Mainland Mexico Ride - Agua Prieta, Durango, Mazatlan, and back north to Mexicali

Howdy gang,
I just got back from a 10 day trip down through Mexico while astride the ST1300. All paved or what passes as pavement in Mexico. I'll post more later as Mapsource has been fighting with me this morning and keeps crashing. I rode some "must do" roads for any motorcyclist and will elaborate more on those. For now, here's a screen capture of the route heading south (note all the squiggly lines)

For those afraid to travel in Mexico, I didn't run into a single problem or even mildly questionable situation. Just like any country, there are areas to avoid and my route didn't go through any of the troubled areas. What you'll miss if you don't go are warm temperatures, some great (and some sh*tty) roads, friendly people, great food, and inexpensive lodging.

Sounded like a great ride any pictures.??

Olddude said:

Sounded like a great ride any pictures.??

Click to expand...

I have a few photos and a fair amount of video. Have to get it all downloaded

Looking forward to this post, can you also include the names of the places you stayed at. That's my dilemma going to Mexico, where to stay and a safe place to store the ST.
AL

For those that don't know, when traveling in mainland Mexico, you need both a tourist visa and a temporary vehicle import permit (TVIP). I crossed at Douglas, AZ/Agua Prieta, MX and this is by far the easiest place I've ever gotten it done. In one small office, you can get both and be out in 20 minutes.

I'll list an image of the route and name the hotel where we stayed along with whether it was a good ride or not. The day 1 route map:


The pavement was okay to a little crumbly but not horrible. We stayed in Banamichi at Los Arcos

Full gringo price of $100 per night but the owner is a gringo motorcyclist who has fixed up a colonial house as a really nice hotel. Secure parking in back

Edit: the new "improved" smugmug is fighting with me so please bear with me.

The day 2 map is the attached thumbnail. Unless you're George Catt, you probably won't enjoy Hwy 117. The beginning is fine and even scenic but the last 20 miles or so is bombed out pavement well into the transition back to nature with hundreds of rock slides thrown in. Expect those last 20 miles to take at least an hour and probably a little more. The transition to amazing pavement could not be more amazing - Hwy 16 heading to Yecora is amazing curvy pavement and riding that on a street oriented bike was part of the reason for this trip. We spent the night in Yecora and I can't really recommend the hotel we stayed at. BTW, it gets cold overnight in the Sierras


More later

Yecora to Creel

Yecora and the Mexicali commercial border crossing had the only topes (speed bumps) that were too tall for the ST. I had to cross the topes in Yecora as close to parallel as possible, starting at one curb and riding most of the way to the other before coming down off the tope. Another reason not to stay there. But then, more fun riding. The pavement wasn't quite as good, just not quite as good as west of Yecora. Mexico is truly the land of the universal speed law - don't drive faster than is safe for the conditions. You will receive many reminders to not ride faster than visibility allows. If you can't see around a curve, slow down so that you can stop within your sight distance as much more often than in the US, a hazard such as a pot hole, stopped or slow moving truck, or rock slide will be in the road. It's really the same speed you should maintain in the US so I consider it excellent practice. And should you inadvertently exceed the posted limit, you won't get a ticket (though I suppose it's theoretically possible.) Creel is at around 7000' and we got there at 1:00 or 2:00 p.m. just as the skies opened up and began dumping. Creel is a tourist area with tourist amenities so we had lunch and used the excellent wifi at the cafe to track the storms. I've ridden the next section of mountain road twice before and didn't want to waste all the awesome curves and views ahead so we got a room.

Cascada Inn - 500 pesos which is about $33.33 US. Really nice rooms and the gate in the photo is closed at night for security. The Best Western in town where most of the tour groups stay is around $150 a night US

Creel to Hidalgo Parral

Waiting out the storm was the right choice. No rain for the first couple of hours made for a great road and awesome views.

You ride past the turn off to Batopilas and the road down is now mostly paved. A determined rider on an ST could make it but our route went past Guachochi and on to Parral.

The rain caught up to us here and we had an hour or two of rain riding. Much of this ride was at 8000+' so I was happy to have my heated liner along. In Parral, we stayed at the American Inn ( http://www.americaninn.com.mx/ ) which has secure parking and includes a decent breakfast buffet.

Parral to Durango

We didn't take the shortest way but it was certainly the most fun.

Ride south from Parral on a modern highway- Hwy 45. New pavement and wide shoulders make it easy to forget you're riding in Mexico. Altitude is around 6000' and you could easily imagine you're riding across Colorado or New Mexico. After an hour or so, watch for the well marked turn off to Santa Maria del Oro. At first, you'll be cussing my memory as the first 20 miles are a pot holed, sub par Mexico road with a pretty fair amount of traffic. Santa Maria del Oro is a crowded, busy medium size town with one crowded main thorough fare. Unfortunately, we rode past numerous delicious smelling taco stands as my riding partner prefers a regular restaurant. As soon as we leave town, all is forgiven. Traffic disappears and we're riding a magical 2 lane concrete highway with velcro like traction up and down and around mountains. We're both hooting in our helmets. No traffic!!!! Who paid for this well engineered, almost totally unused highway in the middle of nowhere?

If this works, here's a video of part of that section:

http://jonz.smugmug.com/Motorcycles/Mazatlan-2015-trip/i-KGqJBFz

Then on to Durango. This is a prosperous city of around 500,000 worth checking out. Lots of restored colonial buildings and impressive cathedrals.




And upscale shopping/dining areas


We stayed at the Hotel Florida which was an easy walk from the cathedral and dining areas. Secure parking and decent rooms - I forget the exact rate but it was around $40 for both of us. An added bonus is that as we were sitting on the outdoor patio enjoying some cold beverages, local women headed to aerobics classes in the front building were parking there. :twisted:

Durango to Mazatlan

This was the ride that inspired this trip. I'd been wanting to ride Espinoza del Diablo (Spine of the Devil) for years. Waiting years turned out to be lucky as Mexico has constructed a faster route (40D) that almost all traffic uses now. Leaving Durango, the elevation of the road is 8000' - 9000' for quite a distance which I did not expect. After passing El Salto and a military checkpoint, the road starts dropping and changes from rolling sweepers to tight 20-30 mph turns with nary a straight away even 1/4 of a mile long. Unrelenting curve after curve after curve for a couple of hours. And great pavement - Mexico must have fixed it up just before opening 40D (the cuota or paved route). Down, down, down from pine forests to tropical forest. We passed maybe a dozen or two cars in those 2 hours and only a couple trucks. Beautifully engineered and beautiful views the whole way. It easily lived up to my hopes and expectations. I already wanna go back.

The ride ended in Mazatlan and we stayed near the south end at the La Siesta Hotel. We had a 3rd story ocean front room for less than $50 a day. Parking in the central patio - they keep a ramp inside for motorcycles.

The view north from across the street from our hotel


On the day off, we checked out the central market


And a beautiful nearby building with tiled domes


I'll try to upload some video from the Espinazo del Diablo. The video uploads are brutally slow - I'm guessing my ISP and smugmug do not play well together.

Jeff, do you have a video editor or something that you can use to render the video to a lower bitrate/frame size. that might help with the uploading.

dwalby said:

Jeff, do you have a video editor or something that you can use to render the video to a lower bitrate/frame size. that might help with the uploading.

Click to expand...

My test program shows my upload speed is 1Mb/sec so the one 800 Mb video I got downloaded to smugmug should have taken 800 seconds. It took hours. My video editing skills are non existent. Guess I'll have to learn

Your video file is 800MB (bytes), your upload speed is 1Mb (bits) so it should have taken 6400 seconds (just under 2 hours), assuming you were able to maintain the upload speed consistently.

I use an editor so I don't keep up on the latest freeware conversion s/w, but there might be something relatively easy to use and free that would do the conversion without much learning curve at all. If you're interested do a google search on it and see what you find.

Just to finish this off with short coverage of the last 2 1/2 days, we drove 15D (the cuota or toll road). Tolls in Mexico are surprisingly high - the first one in Sinaloa was 62 pesos or just over $4 US. Others were less but I'd say it was $20+ every day. We spent the first night in San Carlos (near Guaymas), a pretty place. I can tell you where NOT to stay - Gringo Pete's Hotel - unless hot and cold running mosquitoes is your thing.

My friend continued on 15D up to Arizona. I turned off at Santa Ana and rode to Puerto Penasco. I'd never been there before and wanted to check it out. Sadly, I got there on the first Saturday of Spring Break with lots of drunk young men and way too few hot young women. Luckily, I had a hotel guide with affordable hotels and the hotel listed in this city was away from party central and so had a room.

I got an early start the next morning and followed Hwy 3 to El Golfo and onto the commercial vehicle crossing in Mexicali. Hwy 3 was starkly beautiful and I really enjoyed the ride. My Bicimapas map program in my Garmin GPS came up with some interesting routes as several times it didn't know the difference between train tracks and a highway. With a little thought, I was able to figure out the way and rode through a couple small ejidos I'd never normally get to see (nor smell the many savory taco stands). I had to go to the eastern (commercial vehicle) Mexicali crossing so I could cancel my temporary vehicle import permit and get my $400 credit card deposit back. That done, my Mexico ride was over.

Mexico is a great country to ride a motorcycle through. The scenery is amazing and especially on the mainland, travel is cheap. Yes, there are dangerous parts of Mexico. But Mexico is a huge country and most of it is filled with incredibly hospitable people that want you there. Imagine if all the people that want to visit the United States decided not to because they saw TV coverage of the riots in the streets of Ferguson, MO. How many hotels in the United States allow what is expected in Mexico - parking you motorcycle in the lobby/courtyard? Consider that one fact and extrapolate it to life in general for a motorcyclist in Mexico, and you'll begin to understand why I like it there.