I left almost exactly 3 weeks ago, and have travelled about 3800 miles.  We are now in Pie de la Cuestra, which is 10K north of Acapulco.  We decided to stop here because it was getting late in the day yesterday and we didn´t want to try to find a hotel in Acapulco at sunset.  Anyway this is supposed to be a much more laid back town than Acapulco.  I spent much of the day laying in a hammock reading a book while Dick and Eric went into town to find the local Kawasaki dealership.  Dick had been feeling a clunk in the front end of his bike, and established that it had to do with the steering head.  We stopped in Manzanillo a couple days ago at the Honda place, and they helped him tighten the retaining bolt, but also established that the bearings were shot and needed to be replaced, something they couldn´t do there.  Turns out they can`t do it here either - they are short the lower steering head bearing, so that lead to this trip to the internet cafe to search for the part on the internet and see about having it shipped down from the states via DHL.  The current plan is to try to order the part today or tomorrow, and have it shipped to the Kawasaki dealership in Oaxaca.  We'll ride to Puerto Escondido tomorrow, stay for 2 days, then ride to Oaxhuaca, and hope that the part has arrived promptly.  Spend a day there while the bike is fixed, and then move on towards Palenque.  After Palenque the next destination is quite up in the air, we may head up the Yucatan and down through Belize, or we may just head straight to Guatemala with a goal of taking a week of Spanish lessons in Antigua.  Our Spanish has been improving quickly since arriving in Mexico, but is still grossly inadequate. I am now an expert at ordering beer, proficient at ordering food, ok at figuring out a room and what amenities are included, but my conversation Spanish is just non-existent.  People are in general very friendly and curious about who we are, where we are from and what we are doing, but unless they speak a few words of English we really don´t get too far.  This needs to change, we are missing out on too much culture, hence the idea of taking language lessons.  If the steering head bearings show up late we may be able to take a couple of days of classes in Oaxaca to get us going.

Let's see, I last wrote from Tequila, which was a neat little town.  It was cooler than expected up in the hills, most of the heat seems to be down here by the coast.  There was a thunderstorm that night but we rode out of town the next morning under almost clear blue skies.  We needed to get heading south towards the coast, but want to stay out of Guatelahara (I know I spelled that wrong) so we ended up circumnavigation the southwest part of the city via back roads through the hills.  It was a pretty ride through small villages, most of the roads were dirt - but the really fun kind with reasonable corners and pitches, so at least some attention could be focused on the scenery at hand.  In the middle of this scenic route we stopped for a water break, and parked the bikes near the town plaza.  An old man said ¨there's a faucet right over here^ (wait how do I get a double quote mark again on this keyboard???) but we wanted bottled water.  Went and talked to him after going to the store and asked him which road to take out of town, and had he lived in the states, his English was very good.  Turns out he had moved to the States and joined the army when he was young, serving in Korea and Viet Nam and almost ended up going to Iraq during the Gulf War.  His son is currently stationed in Afghanistan.  He moved back to Mexico to be closer to family and live out his days on his pension check, which goes quite a bit further down here.  He told us the scenic route out of town and towards the highway, which we followed until we got to a paved road, then got a bit lost before finally getting to the highway to the coast.  A few thunderstorms were popping up but we managed to stay dry, one of them tried to get us at a gas station but we left just in time.  The highway to the coast passed over several mountain ranges and wound down the side of one fantastic canyon, everntually dropping down to the hot and humid coast.  We stayed at the town of Barra de Navidad, which was really pretty and got a bit of a seabreeze.  Dinner was by the water and I posted the picture a couple days ago but didn't spend any time typing up a trip report.  The following morning we started heading south, and made it as far as Manzanillo before Dick decided the clunk in his bike was getting worse.  The Honda place didn´t charge him for the hour or so 2 mechanics spent helping him figure out the problem, but he tipped them $20 for being so helpful.  Since we lost a few hours we didn´t make it particularly far, stopping at a town called Coleta de Campos just after dark.  The coast leading down to this section was amazing, very rugged, trees with huge clumps of white flowers draped over the road, glimpses of deserted beaches with endless coconut palms.  It really feels like we are in the tropics now.  From Coleta de Campos we were able to make it to the edge of Acapulco yesterday afternoon, kind of a long ride.  I needed a day of rest and was not sorry to have to hang out in a hammock much of the day.  I might have to get a hammock of my own to carry along, they can come in pretty handy.  I guess that´s it for now, will probably write more in a couple days.