Re: Mexico on two wheels


"sleazy rider" <sleazyrider2k1@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote

I'm leaning heavily towards going down on the GSA in June of next year
for three weeks. The plan is the Gulf Coast of Mexico and possibly
Guatemala/Belize/northern Central America. Can you get to the Panama
Canal by road? Details? Websites or books recommended? Anyone here
done it? Tips, can't miss places? I know I need my passport and many
copies of license, Mexican insurance, birth certificate originals,
yada...

Take along enough money for bribes to the various Mexican Police forces.

True story:

While riding through the hamlet of Joshua Tree one afternoon I spotted the
most outlandishly overloaded Honda Dual-Sport 650 I'd ever seen, parked next
to a used book store. It was hung all over with spare tires, packs over the
front fender and behind the rider, a huge tank bag, saddlebags next to both
the front and rear wheels, and a pack for the rider as well! In fact, you
had to look hard to see any motorcycle at all.

Curiosity overcame me, and I stopped, went inside, and approached the only
other customer who turned out to be a German guy about 25 years old who'd
been working his way around the world eastwards on his bike for the last
couple of years.

He'd gone through southern Europe and the Mideast to Africa, and then ridden
all the way down to Capetown; where he put the bike on a tramp steamer and
sailed to the southern tip of India. He then rode more or less eastwards
across southeast Asia and took to the water again until he reached Perth,
Australia; where he stayed for about a year earning money to support the
trip.

He then rode east across Australia and took ship to Alaska, from which he
intended to ride all the way to Patagonia on the southern tip of South
America, and thence home to Europe by boat.

I asked him how the trip had been so far, and he said it had been fine until
he reached Mexico, where the local Police forces had demanded so many bribes
from him that he was almost broke again before he'd even made it to Mexico
City.

At that point he gave up on South America entirely and returned north to
California, planning to cross America west to east instead, and sightsee all
the National Parks along the way. He was in the bookstore looking for
reading material to tide him over while he camped out at Grand Canyon, Zion,
and so forth over the next few weeks.

You have to wonder how bad the bribe/payoff problem is in Mexico for it to
have discouraged a guy who'd so far made it three quarters of the way around
the globe without letting anything else stop him!


.

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