Zacatecas to Barra de Navidad Mexico

YALD (yet another long day) – we somehow managed to get an early start (2 days in a row) and it was pretty chilly in the morning while riding out of town. Zacatecas is at about 8200 foot elevation so it takes a bit of sunshine to warm the air in the morning but by our first gas stop we were stripping off all the thermal gear and back into the mesh stuff. 

We did about 450 miles today and when we arrived in Barra we were both fried. The roads out of Zacatecas down thru Guadalajara were mostly flat with occasional twisty sections to keep us awake. After negotiating the traffic thru Guadalajara we were running on highway 80 and for maybe 50 miles it was pretty boring stuff but as it climbed over the coastal ranges it turned into a fantastic roller coaster with unlimited curves including banked corners and not too much traffic.

Very interesting to see the terrain and vegetation change as we came down from the high plains. A slow transition to almost jungle like plants and the accompanying humidity – a short burst of rain began a debate between John and I about whether that qualifies as rain but we didn’t get our rain gear out and decided that if we hit that sort of thing back home we wouldn’t stop – so – no rain was declared.

We stopped just north of Guadalajara to see a tall waterfall cascading on a sheer face of rock – Cola de Caballo - Horsetail waterfall. Not much water flowing over this thing but the height of it was very impressive. They say it is 670 meters (just about 2200 feet) – and the overlook platforms were kind of spooky.

We rolled into Barra around 5:30 and were trying to find Dan’s friend Rob Kirby when all of the sudden someone is yelling at us from a balcony and we look up and it’s Rob. Great to see him and he had ice cold beers ready for us. By the way Rob roasts  what is routinely called the best coffee you’ve ever tasted – check out his site at: Local Goods. We found a great hotel that is on the beach and they  let us park the moto’s inside at night – here is Dan riding into the lobby…

A housekeeping note – we changed the entry name of our blogs to be both of us – we were getting questions about who was writing and so forth. Mostly we have written the blog entries together – John will write something then Dan will add pictures and color commentary or the opposite. Anyway – going forward we will post under both of us unless its just one of us.

OK – cheers!