Day 12 11/7/2021
Odometer- 25,220 – 25,589 —– 369 Miles Today ( 2889 Miles Total)
Monterrey Mexico – San Luis Potosi
I really hope you guys are enjoying these emails they are hard to keep up with after a long day of riding and exploring!
Also check out the link to my gps tracks. Someone asked me to post it on every email.
https://new.spotwalla.com/trip/8354-102e3c09-202f/view
Woke up at sunrise today and had no idea where I was going. Once I loaded up the bike at the Airbnb I opened up google maps and decided to go south to a small old town in the mountains called Real De Catorce. I stopped for breakfast at this little shack on the side of the road about an hour into the 5 hour drive I had mapped out. As soon as I pulled up this gentleman started speaking a little English to me. He pretty much went up to the food cart and started ordering all kinds of things for me and I was thrilled by it all. Finally my second real meal since friday! I grabbed a few extra liters of water for the road and took off. I found this small little town online a few months ago which I didn’t know much about. It was more about the adventure to the town and out of it since the town wasn’t much to look at. When I got close to it off the highway I got on a cobblestone road. Actually more like rocks cemented to the ground. it was the most bumpiest road i’ve ever driven on i think. I wasn’t sure if I was going to rattle apart first or the bike! I honestly don’t know how my bike didn’t fall apart on it, it was nuts. I’ll have to admit here the italians do a much better job making roads out of pavers! hah!
Anyway once I got to the end of the road there was about a 1/4 mile long line of cvars which I just skipped and when I got to the end there was a line of cars coming out of a tunnel under a mountain and we were waiting to go through once they all made it. I got through the tunnel which was about 1.5 miles long and probably full of pollution from all the cars. Not much to see in the town and I couldn’t make a wrong turn trying to leave or else it would have been a nightmare trying to turn around. On the way out of town it was a downhill cobblestone road on the edge of a cliff a few hundred feet tall. One wrong move and you’re dead. There were old jeeps with tourists on the roofs getting transported up the mountain and it was wild watching two jeeps going separate ways around each other. They almost clipped my bike a few times and even while I was riding. I took some videos of it but I’m not sure I can post them on here they’re too big of a file but you will see some pics.
After the long ride down the mountain I got to a deserted town, filled up with fuel, and made a few phone calls about where to go next. I found a few cool waterfalls southeast of me and decided to head that way. The boring way was 4 hours on a highway mixed with other roads or there was a 7:45 way with some back roads and mountains. You can guess which one I picked! The ride out of there was pretty eerie and humbling being in the middle of nowhere. There were mountains maybe 150 miles away in each direction and just bushes up until then. I passed a few small towns on my way and even passed a funeral I think. There was a car with about 150 men on horses following it! I didn’t think i could find a decent spot to camp since i was going to be passing a big city an hour before sunset, i didn’t want to stop riding too early so i got a Hostel in San Luis Potosi. I rode 4 hours of the 7:45 drive so I have about another 4 hours tomorrow to make it to the waterfalls I found. The ride today was mostly desert so it’ll be nice to hit some lush green mountains tomorrow. The temps finally warmed up today, it was 77 for parts of it and I think I finally put the down jacket away for good!
The ride today through the desert and nothing else around was a weird feeling. A Lot of anxiety about the bike breaking down which will go away soon hopefully. Also just a weird feeling overall being so far away from everything and just being on your own. I’m curious to see how that feels when I get to Peru, Bolivia and Chile where these empty roads for hundreds of miles are going to be on dirt!