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