Burrrr, we arrived home to record cold temperatures in the Seattle area, 22 degrees F. Yes, a few weeks earlier than planned but for some reason we were ready to be home.

The motorcycles returned with almost 13,000 more miles clocked than when we left. We felt that we explored a large part of Mexico and covered most of the states. Truthfully, we only scratched the surface of places to visit and only saw a few of the 121 “Pueblos Mágicos” (Magical Towns) in the country. I’m sure we’ll be back for more.

Once we left the state of Quintana Roo which is the furthest East in Mexico, and actually in the Eastern Time Zone of the United States, we realized we were now pointing closer to home rather than further away for the first time. According to Google, we were 3,609 miles from home via the fastest route. That number was in my mind as I checked the condition of my back tire after almost 10,000 miles already.

Hmmm, is that a crack?? Yup, it seemed like this tire was about due but we had more riding to go before we could get that taken care of. After all, it still held air….

Officially Mexico is known as Estados Unidos Mexicanos or in English, the United Mexican States. There are 32 states in Mexico, I’m beginning to wonder if we’ve been to them all. Hmmm.Our destination after leaving Kevin’s group was what gringos commonly just call the Yucatan Peninsula. In actuality the peninsula is made up of three states, Campeche, Yucatan and Quintana Roo.

After finding our way into Mexico City we met up with about 20 other riders to start another GPSKevin adventure. For those who aren’t familiar with Kevin and his adventurers here is a short summary in my own words. You can read the official version here: https://www.gpskevinadventurerides.com/

More than one knowledgeable person has told me not to ride a motorcycle into Mexico City. I suppose that would be the main reason that we’ve never visited the capital of Mexico and home to almost 9 million people. The metropolitan area has over twice as many people at about 22 million people. Of course, to get to the city you need to ride through the metropolitan area. In short, it’s crowded.

Not a bad way to spend the winter upon retrospect. I suppose we were both getting a little restless with our long stays and decided to get some more riding in. It seems like some of the best motorcycle roads in Mexico travel between the mountains and the ocean. So, our destination after the mountain town of Taxco was Zihuatanejo, still in the state of Guerrero.

Google maps initally suggested a longer but faster route but I changed it to ride down a remote two lane road MEX51 and then MEX134 to the ocean. The time? Almost nine hours?? No way… maybe.

The destination for the day was the town of Patzquaro, Michoacan. Not far from Santa Clara de Cobre but we, of course took the long way around. Literally, we wanted to make the trip around Lake Patzquaro to see the famous artisans around the lake. We stopped at a few places but mostly just enjoyed the nice two lane route with scenic views as we made our way to Patzquaro. We arrived early enough to explore the town a little but were getting restless and spent some more time planning our next adventure.

Time to leave PV, the sun, the beach and all the tourists. We were on a mission to visit the very non-touristy Puebla of Santa Clara de Cobre in Michoacan, Mexico. We loaded up our neglected motorcycles that had been sitting for 10 days and were almost ready to leave when during my routine tire pressure check Deby’s relatively new rear tire measured exactly Zero PSI. The stiff sidewalls of the MotoZ GPS tire held up the bike so I thought my gauge was faulty. I checked her front tire and it was fine…. hmmm. Yup there was no air in the back tire. How did that happen???

A careful inspection found this…