Snow in Mexico?!

From Yécora onward the ride was awesome because the road conditions were good and the weather wasn’t against us (yet).

They do know how to build very nice shrines here in the mountains.

Nice twisty roads and good asphalt.

I think the point was to get it all in but they just can’t aim straight?

The things they do here in Mexico to make life of a biker a living hell, we’re just glad that most of the time they have some of them missing, so we can ride through them.

We had some nice windy and twisty roads all the way to the Basaseachic waterfall. We wanted to go and see Mexico’s 2nd largest waterfall (246m), so we set off on foot, but we saw the sky above begin to get darker and darker and by the time we reached the falls, it started raining.

A suspension bridge on the way to the waterfall, you can see the sky grow darker and darker.

The Basaseachic waterfall seen from above.

The views in the mountains can be spectacular.

Not letting a little rain slow us down, we decided to try and push on until Creel, but seeing as it was already 2 o’clock, we decided that we could settle for San Juanito instead, which is a very small town somewhere in the mountains. Along the way, the conditions started getting worse and it went from a slight drizzle to heavy rain and wind to snow and ice on the roads. This slowed us down a bit but we still managed to make it to San Juanito before dark and we got to spend new years eve in a really remote place…

The first of January had to be an insight in what the new year would bring us, but I hope the Gods were joking because this just isn’t funny… In the morning we decided to take it a bit slower than usual and so by the time we were ready to go, it was after 10. We saw a bit of snow falling out of the sky, but this wasn’t going to scare us, so we set off to get some gas and head over to Creel. By the time we got to the gas station the roads were white and we couldn’t see a hand in front of our eyes, but this wasn’t bad enough to make us go back, so on we went. When we wanted to take the main road to Creel, we saw that the road was blocked by the police and they told us that we couldn’t go any further because of the heavy road conditions ahead, so hey what could we do, take a picture and head back to the hotel.

Is he taking home dinner?

I think we should get a medal for bravery and courage, or at least a hot shower anyway.

On the way to the hotel we passed a supermarket where we got the necessary vitamins (chips and candy) and Seb decided to go and take a picture a bit further down and this is where it happened…the first ‘drop’ of the bike since we started. The bike just slid under Seb and fell on the brake lever, which off course bent and wasn’t working anymore.

With a snowy white bike, a bent brake lever and freezing fingers we went back to ‘our’ hotel and decided to wait out the worse of the snowstorm before we could go further towards Copper Canyon.

The Hepco & Becker XPlorer cases have proven to be water and snow proof! This was not even an hour after we went back to the hotel.

A beautiful white bike covered in even more beautiful white snow!

Mmmhhmm snow!

Bienvenidos en Mexico, welcome to Mexico!

The streets surrounding the hotel are one messy place.

The beautiful mountains surrounding  San Juanito.

After one day of rest in San Juanito, we decided it was time to test our luck and to ride on. When we left, most of the snow had melted away and there was just a huge amount of water on the streets. We wanted to get to Guachochi which was about 200 km’s from where we were and we hoped that the roads would be good. This time there was no police saying that the road was closed, so on we went. The first few kilometers were ok with only some melting snow in our faces and a lot of water on the road, but the higher we went into the mountains, the worse it got. At one point we even got stuck in a huge snowstorm and we couldn’t see a hand in front of our eyes. The road was white and so where we after a while…

The progress was very slow and in the end very painful because our gloves were soaking wet, Seb’s feet got wet and the ice was sticking to our body, so the temperature went down. We got to Guachochi after 4,5 hours on the bike with only one stop to take some pictures, while I was sobbing away in my helmet out of pure misery. Thank God for our Cardo intercom system because I had some nice music playing in my helmet all the time. When we arrived we went into our hotel, took a shower and changed clothes and you will never believe what happened after we went outside again to get some food, the sky was blue and the sun was out!!! I think someone is doing this on purpose… Oh well, I am glad we did it, I’m very proud of ourselves and we are both ready for some new adventure but this time hopefully without snow and ice.

A day later we see this on the frontpage of a local newspaper…

It was on the same road we just took, at least with all the snow it was too cold for the drugcartels to shoot eachother the days we were there…

We took a rest day in Guachochi to let all our clothing dry and the find the one and only bank in a 200km radius as we needed cash. But for one or the other reason the ATM just wouldn’t give us any money, so we’re back on the road to search for another bank, as we only have the equivalent of 50$ left in our pocket…