May 13 - Cuernavaca to Puebla - 125 Miles

Our day started fine, with Alex's Gold Wing running fine at first.  However, just as we were about to take the route to Oxaca, our planned destination, the motorcycle quit dead again.

We thought it might be the battery, so we loaded the battery into Deane's bike, and he started off with the kind of bad directions we usually got, to find a shop that was supposed to have batteries - we thought it was a motorcycle shop.  Well, Deane got lost, from taking a turn onto a fast moving Quota, and it took a long time just to get back to square one where Alex and the dead motorcycle were.

Have you ever been in a foreign country where you speak only a little of the language, have no map, and are in a big spread-out city with no street signs and people who give directions faster than you can comprehend them?

We decided it would be smart to flag down a taxi to go to the supposed motorcycle shop.  It turned out to be a big electronics store, not a motorcycle store, but with a little of everything in it, and tests showed the battery to be good.

In the process, the cab driver that took Alex to test the battery told Alex that he had a friend who had a one-man motorcycle repair business, and had long experience.  So, we gave Alex's bike a jump start again from Deane's bike, and went to the shop.  The mechanic diagnosed the problem as a intermittent connection, cleaned it, put electrical grease on it and pronounced the problem fixed.

At this juncture, with the prospect of a possibly unreliable electrical system, and getting tired from our multi-hour days, we decided that we had to skip Oxaca and ride on toward Veracruz.  Since Oxaca was one of our most anticipated visits, this was a hard decision.  However this would save two days in our schedule, which we could use for shorter riding days, and possible future problems.  So, we set our sights on the city of Puebla, about 125 miles.

On the way, we had lunch at a little roadside stand in the village of San Carlos.  This was the highlight of the day, with a wonderful "roastizado" chicken lunch.  The chicken was actually barbequed, with basting of fresh pineapple juice, on a open grill in front of the open air dining area, .  Then the dishes of rice, red or green salsa, lettuce, tomato, fruit, and of course tortillas were added for a repast fit for a king.  Mmmmm, Mmmmm!

After Cuernavaca we rode through town after town after town at 20 mph, and with many, many Topes.  We decided we had had enough of 20 mph riding and jumped on the Quota toll road for most of the way to Puebla.  Riding on to Puebla through dry mountain area was quite scenic.

Due to our late start, we arrived at Puebla, a large city, at about sundown.  It took us almost an hour to find the hotel we had picked out of a guide book, in the downtown section.  It was a nice older hotel, and had inside car and motorcycle parking, so it was fine.

We have found that most of the hotels and motels in larger cities are right  downtown.  It is not like the American situation of finding a convenient motel on the way into or out of town.  There are none on the outskirts.  So, we have had to dive into the town and traffic, and every once in a while stop and ask directions.  Mexican people aren't good at giving directions that one can count on, and so the process of asking, going a ways until one is lost, asking again, and repeating the process several times takes a lot time and a lot of following bad leads.

The same is true for getting out of town.  So, we have concluded that it takes about an hour to get into town and get a hotel, and about a half hour to an hour to get out of town the next morning!  I looked for detailed Mexico maps before leaving home (including on the Internet), but could find none.

So ended another day, with some bike problems, but interesting scenery and observations also.

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