Welcome to Mexico
Added on Wednesday, May 19th, 2010 by Carole Nash Editor
Welcome to Mexico
It’s getting harder to keep the police happy. Paperwork in Mexico is a costly and time consuming process. A hundred kilometres south of Mexico City, a short red road crosses over from the autopista at Tres Marias toTetando de Arista on the western-side of a beautiful mountain pass scrambled with tall trees, succulent green fields and fast flowing streams. Inadvertently I’d stumbled across one of the play areas frequented by urbanistas from Mexico’s capital city. The twists and turns in shadow and sweet glades brought rare precious moments to what had been a tough route from Salinas Cruz.
I was stopped by a police checkpoint and a greasy looking policeman with gold teeth came up to me saying that I had caused an ‘infraction’. He showed me a scrappy piece of paper badly typed in English telling me that due to alternate circulation days around the City of Mexico, drivers with particular number plates should be allowed to proceed only if it coincided with the correct days. There was a spelling error in every word and the fact I had English plates that could not possibly have complied with any Mexican alphabetical number plate rule made this demand bogus. “If you do not pay,” he said, “sliming his words, “I take your license and you present yourself to our office in a few days maybe in Mexico,” and he grinned. He asked for $400. There was no way out of this one, no sweet talking, no ‘welcome to Mexico’, not a scent of conscience just the corrupt mentality that has contributed to drug barons having killed 18,000 people here in the last two years.
So I say, “Signor Officer Capitain Policia,” in my best Spanish (whilst wondering how awful it must be living in his head) “Gracias for usted hospitalidad, but I am not the rich tourist you think I am, how about $100 (you b***ardo)”.
“No, $400″.
“No, too much,” I say, “$100″.
“License,” he says.
“Ok, $200, and just for you and not the others,”
“Ok”.
So I get out of the car to hand him the money and I didn’t realise that as I did so, my mobile phone that must have been sitting on my lap, must have fell out of the car. He pushed me back into the car and I remember him bending down as he walked away. He sent me away and after 20 kms when I realised the phone was gone drove back to where I had been stopped and looked on the ground knowing I’d never find it. I went up to the officer and accused him of theft and as guilty as hell he pretended to empty his pockets, then told me to go, otherwise he’s arrest me.
Earlier in the day and working back to the border with Guatemala, entering Mexico could not have been simpler and when we paid our money to the bank kiosk further up in Tapachula, the autopista west to Arriaga was gently undulating and bland, based as it was on the lower slopes of the Sierra Madre de Chiapas. Everyone was ahead and bedded down in the hotel at Salina Cruz. As I pulled into the hotel car park, a late night girl hung wanting to be friendly but I was asleep in my bed minutes later and awake two hours later briefing the riders on the route to our next destination west of Mexico City.
There were two possible ways of journeying north from Oaxaco towards Mexico’s capital city. My original choice was to take the autopista to Pueblo and then traverse the environment of Mexico City on the south side. The problem with this route centres on journeying through such a large city. It’s a confusing sprawling metropolis and possibly dangerous at night. There was a risk we’d arrive late and with the present security situation being so compromised, I was nervous about how safe night riding in Mexico would be.
The other route was windy and hilly and slow. Some of the riders had left early and I was not very reliably informed that they had taken the windy route. This left me with a dilemma and when several other riders elected not to take the autopista route I agreed to take the support truck along the route of their choosing and set off.
The road followed a predictably dynamic pattern, encased by high, hard and sparsely vegetated hills. Cacti came down to the roadside to watch us pass, their arms outstretched. Small towns came and went but progress was slow and by late afternoon and carrying Rob’s KTM on the back, the engine started to overheat. I was not mechanically capable and had blown up the engines of several cars over the years and there was an excellent opportunity to do it again. The temperature gauge was in the red yet again so we stopped and Rob, whose KTM Adventure had broken down on the outskirts of Telgulpicalpa, decided to take out the thermostat. This worked, the temperature stayed down but we were shattered and at 11pm checked into a hotel not knowing that the group had skipped off the agreed route and backed over to the easier autopista. No one texted us to say that this had happened - it could have been that everyone thought someone else was doing it and Steve did say he was concerned about it knowing we were committed to a slow route for most of the next day. I didn’t find out until after we circulated around Mexico City, past the gold-toothed policeman and when we eventually reached the hotel at Toluca, very west of Mexico. At first I was cross with everyone and felt let down. I felt that the communication between the group had become poor and actually very self-centred. Then I began to relax. There must have been many occasions when the riders felt that I had not communicated effectively and that they had felt disenfranchised for what ever reason from what was said and for what had to be done. Yes, it was a two way process and sometimes you can’t get it right everytime.
The following night we were all together once again and it was only then that I realised what a heroic journey some of the riders had done, of which the greatest ride was enacted by the BMW boys, Graeme Willett, Nick Robins and John Baggaley.
Nick had blown a tyre somewhere on the outskirts of Mexico at about 9pm. Nick had blown a back tyre and without me being able to support him, they took off his wheel and left him by the roadside. A taxi driver led them towards Toluca and then stopped his cab and jumped on the back of Graeme’s bike, his luggage and Nick’s wheel being carried by John. Graeme was good but John missed a turn and Graeme got to the hotel at 11pm without John or Nick’s wheel. This is not such a great adventure until you start to add a few layers to complicate the perspective. Firstly, the area is spaghetti of motorways extending across from one of the most populated cities in the world. The difficulties in navigation are extreme. Two, Mexico is suffering its worst social crises since it’s separation from the USA. Over 18 000 people have been brutally murdered by drug gangs in the last two years. Two days after we passed though Culiacan on the west coast, a gang gate-crashed a wedding party, took away half the guests along with the bride and groom and killed them. Signs of extreme torture were evidenced on their bodies. Human faces have been ripped off and crudely stapled onto footballs and left in the street. Intimidation is as ruthless as it can physically get. We were a little foolhardy and not a little brave to be riding here. Three, when you add the fast flowing traffic all equally nervous and paranoid, this journey of the BMW boys has now had the colour added to their painting. John eventually found his way back to the hotel whereby Graeme and he took a cab with the errant taxi driver and with the wheel back to Nick, who had been by his bike on the kerbside for two hours. Wheel back on and back to the hotel for midnight. The next morning everyone is back on the road. This is the ‘craick’ as the Irish say; this is extreme biking, the most extreme adventure touring in the world.
