Monterrey to Real de Catorce

 This is the view we woke up to this morning in Monterrey. We took our time getting ready and packing up this morning, but we still made it on the bike around 9am. The night before we had planned to head to Zacetecas, which would have been a 7 hour ride from Monterrey, but Eric woke up around 4 am and changed our plans while I was still sleeping. Instead, we would head to Real de Catorce which was only a 4 hr drive from Monterrey. We had read about Real de Catorce before leaving for our trip, but decided not to go since the town was not only located a bit off of our path but also because the road leading up to the mountain town was made of rock and cobblestone, which we thought would be too rough on the bike. However Eric woke up on the brave side of the bed at 4am that morning, and we figured a 4 hour ride was better than 7 no matter how we looked at it and went for it. We pulled out of our hotel, got some gas, and started towards Real de Catorce. The last two days we've been taking the  free road (the libre) vs the toll road since its only slightly out of the way and costs much much less than the toll road at the cost you would pay in gas to get from point A to B. You would think the free road would be rubbish since the toll road is so expensive, but so far the roads have been as good as riding U.S roads.

The 4 hour drive to Real de Catorce went by faster than the driving has been the last few days. This no doubt is more psychological than logical as the scenery had much improved once we were about an hour south of Monterrey. The drive to Monterrey and just around the town looked a lot like Texas; flat farms, hay, and a lot of land to look at with not much excitement.Once south of Monterrey, however, the land starts rolling, cactus and Joshua trees start appearing, and livestock on the side of the road is plenty. On this route, I saw my first real live cowboy herding his cows along side of the road.

We stopped to eat lunch at a roadside truck stop restaurant which was so good I ranked my number one meal in Mexico thus far (thought I can't remember the name of the meat), and stopped for gas before taking the 18 mile cobblestone road up to the top of the mountain where Real de Catorce rests. While at the gas station we check the bike for possible problems on the journey up, and decided two of our tool cases were hanging low enough to bump or grind against the chain guard or break if the road was bad enough, so Eric used some massive zip ties we bought at harbor freight right before we left home to lift them up.

I think we were both a little nervous when starting on the road, but after a a few miles we realized that the road itself was innocuous. While the bike did shake and rattle a bit, what we were expecting was far worse that what it was. Eric made it all the way up (and back down), with no scares and no falls. Well done Eric!!

Real de Catorce is an old silver mining town originally built in the early 1700's that used to be home of nearly 40,000 inhabitants, but now consists of a small ghost town and a remaining population of about 1400. The town is now mainly used as a pilgrimage for an old church that resides there, but is also a tourist attraction mainly due to the movie The Mexican starring Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts. I have never seen this film myself, but the producers apparently found and loved Real de Catorce so much that they widened the tunnel, built at bar, expanded the electricity and cleaned the town just for the set. I don't think the movie made nearly as much as they had hoped for, but the town is supposed to be just as charming and quaint as ever.

Of course since Real de Catorce is a tourist town there was a man standing at the top of the mountain before a tunnel which lead directly into the town waiting to charge 20 pesos to cross. We paid, waited in line to cross over since the tunnel is only wide enough for one lane at a time, and took the 1.5 (ish) mile tunnel to Real de Catorce. The town is situated on a steep mountain side which, in turn, was made of steep cobblestone roads. We found a hotel called Hotel El Real on the internet before leaving Monterrey that was supposed to be on the first level of the town, and we were happy to find that we didn't have to drive up any cobblestone "San Fransisco" style roads with the bike and luggage. Again, I stayed with the bike while Eric went to check in, and he came back with the same story as he had the day before; the hotel clerk wouldn't sponsor the price we found online, and instead of the price we originally expected at 55.00, she wanted to charge 90 U.S instead. So, we used our tablet once again, stealing the internet from the coffee house we were parked in front of, and booked our room for 55.00 before checking in. Thankfully this hotel clerk didn't seem resentful as the one the night before had about our cheap ways. The room was cute, clean, and was everything that reminded me of the Mexico I love, aside from the cold air. Since this town basically  had no connected electricity before The Mexican was filmed, I suppose it's understandable that they still hadn't updated their central air/heating system. This would normally be okay except for the fact that it would be about 57 degrees in town that night.

We unpacked, changed and went out to explore the town. The town was small, and they really built up the area around the tourism that supposedly came after the movie was made. Since then, they've promoted horse back riding to a silver mining ghost town, and built up sale stands along the entry way of the town in hopes to make money from tourists. unfortunately, aside from us there were only two other tourists in the whole town. We walked around, took pictures, bought a 1.2 meter beer bottle for Eric and I to share as a victory (for making it with no problems) drink, found a great place to eat where we ordered 12 gorditas for only 4 US dollars, and called it a night. We had to force ourselves to shower with it being so cold in our room, and hid under our blankets computer-ing for the rest of the night. It was far too cold to utilize the desk and chair provided in our room.