Batopilas to Las Nieves

We got a relatively early start today and after walking thru the town of Batopilas we geared up and poked our way down the street to get some gas. Not your average gas filling situation but not too bad actually - it worked well and we didn't bother asking how much per liter/gallon the fuel was - just fill it up and pay the total. Inside that building are about a zillion barrels of gas - or what they claim is gas - anyway - it burned fine and we didn't have any troubles with it.

Our trip up the canyon went much faster than riding down into Batopilas. We weren't stopping to take pictures quite so often and we were able to make our way to the rim of the canyon in about 2 hours or so. Along the way we watched these 3 trucks do the dance of figuring out how to get past each other - it took them 15 minutes or so to work it out and we hung back about a 1/4 mile to watch from afar - no need for a motorcycle to get ground up between the trucks.

Here's a shot of one of the wooden bridges - we managed to both make it across all the bridges without incident today

Notice the mother Mary shrine behind Dan. Painted on the rock wall. These are all over Mexico.

OK - check out this dump truck - they were working on the road in sections - to give you an idea of how rough this road is, Just the wheels and tires on this truck are roughly the same height as we are while sitting on the bike. (6 Feet)- it looks tiny here but you can also see the school bus in the right of the picture for scale....we had to follow it through this ditch and it had rained a bit last night so the mud was super slick.

We hit the asphalt road after about 3 hours and 45 miles of gravel - and both of us let out a cheer cause the road was smooth and we were cruising again! It was pretty cold at the top (8,000 foot elevation) and we suited up with heated gear on.

We cruised across a wide variety of terrain today - emerging from the canyon country we came into some really broad sweeping high country plains and grasslands. The road routinely ran along the very ridge of a high bluff area and the views were fantastic.

Aproaching the town of Balleza we came to a military checkpoint (our first in a few days) - unlike some of the other ones we've hit - these guys were strictly business - vests, helmets, lots of big guns etc.. They looked in John's luggage and talked at us for a few minutes before pushing us onward. On leaving the town - literally 1 mile and 2 minutes later, but just out of sight from the other checkpoint we were stopped again. These guys seemed even more serious than the last bunch and were wearing masks over their faces and several guys questioned us before letting us go onward without a search. We both remarked that it was very uncomfortable and they seemed pretty nervous.... Coming into the next town we went through yet another search but it was much more routine and we pushed onward. We were reminded how nice it is to have the comm system between us. As they would always ask each of us the same questions and the second one can here the questions/answers. Making it easy for us to make our stories match. Would have come handy as kids for when mom and dad asked us where we had been when we got home late.

We rolled into the forgettable town of Las Nieves about 4:30 with plenty of time to find a hotel and we dug up a swell one - 300 pesos for the night for a double room in the "1^st class" section... but it's freezing cold in  the room and there is no heat - we're both sitting around in sleeping bags typing in the blog entry for the night. Having a dinner of Ruffles Queso, Canelitas (crackers) and coke.

Rain report: while we had a few sprinkles today - nothing that you would consider rain and we definitely didn't have to drag our rain gear out - so, the streak continues!

Cheers!