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Is Mexico Safe? A Report From The War Zone

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M38A1 said:
:chug: WELCOME BACK to Texas Tricepilot! :hail:
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:sun:

I have an interesting website owned by a California photographer for you. Met him in Oaxaca, he was there to photograph the festivities surrounding the Day of the Dead.
 
Re: New Warning RE: Travel in Mexico

kiko said:
Tricepilot is in Santa Maria Del Rio, a pueblo in San Luis Potosi that is famous for its hand made silk rebozos, silk shawls. Looks like he's been there for at least an hour or so, probably just getting breakfast.
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Wuz up KIKO Im still in Monclova someone lend me a Gs1200 is sitting on my garage cant wait for tomorrow to hit the highway and try it :rider:

Glad you made it back TRICE :clap:

SALUDOS
 
Another good report and excellant photos from Tricepilot.

What are the details on the crash by one of the group that left for the BMW rally?
 
Hap Hazard said:
What are the details on the crash by one of the group that left for the BMW rally?
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Jim, Frank, Brian and Ralph were signed up for the Mexico BMW rally in San Cristobal de las Casas. Jim, Frank and Brian each had either a wife or a girlfriend fly into Oaxaca with the plan to meet them and ride together to San Cristobal - the girls in a rented car and the guys leading them on the bikes.

Everybody made it to Oaxaca and the day arrived it was time for the others to go the the rally, with me not wanting to go but to stay in Oaxaca for touring and the Dia de los Muertos festivities.

We're in different hotels, but only 4 blocks walking distance, so I get up early to go have coffee at the hotel with the others and see them off. Last time I saw them all together was at the Hotel Conzotti breakfast table, where I said goodbye and left to find Instituto Cultural de Idiomas to get some info. As I'm walking back from the Institute, the rental car honks its horn and they waive to me. I waive back and say "good luck!"

Well, luck was not to be with them, as for them it was one long cluster of a day ahead for the rally riders. Before they got out of Oaxaca, the group separated. Brian, Frank and Ralph never saw Jim on his bike or the girls in the car until they got to Oaxaca.

The route was much longer and complicated then their planning and it started to rain and get dark, and they were not close to San Cristobal. Add to that fact is Jim on his GS was slowed down by the girls in the rental car, who could not deftly pass other traffic.

Meanwhile, Frank, the crash-ee, met his accident in this manner: the usual combo of events explanation where not one thing is the culprit: dark, rain, fatigue, stress.....he found himself tripped by two different binding layers of pavement and when he turned sharply to avoid being spilled as a front tire meets different levels of layers, did just that, get spilled to the road. After a fashion, via the infusion of adrenaline, he is able to use the turn-your-back-to-the-bike method of raising his brand new 30th anniversary edition GS adventure to the vertical. It would be more hours until the bruising sets in and when I eventually see him back in Oaxaca, he is walking with a limp and a cane.

Meanwhile, somewhere near Tuxtla Gutierrez, Jim realizes that it is no fun riding as the lone escort for the car, and decides to pull over at a Pemex and get into the car, leaving his bike parked under a street light. How he gets his bike back is like this: he is on a rally bus tour from San Cristobal the next day to a canyon west of San Cristobal, when he gets the idea to take a 2 hour taxi ride back to the Pemex, retrieve his bike, and ride it back to San Cristobal with no helmet or jacket, since he did not conjure up the plan to do any of this until he realized the tour brought him in the general direction of his motorcycle. I guess his original plan was to ride in the car after the rally was over and just get it on the way back.

The rally was nearing it's end, but not yet having moved farther east to Palenque, which was the Saturday cultural treat requiring a new hotel for attendees. It included the geographic misfortune of making all attendees end the rally actually farther southeast than the rally city point of San Cristobal. Reflecting back on the cluster of arrival, and realizing that choosing to complete the rally as designed would place the group in the quandary of seeing a nice archeological site but adding even more miles to get back to Oaxaca, the group voted to skip Palenque and the last day of the formal rally, and head back to Oaxaca where in the meanwhile, I was enjoying an idyllic life of cappucinos and the viewing of exotic indigenous locals.

I did find Jim and pull him aside to ask him how the rally really went. His response was that it was a 4 on a scale of 1 to 10. There was no grand central hotel in San Cristobal that could hold all the attendees, so they were spread out around the city. Add to that the carnage of just getting there, and the disappointment of having to cut out Palenque (a must-see, if you're reading this and wondering if it's worth it to go there).

In the end, in true adventurer spirit, nobody let the events as described get them down...one just morphs what happens into a good tale and you learn to adjust what ever it is you adjust, mentally or physically or both, for your future trips to Mexico. In this arena, one thing is for certain, you learn a LOT about your fellow Mexico riders through all manners of levels of adversity of events, and if any display what could be kindly described as an "inability to play well with others", that person gets inscribed on a virtual "don't ride with that guy again" list. There's just too much planning, effort, and safety considerations that go into Mexico travel that you have to have a reasonable certaintly that your companeros have the flexiblility to keeps things in good humor at all times, as best as can be expected.
 
Sorry to read that story on the group at Chiapas

I finally got to ride the GS 1200 went to Cuatro Cinegas this morning 70 mi aprox from Monclova there was a soilders check point as you go in to 4 cienegas but tey didnt even make me stop they just waved at me go, go... Got me a huge bowl of menudo 4bucks ...it was delicious no micro please .This bikes are toll or i may be short so I was doing tiptoes like how you can lean them though.
As I was taking it out of the garage on reverse hitted the brake on the midlle of the ramp and lost the ground so had to let it laid and jump to the side. The goal is to ride one day with TRICE on a GS but for what I see is going to be a GS800 think

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At the Pharr crossing, the vehicle closest to the aduana had one of these Mk 19 automatic grenade launchers mounted to a tripod on the rear deck. This is a stock photo since I don't take photographs of the Mexican army and their gear, it makes them understandably nervous.

Read about the Mk 19 here

Rather than feel nervous myself, seeing the intensity of military presence in Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon (Mexico states) actually made me feel comfortable. They, and the Polica Federal Preventiva (PFP), are all over the place, the former most visible in the aforementioned states, and the latter in the states below.

Mexico's enforcement entities have tons of U.S.-made gear, from guns and ammo to vehicles and helicopters. In fact, every convoy of military I saw, once again, appeared to be as professionally outfitted as those back here in the states. The wild-card is training. But without getting into that, it is true that there is a presence in a lot of places.

Interestingly, once just north of Mexico City, on Mx 57 (the Grand Funk Railroad), there were zero military checkpoints until Nuevo Laredo, but I did see the PFP on more than a few occassions. Also, my vehicle permit was safely tuckes away but ready to present from my side case. I never needed it. Nor was I every asked for my passport, which by a new Mexican law, every foreigner must possess and present upon demand to federal authorities.
 
I always wanted to shoot one of those launchers. Looks like a great way to blow up some money.
 
tricepilot said:
In the end, in true adventurer spirit, nobody let the events as described get them down...one just morphs what happens into a good tale and you learn to adjust what ever it is you adjust, mentally or physically or both, for your future trips to Mexico. In this arena, one thing is for certain, you learn a LOT about your fellow Mexico riders through all manners of levels of adversity of events, and if any display what could be kindly described as an "inability to play well with others", that person gets inscribed on a virtual "don't ride with that guy again" list. There's just too much planning, effort, and safety considerations that go into Mexico travel that you have to have a reasonable certaintly that your companeros have the flexiblility to keeps things in good humor at all times, as best as can be expected.
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This is a nice, tactful reminder to all of us... nicely done.

Very nice photos, looking forward to the ADV RR.
 
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kiko said:
Tricepilot is on Mexican Central Time,

El no entiende prisa, el no vive en el reloj..
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Kiko is right,

and since Trice said "in a week", then in Mex that could mean "in a month.."

if he would had said "Mañana"; then a week would be the expected time.

so be patient.

:mrgreen:
 
Baldy took ADV down today and when it comes back up, it'll have partial functionality until he works out some bugs and some upgrades. This has been announced for a while. I didn't want to roll out the ride report in the middle of this work, so when Baldy is done with whatever it is he's doing with ADV, the RR is ready to go.
 
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