Motorcycle Mexico 2026 Day 9

March 01, 2026 We left around 8:30 after a quick breakfast of bananas and bread. My rear tire had still been full the morning before, giving hope that the sealant had worked, but this morning it needed some air. It was pleasantly cool in the morning and we climbed up into the mountains as the morning went on, so we stayed cool for a while. The mountain roads were really curvy but with varying pavement quality. The road goes through Los Mármoles National Park, but there are lots of tiny towns and houses built here and there alongside the road. The road crosses over ridges and feels like it spans a couple different mountain ranges. In the higher parts we looked down at valleys filled with clouds below.

Photo stop on MX 85 - *The road is vaguely visible above the cliff across the valley*

After three hours of endless curves we stopped to have lunch just outside the city of Taman. I ordered enchiladas rellenas con huevos y cecina. What I expected was two or three enchiladas with eggs and meat inside, but what I got was six tiny taco-ish enchiladas filled with scrambled eggs and a huge but thin slice of grilled meat - really tasty, and enough food for almost two lunches.

By the time we stopped for lunch we had descended quite a bit and it was warm and humid. We continued going down into denser agriculture and more frequent settlements. The views were still impressive, but for part of it we were in the clouds (which felt cool) then we got out of the clouds and everything was very hazy. I have too many photos of mountains and valleys already so I didn’t take more photos, but I really enjoyed the glances I got when there was a chance to take your eyes off the road. We got down to some flatter areas. For a lot of the morning we had been between five and seven thousand feet, but now we were below five hundred. We had followed MX 85 from near Tasquillo north-west and then later north-east and finally we turned off and rode a couple dozen miles to Xilitla. We arrived around 1:30 so that we could check in to our hotel and get a taxi to the Edward James' Garden for their only English language tour of the day at three. Per Wikipedia, Edward James was the son of William James (who had inherited a fortune from his father, merchant Daniel James) and Evelyn Forbes (think Forbes Magazine). He was incredibly wealthy and he spent his life as a patron of the surrealist art movement, a dabbler in mysticism, a poet, and a drug user. He traveled a lot and became entranced with this valley and over the forty years from 1944 until his death in 1984 he lived here for a few months every year and hired artisans and workers to create physical representations of some of the surreal visions he had while using drugs as well as adapting designs and art from other contemporaries in the surrealist movement. Our guide Carlos did a nice job explaining some of the history and helped give some context to the wild and impractical constructions here.

Perhaps this leaf has something to do with these wild visions? - *Edward James’ Garden, Xilitla, Mexico*

The “airplane” - *Edward James’ Garden, Xilitla, Mexico*

PXL_20260301_215451067.MP — *Las Pozas* by Gustavo

After the tour we had run out of cash for the taxi and had started walking the hilly few miles back to the hotel, but we stuck a thumb out and got a ride from a couple who were on a road trip and had taken the Spanish language version of the tour. Gustavo later found them in one of the photos we had taken. We washed up a little at the hotel and did some route planning for the next few days, then we hiked up the hill to the center of town, wandering around a little before settling on a restaurant. I ordered some enchiladas for dinner that, despite having a different name, were quite similar to my lunch - the lunch was a bit better.