We left Truth or Consequences NM and rode back to El Paso Saturday, May 29, arriving about noon. It was hot and we exited for gas and got directions to a UPS so we could mail back my backpack and all the lava and other rocks that Terri had been putting in it during the trip causing it to end up dragging on the ground. I also mailed back the GPS and other stuff that we did not need. Adjacent to the UPS was a "Taco Tote" Mexican restaurant and we ate there. It was incredible, best tacos, free salsa bar that was loaded.

 We have never been in a "Taco Tote" before and we both thought it would be nice to own stock or open one up in San Antonio as we had never seen one before and knew it would be a hit. We decided to take the downtown exit into Juarez Mexico, visit all the little shops just across the border, then take Ave 16 De Sept out to the PRONAV center and stay in one of the holiday inns near the bull fight area as that area is always well light up with light traffic and a big bridge to come back over. At least that is was we thought but it had been 10 years since we were last in Juarez and things really changed.

Upon exiting into downtown El Paso I started looking for brown signs "to Juarez". The were not where I expected to see them and one sign pointed to what I though was clearly the wrong direction. Turned out the old bridge we wanted to cross was now one way coming into the USA and the outgoing bridge to Mexico was the old commercial bridge that I had never taken even back in 1971 when I was stationed in Biggs Field. We got off to a bad start by keeping to the left as we went thru Mexican customs and ended up in a "bus lane" and were forced to merge into the worst traffic I have ever seen. Even with helmets on all I could hear was honking as 5 lanes merged down to 2 lanes (one way) with the left and right lanes for parked cars. People rarely honk in USA in my experience, you see that only in Mexico and it does not do any good except get people aggravated. Several time I noticed the bus's went thru the red light and cops nearby did nothing so I assume that city vehicle like busses can do that. Virtually every ambulance we saw was going down the wrong way, the didn't even attempt to "move with the flow" as there is none.

  Anyway, the R1100RT quickly overheated and I had to stop. Pulled into a taxi only parking and Terri got out to shop in the produce market as we never found those small shops we were looking for. I had to stay by the bike as my previous experience in Mexico in 1971, they will push your car or bike out of the way if you use the taxi parking area and leave your vehicle unattended. Several policia came by, looking and asking me about my BMW, they had never seen one before it seems. There were very few other bikes, only pizza delivery ones it seems.

Terri showed up about 2 hours later and got directions to Ave 16 de Sept which one the road I was most familiar with. The traffic had eased off slightly as it was now after 6pm but when we got to Ave 16 de Sept it went the wrong way. I found out later that Mexico had replaced all the normal two way roads with one way and changed the international bridges to make them one way and that had all happened since the last time I was out there. We finally got our bearings and headed to the pronav area and checked into a hotel were we stayed for two nights.

 Here are some pictures from Juarez. We quickly discovered by riding around that what we knew as the "pronav" with the little shops had been demolished since we were last in Juarez. There was broken concrete everywhere with no construction going on. Seems that the entire area was supported by gringos crossing the border to gamble at the racetrack and the area quickly disintegrated when gringos started going to the Texas racetracks then they were legitimized 8 years ago or so. There was graffiti everywhere, not just in the poor neighborhoods. What I would call "lower middle class" with a few late model autos all had barb & razor wire above the fences with graffiti anywhere somebody could write it. Everywhere we rode, every street from the pronav (old hippodrome area) back down 16 de sept to downtown was grafted. Everywhere I went motorcycle cops staring at my BMW. We never saw a single cop, always two at a time even when they were just hired to watch cars in a parking lot.

We were told there was a good show at the "Yuba" where they have a "Fiesta Mexico" every night with live "family" entertainment. It was within walking distance from our hotel and dos equies "XX" were $1 each with only $3 admission. We went, but they wanted $20 a table so we stood. The performer made fun of gringos. He would put on a mask that made him look like, for example, Jose Luis, a famous entertainer. Then he would get some gringo eating at the dinner table to get up on the platform telling him one thing in English and then making fun of him in Spanish to where everybody was laughing at the expense of the gringo who didn't know what was going on and was believing all the English the impresario was saying. Terri had some drink that glowed in the dark but I only like the dark dos equies and they only had the blonde. We then managed to get a free table where the gringos were eating as we wanted to dine even though it was expensive. We did not volunteer for the next show when asked as we knew what was going to happen.

The next day, Sunday, we visited a few shops but most of them were closed up. We did quite a bit of riding, going back down to the center of town then back taking various one way streets and just looking for anything open and stopping by. Not much going on, I was really disappointed. Either we went to the wrong places or Juarez has really changed. We did find another "Taco Tote" and the prices were cheaper than the El Paso one but they could not break a $20 USD so we had to hunt and add up all our smaller bills to pay them as we had no pesos. We stopped at one shop that was open and I looked at a pair of leather chaps ($75) and a brown "potato sack" type bag ($15) that had printed on it a huge McDonalds golden arch and the phrase "One Billion Marijuana's sold in Juarez". We walked away and they followed us several blocks with the price of the chaps dropping to $35 and the bag to $4 by the time we left.  I stopped to check oil and ended up adding a 1/2 quart.  Later, when I got home, I was still a 1/2 quart low so my BMW does use some oil.

We left Monday morning and crossed the international bridge (see photo of traffic) and the helmets came off while waiting and we ended up not wearing the helmets again all the way to San Antonio as it was too hot. We headed directly out planning to stop in Sonora and stay the night and look at those caverns there. Just outside of El Paso we picked up a fellow biker who rode with us to Van Horn. I found out later that his tack and speedometer was broken and was matching our speed to keep out of trouble with DPS.

Before we got to Van Horn, there was a massive pileup at that INS checkpoint. The pileup extended for at least 10 miles and by the time we got to it the LEO's were already directing traffic off of I-10 onto the access road on the other side of the highway. We drove along that left access road looking at the 18 wheelers and autos that had been stopped there for so long the passengers got out of their vehicles and were chatting with each other. When we passed the INS checkpoint we saw what had happened. Really bad pileup, several cars, two totally burned, 18 wheeler laying on side another jackknifed. Cagier behind me almost ran into me as he was watching the wrecks and I had to honk to get him to pay attention. It was super hot as we could not maintain 75 on the access road and when we got a chance we pulled off under an overpass and took a break. That other biker that had been following us showed up and stopped and we chatted. He had a BMW but it was in 7 boxes. The HD he was on had cable problems and neither the tack nor Speedo was working. We both commented about how hot it was that not even a buzzard was in the air. The only birds we had seen were right there with us under the overpass in the shade and we had disturbed them to where they were chirping at us.

We finally got into Sonora after dark and Tuesday we went to see the caverns. The humidity was unbelievable, while the temp was 70, the humidity ate you alive. Here are some pictures of Sonora and a stop we made in the hill country as we neared San Antonio. Ozona has a nice steak restaurant founded by Texas ranger L.H. McNelly. When we got into San Antonio we saw a "Taco Tote". We found out that it had just opened up two month ago and is the first of 9. They will put "taco cabana" out of business I suspect.

This is last of trip reports, don't know if I will ever do that again. I don't think I would have made it without Terri passing me water and ice. The ride from Van Horn thru Ozona was the hottest, temp was 104 that Monday, memorial day and we rode thru the hottest part of the day.