BREAKING

Travel Adventures

There And Back Again

Article And Photos By: Kiwi Mike Thomas

Originally Published In The May 2015 Issue Of Cycle Source Magazine

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After a good meal and some rest for our beat up bodies we decided that it would be a good day to just hang out in town and I relaxed at the river bed which was pretty low in water flow. I was intrigued by an indigenous Indian lady washing the family clothes and the floor blankets. She worked and worked those blankets one by one, slapping them on the rock, dunking them in the river, scrubbing, more slapping on the rock and more rinsing. She was there for hours while her kids played in the river. Overhead was a pedestrian swinging bridge for the people who lived on the other side of the river. The houses were cut into the steep sides of the mountain. There was no vehicle traffic access to this side of town at all. Life at Batopilas is like turning back the clock 150 years and no one could be bothered with anything or care about time. Before we left the US, Ebola had broken out. Down here they had no idea what was going on anywhere in the world, nor did they care. Gotta love it.

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I witnessed pickups getting thoroughly abused bouncing over the big rocks when as they were using the riverbed as a roadway to get to their homes downstream. What a work out and makes our rough use of vehicles in the US look like easy street driving. These folks have no mercy what so ever on their vehicles. Today was the first day that we took time to enjoy lunch. We walked into the other eating place that was in town to be sure we patronized each one fairly. We sat down at 12 noon and realized no one was there. We decided to hang out for a while figuring that she might be attending to a baby. Quite a bit of time passed by so we went outside to try and communicate a message that no one is inside. Talk about the bush telegraph, next thing you hear Melissa’s name being yelled out throughout the town. Eventually she walks through the front door at 12:55 with bags of groceries. Ah, this must be Melissa. Every meal is made from scratch and takes a while but it’s always so tasty and worth the wait. This day was The Day Of The Dead and it isn’t an easy day for me. I keep thinking about my loss of Ross on July 22. I just sat by the river for quite a while by myself.

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The town is being remodeled or basically getting a face lift. The Federal Government is putting the money into the town and the road. Not sure why as it’s a very small town with no room to expand. The amount spent to put in the new road to here is in the billions of 68 May ‘15 CYCLE SOURCE love it. I witnessed pickups getting thoroughly abused bouncing over the big rocks when as they were using the riverbed as a roadway to get to their homes downstream. What a work out and makes our rough use of vehicles in the US look like easy street driving. These folks have no mercy what so ever on their vehicles. Today was the first day that we took time to enjoy lunch. We walked into the other eating place that was in town to be sure we patronized each one fairly. We sat down at 12 noon and realized no one was there. We decided to hang out for a while figuring that she might be attending to a baby. Quite a bit of time passed by so we went outside to try and communicate a message that no one is inside. Talk about the bush telegraph, next thing you hear Melissa’s name being yelled out throughout the town.

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Eventually she walks through the front door at 12:55 with bags of groceries. Ah, this must be Melissa. Every meal is made from scratch and takes a while but it’s always so tasty and worth the wait. This day was The Day Of The Dead and it isn’t an easy day for me. I keep thinking about my loss of Ross on July 22. I just sat by the river for quite a while by myself. dollars. It makes no sense at all since when you get here, there’s nothing here. We fueled up the bikes this afternoon ready for our ride out of here. Gas was brought to us in plastic cans as there are no gas pumps here. We didn’t care or ask about the price, its gas and we had to have it to get out of here. On Sunday we got an early start and since the worst part was going to be at the start of our ride, we were fresh to attack it head on. Having some experience and knowing what to expect also helped out some. The day of rest in Batopilas had also been a big help. None the less it’s still a lonely feeling knowing that no one is going to bail your arse out if something should go wrong. The climb out of the canyon climbs up 7,000 feet and it just goes on and on. Bugger me days it just kept on climbing. Most of it is in 1st gear and when we got into 2nd gear it was just a very short lived experience. For this reason I built our bikes with the original 3 speed/crash box tranny design. The replacement gears I make for these old girls is of a far superior material than the originals and the simple design makes it bulletproof. So with all the 1st and 2nd gear usage to climb out of the canyon it surely proved its worth.

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It was a whole different view of the canyon looking up and riding out of it. It looks far more spectacular because it’s so massive. Near the top we see about 6 Federali Policia SUV’s speeding down the canyon checking us out very closely. Dunno who the guys are chasing because we hadn’t seen anyone for a long time down, but as we came over the brow of the hill, holy shit your pants batman, oh shit oh dear. Crickey mates…. Check in next month for the rest of this exciting story. We ain’t in the US Toto.

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