Yesterday we biked from Cananea to Agua Prieta. The hospitality we’ve been shown throughout the trip has been legendary, but our connection in Agua Prieta beats all. Remember the stranger we met in the gas station in Cananea who escorted us into town? His name was Luis Ramirez and he connected us to his friend Raymundo in Agua Prieta.
Raymundo met us on the edge of town in full cyclist kit, branded with the name of the local cycling club he belongs to, APSON MTB (Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mountain Biking). First he took us to a restaurant owned by a member of the club, a bright little sandwich and salad place attached to a car wash. They fed us a massive dinner over multiple hours and told us more about Agua Prieta.
The most interesting thing we learned is that Agua Prieta isn’t really such a bad place. You wouldn’t know that based on what everyone has been telling us throughout our ride. People in Nogales warned us about Agua Prieta, but the people who live here have the same negative perception of Nogales. It’s a phenomenon we’ve witnessed throughout northern Mexico: As you approach a town or city the news steadily improves, and eventually reaches a tipping point. Talk to the locals, and they’ll inevitably tell you the real trouble is elsewhere. This is especially true across state lines. There are 32 states in Mexico, each with its own distinct culture. Many people, however, never get the chance to travel beyond their own state, and develop frightening perceptions of what lies beyond.
Based on our experience, Agua Prieta is a welcoming place. There was a great fraternity between the members of APSON MTB. They helped us clean our bikes, and Raymundo insisted on putting us up in a motel suite. The next day they were all cooking and selling hamburgers to raise money for a friend’s operation.
They did give us some bad news though—that the highway to Janos, Mexico, our next stop, would be impossible to bike. It’s a two-lane road without a shoulder on either side, and is primarily a route for semi-trucks headed to Juárez. The distance between the two stepping stones was also prohibitive, 93 miles through flat desert and a twisting mountain pass into the state of Chihuahua, with no stops in between. Really, dear reader, I’m begging for your forgiveness. I’m a legalist when it comes to these bike trips—the world of bike touring actually has a name for people like me EFMers: Every. F******. Milers. But this time, the haters prevailed.
The bike club nicely escorted us to a military checkpoint where we could hitch a ride. It was just a gravel patch next to the highway, but there was a truck stop that served quail, and a series of shrines along the road. “Shrine” isn’t quite the right word, but we’ve seen these colorful, garden shed-sized religious altars nearly every day we’ve spent on the road. Each is dedicated to someone who died on the highway, and typically features flowers, candles, and the image of Christ or the Lady of Guadalupe, but we’ve passed hundreds and never seen two that alike. It’s the same idea as roadside crosses in the United States, but much more intense. While waiting for a truck to pick us up, I was amazed to see how many people walked all the way from town to visit and pray in these shrines. Graves are enormously important in Mexico. A person never really dies as long as his or her family continues to visit and honor the place where they are buried.
The border wall was also in view just a mile or two from the road. It has recently imitated a rust-colored serpent, briefly visible above a rolling hill before diving out of sight. We’re told there are few border crossers here, but for the first time we’ve seen people who looked prepared to cross:pairs of young men walking on foot and carrying backpacks. Based on the style of their clothes, Davi says one of these pairs was likely from Honduras The wall passes through the center of town along the border, but only extends a few kilometers on either side. It’s the only time we’ve seen the wall abruptly end. While we were watching, a green and white border patrol vehicle slowly rolled behind the fence, obviously there to guard the exposed flank.
We didn’t have any luck catching a pickup truck. Weekend traffic was relatively slow. So we decided to try our luck at the gas station. The first truck driver Jon talked to said he’d be happy to take us to Janos. He stepped down from the cab and told us to put our bikes on top of the flatbed, already loaded with 60 tons of copper. He tossed us one of those yellow cargo straps, helped us winch everything down, and invited us to join him in the cab.
I’d never been in a semi-truck before, and it was just as awesome as I imagined. Tons of gauges and dials, an enormous steering wheel, and a long gear shift on the floor. We all sat on the mattress behind the pilot and copilot’s chairs. Sanchez’s license and a child’s sock attached to the air horn swung from above the dashboard.
In a cloud of gravel dust we pulled out of the station and very slowly got up to speed. Sanchez had 18 gears at his disposal and probably used half of them to reach 25 mph. There’s no way to see the cargo unless you’re looking in the right mirror, but the weight was a palpable thing, pulling and pushing the cab with its own gravity and inertia. To me, Sanchez was the captain of his own starship. Perched high above the road, watching this guy bend two 30 meter trailers to his will, I understood the romance of the trucker’s job and the open road. And then I glanced down at the non-existent shoulder and remembered what this all meant for me, a biker, who stopped wearing his helmet weeks ago, wants to pedal EFM, and has a long ways to go before he reaches Brownsville, Texas. I pictured myself pedaling furiously far below only to be sucked under the wheels—Lord Almighty. How have I made it this far?
Sanchez has a lot of visibility at a distance, but very little close to the trailer. This particular highway is old, and has begun to slope downward on both sides. If just two wheels wander off the road, the weight of the copper will suck the entire rig into the ditch. Like most drivers, he works 12-16 hours a day. He had one minor accident—he rolled into the back of another car after falling asleep at a stoplight—but otherwise a clean record. He takes some kind of pill to stay awake now, a healthier, more expensive alternative to what other truckers use—snorting cocaine, and smoking lightbulbs. Unlike a lot of drivers, he says he actually earned his license instead of paying a bribe for it. None of this was any comfort to me as we wound our way through mountain roads so narrow that trucks had to pass one at a time. Sanchez lit up a pipe of marijuana, and managed to puff at it while wrestling the steering wheel and the clutch.
The mafia tried to rob him once, but he defended himself with his belt buckle. Since then he’s started burning candles and praying to the Santa Muerte, the saint of death, an incarnation of justice because she comes for everyone—the rich and the poor, the good and the bad. Muerte is also a favorite with members of the cartel, and we’ve seen homages to her all throughout the trip. The pink kids sock attached to the air horn apparently casts a shadow in the shape of Muerte, and gives added protection on the road. Sanchez told us “When it’s your time to go it happens even if you try to dodge it.” Needless to say, Sanchez has me shook.
I resisted hitchhiking, but it’s turned out to be the wise choice. Sanchez got us safely to Janos, where we stayed with biologists trying to save the buffalo and groundhog from extinction, but that story will have to wait. The highway ahead is just as terrible as the last stretch, and I suspect we’ll be hitching it to Juárez as well.
