Wandering with Tedder and Tamara

After spending the night in Durango, we woke up wanting some simple sweet breads for breakfast. We figured we would look for a bakery to get it. There are markets all over the center of Durango, but we walked for about two hours without finding an actual bakery! We finally just bought some at a little restaurant. It was discouraging, though. Pan dulce is really common, but we couldn't find the bakery it comes from?

Since we got up late, and spent so long getting going, it was getting late by the time we packed and left. That meant it was getting warm. We trudged through the center of Durango, finally found the highway out of town, and headed towards Zacatecas. It was only about 180 miles, mostly straight road, but at a very high elevation- about 8000 feet the whole way.

At one point we stopped for a break, and I adjusted the chain. I loosened the nut, left the wrench on the nut, adjusted the chain, then we left. I completely forgot to retighten the nut or to take the wrench off of it, even. It was about 60 miles before I realized that- we were almost in Zacatecas, but the axle nut was completely missing. That definitely caused my anxiety level to escalate.

Once we got to Zacatecas, we hit the city streets to find the center of town. Zacatecas is a very old city- well over 400 years old- and the streets are made of volcanic cobblestone. It is pretty slick stuff, and worse because the city is built on a couple of steep hills. It's so steep that I couldn't lug the bike in first gear- I would have to rev it and slip the clutch to get up the steepest hills. Negotiating corners, making u-turns, and worrying about the axle added up to a pretty miserable few hours. I dropped the bike once.

We were looking for a fairly cheap hotel that had somewhere to safely park the bike. There's no street parking, and the city is steep enough that the bike couldn't be pushed up through doorways- there were usually a lot of stairs.

On one lap through the town center a KLR caught up to us. The rider excitedly yelled at us (in english) to follow him to his hotel. I was a little nervous at first, but we talked for a few seconds about it, I saw his Horizons Unlimited sticker, and I realized he was quite genuine.

So we followed Frederico to his family hotel, Hostal del Carmen. It has a very nice interior courtyard for the bikes, complete with a little bit of extra cement on the sidewalk so the bikes can come through a ramp. Once we got in and settled, Frederico's brother took our axle and searched for a replacement nut. He was gone about two hours but found a very suitable replacement. That saved us at least a full day of searching.

Frederico then took us to dinner at a local place, helped us with our Spanish, and got us oriented on the town. Quite a difference from earlier in the day when we were lost and feeling quite overwhelmed!