Creel to Urique…not quite.

My third and last night in Creel was not restful. After speaking to Ivan at The 3 Amigos Trails centre I was concerned about the road between Batopilas and Urique. I had considered the road to the falls unrideable, I struggled to walk up it. The cobblestones were rough, the switchbacks were tight, the slopes were steep and there were three or four memorial crosses with people’s names who had taken a tumble over the very steep, long drops. I did feel that this particular path was beyond my abilities.

Considering that, Ivan said the ride between Batopilas and Urique was one of the most challenging rides in the Copper Canyon, and based on what he told me about the other road to the hot springs, I decided it must be too challenging for my skills and not to take the road.

So I tossed and turned, dreaming about tight switchbacks on gravel with steep drops off the side, and dodging trucks on slippery slopes. I looked at my original maps and I had planned to take the road to Batopilas then turned east to Guochochi and wind down the mountains to the west coast. That’s the route I’ll take. I felt good about my decision.

I was told that it was not too bad to get to Urique and I did want to visit the El Divisadero Adventure Park along the way. I left Creel just before ten and took a nice easy pace past the turnoff to the hot springs and began some eighty kilometres of the most magnificent riding I have experienced. The day was sunny and around twenty degrees Celsius. The roads were in great condition and as I continued I could tell that they were very new, with smooth, uniform bitumen, wide lanes, new guard rails and some spectacular cuttings through mountain-tops. I was loving the roads and the nice sweeping bends, the climbs to the summit and the long winding roads down.

The road criss-crossed the railway through the canyons and the scenery was beautiful.

I stopped at the adventure park where the facilities were top class, but it was surprisingly empty of people. 

The views at the entrance were amazing.

I was mobbed by tourists when I pulled up, with a whole group wanting photos with me. 

I checked out the facilities but my idea of adventure was what I was doing and I didn’t want to spend money on cable cars and zip lines so I ate lunch and left.

 It turned out that the roads were quite new because eventually I caught up with the roadwork, firstly on new tar with no lines marked, then past the tar trucks and workers and eventually to the rock crushers, the mountain eaters – huge crushing machines – and finally I rode through some thick road base that wanted to grab my front wheel and throw it around a bit.

I stopped to take a photo or two and a work vehicle stopped next to me. It’s hard to write the conversation because he was speaking in Spanish and I was pretending to understand. Si. Si. The story was basically that I shouldn’t be there and I can either turn back or take a small track leading off to the right and follow the track to the top of the hill, turn left and it would lead me to Urique. Cool, doesn’t sound so hard.

 I decided to take the track and the first thing I did was go the wrong way along it. I realised when I ended back on the road works so I found a place to turn around and headed back, past my entry point and onto a dirt road wide enough for one car. It was mostly used by trucks.

One of the things that I do find difficult with the big GS is turning it around on the dirt. The main problem is the height because my feet are not always firmly on the ground and when my foot hits the ground there’s a whole lot of mental processes and foot testing that goes on to ensure my food doesn’t slide away on a loose surface. It’s happened to me twice and both times Ziggy lay down.

 I continued along the narrow track with a few ups and downs, but it was all quite ok and I was relaxed. I came to a steep hill with a blind turn at the top and I assumed this was where he had told me to take a left-hand turn towards Urique. I rode to the crest of the hill, standing on the pegs and leaning forward like I’d been taught and I was glad to have learnt those skills.

 At the top of the hill was a very active work site. A front-end loader was just a few metres from me digging into a pile of road-building stone, with three trucks flanking him, one straight ahead of me, another to my right perched on a very steep slope, and another to my left.

 I hesitated because I looked at the steepness of the hill to the left and I could feel the fear welling up. During my indecision, the front-end loader backed up right next to me, I could have touched him if I wasn’t holding on so tight to the brake and clutch levers. The machine towered over me and filled my immediate vision. The driver loaded a scoop into the back of the tipper in front of me and drove back to the pile of rock.

 Gritting my teeth and feeling the sweat of fear rolling down my back, I gave Ziggy a good twist of the throttle and eased out the clutch, pointing up the steep gravelly hill next to the truck. I powered up in first gear then changed to second. I could feel the rear tyre digging into the loose, dusty surface and the rumble of Ziggy’s torquey engine pushing us up the hill with ease. The fear is in my ability, Ziggy has yet to give me a reason to be concerned about what this motorcycle is capable of.

 I stopped at the plateau on the top of the hill, turned off the bike and sat for a rest and a drink of water. My day of idyllic riding had turned into an unexpected off-road challenge so I had to summons up all my skills and courage for the next part of the road. I had no idea what lay ahead.

The road widened from the original track to a two-lane gravel road that was in reasonable repair but was quite loose and very dusty with patches of deep silt, mainly on the sharp bends. It wound down the side of the mountain with some tight swtchbacks, edges that dropped off suddenly to a steep something below. The road rose up a bit then back down again. I was going very slowly on the unpredictable surface and a large pick-up overtook me on the left. Soon after I saw a large log-bearing truck bearing down on me from behind and I pulled over to let him pass. I found myself on the very road I had been dreaming about last night.

For about ten kilometres I followed the dust cloud of the truck down the winding hill, over a small bridge, and around one tight right-hand bend that had my heart in my mouth because if I failed to get around it, the slippery surface would send me straight over a sheer drop.

 The road flattened out somewhat and soon I arrived at the small town of Bahuichivo. 

I stopped at a little restaurant that sold petrol near the turnoff and took my riding gear off, giving the adrenalin time to dissipate a bit. My heart had been racing for much of the descent and now I was feeling waves of relief and exhaustion. There was a sign a bit further back so I walked to it with my trusty iPhone offline map app, and tried to work out where I was and where I wanted to go.

 I felt a sense of almost panic, dread come over me as I realised that I either had to follow this same road back or continue on with similar roads to Urique. From Urique, due to the roadworks, my only option would be the road that Ivan had talked about. He put it in terms of,

‘If you can ride that road, then none of the other roads will be as challenging or exciting in the whole copper canyon.’

 Well I have been challenged and I’m not sure about excitement yet, at just one of the normal roads that cars and trucks use like a commuting road. My mind was racing and I had thoughts about putting Ziggy on a truck to get out or just staying here forever because it was too scary to leave. I even wondered if I had what it takes to really be on this adventure. That’s when I realised that this was really the adventure that I was looking for. Here I was at the very beginning of the real adventure, not just a nice little tour around the countryside.

 It amazed me how quickly the day had gone from some of the most idyllic riding I have done on this trip to landing myself fair and square into my adventure I had been dreaming of for years. This was it. This was real. I was in a strange land with a language I couldn’t understand. I had the skills to get a hotel and some food but anything more I couldn’t string together at this stage and if I did get a good question out I more often than not had no idea what they were answering.

I had to make a decision. I had come to a fork in the road and if I can’t live by my own philosophy it’s no point touting it.

The people in the restaurant were really helpful and directed me to a hotel in a larger part of the town. After a few attempts we managed to understand each other, or so I thought. I remounted and headed down a narrow track where I thought they had told me to go, and ended up pointing downhill towards a very rocky dead-end. I had to turn Ziggy around. Continuing on looked a really bad option as there was no place to turn around. Whenever I stop, I always consider my escape route, which must be forwards. Motorcycles (well most) don’t have reverse. I was stuck. There was not enough room to turn around and if I rode forwards on full lock I’d still be facing downhill and not be able to push the bike backwards uphill.

 I dismounted and looked at the situation. No good options. I thought back to my off-road course about what was said when you were stuck on a slope. It was always an option to lie the bike down, pull the rear of the bike around so the front is facing the right direction, lift the bike up and continue. That’s exactly what I did. There’s no real gentle way to let Ziggy down so I just let her go onto the right hand side.

She spun easily when I pulled the rear wheel around and I manipulated the bike into the position I wanted, then used the technique, once again learnt on the course, to lift her back up onto the sidestand. I remounted and headed back to the junction and turned right, the road taking me into another typically small Mexican town.

 Riding a world-touring motorcycle all packed up into a simple country town makes you the centre of attention. Every eye is focused, some give a cursory glance, but many just stop and stare. The friendliness of Mexicans is such that if you give a wave, they all wave back and the younger ones with a big grin. People are just about always friendly and I found my way to a hotel and secured a room for the night. Trying to find Internet or even Wifi proved fruitless but I did find a nice restaurant with a lovely lady who managed to joke with me about staying at her hotel next time I’m in town.

 The centre of town usually has a square and here it was right next to the school. Men in cream broad-brimmed hats sat in the central rotunda while forty or so young school kids played noisily around the square. Life appears quite slow here with people just going about their business, but as I noticed in other places, fashion is followed, especially with the younger adults, and all the kids are well dressed. There are the usual gaggle of stray dogs mixing in with the traffic and pedestrians. Bahuichivo is very clean with spotless footpaths and no rubbish or litter to be seen. The roads however are the usual congestion of large pick-ups and even larger trucks, vying for space to pass.

I found a comfortable hotel and settled in for the night.

Creel - Recowata Falls

My first full day in Creel I went for a walk around and happened to drop in at The 3 Amigos Adventure Tours shop and met Ivan. 

He spoke English and was a keen motorcyclist so we chatted about the local roads and places to go. He directed me to a local thermal pool and said that the road was a bit challenging but not too bad. He also gave me some directions to the Copper Canyon and the roads to take to Urique and Batopilas.

I took his advice to visit the Recowata thermal pools and it was a short ride out of town and a fun bit of dirt to the top of the road to the pools. The first half a kilometre was a rough stone-laden cobble road with the stones cemented in but nothing resembling smooth. It wound downhill to a carpark and a small hut, which had a boom-gate blocking the remainder of the path.

The pathway zig-zagged for three kilometres deep into the floor of the gully. It was constructed of the same rocky cobblestone and some parts were very steep, ending in a hairpin, then continuing on to the next hairpin. I couldn’t imagine riding down here and was surprised that he had mentioned it as a riding option. The crosses and names along the path where vehicles had tumbled over the edge were testament enough!

 The half a kilometre of cobblestone I had ridden down was much easier and had still taken a lot of concentration.

 At the bottom I met a group of people, a couple of Canadians, an American, two Austrians a Fin and a French woman. We hung out and swam for a few hours enjoying the magnificent setting and the body temperature water. They were a friendly group, most of them studying in Mexico on exchange and getting away for a long weekend.

The return trip up the hill was made easy for the group who took a quad vehicle that ferried people up to the top but I opted to walk, needing a bit of exercise. And exercise I got! It was really very steep and not sure how long it took but I was glad when I got to the top with burning thighs and calves and wondering how I was going to ride the bike.

I took video rather than photos so it's on my list to edit!

I managed and felt really good for having done the walk. By the time I was at the top it was nearly closing time so I returned to my hotel and had a good solid sleep.

The following day I actually took the rest day I had promised myself in Creel and it was late in the afternoon when I visited Ivan again to go over the roads to Urique and Batopilas. He told me that it was most suited to a bike around 400cc, not really to my 1200cc bike that was loaded up. He described the road between Batopilas and Urique as one of the most challenging in Copper Canyon and after that road everything else will seem quite simple.

I asked how it compared with the cobbled road to the thermal pools, and he explained that it was no comparison, and if I wasn't confident to do the road to the thermal pools that I would probably not have the skills for the Batopilas to Urique road. He painted a picture of steep hairpins on dirt roads with steep edges, frequented by mining and road-building trucks. They don't give way to motorcycles.

Armed with this knowledge I decided that I would go to Urique first via El Divisadero where there was an adventure park with zip lines and views over the canyons. I would go to Urique, decide if the roads were doable for me and work it out from there.

Basaseachi to Creel

The next morning I rode to Creel via the road to San Juanito. It was a squiggly line on the map and I was accused of drawing with crayons when I posted a screen shot of part of the road on Facebook.

The road was spectacular, winding for a hundred kilometres through mountains, rising to the summit only to zig-zag down the other side. One mountain I think I rode almost completely around with one mighty sweeper. The ride was punctuated with rocks on the road from the crumbly cliffs, overloaded trucks barrelling down the opposite way at dangerous speeds and big Chevrolet pick-ups overtaking my ambling pace on blind corners. Where the road to Basaseachi was an excellent ride, these twists were tighter, the rises to the tops of the peaks steeper, the drop offs without guardrails were closer to the road and deeper and basically it was the most exciting ride I have done yet.
A highly recommended ride.

This is one of the few photos I could get. The most spectacular views can only be a glance from the middle of a bend as there is nowhere to stop and where there is a small space to pull off the road, it is mostly in a place with no view.
I arrived in San Juanito and it was warm and sunny. I pulled up near some street stalls and found a small restaurant to have lunch. Restaurants take on a new meaning in Mexico. I knocked on the door that was then unlocked for me and two elderly ladies were sitting in what looked like a household kitchen.

‘Tiene vender comida aqui?’

‘Si.’

Yes they did sell food and I walked into the other room and sat at one of the four small tables. As usual, the food was ready in a short time, I was given corn chips and salsa, and the coffee was awful. The food was delicious though and the television was playing the last ten minutes of the movie Spiderman, dubbed in Spanish.

I did my usual walk around the town and tried to find some credit for my phone, but apparently the company Moviestar isn’t as popular as Telcel, and I couldn’t find a shop that sold it. I walked back to the bike and headed for Creel. 
What I have noticed in these small towns is that I am without doubt the big curiosity, but people tend to look from a distance and most of the time I have to engage them first, especially if they are locals. People who have spent time in the US or speak English with confidence will sometimes approach me. At no point has anyone gone over to the bike and looked at it as if they were trying to handle something on it or take something off it. Sometimes if I’m within sight I’ll just leave my gloves and helmet on the bike, but people just don’t tend to go near it here. I guess one advantage of a bike set up for round the world is that there are so many bits and pieces everywhere it’s a bit of a visual overload and people don’t seem quite sure what to look at first. Certainly the size of the bike seems to surprise them.

It was a relatively short ride to Creel, which was the largest town since Madera, with the highway going through the wide main street of the centre of town. 

I saw a couple of motels and randomly chose one. The price was 300 Pesos and the room was well appointed with heater and hot water. Only after did I discover that Wifi was only available at the reception area/restaurant so I would spend my evenings there catching up on blogging.

I stayed for three nights in Creel. One of my rules I had made for travelling was not to ride for more than four days in a row. The ride to Creel was the fourth day so I was happy to just relax and check out this town I had heard about.

The first afternoon I felt compelled to go for a walk and that’s when I discovered the tourist strip, Calle Adolfo Lopez Mateos, full of restaurants, hotels, local arts and crafts made by the traditional Tarahumara people. This is the first time I had experienced begging in the streets in Mexico and it was all from the colourfully dressed Tarahumara. Mostly women and children sat huddled in doorways, some were in the main square making their crafts. The children mostly did the begging, but on any corner you can buy a range of woven and hand-sewn articles of clothing, jewellery or decorations directly from the women. 

The things they make are beautiful but as I’m on a motorbike with already full bags, I can’t buy anything. I don’t wear jewellery normally although I did lash out and buy a small Berber pendant while in Morocco last year. I would like to get something small from all of the traditional people I meet in my trip, and this time I opted for two small bookmarks made of cloth with little sewn people on the ends. I hang them on the front of Ziggy for a bit of colour.

 I was glad I found the place and also glad that my hotel was a bit of a walk away and out of the centre of this tourist area. The children target tourists for Pesos constantly. On advice from Antonio in Chihuahua, I carry a bag of lollipops in my tankbag and when they ask for Pesos I give them a lollipop. I feel bad that I am contributing to the sugar addiction that is apparent with these people, but giving money to children begging is also not something I feel comfortable doing. I like the fact the women make culturally unique things to sell to support themselves.

 I noticed too that groups of the Tarahumara get transported around in the back of pick-ups by some groups of NGOs possibly.

Creel has it's own selection of crazy motorcycles

My first encounter with a Chihuahua in Chihuahua resulted in an angry dog biting my boot

Train tracks have more than one use

And fruit salad gets topped with tomato sauce and chilli powder...hmmm, interesting.

The basketball court has a great view

and good old fashioned playground equipment like we used to have when we were still allowed to hurt ourselves as kids!

I even had a close-up look of the trucks that share the roads

And the little straps that hold it all on

Basaseachi

I was the last to leave the carpark at Basaseachi Falls after a snack and drink. I decided to ride to a town called Moris which was on the other side of the National Park. I rode into Basaseachi township and watched the comings and goings of life there for half an hour. 

As usual the bike garnered a lot of interest, most from a distance. People still waved and smiled if I initiated it. I asked about hotels and was told there was one just up the road in the direction I was heading. I stopped in there on the way but no-one answered so I continued to Moris. I found the turnoff and was pleased to see that it was paved and in good condition. The first ten kilometres were great with a lot of new road construction in the last couple of kilometres.

It was about sixty kilometres to the town so when the road turned abruptly to dirt, rocky dirt, I thought I would see how it goes. 

I travelled about ten kilometres along the road that was climbing steadily into the mountains. I was surrounded by forest. It was tough going on the bike. The ground was full of rocks sticking up and it wasn’t possible to get any speed up to glide over them. 

It took a while to cover the ten kilometres and I started considering time because I have to return this way as Moris was at the end of the road. It was approaching 4pm and I decided that it would be close to dark when I arrived at Moris and I had no information on whether there was accommodation there. I decided against it and turned back to get a hotel near Basaseachi. By the time I arrived back near the township the light was starting to disappear and I was glad I had made the decision not to continue. I stopped at a pizza place and enjoyed some tacos...Pizzas and More...I took more!

I asked if they could recommend a hotel and they pointed me towards one about a kilometre away. I rode to the motel, which had a dingy look to it and a rough gnarly driveway to get to it. The manager was in a little hut separately sitting in the front of the barren grounds. A young man came out and looked at me without smiling and looked at the bike. I asked how much for a room for the night.

‘Cinquos Cientos’

‘Can you repeat that more slowly?’

‘Cinquos Cientos’.

I held up five fingers and said, ‘Five Hundred? For that?’

‘Si’.

 This was the first time, maybe the second after my insurance, that I had experienced the so-called ‘Gringo Tax’ - the heavily over-inflated price for a dodgy product or service. I had rejected 400 Pesos previously at an upmarket hotel and this was a very poor looking motel with the highest price yet.

 I just smiled, put on my helmet, and mumbled to myself something like, ‘No wonder it’s empty’, and rode off. I found another motel not far away. It was a more professional looking outfit but the room was pretty basic, yet for 300 Pesos - approximately $23 – I took it. It had a good driveway in comparison but the approach was a bit rough.