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.