BackRoads: Mexico - South of the Border

The sky is bright enough to have overdosed on sunshine. The grass grows tall on the sides of the road where there is no shoulder. Tar strips and patches thump a rhythm out as we ride into a different age, seemingly a past era. The border is behind us; ahead is the vast expanse of the Sonoran Desert and the Ruta del Rio Sonora – the Route of the Sonora River.

Getting to the border was a journey back in time, first Tombstone, Arizona and the old west, then Bisbee, and the bygone age of wealth pulled from the copper mines. The Copper Queen Hotel still sits as the centerpiece of the town, maintaining with it the air of the heady days when Bisbee was the largest city between St Louis and San Francisco. Bisbee is now reemerging in a mini real estate boom as the town has been re-cast as a haven for artists.

Leave Bisbee and head south towards Mexico, cross the border at the twin towns of Naco, Arizona and Naco, Sonora is easy: work your way through the maze of concrete road barriers on the US side, slow down at the gate and be waved through into Mexico.

For the true flavor of Mexico it is best to proceed directly out of Naco, as border towns are neither American nor Mexican but a strange clashing confluence of the two. The road heading out is narrow and a solid mass of patches yet not uncomfortable. There are a few potholes but maneuvering the bikes around them is not a problem. Soon the intersection of Mexico Highway 2 appears and now we travel west.

The road surface is good but no shoulders. There is light traffic, a mix of cars, pickups farm trucks and semis, to Cananea, a working class copper mining town. This is no Bisbee or even what Bisbee once was; it’s a hardscrabble city of 30,000 working class people. Now we sweep around an insane intersection and head south again. The Sonora beckons and the clock seems to wind in reverse as we enter the undiscovered Mexico, untrammeled by tourists or littered with fast food or hotels chains.

Running between the tall dry grasses growing right up to the edge of the pavement on either side of the road feels like a Hot Wheel’s track. This is the “Ruta del Rio Sonora.” The river cuts a valley along the foothills of the Sierra Madres and the road climbs up from the valley floor and back down again. Small towns, poblados, appear with small homes of adobe on the outskirts. The town centers all have a main square and a church and most were founded in the mid-1600s. Narrow streets, laid out centuries before pickup trucks parked here, front the neat houses of adobe. Many are in disrepair and need paint, reflecting the lingering after affects of the currency devaluation and recession of 1994, but there are splashes of new paint and new construction.

The Sonora River is cattle country and small herds of cows graze along the roadside and often in the road. Rounding a curve to find an 800-pound steer on the roadway can...

We hope that you enjoyed reading this excerpt from "Mexico - South of the Border". If you would like to read the entire article and more, you can order a back issue of Jul / Aug 2006 where this article was originally published.

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