8.) The Road to Chihuahua

The road from Ojinaga to Chihuahua is wonderful. It has some mountainous sections, but is not seriously twisty. High speed sweeper curves. It was created especially for the BMW K1200R. Unfortunately, I was riding the BMW F650GS.

But that is going to change soon enough. (Though I'll still keep the GS).

There is very little traffic. Road conditions are good, and aggressive riding is the norm. Several mountain passes present between Ojinaga and Chihuahua, but they are not very steep or do not have that many switchbacks. High speed stuff. The area is sparsely populated, with only the occasional town or pueblicita.

The following photos are typical of the first hundred or so miles inside Mexican territory on Route 45.









In these mountains, some strange religious shrines exist. It is not uncommon to find a Virgin of Guadalupe shrine nestled away in a small cave 20 or 30 feet above the road. You need to climb the cliff to get to it, but obviously people do, because they have candles burning and the like. Additionally, this area of Mexico has several gigantic paintings of Saints or other religious figures painted on the vertical faces of cliffs. Some of the paintings are dozens of feet tall. It is a shame that we did not get any pictures of them, but we kept waiting for a better one to come along. Suddenly, they just played out and we saw no more of them. This section of Mexico, between Ojinaga and Chihuahua is the only place in the country where we saw these sorts of shrines.

In Coyame, we stopped for lunch. Tacos al Carbon. Which is tortillas with grilled meat inside. We had a side of beans and rice and a soda Cost less than 4 bux each. Left the place totally stuffed. The name of the restaurant is La Estrella, or The Star, and is one of the very few restaurants we saw for 150 miles.



This place is actually pretty high class.