January 19, 2013, Puerto Escondido Mexico

235 miles with a moving time of 6 hours and 5 minutes today and for the first time on the trip the temperature registered above 90 degrees. It was another good day.

We’ve been staying on Mex 200 for since entering the mainland and it’s giving us the opportunity to view an amazing slice of Mexican life. We must have passed through 100 small towns today and I would venture to speculate that Mex 200 is the only pavement in most of them. Life seems to revolve around the two lane highway and the commerce it brings. If we went through 100 towns we went past 1000 roadside stands selling things from every type of food staple, roadside snacks, women’s dresses clothing and toys for children. We saw all of this close up because each town is full of topes as they seem to be called in Baja or “Reductor De Velocidad” as they are called here. Translation – speed bumps. Some are more “humps” than “bumps” but most of them are like driving over a 4X4 piece of lumber which tests our suspension and certainly does slow down traffic. If we went through 100 towns and past 1000 roadside stands we easily went over 10,000 “Reductors”.

We are trying to make progress while in Mexico so we have more time to spend in Central and South America. It’s probably a good thing Keith is keeping us on schedule because I would be stopping in every other town to hang out, take pictures, try the food and generally goof off. I’m pretty sure that would totally guarantee we would never make it to Pucon Chile. Since we are moving so much I decided to take more pictures on the road with one hand to try to capture some of the life here.

Passing is a constant part of the ride, we are experts at it.

Look mom, I can pass with one hand and take a picture at the same time!

Typical roadside scene.

I wish the next picture wasn’t blurry, they were so excited to see me riding behind them with my camera. It was very common to see pickup trucks filled with people… safety third! And hey, what does that road sign mean? Nothing important I hope.

I love this next picture, passing another motorcycle.

.We stopped at a typical roadside restaurant for lunch today.

Jim and Mike had the soup with was a collection of whole fish, shrimp and some other stuff. They spent most of the time picking out the complete skeletons.

We made an ATM stop in one of the larger towns and took time to observe a dance class  in the open air court. It looked like they were working on traditional Mexican group dancing. Some of it almost reminded me of square dancing. We couldn’t decide if it was an after school class or a competitive team. These kids really had the moves.

The bikes are running fine, we all seem to be healthy and are getting along amazingly well with each other. Tomorrow is day 10 since we left the US, that means 90% of the journey is yet to come.

Thanks for following…. Donn and Deby 🙂 🙂