Mon, April 14^th: To Cuernavaca, where we met Juan and his wonderful family, Isabela his wife and Claudia his daughter. Juan is a man of many talents and also a motorcycle enthusiast. In his garage he has a BMW K100LT, an R100RT, a homemade airplane, rocket motorbike, and rocket go-cart. The rocket bike and go-cart can each surpass speeds of 250 miles an hour in 5 seconds. This man loves speed! He is currently designing and producing a back-mounted rocket pack like the one used in the James Bond movie. And oh yeah, he’s also in the family jewelry business.

Isabela hosts foreign students in their home who are in town taking intensive Spanish courses. She also plays classical guitar. Claudia, their daughter, studies music and plays guitar in a Christian band. Our first night there Juan took us to meet his brother and other motorcyclists at a café in town.

Tuesday, Juan and Claudia took us on a ride to an old, nearby town to see the town center with its beautiful church and huge arched mural made out of beans and seeds from the area. We also tried tequila-flavored snow cones where Claudia works. Very interesting flavor indeed.

Later that morning after dropping Claudia off at home we headed out in another direction to the town of Taxco, about 100 kms away. Taxco is a very unique town, built right up the side of a steep mountain. Juan told us the Spanish built the town styled after a town in Spain. It’s narrow cobble-stoned streets, colonial architecture and beautiful churches all add to its charm. Taxco is most well known for its high quality silver jewelry and low prices. After exploring the beautiful cathedral with its huge, real gold leaf altar and having some lunch, we set off to shop til we dropped. We finally settled on a few choice pieces and called it a day.

On the way home we had to make a break from the high heat to have a drink and an afternoon snack. Juan knew a roadside restaurant, which was obviously well known throughout the area. It was packed! Later that night Juan and Isabela took us out for a late dinner of Pozole, a wonderful soup made from corn (the type with huge kernels), a mixture of vegetables, herbs and your choice of meat or shrimp.

The riding day ended at 8:30pm when we finally found a hotel, make that a love-motel, to stay for the night. It was the only hotel we could find for a reasonable price, and it was quite nice and new too.

Thurs, April 17^th: Tequila, and seńor Jose Cuervo (the factory) was closed – 540kms. Not being good Catholics, we didn’t know that the Thursday before Easter is a holy day. Nearly everything in town was closed, except the internet café. We planned the last week just so that we would arrive in the town of Tequila on this day! Oh well, we did get to see the interesting and beautiful views of fields of agave plants, which are what tequila is made from. The blue/greet plant looks like a bunch of swords sticking out of the ground.

We arrive in Durango, late in the afternoon. Durango is famous for being the home of the Mexican western film industry. Hollywood also favors the landscapes here for western films, the most recent being the Mask of Zorro. When we arrive we meet another local motorcyclist named Pepe who takes around town to try to locate a battery for Chris’ bike. At this point Chris is losing fluid from his battery at an alarming rate. No luck though as this is Good Friday, and most things are closed. Pepe does help us find a decent hotel right on the main plaza and we get out and enjoy the festivities in the plaza.

Sat, April 19^th: Chris finds that his rear wheel has a bit of movement in it from side to side ---- an indicator that his wheel bearings are going bad. We ride to the Suzuki shop down the road to find it still closed for the holiday weekend. Two other local riders in their black leathers pull up and ask us if we need help. We tell them what we are after and they take us to the shop of a motorcycle mechanic friend of theirs. The mechanic is a really nice guy and actually has the right size bearing we need for the bike! He helps us replace it and off we go further north to the town of Hidalgo de Parral.

This is another long day of riding but with mostly straight roads through desert landscape. All very boring scenery and lucking it was overcast and cloudy most of the day. Otherwise it would have been bloody hot too.