At the guest house, I did meet some other bike riders and I got more of the mixed messages with one rider having turned back about half way and another saying the little town at the bottom was great and the road was very manageable. It also turned out that Jean-Luc and Ron had arrived (as I knew they were going to) and were staying at another hotel. One of the people I spoke to had chatted with them and said they were planning to head down into the valley the next morning, so I decided I would try to find them and go along at the same time so that there was help if I got into difficulties.
Next morning I got up and after breakfast I got organized and took the luggage off my bike (to make it lighter and easier to ride in technical off road) and set out to find the other guys. I found them and they were very open to the idea of me coming along, so we all headed off in the direction of Batopilas together.
The first 75Km of the road are Asphalt and it turned out to be very nice asphalt indeed!
The road is one of the nicest twisty motorcycle rides I have ever done. The curves start gently and you get warmed up and as you head South the twists get more and tighter and longer. Just as Ron said, it was "an Asphalt Ribbon of Moto-Ecstasy"! The scenery too was lovely with the road winding through pine forested mountains of Dolomite or Limestone with cliffs all over the place. I must admit though that I spent not a great deal of time looking at it since I was concentrating on trying to keep up with Jean-Luc and Ron who are both better technical riders on and off the road (I`m tempted here to use the excuse of my bikes smaller engine not keeping up but really it was my comfort and skill levels) There were several occasions where my eyes started to bother me and I realized it had been several minutes since I had last blinked - I was so fixated on the exhilarating riding :)
Well we made it to the end of the asphalt and I was not too far behind the others, and then we started into the dirt. The dirt road was about 65Km and did have some construction at the top as well as having some steep and rough sections with assorted surface textures. I have to say though that it was just a rough road and didn`t warrant any special skills on my part. I certainly felt that it was far easier than the White Rim trail in Moab, and the other riders, who had far more off road experience than I, agreed as well. So it seems there are some very timid people out there and that I am actually not that hopeless as well :)
When we made it down to the bottom (about three hours later) we came to a lovely little tow called Batopilas that has been there for over 300 years and was the second town in Mexico to have electrical power. It was all because of silver that was discovered and fueled the building of roads and aqueducts for hydro power. The silver ran out many years ago and the town has settled into being a sleepy little hamlet. It is about 1600m lower than Creel and the air down there is far hotter. The pine trees from higher up are replaced with cactus and scrub and if you are out in the sun, it is rather uncomfortable!
Batopilas however is nestled in the bottom of a very deep valley and the sun does not hit the town directly for that long. They also have the luxury of a constant water supply from the river and this means that they can and do grow all sorts of tropical fruits. There are literally Mango and Papaya trees in almost every house yard and bright red dragonflys and little blue-green humming birds flitting around. It is a very narrow town with one main street and at best one other street parallel (so the town has a central square) The best thing to do when you are there is to just sit around and relax while drinking beers. This we were very happy to do for several hours, but we eventually decided to go "do something" and the lucky winner of our attentions was an old Mission a few Km out of town further down the valley. So we headed back to the hotel we had decided to stay at (the plan was to ride back up the hill the next morning) to start up the bikes and quietly rode out to see what the Mission offered.
