May 7, Creel to Rodeo - 395 Miles

Deane had planned this day to see more of the Sierra Madre mountains, with the plan to go from Creel to Durango - about 440 miles by Deane's computer mapping program.  Since Creel is the mountains, we started with beautiful Ponderosa Pine forests that we hadn't been able to see the previous night.  Mountain riding made for lots of curves and challenging riding, with roads being quite good in general for the first half of the day.

For our motorcycling friends, this section contains a higher quantity yet of curves per mile than the Arizona Highway 191 described before, so it was great fun.

The mountains were fairly dry, as Mexico is in a drought like the Southwest U.S., but still spectacular, with massive rock cliffs and walls.  We stopped at an enormous rock wall that Deane had seen a year ago, to get photos.

We enjoyed the mountain riding, but by mid-afternoon we found that the road to Durango continued to be very mountainous, crossing several high ridges only to go down and up again to cross more high dry ridges.  The road surface was only fair to poor, but riding was still fun.  

We hit two army check points today, one where they just waved us through, and one where they stopped us.  When they stopped us, they didn't seem to know what to ask.  The one questioning Deane wasn't familiar with the tourist permit, but when he saw it was good for 180 days, that made it OK.  The ones questioning Alex asked him quite a few questions, including how he got into Mexico, as if he shouldn't be there.  But they then waved us on through, with us not knowing what their function really is.

But we could see that Deane's plan for the day, made from maps with no first-hand knowledge,  had too many miles and too many mountains to cover to get to Durango.

So, we decided to ride until about sunset and find a motel somewhere.  However, when sunset came, we were in a tiny village with no motels, and found it was 50 miles to the next "town" which had a hotel.  After riding in the dark for 50 miles, the town turned out to be very small, with the "Camino Real Hotel" having pretty dilapidated looks from the outside.  We took a room though, at $150 Mexican Pesos (about $15 U.S.).

The room we took was "OK", but not great.  Alex said that of the two other rooms he looked at, we got the one "suite" of the hotel.  This meant we had the toilet inside, a black and white TV, and a cold shower.  Oh yes, the broken swamp cooler was sitting on the table.  It was a hot night in the desert hills, but we got some sleep and survived.  At least the room and the sheets were clean and the owner lady was nice.  We looked at it as part of the adventure of being in Mexico.

At this point, we should say that we are finding the Mexican people very friendly, very helpful, and quite interested in us and the Motos.  Whenever we stop, lots of kids come up and chatter away and want to touch the Motos.  Alex talks and laughs with them, and Deane is getting better at his Spanish and is able to converse better each day.  We make a point of talking to the adults at each stop and we are enjoying them.  One thing is always on the tip of the tongues of young and old - How much do Motos like that cost? - "Quanto Questa la Moto"? 

Back to Mexico Homepage

Back to Trip Index

Next day