Ground clearance…who needs it?!

We have made a rule for ourselves and that is that we try not to ride in the dark, but being as it is wintertime, it gets dark at 5 o’clock in the evening, so we try to stop at 4:30 at the latest and get on the bike at 9 in the morning, so we still have a good riding day ahead of us.

Gearing up the bikes early in the morning (well at least early for us!).

Leaving the small town of Bacanora behind us.

After getting of the main road, we were now riding through the gorgeous Sierra Mountain range and a new spectacular vista was waiting for us behind every corner.

At one point, Seb saw a sign saying that there would be a military checkpoint in 1 kilometer, so he decided to put his camera on the bike and start recording, just to see what would happen. When we came to the checkpoint, we had to stop the bikes and give them our passports. All the military guys were very friendly and I didn’t get uncomfortable at any point, not even when one guy pointed at the camera on the bike and said to his colleague: “mira, un camera!” (Look a camera). The guys just asked us where we were from and where we were going and they looked very impressed when we said Argentina. So, passing a military checkpoint can get crossed of our list and we didn’t even get shot, imagine that…

I don’t know who invented the speed bumps in Mexico, but they can shoot that guy! You never see them, they are way too big and we always loose half our exhaust when we go over them since we have so little ground clearance. This is one of the times I whish we had a bit more clearance, but we have found out that if we ride over them in first gear and put our feet on top of the bump, lift our butt out of the seat and ride over with the back tyre, that we don’t hit them with our exhaust anymore, so you see, who needs ground clearance after all!!

When we left our hotel in Bacanora in the morning, we thought we would at least get to Cajurichic in the evening, which was about 250 kilometers further down, but this wouldn’t be so easy as we soon found out.

The lovely village of Arivechi has a nice church and a festive town square.

They have street lights that are only working on solar power, something we can learn about for in Europe, although I doubt the sun shines enough to make them work in Belgium…

The road we were on started to deteriorate after about 50 kilometres and it went from bad to worse the further we rode. Going from huge potholes, to no tarmac at all and huge boulders that have fallen on the road. This made progress slow and it made it almost impossible to dive right into a curve, since you never knew what you could expect in one. The scenery in the mountains remained breathtaking however and was worth the harsh road conditions.

This used to be a two lane road, now mother nature has taken over again.

Sometimes you see the asphalt, sometimes you don’t.

Beautiful mountain ranges, a clear blue sky, but very cold.

In the end we only did 160 kilometres that day so we ended up staying in Yecora in an almost renovated hotel with adjacent restaurant.

After a hard day riding, deciding what to have for dinner.

The hotel had rooms with a fireplace in it and it was one of the most charming hotels we have stayed in so far. The nights in the mountains tend to go below freezing point and it can get cold in your room, so we were glad that the owner brought us some extra firewood for the fireplace. We had to sign the hotelbook, she wrote “gringos” for our name so this just shows again how many ‘tourists” they see in this place. 😉

Before we went to sleep, we took out the chairs of the room, found a nice spot in the sun and enjoyed life watching the comings and goings of small town life.

In order to get some internet, we had to sit outside, because the signal wasn’t strong enough to go into our room, but we had some nice company of the local cats so Seb was happy with the WIFI and I was happy petting the cat!

Mexican happy cat, everyone just needs some love…

While we were sitting outside, we saw a huge fire develop near the road and when we warned the owner of the hotel, she just looked at it and said that the wind was blowing away from the hotel so we shouldn’t worry about it…