{"id":175,"date":"2008-12-17T08:00:56","date_gmt":"2008-12-17T08:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jc4ever.co.za\/?p=175"},"modified":"2022-03-16T14:20:48","modified_gmt":"2022-03-16T14:20:48","slug":"mexico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jc4ever.co.za\/?p=175","title":{"rendered":"Mexico"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chihuahua<\/h1>\n

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17 December 2008<\/h2>\n

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Well, we are safely in Chihuahua, Mexico. The border crossing was not too bad, it took us 40 minutes to get the GS stamped out of the USA. On the Mexican side, it took 20 minutes to do our immigration and 1 hour 30 minutes to get the road permit for the GS. The drive from the border was great, the scenery got more and more beautiful. Dry arid conditions as in the Northern Cape\/Namaqualand.\u00a0When we left Easter Egg Valley this morning it was -1’C!! but thankfully the closer we got to the city the warmer it got – right up to 27’C. We have booked into the Motel Maria Dolores and will be heading for Creel in the morning.<\/p>\n

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Alamos<\/h1>\n

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22 December 2008<\/h2>\n

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We are safely in Alamos.\u00a0Our first impressions of Mexico is great. The people are friendly, the\u00a0countryside is gorgeous and the food is the best! What more can you ask\u00a0for? From the border town of Ojinaga, we drove through arid mountainous\u00a0terrain to Creel, on the North Rim of the Copper Canyon. After a few\u00a0enjoyable days at Creel, it took us two days riding to get here to Alamos, 60km from the Gulf of California. The road winds and winds through the Rocky Mountains like the roads in Europe and Turkey, lovely! We are\u00a0back\u00a0in Cactus country and saw our first Road Runner (bird) today. We will stay\u00a0here for two days before we will go further south to\u00a0Mazatlan.<\/p>\n

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Ojinago to Alamos<\/h1>\n

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26 December 2008<\/h2>\n

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Here is the first part of Mexico. Please feel free to inform us if you wish not to receive these emails from us. We do not want to fill your inbox with stuff you do\u00a0not want.\u00a0The border crossing into\u00a0Mexico\u00a0went much better than we expected, about two and a half hours in total.\u00a0 After getting the carnet stamped out of the USA we drove over a bridge to the Mexican side and the officials showed us to drive straight through. We stopped where Bruce and Donna (the American couple that joined us) were waiting for us, they were already finished with all their paperwork, and we walked back to the immigration office to get our passports stamped. The longest wait was to get the permit for the GS as the officials did not understand the use of the carnet and our non-existent Spanish did not help either.\u00a0The road south to Chihuahua was really beautiful and the surface condition was good. The terrain was dry and flat with small shrubs, very much like the Karoo or Namaqualand. We passed through one or two little towns that supported the local farming communities. They consisted of a few small buildings that were a home come convenience store and a fuel station with a bus stop. It was a nice welcome to discover that the \u2018al banyos\u2019 (toilets) were the sitting type and not the squat over the hole-in-the-ground type.<\/p>\n

We got into the town of\u00a0Chihuahua\u00a0just before sunset and went in search of a place to spend the night. The streets were filled with Christmas decorations, pretty flashing coloured lights of nativity scenes and hundreds of shoppers. As before on our travels, we were looking for a place with secure parking for the GS and now also for Bruce\u2019s Harley. After crisscrossing the city in the evening traffic we were now riding in the dark, so with the torch shining over Johan\u2019s shoulder onto the little street map which got torn out of the Lonely Planet Book, we were almost back at the place where we started our search and low-and-behold we found the perfect place with a courtyard!<\/p>\n

The flatlands slowly changed as we climbed in altitude and we went through mountains with pine trees as we got closer to the\u00a0Copper Canyon. The Copper Canyon is a group of canyons consisting of 6 distinct canyons in the Sierra Tarahumara in the southwestern part of the state of Chihuahua. The overall canyon system is larger and portions are deeper than the Grand Canyon in the USA. The famous Chihuahua al Pacifico railroad, nicknamed \u201cChepe\u201d, is both an important transportation system for locals and a drawcard for tourists (both international and Mexican). The canyon is the traditional home of the indigenous Raramuri (Tarahumara) people.\u00a0The town of\u00a0Creel\u00a0is a lovely town with narrow cobbled streets, loads of little shops filled to the brim with curios for the many tourists visiting the town. All the curios are handcrafted in either wood or leather, woven woollen fabrics, woven reed or palm frond baskets, rustic music instruments \u2013 guitars, drums, flutes, (both Johan and Bruce enjoyed testing all the noisy items… boys!!!) etc, etc. Creel was historically a logging town, although tourism has become the primary job source over the last 20 years. There are many hotels, restaurants and a number of tours (mountain biking, horse trails and canoeing) down into the canyons and throughout the surrounding area. We went for a drive to the viewpoint of the \u2018Three Canyons\u2019 in Divisadero. \u00a0It was a wonderful winding road that goes up and down through the thick tree-covered mountains and valleys, giving you a\u00a0glimpse\u00a0of the canyons when you near the top. The viewpoint has a paved pathway and a suspended bridge with the locals selling handcrafted curios on the sidewalk. We got to love the bright colours that the Mexicans are so fond of; you see it in their clothing, the way they paint their buildings and homes. Each town also seems to have its own beautiful, well maintained old stone churches with great wooden doors. I guess this is from the Spanish – Catholic influence. The Mexicans dress very neatly, the women and children wear brighter colours, and you see both men and women wearing real leather boots. We have also seen more Mexican cowboys, some on their horse in the towns, than in the USA. During the 16th century, the Conquistadors and other Spanish settlers brought their cattle-raising traditions (what we now consider the cowboy tradition) as well as both horses and domesticated cattle to the Americas. So, though popularly considered as a North American icon, the traditional cowboy actually began with a Hispanic tradition!\u00a0Another thing we noted in every town was that there seemed to be a lot of ugly pavement specials skulking around, (these dogs make the Dubai kitty fondly named ….ertjie look like a princess)!!\u00a0 They are everywhere, mostly medium size dogs and some are quite muscular and sturdy looking \u2013 I think a lot of them do have homes but due to the fact that most of the shops in the city are also family homes, the poor dogs either have to roam the streets in the day or like some, lie on the sidewalk and bake in the sun, who knows where they go at night!! We have also seen some really small ones but man; I can\u2019t say that I\u2019ve seen any pretty looking ones!!<\/p>\n

It was a real surprise to feel how cold it was when we headed out of Creel, we were getting colder than we ever got before – at one point the temperature dropped to minus 5 degrees Celsius, brrrrrrr. The route for the morning was to take a shortcut on a scenic mountain road that was 60km\u2019s tar and about 40km\u2019s gravel.\u00a0 When we enquired about this road we were told that it was a good quality gravel road, so Bruce would not have to worry…..\u00a0 well, it sure was a scenic road, houses in the middle of nowhere, people farming with cattle and growing crops, really beautiful country life, one corner after the next and even though the tar was in very good condition, the tight corners were not very Harley friendly, then came the gravel…\u00a0 my goodness, even the GS had to slow down to 1st\u00a0gear to negotiate some of the technical and rocky sections. We take our hat off to Bruce, he handled his large touring machine like a real pro, and he can join us on almost any adventure ride after surviving that road!\u00a0 We called it a day in the town of\u00a0Yecora.<\/p>\n

We had another early start with fresh crisp air but this time we knew that we would be heading for the warmer weather. Once again we were blessed with the most amazing scenery, the mountainous roads slowly levelled out into rolling hills with flat areas the closer we got to the coast, and we saw more and more birdlife. We even saw a real \u2018beep-beep\u2019 the roadrunner and it crossed the road really quickly before disappearing into the bush… no, there was no coyote chasing it!!\u00a0 We also saw some local little buck in the distance.<\/p>\n

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