Puebla and Teotihuacan

1/22/2018

For me (Scott) one of the hardest parts of traveling is the fear of missing out. Leaving Michoacan we passed a number of towns with rodeos in full swing and had to shed a tear and drive onward in order to make miles towards Puebla. How far can you possibly travel if you try to do everything? Finding the balance is hard.

Somewhere between towns north of Mexico City Sharah pulled over in a dirt parking lot as her clutch cable had snapped. We had brought an OEM spare so we installed it and were back on the road in 30 minutes. We've found that in Mexico universal motorcycle parts are as easy to find as coca-cola. Nearly everybody in Mexico drives a motorcycle and the most important thing for them isn't to find OEM parts but rather to just fix it and keep going for as little money as possible.

Our slight clutch cable delay and normally slow pace brought us into the town of Ixmiquilpan with the setting sun and threat of rain so we abandoned our plans to camp at a swimming pool in the mountains and splurged instead on a $500 peso ($30USD) hotel room with private jacuzzi. This was the last bath tub we would see in our travels for months.

We drove into Puebla planning to change Sharah's rear tire and both of our oil. The economy of Mexico is incredible sometimes. What would normally have taken me about an hour of sweating and cursing, some busted knuckles, and a few popped tubes to change Sharah's tire instead cost $150 pesos ($9.00 USD) at the Yamaha dealership in town where a team of two burly men spent an hour doing the exact same, and all I had to do was eat the street food and watch. Such luxury would usually cost $30 USD in the States, plus the food. Total cost in Puebla, $10.00 USD, including food.

We changed our oil and filters in the afternoon shade behind an Autozone but learned you can't drop off your old oil inside like in the States. A street kid waving a red handkerchief collecting parking fees pointed at a grassy patch and said to just dump it out but we couldn't bring ourselves to do it.

A British geologist once told me that bacteria eats most of the hydrocarbons before our tiny spill could become dangerous, but I still resist the idea. We poured the oil back into bottles and left it by the back door hoping our conscience wouldn't haunt us.

Our host in Puebla is a bit of a Yamaha enthusiast, specifically the 80's and 90's FZR and TZR series. His attention to detail in rebuilding these antiques was apparent when you saw how excited he got as he showed off his OEM engine seals that had just come in the mail. Manolo also owns a KTM 990 and a Cagiva Navigator as well as a Honda XR200 pit bike. We were in good hands for specialty tools and a library of old Paris-Dakar race footage DVD's.

Nerds

We backtracked a bit to visit the famous pre-Aztec pyramids of the moon and sun in Teotihuacan. The pyramids here are some of the largest Mexico and our self-guided tour through the ruins was full of wonder and the incessant calls of street vendors growling into jaguar sculptures and hawk whistles.

Despite the noise of hundreds of tourists from all over the globe, there is a palatable solemness about this place The road of the dead stretches between the pyramid of the sun and moon and is lined with smaller pyramid structures. Ancient secrets and mysteries crawl into your head with whispers and hints of things you will never know of but of which you are somehow aware. There is an energy in the imagination of thousands of ancient feet and bodies traveling the same pathways in such a meaningful place, climbing the same steep stairways, feeling the same sunshine and looking across the same valleys which are today undoubtedly very changed.

A variety of murals found on the walls of Teotihuacan

The temple of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, under excavation.

One of the thousands of small figures removed from the pyramids of Teotihuacan and put on display in the museum.

Mornings in our campsite were replete with hot air balloon launchings and landings. Our site was adjacent to open fields perfect for landings and perhaps more than 30 balloons would be in the air by sunrise.

Our three nights in Teotihuacan gave us time for maintenance. Since owning her bike Sharah has now replaced the cylinder, piston, rings, valve stems, drive train, and rear mono-shock, and does her routine valve adjustments and oil changes too.