We got up and started getting ready and discovered that Gustavo’s rear tire was flat. He said he thought it felt funny last night after we stopped at the ATM, but he thought maybe he was just sliding on gravel. So we planned that we would just pump his tire up and go find a tire repair shop. I rolled my bike to make more room for Gustavo to set up his mini air compressor. Funny, my bike is really hard to roll…:huh Hey, my rear tire is almost flat, too! Great, a brand new set of Anakees with only 200 miles on them, and a flat already.
I get a chance to test my new Slime mini compressor – it works great, what a nice gift that was from my family!
So, here we are parked at the local tire shop with two VStroms having their rear wheel repaired:
The bike rims didn’t fit on their tire changing machine, but the guys at the shop had plenty of experience. With the wheel on the floor and a 2 foot tire iron and a 3 foot (!) crowbar, one bead of the tire was removed in a jiffy, and the two inch nail removed from my tire. Tire patch installed, and bead put back on, their Snap-On compressor set the beads in an instant – much quicker than the couple of tries it took me to set the bead when I changed the tires. All for $5 per tire.
Tires fixed, we returned to the hotel to wash up and finish packing up. Then we waved to the tire guys on the way out of town. I think they heard Tony’s bike coming :evil
We’d planned to get an early start, but the tire repairs set us back about 2 hours. We rode some more high desert roads. Today the wind was up a bit, generally coming from the west as we headed south.
We did have some fun going up and over a small mountain range on this road:
We attracted some attention from the locals in Ignacio Zaragoza where we stopped to get gas. There are lots of 125 and 250cc bikes in the towns, where they are used to deliver pizza and for commuting, but you don’t see many “big bikes” out on the highways, and many people wondered what we were up to. Several people were surprised when we said we were on vacation – surprised as in “Why would you ever come to this place on vacation?” Well, it’s on the way to somewhere else 
We had a big breakfast at the hotel, so we just had some snacks for lunch from an “Abarrotes” (mini-grocery) in Ignacio Allende. Two 1.5 liter water bottles, a couple of sodas, some cookies and chips, all for $4.40 – try getting that deal at a Seven-11 in the States!
Looking south from the Abarrotes, things look a bit desolate:
Note the tope in the road – at least there is a sign marking this one.
Note to self: do not attempt to drive a sportscar in Mexico. We saw some topes later that day that our car would probably balance perfectly on.
We crossed over another small range:
Finally we got down to Mexico 16 west of Cuauhtemoc, and headed west toward Basaseachi. This road was really fun as it wound up and down over ridges, first following one river or stream, then another. No pics of this part as we were starting to run low on daylight, and weren’t sure how much longer the ride would take. We all really enjoyed this part of the ride, as the pavement is in excellent condition. The only down-side is that it is a major truck route, so we got a lot of practice passing slow-moving trucks.
We arrived at Rancho San Lorenzo, near the Basaseachi Falls park, after 5, and the sun was setting by the time we’d settled in and had a chance to snap a picture. Our cabin is the far half of this “duplex”:
Tony is still changing shoes and socks:
Several of the other cabins were occupied by a base-jumping club who were there to jump off the 3000 foot cliff in the nearby canyon. Here’s the helicopter they use to get up to the top, with more cabins in the background:
As we walked up to the main lodge, Tony made a new friend:
We had a great dinner and conversation with Don Fernando, the owner of Rancho San Lorenzo and another set of cabins near Aguatechi. He is a real character. The food was great and the beers were cool (not refrigerated because their only power is solar or generator).
At 6,500 feet elevation, it cooled off quickly after dark. We had thought to bring flashlights, so made it back to the cabin with the only stumbling being because the stars looked so fantastic.
The Rancho staff had started a fire going in our fireplace while we ate, so the cabin was not too cold (yet). It did get truly cold later that night. I got up and managed to get the coals of the fire going again and added a couple more logs. It was pretty toasty right in front of the fireplace, but a drafty rock building with no insulation on the roof just doesn’t get warm.
Fortunately each of the three beds had four blankets.