We’ve been travelling down the west coast of Mexico for three weeks now. The further south we get the warmer it gets as we dip into a more tropical climate. The riding is fantastic if you like narrow roads with tight turns. Motorcycle riders are strange that way, those are the roads we love.

It seems like weeks, well, it has been, since we’ve had decent WiFi, so I finally have a chance to put together and upload some short videos. I made a short video using the Relive online app that shows our route from an ariel viewpoint. I love that it gives a really good idea of the topology and just how many turns are in the road.

We had fun and took a few road shots with my helmet cam.

Had some views as we climbed into the hills a little.

The following picture just about sums it up. You can see I’m in 3rd gear, 32 miles an hour and the GPS and Google maps show the road with lots of turns. You have to be careful when you see this coming towards you on these narrow roads. Usually the trucks need all of their lane and some of ours as well in the tight corners.

Overall a pretty easy day, 201 miles in just over 6 hours. That would prove to be one of the last “easy” days. I made a really short video to get the feel.

Zihuantanejo is a pretty easy place to stay, one of the bigger tourist cities between Puerto Vallarta and Acapulco. It’s situated in a small protected bay and attracts tourists from all over Mexico, US and Canada. We seem to have our favorite spot, Hotel Irma. We also seem to be settling into another routine that is different for us. Ride for a day and then stay somewhere for at least two… or three… days to explore. Hmmm, is that the age creeping in or the wisdom? Hotel Irma is the pink hotel on the hill in the distance.

Of course plenty of fantastic food every night.

We stayed there for three nights, the internet connection was nearly nonexistent so we were forced to sit by the pool, read books, go for walks on the beach, stroll the Malecon and search for more great seafood all under clear skies and 80+ degree weather. I wasn’t sure I could take too much of that.

Rested, it was time to move on. We did have a destination, the city of Oaxaca where I am enrolled in a two week Spanish speaking class. Everyone I come in contact with would agree that words are coming out of my mouth but they are not much like Spanish no matter how emphatically I speak them. Our next stop is another favorite of ours Puerto Escondido which is in the state of Oaxaca along the coast. It would be our last beach stay before heading up into the mountains.

The distance from Zihua (as the tourists call it) to Puerto Escondido is just under 400 miles but according to the latest mapping technology from Google and Garmin it would be an 11 hour ride. I’ve learned to trust those time estimates after learning the hard way that I can’t beat the time on a motorcycle. We wisely decided to break up the trip into two days.

The logical midway point would be Acapulco but we wanted to skip the big city and decided to stay at a small but nice hotel just south of town on a remote beach. We had been there before and appreciated the solitude and nice staff the Mishol Hotel.

We were looking for three nights booked in Puerto Escondido but we had to do some work to get there. It was getting hot along the coast with increasing humidity during the day. We were on the road around 9:00 and things were going just fine until about 11:00 just as it was getting warmer traffic just stopped. Using the proper motorcycle etiquette, we started riding on the right shoulder, cutting to the left shoulder, lane splitting between lanes and just trying to get to the front of the line to see what was going on.

We were coming into the small town of Marquelia where Mex200 crosses over a river. It seemed like the road was blocked on the other end of the bridge and there was really no way around. We finally got to the front and saw protesters were blocking the far end of the bridge. But wait, this is Mexico and there is always a way! Someone directed us to sneak between two parked cars and jump down a curb and we could get past… ha!

I had time to put together a YouTube video that shows the process. We felt sorry for the people in cars and busses, they were just stuck for what would probably be many hours.

Whew, I’m glad we made it. I wasn’t sure because blocking a bridge doesn’t really give an out for even a motorcycle. We were glad to get to Puerto Escondido almost 7 hours later as the sun was getting ready for a spectacular show. I took this picture of a statue on the beach in front of the hotel.

I took one more picture to wrap up the day.

True to our new favorite habit, we booked three nights at Hotel Santa Fe on the beach. Darn, no internet again so we would have to just rough it by talking, walking on the beach and now we play cards at night. Deby always wins…..

Ok, I’m going to stop here for now. Thanks for the comments, I’ve been really delinquent in answering them but we appreciate getting comments and e-mails from our friends. I was asked about Deby’s center stand. I took it off and it’s just attached to her motorcycle bags. We don’t really need it except it helps when I need to oil the chain. Every stop I threaten to just leave it behind.

I created a new YouTube channel where I’ll just keep motorcycle related stuff. My other channel is a random collection of videos from over the years. If you want to visit my channel click here. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClf6gNdOZULjlGWbhiics7Q I call it the ADVdonnh Motorcycle Channel, pretty original right? I’m told it’s good if people subscribe and click the like button. Well, that would be nice but I’m not trying to make any money off my channel so it’s up to you. However, if you DO subscribe and like it, I think you will get notifications when I upload something. At last check I had exactly 1 subscriber and I think that is Deby. Ha.

We are in Oaxaca now and school starts tomorrow. I want to get another post in the next few days with our ride up the mountain road from the coast. We decided to take the “old” highway which was a lot of fun.

More to come, Donn and Deby.