From San Carlos we left for Mazatlan, hoping to make it before sundown. We had to buy our visas and Mexican motorcycle registrations past the city of Guaymas, or so we thought... Twenty minutes outside of Guaymas we stopped at the "Registration Place", (for lack of the spanish term) and let Milan feel the situation out. After ten minutes of talking to the lady inside he came back and told us we had to go back to the border for our visas!! After a few seconds of suspense he said, "just kidding, we've got to goto Guaymas". This was better than the border but none of us wanted to back track. Getting back into town we found the "Visa Place" right in front of Coca Cola distribution center. After taking turns, for around 45 minutes, watching the bikes and going upstairs to sign documents we had to goto the bank, pay for the visas, and come back to the "Visa Place" to get them. Talk about jumping through hoops! What a pain!
Finally, we made it back to the place of registration and got or documents together. After Milan got his registration and then rest of us started reading over what we needed, I got some bad news. We were all required to have a credit or debit card with our name on it to ch
arge the price of the registration and to cover the cost of the bike if we didn't return the registration upon leaving the country permanently or after the six month expiration. Everyone had brought cards with them, I however, did not. My other option was to drive back to Guaymas, again, and deposit a $200 fee in case I did not return the registration correctly. Not only did I not have a card and not want to drive back to Guaymas, I didn't have $200 on me!When my turn came I tried passing off another of Bean's credit cards as my own, hoping the girl wouldn't look at the name, of course that didn't work. Milan, acting like he had no idea what the problem was, came up to the window and asked if there was a problem. The girl explained the problem and Milan was astounded. He tried his sweet talk saying, "un excepcion? por favor? excepcion?", and while the girl melted in front of us, she couldn't make an excepcion. The one thing she finally said she could do was take the $2oo deposit instead of making us go into town. So, for the next ten minutes I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to scrape up $200 from the guys so we could keep moving.
We finished the paperwork and got the heck out of there! With all of the setbacks we knew we wouldn't be able to make it to Mazatlan so we aimed our sights on Ciudad de Obregon (I thought it said Oregon the first time I saw it too).
Rolling into Ciudad de Obregon around 4pm, we stopped at a small restuarant for something to eat and to figure out our plan of action. We always aim low when trying to find a place to stay. We ask about good places to camp, hear about RV parks, and sometimes end up even better off. Because of the antics earlier in the day, I was fresh out of cash and had gone all day on breakfast. I pulled out a Ramen and started eating it at the table while the guys ate their food. The lady looked at me and asked if I wanted her to boil it for me! I guess I looked pretty pathetic. She boiled it and brought out to me in a nice bowl. I used what was left of the taco dressings, lettuce, onions, sauce, and made myself some authentic Mexican soup. To be honest, it was amazing. In the course of collecting the table scraps I must have looked even more pathetic because the lady brought me out a small plate of ceviche on the house! So far, every Mexican I'd met had been amazing. Despite all of the negative media we see about Mexico and all of the horror stories a friend of a friend has heard, Mexicans are very a very kind and giving people.
While paying our bill Andrew pointed towards the street at a local on a BMW GS650. The gentleman rode over and greeted us. He asked where we were from, and we asked if he knew of a good place to stay. The second sentence out of his mouth was, "Ive got an empty apartment down the street with a gated courtyard where you can stay if you want". What? Seriously? He parked the bike and sat down to talk with us. His wife had seen us riding through town and called to let him know, thinking he might want to find us and say hi. We talked with him for a few minutes and he invited us to a bike gathering with him and his buddies. They had one every Thursday and he wanted us to come! We followed him to the apartment to take a look. He said he could leave us with the remote to the gate if we wanted to stay, but we didn't have to. We were all blown away and obviously said yes to a free and secure apartment for the night. He said he'd be back around 7pm to pick us up for the meeting, which were all looking forward to.
We settled in, washed some clothes on the washboard, bought a few beers and ate some cow tongue tacos until Jorge arrived(You may notice he follows the blog! Hello Jorge!). He showed up with his buddy Cesar who was riding a Kawasaki Concourse, a sweet bike. By 7pm it was night time, and we were riding with a Mexican motorcycle gang called "The Yaquis", (I think). We met at a local bar where you bring your own meat and grill it on a giant indoor charcoal barbecue. Lawson went with Cesaer to"The best meat shop in all of Mexico" and picked some carne asada for tacos. Everyone in the group was awesome. Most of them were college educated and ran successful businesses. We hungout and talked for a few hours, learning about places to stay and places to stay away from. We said our thank you's and goodbye's and rode back with Jorge and his two friends to the apartment. All of us had a great time riding back and rolled up to the apartment laughing. We thanked Jorge and said our goodbyes. The hospitality of the people we've met along the way has been totally unexpected. A good lesson to all of us guys. One thing Jorge said I'll always take with me. He said, "I wish someone had done this for me".
We rolled out our sleeping mats, turned on the ac, and prepared for an indoor night of sleep, sweet indoors.
Another great memory because of someone elses hospitality.
Isn't being an American embarrasing and humiliating sometimes when you see, touch, taste, smell the way that the rest of the world loves people?
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