Brian A. Hopkins
Adventure Bumpkin

Bahlobo y los Gringos:
"South of the Border"
(Copper Canyon, Mexico) 13 - 22 April 2007

Off the Pavement (page 3 of 3):  

You can't deny the simple beauty of where these people live. Perhaps we could all live with
much less than we think is necessary... (Photo courtesy of Rich Desmond.)

...by learning to live closer to Nature, by finding a greater appreciation for the way
a mountain touches the sky ... (Photo courtesy of Rich Desmond.)

...for the way Nature's artwork resonates with our souls? (Photo courtesy of Chris Marlow.)

Another gratuitous shot of yours truly.

Danny on a switchback below me.

Chris crossing a bridge on the road to Batopilas...

...with Rich not far behind.

More scenery.

It was truly never-ending.

Honest.

Like I said, it was hard to make any real progress...

...with such incredible photo ops around every corner.

See what I mean? (Photo courtesy of Chris Marlow.)

Yours truly again. (Photo courtesy of Rich Desmond.)

And again.

We only had navigational issues on our very last day. Leaving Batopilas, after spending the night
there, our plan was to find a route from Batopilas to Urique, rather than retrace our steps back to
Creel. We spent 3 or 4 hours and a considerable bit of energy and gasoline scouting out various
routes, all of which ultimately vectored off in the wrong direction. The locals that we asked kept
saying, "You can't get there from here," even though we knew it was possible.

These were among the more difficult trails that we'd attempted. Tighter. Steeper. Rutted and
washed out in places. It was our last day offroad and -- speaking purely for myself here -- the
constant riding and working of the bike had taken its toll. I was pooped. (Photo courtesy
of Rich Desmond.)

On a steep uphill switchback (yes, it's steep, even if it doesn't look like it in the damn photo), I
jived when I should have jogged, veered away from the drop off at the edge (there were the good 
line through the switchback is) into the ruts and rocks, dropped a foot and wussed out when I should
have been on the pegs and on the gas ... whatever. A moment's indecisiveness is all it took. The
BMW and I went over. It was a bad place to drop the bike.

The bike's been down several times before with very minimal damage ... but that was on level
ground where the bars and engine guard do an excellent job of keeping fragile bits off the ground.
Here, on those rocks ... well, it hurt ... the bike, not me. Front fender scratched up. Turn signal
snapped off. Mounting piece that holds the turn signal destroyed. Exhaust shield on that side scraped
up. Plastic fairing/trim piece (near the rear of the bike) shattered. (This was actually drop number two
for me, if you're keeping score, because I had gone down on the stairs in Batopilas that morning --
more on that in the Batopilas section of this report. It was there that the right hand mirror got snapped
off, in case you're wondering where it went. The left mirror rotated up out of the way in this drop,
thankfully leaving me with one mirror for the trip home.) Because the bike was on an incline, I couldn't
pick it up without spinning it around, which would have done even more damage. Danny and Chris
were out in front of me somewhere, but Rich was bringing up the rear. I opted to wait for Rich to
catch up and lend a hand. While waiting, I did the proper Adventure Rider thing: I took the photos
you see here. After a couple minutes, I got a bit concerned, though, because not only was Rich not
putting in an appearance, but in the dead quiet I couldn't hear his bike echoing up through the
canyons. Where was Rich?

While waiting, I got the strangest sensation I was being watched. I looked up ... there, some
4 or 5 hundred feet above me, were Chris and Danny. Here's the view they had. (Photo
courtesy of Chris Marlow.)

Can't see me? I'll zoom in. You can see where the switchback loops around behind me and
downhill. Eventually, I heard Rich coming. It had taken him so long because he too had fallen
(number three for Rich), just a few switchbacks back from where I was. Rich helped me pick up
the Beemer. I started it up and we pressed on ... but we ultimately abandoned our quest to find the
route to Urique. Gas and time were working against us. We couldn't afford to run out of gas out here
in the boonies. And we definitely didn't want to be out riding after dark. Discretion being the better
part of valor and all that, we backtracked to Batopilas and returned to Creel the way we'd come.
(Photo courtesy of Chris Marlow.)

The views, of course, were still magnificent...

...even the second or third time around. (Photo courtesy of Chris Marlow.)

Click the Dancing Sombrero to Continue the Adventure