Our previous 12 hour day left us a bit draggy in the morning, but we were up early and on the way to the historic center of Puebla to meet Hank's crew at their hotel. I still felt weak and wobbly from the stomach bug but pressed on.
The downtown was deserted in the early hours, and a beautiful city it was. Our previous night's stay and entry into the town had been in a modern area replete with beautiful skyscrapers and businesses. Overall, the impression of the city was good with a sense that it was going somewhere new rather than living in its past.
We circled the old plaza and a few blocks away found the hotel. There was no parking and since we assumed they would be ready to leave, we parked on the sidewalk and went in. The crew had seen us through the restaurant window and were having breakfast. We met Frank and his wife, a couple from Germany on a 1200 Adventure and their son who was riding one of Hank's rental bikes, an 1150 Adventure. Another couple, Scott and Amy were on an F800GS and hailed from San Antonio. One additional rider, Larry from San Antonio, was there solo, his wife having started the trip on the bike but who'd flown home from Guatemala after an incident they'd experienced in Chiapas.
As they finished breakfast, two police officers walked to our bikes on the sidewalk, intent on punishing us. We bolted outside and acted stupid, easy for me I might add, and they let us off from a ticket but stayed until we moved the bikes into a parking garage a bit further up the street.
Eventually we got on the road north for Teotihuacan, the closest town to the huge pyramid complex begun by the Toltecs almost 2000 years ago, and later occupied by the Aztecs. It houses two of the largest pyramids in the world, the pyramid of the Sun being listed as the third largest in the world, and its smaller sibling, the Pyramid of the Moon.
We'd been warned earnestly by locals the day before to be very careful in the Puebla traffic and it was obvious why on our first evening. Probably the most aggressive *sshole drivers we've encountered, including NYC. Nowhere else in Mexico, or anywhere for that matter, have I had drivers literally try to push a motorcyclist off the road or out of the lane. It was very dangerous and I'm not sure where the aggression comes from, but be prepared if you go.
Luckily, our group had no serious encounters as we wound our way out of the huge city and onto the tollway north. The tollway was a bit different than others, in the fact that you took an entry ticket and then paid the fees as you exit. Hank had warned me about ahead of time to be sure and keep the ticket and I was glad. In normal travels, you get a receipt at each toll booth and end up with a pocket full of tollway receipts at the end of the day. They’re just trashed and you don’t even try to keep up with them. It would be easy to mistake the entry receipt and lose it, then have to pay the maximum toll upon exit - the tolls on this “northern arc” are not cheap either.
Speaking of the Arco Norte tollway, it was a beautiful and chilly ride in the early morning sunshine, the elevation higher than expected and the rolling, mountainous terrain a refreshing change from the typical tollway routes. After a couple of hours we exited for Teotihuacan, paid the toll to the smiling and incredulous attendant and shotgun toting guard who were fascinated by the woman on the big motorcycle.
Another exit down, my GPS squawking as the correct exit, Hank swung off as well. It led us down a rough cobblestone road into the village of Teotihuacan itself, and not the pyramids as Garmin thought. A few questions answered by locals, and we were again on our way, reversing back out and racing back onto the highway at high speed.
Just as we all hit 80 or so, suddenly Hank exited without warning and the entire line of bikes began hitting brakes hard at the unexpected event. Kim and I being in the rear, had to lock up hard but couldn't get stopped in time, swerving past the stopping group and onto up the shoulder. Kim was shaken and we were both pissed at our near collision due to the sudden exit with no warning. Our only way back to the waiting group behind us, was down an embankment and back up through some rough stuff. Semi trucks were blasting past us and it was too dangerous to consider trying to push the bikes backward up the roadway. The deep embankment was too iffy for Kim I felt, and ended up riding both bikes down through the muck and back around to the crew. It’s a good thing Hank was in protective gear or Kim might have punched him. I felt the same way frankly, both of us coming so close to hitting all the others for no real reason. After a deep breath and change of shorts we were on the road again and soon saw the pyramids rising to our left.
The entrance was proof that either zombies do exist, or some people live forever, as surely one of the original Three Stooges was running the place. The guy was more confused, discombobulated and utterly inefficient than anyone I’ve ever seen, and I thought we'd never get through the entry gate. Seriously.
Finally parked and off the bikes, I checked out Larry's 1150GS and his cracked and duct-taped windshield with golf ball sized hole. In our cryptic texting a week or so before, Hank had shared that their trip had been "interesting". They'd been racing south for Palenque on the tollway when Hank said he'd checked his rearview mirror to see where the other bikes were, at the same moment an 8" wide by 3' long deep pothole appeared in the concrete, running the direction of the bike. His front wheel didn't drop in, but his rear did, the impact locking up the rear end of his bike and him coming to a smoking, screeching halt in the middle of the tollway. Luckily a pickup truck behind him was able to stop and block the high speed cars behind.
In a nutshell, the rear wheel had dropped perfectly into the pothole, the force of the exit from the rut so strong at 80 mph that it snapped the shaft on his Touratech rear shock and broke the top shock mount weld off the GS’s frame. Subsequently, the shock jammed the rear wheel, locking it up and shredding the rear tire. It was miraculous Hank didn't go down or get hit from behind. Hank had to get a truck to carry his bike to Palenque, find a place to store it and continue on as a passenger on his rented 1150 to get the tour group to Guatemala in time.
Larry's damaged windshield was the result of a roadblock incident a day or two later in the Chiapas region. The group had gotten spread out a bit on the narrow back roads, when around a sharp corner, a board-with-nails road block had been set by black-masked EZLN members from a local village.
Hank and the first couple with him made a fast maneuver onto the roadside and got past them, the second couple arriving a few moments were stopped, playing dumb and then tossing a $20 peso bill at them, racing through a gap between the nail boards. Larry and his wife had been further behind and got stopped when they arrived.The EZLN guys were now angry and began shoving the motorcycle around. Scared, he saw the gap between the two spiked boards and when an arriving car distracted the rebel group momentarily, he hit the throttle hard for the gap. He didn't realize the bike was in second gear, the bike stumbled and died in the process and while he hit the starter, one of the group fired a rock at him from a "rifle-like slingshot", hitting the windshield, punching a hole through it and breaking it in half. The rock hit him in the chest hard and in the fiasco, he lost control of the bike and went into a ditch, dropping the bike hard and bending his brake lever badly. He didn’t finish his story of how the incident ended, but to his wife, on her first trip out of the US on a motorcycle, the trip was over. Upon arrival in Antigua, she booked a flight home and he delivered her to the airport in Guatemala city the next day for her flight home.
With Larry’s story fresh in mind, we walked out into the main area of the pyramids, taking in the huge space, its scale hard to grasp. Across the way, the Pyramid of the Sun sat staring and calling our name. It looked like the way up was long and steep. And it was. The view from the top was great and we hung out there a while, before following Hank, Scott and Amy to the bottom and over to the Pyramid of the Moon.
In some areas, the original plaster and painting has been preserved intact. The great black and brown stone monuments are impressive as they stand, but a glimpse into the past when they were gleaming white pyramids, edged with bright colors and priests in colorful garb would be amazing to see.
The ever present vendors were there, selling obsidian daggers, jewelry and the growling sounds of jaguar whistles, intriguing to Kim for the potential havoc they might cause when camping with others. We were both up for scaring the hell out of folks with the growl and laughed impishly, but sadly the clay creations were too big to carry in the cases. Damb!
The midday sun and heat were reminders that Hank and his crew needed to get on the road for San Miguel, their destination for the night. We took a couple of pics and said goodbye, heading back for Puebla on back roads to avoid the tolls and semi trucks.
After a couple of hours and crossing a few hundred topés, we’d had enough and decided to get back on the tollway since the day was fading and we were getting hungry. Kim had mentioned the Krispy Kreme donuts we'd had the night before and our donut demons took complete possession, twisting our wrists for Puebla.
There was a lot of truck traffic and a lot of high speed lane splitting at times. The main toll plazas nearing Puebla were choked with traffic and vendors, but often we were able to snake through the half-mile long lines in a matter of minutes.
The late-day doldrums were shattered by the sight of a dog running into traffic just as we slowed for topes, the dog being hit and rolled under a truck, to the screams in my headset from Kim behind me witnessing the event. Incredibly the dog wasn't killed and ran like fire across the rest of the traffic to the other side. The momentary emotional upheaval of seeing the event and Kim’s simultaneous piercing scream had bolted me out of my mental slump, just slightly short of a heart attack.
As has been typical of our travels we arrived in Puebla starving, locating the Krispy Kreme, but adjacent was a Carl's Jr. Hamburger joint. Apparently the “Carl's Jr. Hamburger demon” is stronger than his “Krispy Kreme” kin. The burger wasn't good, but it was good enough.
It was cool to see Hank and meet the other guys, even if just for a couple of hours. Life on the road is a bit like sailing the seas in a small boat, and it lifts your spirits to see compadrés.
Kim, Gabi & Frank from Germany and their son, Hank, “Slingshot” Larry, Amy and Scott
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