Copper Canyon Day 4

Our Mexico hotel room in Batopilas is at the bottom of the copper canyon. The road getting here is a challenge to any vehicle so few ever travel that road for pleasure. Motorcycle Adventure riders like us and others that have been here do it for the sport of it.

Our hotel rooms have about three foot thick walls with ceilings that are about sixteen feet tall. The door leading to the bathroom resembles a Mexican hacienda complete with ornamental adobo roof tiles and Navajo looking wall print designs. There’s even a large kerosene lamp on the wall in the event of a power outage.

Across the street from the hotel is a very active merchandise store that resembles Ike Godseys General store in the tv series The Waltons. This place could very well be the Novela Mexican version of Walton’s Mountain, a fictional mountain-area community in fictitious Jefferson County.

Only in this novella gpskevin’s dirty dozen adventure bike riders are the only game in town ever since we first rode in. The hotel owned by Martin is now full, Carolinas restaurant just walking distance away caters to our every need for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We are always the only customers at Carolinas place.

When we first arrived I noticed that our hotel innkeeper wore the traditional huaraches. The traditional Tarahumara huarache is a sandal made out of old tire rubber and leather. The sole is cut to the shape of the foot and three holes are cut: one between the toes and one on each side of the heel. A single long leather thong is then knotted at the end and threaded through the toe and ankle holes. Guess what? I talked Umberto into making me a pair on our first day. And then three others wanted a pair. See I told you we were good for the town’s business.

And after countless ear pops, multiple twisties dodging everything from donkeys to cattle to goats and anything that fell onto the road, we came we saw, we defeated the challenges that tested our limits, our spirits, and our motorcycles.

The twelve riders who signed up are now in a new land with only several more days to explore before crossing our border for home. We survived the trials of Chihuahua and Copper Canyon too. One day when you hear someone tell you how dangerous travels to Mexico are; ask them to Google the Nigerian writer Chinamanda Adiche, and the dangers of a single story.

“All I had heard about them was how poor they were, so that it had become impossible for me to see them as anything else but poor. Their poverty was my single story of them.”

That story above is very similar to how people view Mexico travel. My face is now sunburnt and weathered looking like I just raced Baja. My clothes are beginning to smell and the bike is looking well traveled. But, when I get back onto the pavement again tomorrow, my only care in the world should be that today is the first day of the rest of my life; and onward to welcoming the new riding day with new rider friends. On our motorcycles we still feel just like that kid on a bike.