are what addicted me to the ’other place’ back in the day. Keep on keepin’ on . . .

 

[Old Jeeper]

I think I need to go there. Your info on boarder crossings is much appreciated. Great report, thanks.

 

[EGR]

Day 2 About 400Km

Wild camp spot to Urique

The distance thing is interesting and something I struggle with on these trips. If I look at my garmin track, it says about 150mi. When I zoom into the track, I see it is a series of straight lines, cutting off corners. I did not think it would make that much of a difference but I have been on a few trips where my initial planning said it was going to be a 300 mi day by Garmin Basecamp but then real miles end up being over 400.

Looking at the elevation map, you will see a huge decent at the end of the day. It was the most stunning riding I have ever done.

We got up in the morning around sunrise, 6am and made some coffee and oatmeal. Then we packed camp and were on the road around 7am. As soon as I fired up the my bike, I saw someone running. They were in traditional Tarahumara Indian clothing. I now realize the "cow path" that we were parked on last night, may have been their foot path. I believe the person who I saw running may have been silently watching us in the morning.

We set off and the riding this morning was really spectacular. It was rocky and through wooded areas. Much like riding in West Virginia. The mountains started to grow bigger, or should I say the valleys started to get deeper?

Does anyone know anything about these trees with red bark? I found them interesting.

We finished the dirt road section near the Cusarare Waterfall. We turned north and followed the asphalt north toward Creel where we grabbed gas and a lunch snack. Then doubled back to go to the waterfall. We took a wrong turn trying to find the waterfall and wound a large rock formation that is similar to Moab slick rock, we spent a few min riding around on it.

I dont like hosting the photos outside of ADV because they load slowly sometimes and make reports difficult to read. ADV limits posts to 4 photos. So, I will continue on the next post.

Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center - The University of Texas at Austin

www.wildflower.org

Madrone tree.

 

[EGR]

Day 4 started out with some amazing views:

Once someone gets out of the way, you can see the real view:

Jason did tell me the master link was on backwards, but I do swear the directions explicitly stated towards the direction of travel with an image. Well I was carrying several spares, he says we shall see when we change the master link, no big deal easy enough if it does happen, at least I have a case saver....

The extra piece of sandman case saver bolts into the lower right stock hole from the stock guard. The chain hit this, and took out that connecting piece of the case saver, and pulled the entire stock threads and part of the case with it. We got it back together with JB steel Stick. And then rode easy until we got oil from a super friendly guy from under his hood. Through my broken spanish he started speaking english, and when I asked tu habla ingles? he goes, shit I didn't even realize I was speaking english. As Jason said, this lead us to learning a great lesson early in the trip. We got fresh picked herbs, and muy picante salsa with some exceptional huevos rancheros.

and I now have enough oil to help me feel secure.

Across from the store there was an old church and cemetary

and further down a cool old abandoned church

Que Carajo though with that bad hombre and his barbed wire. Was that a gringo toll?

Closer to Urique we wanted to explore a valley we saw on google maps and e32, it lead to nothing really, but a cool ride none the less

We go back to the same Urique Hotel, and do some exploring of some local roads in which our e32 maps try to get us to take some crazy goat path.

A cool old building in Urique now a little shop

We ate at the Plaza restaurant. Super nice lady, and probably the best cheese I have ever had. Super reasonable prices too and cool decor:

Day 4 ride:

Spanglish. One of my favorite things when young was to get breakfast very early and sit close to the universal bunch of old, retired guys . Anglo guys spoke cowboy English. Mexican guys spoke Spanish. There were some shared constructions. So cool. They had been commutating with each other so their entire lives.

 

[EGR]

Great photos!

TX police will do that for out of state vehicles in that area. I’ve only got 60 years experience, out and return to visit los viejos.

 

[cal]

Excellent report!

 

[Animo]

Awesome ride report, well done