Black beans to black bears

Mexico, USA,Canada and Alaska - the final chapter

From black beans to black bears.

Please support our friends at Portsmouth Samaritans by sponsoring us and our trip from Ushuaia to Alaska. Simply follow the link HERE and part with some of your well-earned cash.

Thanks

Nigel and Sharyn

Leaving the chaotic but beautiful Guatemala, our hotel Rancho de las Soto and Alfonso as our host, we head to the Mexico border where everything seems orderly and clean.

The border guards have name badges, uniforms and appear to be professional.  Goodbye Central America, we are arriving into North America. For the first time we don’t see workers in the back of pick-up trucks. Everyone travels that way in South America and Central america but not here in Mexico. Maybe they use buses.

Mexico is big. Boy is it tall from the southern border up to the top.  It will take a week to get to Texas. We elect to use the better roads that have a toll for safety and for speed.  We ride up the west coast road and are soon in wine and tobacco farming country. We want to miss Mexico City and that means heading to the Caribbean coast over the Mexican central mountains where the views are spectacular up in the rain forest.

That means a 4am start as it will be a hot ride after 2pm. The dawn in Mexico is spectacular as we ride east into the sun. Reds and golds light up the sky and the air is clean and cool.

The bike needs some tender care as it has not been touched since Lima and so we head to Coalacoata and the port city of Veracruz on the east coast where we meet Rafa Lago of Motopits. What a great mechanic.

We start to feel uneasy with the security. Miles of empty roads where anything could happen. An annual death toll of only 30,000 (down from 50,000 in 2013). Every store have an armed guard and all the roads have army checkpoints requiring ID. Its for our protection but we still feel uneasy. We decide to avoid Mexico City and Chihuahua.

Soon our bike is working beautifully again and now we can travel up to the exquisite old town of San Miguel de Allende.

This town has high-end shops and an airport for the many Americans who use it as their winter resort.

There are narrow lanes where cars are banned after 5pm, gated communities and a Cadillac dealer.

We stay in the hostel La Catrina and enjoy a lovely evening in the town square with a mariachi band and great Italian food!

We enter to heat of the desert as the road climbs and climbs into the heat and we arrive in Torreon. Giant cactus line the road and it looks like a classic Western film. Its hot, empty and its dry. It just needs Clint Eastwood.

Nearing the US border we see trucks filled with soldiers and Federal Police. Very menacing with black balaclava masks and tall carbine rifles. Convoys of 10 trucks taking 100 armed men and a huge gun mounted on each truck are on the road all the time.  One morning we ride past a police car, parked in the central reservation, Sharyn looks over to see a bullet ridden corpse lying there.

We have friends in El Paso, Andy and Jessica and we we head for Ciudad Juarez. Last year Ciudad Juarez had 3,000 murders but we didn’t know that and it seemed clean and calm when we arrived there.

This is the twin town with El Paso. In happier times people could cross the Rio Grande from one side to the other and both towns share much history. But now it is a fortress over the river with tunnels being built by the Mexicans and closed down by the Americans every day. Its a battle of wits by both sides.

When we reach El Paso we are able to throw our clothes into Jessica’s washing machine as we are really very smelly and in need of a good wash. Sharyn and I both visit the hairdressers the next day and we are soon looking human again. I think I look like George Clooney instead of Uncle Albert.

We head West along the border to New Mexico and California. This part of the world has prisons like other places have farms. We see several and decide it must be hell inside.

We can’t miss the Grand Canyon and so at dawn we head there on a Sunday and almost have the place to ourselves.

We pass by an extraordinary aeroplane store with hundreds of planes, engines, wings and wheels, waiting to be bought or scrapped. A blue 747 looks as if it might have once been “Airforce 1”

We get to Benson, Arizona and decide to camp there but the temperature on the bike is reading 45c. Sharyn sees 47c.  That’s way over 115F and so ask if we can have a cabin instead. The owner sells us the cabin and while the A/C is being turned on we spend the afternoon in the swimming pool. Ouch it’s hot.

Our friends Barbara and Ian in Phoenix look after us for a night as the temperature rises again and even aeroplanes are stopped from taking off as the air becomes so thin.

It’s another dawn start to escape the heat and head to California and the cool of the coast. Just 15 miles inland it can be 35c (100F) and yet by the coast is a pleasant 70F or 20c

We stay in San Clemente and enjoy margaritas on the pier watching the surfers and the pelicans gracefully diving to feed.

The local Capistrano Beach Rotary Club invite us to their 1940’s Swing Band evening. We have a great time dancing to “Chatanooga Choo Choo” and “Take the A train”

Many of them dress up in costume and I buy some nylons from a very shady character with wide lapels and two-tone brogues.

We meet our English friends Mark and Elaine as they head South and we head North. They have rented a black, drop-head Mustang and they look very cool as they glide along wearing shades and listening to surfing music.

The Pacific Coast Highway is blocked because of a landslide due to torrential rain. It breaks California's 7-year drought but it has taken away some of the road. After a detour we are into Oregon and heading to Washington State.

Oregon roads are wonderful for motorcycles and we are enjoying every minute of the journey up through  Washington State and into British Columbia. Marijuana is legal up here and so we head into the first shop to stock up.

The days are getting longer as the sun never really goes down here in the Summer. It is getting colder too and we are again wearing all of our clothes to keep out the biting wind. We get to Prince George on Canada Day. It’s their 125th birthday. Lots of parties and some fireworks too.

But now as we near the Yukon we find the mosquitos are more of a pest. We see bikers wearing netting masks to keep them away.  We stock up on DEET - extra strong. At Haines Junction we are only a day away from the Alaska Highway.

In Lima we met a Brazilian rider Rudy, who had trouble and could not travel with us through Central America. But we kept in touch and he was 3 days behind us for 3 months. Then in Canada we missed him and he is 3 days ahead of us as he heads to Prudhoe Bay. As he heads south on the final lap of his return to Brazil, we miss him again as we cross paths in Fronteria, Yukon. That’s a shame.

There are crazy people up here and they drive crazy things too. Me meet two guys who are driving original Ford Model A’s along the Alcan Highway.

At last , on July 7th it's Alaska! We stop for the compulsory photos and of course the “Welcome to Alaska “ sign is busy as everyone there wants a photo.

We have a huge sense of pride at our achievement. All the way from Ushuaia would be good but we travelled for a month before we even got to Ushuaia.

We have travelled 20,000 miles in 5 months and met some wonderful people along the way. We have received help and generosity from everyone and our trip has been great for both of us.

We have a ferry booked on the Alaska Marine Highway,in Haines which takes us south to Vancouver and Air Canada back to London. It’s a four nights and five days on the ferry and we don’t have a cabin. So we bed down each evening on our air beds and watch Alaska float by.

We are riding for Samaritans so if you would like to support us please follow the link HERE to our sponsorship page. All the money goes to the Portsmouth branch and the Central Charity.

You can follow us with our SPOT tracker too by clicking HERE.

We have a Wordpress blog going on too and you can find it HERE

Best wishes,

Nigel and Sharyn