Chihuahua City to El Paso

Saturday 4/03/2004

The view from our Hampton Inn room in the morning.

Alfonso took us on a tour of a couple places in Chihuahua City . I don’t know if I wasn’t paying much attention or what, but I didn’t write down many details.

A government building.

Another shot in the government building’s plaza.

A huge church in Chihuahua city. It was enormous, but Alfonso said the whole thing would fit inside one of the Puebla churches.

Jay and I outside the church we toured in Chihuahua city. Looks like we should have stood out in the sun.

Jay, Alfonso and Dad touring Pancho Villa’s headquarters.

At my request we also stopped at a store where Alfonso helped me pick out some audio CD’s with mariachi music. Then it was back to the hotel to get ready to ride.

Getting ready to leave Chihuahua City.

On our way to El Paso , we stopped a great street vendor restaurant. There were probably 20 of these food carts lined up, with a guy at each one cooking. They have some kind of customer sharing scheme going, they alternate who gets which customer. It was busy with all kinds of people, and a guy or two in the parking lot directing people where to park.

Lunch at the street vendors’ on our way to El Paso.

After lunch we were cruising along and Jay came roaring by on his BMW – Jay was the slowest on the dirt due to his bike, but he made up for it on the road. I decided to keep up for awhile so I gunned it and moved out after him. My speedometer didn’t work but evidently we were up at around 90 mph at least periodically – which is pretty fast on a motorcycle in general and very fast on a dual-sport bike with knobby tires. The wicked thing is that Dad caught up with us! I don’t know how far behind he started but he must have been really moving. We cruised like that for a long time, going up and down between 60 and 90 or so. I was having fun but wondering about the speed rating on my knobby dual-sport tires. Everyone else was speeding also, and occasionally I’d get passed by someone that must have been going over 100 mph.

We turned in our permits, then rode for another 20 miles or so with some nasty looking thunder storms dumping rain all around us. We outran the closest storm though and passed through the border with just a couple questions each – very easy.

Just across the border we stopped, regrouped, and took this picture.

We went to a storage lot where we returned our rental bikes, and took another group picture.

After rental bike return, in the storage lot. Unfortunately in setting up the timer I messed up my camera resolution for this shot and so only have a low-res shot.

Next we rode in Alfonso’s truck to his home in El Paso for a barbecue. We had a cucumber appetizer (cucumber, squeezed lime juice, picante sauce, garlic powder, salt) which was great – never had a cucumber dish I liked as much, and then steak in tortillas which was great. We met his wife Maria and his sons, and hung out for awhile. Wish I’d taken some pictures, it was a nice evening. Then it was back to the El Paso hotel where we started.