MC Raven Ride Report 39 - Colorful Churches

As you ride through Mexico (and indeed, all of Latin America) you can't help but notice how important and prominent a role the Catholic Church plays in rural life.

Every small to mid-sized town I passed through proudly showed off its church. The church was always the best maintained building in town. Often the focal point of the main square. Usually the meeting place and location for all kinds of special events.

Seeing this I decided to start photographing the churches as though this were a contest. Which town has the most colorful church?  (Don't forget that you can click on these pictures - all pictures in this blog - to enlarge them)

Along the highway from Los Mochis. I know I'm not supposed to feel this way about a church but this one kinda makes me feel all warm inside. Can't figure out why.

Along the Espinosa del Diablo

This picture was particularly hard to get. There was a female dog, obviously in heat, with a large pack of suitors. Every time I tried to snap a picture, one of the dogs would mount the female right in the middle of the frame. You can understand why they need the chain link fence though.

This church was in the town of Santa Catarina (I think). I stopped to take this picture then, discovered a small comedor selling gorditas across the street. It being lunch time I headed over and ordered two from the grandmother doing the cooking: one chicken and one carne asada. The daughter served me the gorditas then disappeared. Within a few minutes a young boy came into the comedor and, after waiting for me to finish my meal, came up and said "Amarillo is yellow." 'Why, yes it is' I replied. "Verde is green." 'Oh, you speak English,' says I. This boy and I spent the better part of an hour pointing at things and naming them and their colors he in English, me in Spanish. It was an absolutely perfect moment of time and, pure chance that I stopped to take this picture.

Scroll down for the winner

The WINNER!

Throughout Mexico, the Catholic Church is dominant. I've noticed though, a new church starting to make inroads, especially in Central America. The evangelical church named Luz del Mundo. They seem to have one in every small Central American town. They're always new and very showy. Watch out Catholics, there's a new kid in in town.

MC Raven Ride Report 38 - Central Mexico

I'm going to blow through the middle part of mainland Mexico pretty fast - that's kinda the way I went through too!

I left Los Mochis at sunrise. I don't normally start so early but, the love motels charge by the hour or 6-hour blocks and apparently, my 6-hours ended about 4:30am. I've since learned to make sure that, when I rent a room at a love hotel, that everyone knows I want the room for the whole night and will be leaving at 7:00am. Didn't know that then so, I moved over to the nearby truck stop/gas station to wait for sunrise.

Thinking that, since it was a truck stop, I'd park in among the trucks and snooze until sunrise. Turned out to be a bad idea. Apparently, the local drug dealers used that parking area for deals and were unhappy to find an old gringo biker in their business area. One of the dealers, trying to determine how much I understood about what was going on, asked me if I spoke Spanish. I told him "I know 'Qué bonitos ojos tienes. Debajo de esas dos cejas' " Which is a line from the song Malagueña Salerosa. It translates to something like; What beautiful eyes you have. Under those two eyebrows. The dealer must have figured he was talking to the dumbest gringo in Mexico and moved his operation somewhere else. I moved over to the convenience store at the gas station to wait for sunrise.

Just a side note: I think that the Malagueña Salerosa is the only song I've ever heard that mentions eyebrows. Lot's of hearts, lips, eyes, etc. But never eyebrows.

Second side note: Los Mochis is where Chapo Guzman was arrested in January of 2016. He was in town when I was there.

Third side note: This incident is the only time in my (currently 5 Feb 2016) 9 months on the road that I've ever felt even the least bit uneasy.

Pretty picture of my singing debut.

The ride from Los Mochis to Mazatlan was just a long, hot freeway drone. I got to the start of the Espinosa del Diablo highway late in the afternoon. There's two roads from Mazatlan to Laredo: the new toll road and the old - Espinosa del Diablo. I took to old road and, it was motorcycling Nirvana. Along the way from Los Mochis I crossed the Tropic of Cancer - my second imaginary line around the world (after the Arctic Circle).

Tropic of Cancer

Unfortunately, since I didn't start up into the mountains until late, and was unable to find a hotel of any kind along the way, I ended up riding after dark. I don't normally ride after dark, my eyes aren't what they used to be and, critters come out in the dark. Even in Mexico, critters come out after dark. It really gets your adrenaline going to be leaning way over into a curving mountain road and find, cows laying on the road keeping warm on the sun-warmed surface. It got foggy, cowy and cold. I was unhappy.

By 6:30pm or so I finally made it to a small town in the mountains before you  get to Laredo. Everyone in this town (La Cuidad) must use wood stoves to heat their homes, the smoke hung over everything. By now, I'd been in the saddle for more than 12-hours, was cold and getting grumpy with the cows so, when I stopped for fuel, I asked the gas station attendant if there was a hotel in town. She directed me to this place. The owner was embarrassed to show me a room. He doesn't get many gringo customers and, not many who want to actually sleep. I didn't care. It was warm, inside and, there was a place for the bike. $100pesos.

Move over bed bugs - I'm tired, cold and grumpy.

It was so close in here that I didn't even have to put the kickstand down.

A series of long days and cheap hotels (sounds like an old country song don't it?) got me across the highlands of Central Mexico.

Ok, let's talk about the toilet. In Latin America, you don't flush used toilet paper down the toilet. You throw it into the small trash can provided. When I first encountered this I was in a place that obviously, had a septic system. I thought, 'That's a good idea. Why fill the septic tank with paper when you can send it away with the rest of the trash?' I was wrong. Everyone, even those on city sewage systems, throws away, not flushes, their used TP. Good to know, right? While were talking about toilet related things, in Latin America, many places don't provide toilet paper. You bring your own. Forget to bring some? Well, here's a solution:

Every home should have one of these.

1-peso gets you this much.

Final toilet related topic: often, toilets public and in hotel rooms, don't have seats. You must use up some of your very precious TP stash to cover the porcelain before you sit down.

I dropped down out of the highlands at the coastal city of Tampico. It was along this coast that Cortez landed on his way to change the New World forever. As I dropped down to nearer sea level I started seeing, for the first time, banana trees and sugar cane fields. I spent whole days singing Harry Belafonte songs "Come mister tally man, tally me bananas. Daylight come and me wanna go home." That song became almost as persistent as the Small World song from Disneyland.

Tampico sunrise

'Y decirte Linda Hermosa'