On February 26, I was finally ready to leave San Carlos and continue the trip. I had not gone very far when I was stopped by a photographer who wanted to take my picture for the local paper I stopped in Guaymas to send a parcel home and then continued the uphill climb out of town to Highway 15. After a few hours, I decided to set up camp at the side of the road. The next day, as I continued on Highway 15, I came to my first toll booth. It was a military inspection point with men in army fatigues carrying machine guns. They just waved me through!

         I stopped at a Pemex,(a gas station which allows camping) to have lunch and I was immediately surrounded by kids who looked very poor. They stared at me as I ate my lunch so I gave them a few pesos each and they left only to return a few minutes later with another bunch of kids. I decided to leave and continued on the straight, flat highway but I soon decided to take a side road to avoid another toll station. I was suddenly in an area of deciduous trees and lush green fields which obviously had been irrigated. I arrived in Ciudad Obregon and stopped at a hardware store to look for something to fix a hole in my tent. I also asked Jose, the clerk in the store, where there would be a cheap place to stay. He offered me an empty apartment above the store. We locked my bike in a garage, he showed me the apartment and then left for the night. After having supper in town, I returned to the apartment only to find that I did not have a key to the building. I knocked on the outside door and finally someone from another apartment came down and let me in.

         The next day I spent some time in town looking for a screwdriver to fix my watch and for gas for the stove. It is 11:30 before I finally got on the road again. That night I stopped in Navajoa and set up camp in a truck stop. There were many kids running around asking truck drivers if they wanted their truck washed.

         Everytime I stopped for lunch, a large crowd gathered around to look at the bike. As I drove down the highway, horns honked and people yelled and waved out their car windows at me. At times, it became very tiring trying to acknowledge all these people and I thought of how I could have a fake, waving hand mounted on the bike!

         On March 2, I crossed the state border from Sonora to Sinaloa. There I was stopped at an inspection station for tourists. Further down the road there was a sanitary inspection. I think he asked me if I was transporting any chickens! All the transport trucks were sprayed with an insecticide.

         As I continued down the road, a group of soccer players had pulled over for a break and when they saw me coming, waved me down so they could look at the bike. A loud cheer went up as I pulled over and the whole team jumped out of the back of a pickup truck. They all gathered around and asked many questions. I was starting to feel like a rock star but as the population increased and everyone wanted me to wave, it became a bit overwhelming. That night, after passing through another toll booth, I arrived in Los Mochis and spent another night at a truck stop on a flat concrete slab with trucks coming and going.

         I rode into town the next day to find a laundermat and soon after that, I got a flat tire. While the laundry was being done, I fixed the flat and then continued down the highway and arrived in Guasave that night. I spent a great deal of time looking for a cheap motel and signing autographs as I went. I arrived at a motel called Mission that had a Virgin Mary on the gate. I went up to the building but I was unable to find an office, just a sign with the room rates. A voice came out of the speakers and I told her I would like a room. A peep hole opened and a woman looked at me briefly and then closed the peep hole. I finally figured out that I must put the money in a drawer that slid inside. The drawer came back with a receipt and my room number but no key. I made my way to room 25 and found that every room had a garage. In the room, I turned on the TV and a pornographic film was showing. It suddenly dawned on me that this was a cheap place to bring your mistress for only a couple of hours. I must have looked strange arriving here by myself on a bike! I spent the night thinking that, at any time, I would be asked to leave. In the morning, I took a shower, packed and left quickly before someone came and asked for more money.

         On March 4, I set up camp outside of Culiacan in an abandoned building and cooked my supper while fighting off the cockroaches. After supper, I listened to the BBC on my short-wave radio. The next day, I rode into town to the usual cheering crowds. While I waited for my film to be developed, I went to see the movie, Black Hawk Down with Spanish sub-titles. I was relieved to find my bike still there and intact when I came out of the theatre.

         After staying for two days in Culiacan, I was back on the Highway again. I stopped at a Pemex for lunch that was protected by two guards with M16 machine guns. The highway became flatter and more sparsely populated with nothing but fields of corn, tomatoes and other grains. That evening, I arrived at another Pemex just as a couple from B.C. pulled in with their fifth wheeler. They invited me over after dinner and told me stories about their experiences in Mexico and warned me that there was very little between our present location and Mazatlan.

         The couple from B.C. were right about nothing to see before getting to Mazatlan, only farms and small villages in the distance which were difficult to get to from the freeway. That night I found a rare truck stop not connected to a gas station with a nice view of the Gulf of California. I set up my tent near the concession stand and in the morning, I woke up to three kittens pouncing on my tent and the family from the concession stand were sleeping on the concrete near-by. They were all fascinated to watch me cook breakfast on my small camp stove.

         On March 9, I crossed the Tropic of Cancer, an imaginary line on the map which is 23° 27' north of the equator. Later in the day as I neared Mazatlan, I decided to leave the freeway to get away from the traffic. Along the way, I stopped to talk to a group of taxi drivers who drove modified Volkswagen beetles. They were convertibles that the locals call "pulmonias" as it was very cold riding in one in the winter. They thought that I should talk to the local media and set about calling the papers. I told them that I would be in one of the local campsites for a few days and they could find me there.

         I found a campsite on the beach and settled in for a three day stay. I spent my time there catching up on my diary, doing the laundry, shopping and fixing my bike. I found someone who would do some welding on the bike but the repairs only lasted until the next time I hit a bump in the road. I was forced to do my own repair job with some borrowed tools from the maintenance man. While there, I met Charles from California and his nephew Tommy from Arizona. Together we spent the evenings strolling up and down the strip with all the restaurants and clubs. Tommy constantly talked about picking up girls but without any success.

         On March 13, I started out for Tepic but the pain that I had been suffering in my groin became unbearable. At lunch time, I decided that I would have to return to Matzalan to seek medical advice. I waited for an hour in a walk-in clinic and after a diagnosis of a bladder infection, I was given some antibiotics. I checked into another campground for the night and started out again the next day. After lunch, the road narrowed to two lanes with deep ditches, no shoulders and endless traffic. After a close call with a truck, I crashed into a bottomless ditch. Fortunately, a young boy came by on a bike and helped me pull my bike out of the ditch. On inspection, I found the fairing was damaged, the top strut was bent and I had a few scratches along with a shaken confidence.

         At that point, I decided to pull off the Highway for the night. I found a restaurant to have a meal and while there I met a fellow long distance biker going in the opposite direction. He was coming from Panama and heading home to California after travelling around the world for two years. After telling him about the "road from hell" that I had just come over, he stated that it stayed that way for a long time. In fact, he thought it had been the worst road he had been on in all his travels! After awhile he headed out to the Highway to continue his journey, but I was very reluctant to start out again. I started up a conversation with a Mexican who sold fuel beside the restaurant. He suggested that I could put my tent up on the front porch of the restaurant after it had closed. While I waited for the porch to become available, I studied Spanish and talked to the crowds that gathered around the bike.

         I was awakened at 6:00 am as the restaurant was opening. I hurriedly packed up as the owner wanted to put out some tables and chairs on the porch. After having some breakfast, I was on the road by 7:30 am. I quickly made it to a newly paved toll road with wide shoulders and no traffic. No one wanted to take the toll road, especially since it only went for 30 km. I began to realize that the next large town, Tepic was still three days away and I was running out of food and money. For lunch, I only had enough money for a juice and some chips which I ate with a can of tuna and an orange. That night I took a dirt side road that led into an orchard and set up my tent there. It was quiet except for the buzzing of millions of mosquitoes!

         The next day, March 16, I stopped in Ojo de Agua de Palimalles and spent my last few pesos on a gallon of water. After a few hours, I crossed the border from Sinaloa into the next state of Nayarit.

Mexico - Nayarit State