Not The Motorcycle Diaries: Four Wheels Through Mazatlan

An Aerial View of Maztlan near where we stayed.

Four Wheels through Mazatlan March 14-18^th 2007

The next morning we left Topolobampo and our Polish friend Pietras Remigiusz at the train station and headed south towards Mazatlan. We rode through corn swept vistas controlled by Mansanto Corporation (the nefarious evildoers of crop genetic mutation) for hours before I ran out of gas while riding behind Josh. Needless to say he was pissed off when I finally caught up to him. Earlier we had been contacted through Adventure Rider by someone named Glen who invited us to stay at his place when we passed through Mazatlan. We made sure to give him a call before we came like good kids should.

Glen and Josh giving the thumbs up for readers of NotTheMotorcycleDiaries.com

Glen said that the finger was for AdvRider.com!

He gave us directions thusly: “Go to the Malécon and look for the tallest building. I’m in that one.” So we did. It was a fifteen story condo right on the white sand beach that stretched for 180 degrees. We made our way to the gates and were let in. We parked our bikes by a BMW R1200 GS Adventure with the website www.StrikingViking.net written on it.

We rode the elevator up and found Glen Heggstad waiting for us. He welcomed us to his home and offered us a couple beers which we took him up on even though it was pretty early in the afternoon. Glen had made Mazatlán his home a few years ago after one of his motorcycle trips around the world he realized that it was the only place he wanted to go home to. So he’s been living and working from his condo in-between rides south through America, trips around the world, or talks at various BMW dealerships since they sponsor his travels.

Although I’d heard of Glen Heggstad and had even seen his book when I bought my jacket at Long Beach BMW I wasn’t quite prepared for the man: over six feet high with sandy blond hair, a smattering of tattoos, and the physique of a giant his moniker Striking Viking is entirely appropriate. The youngest member ever to be inducted into the Hell’s Angels, a third degree black belt, and practically self-published his best-selling book about his travels around the world Glen is the definition of an adventure traveler. His book, ‘Two Wheels through Terror’ begins with this passage, “Warriors claim that the battle is won in the preparation,” and boy did he have a battle. On his ride from California down to South America he passed through Columbia and while his was on a desolate stretch of a highway the road was shut down by the Marxist guerrillas and he was taken prisoner by a band of shotgun and machete wielding soldiers. For the next five weeks he was sequestered in the mountains in a small rebel camp. He was forced to run up and down a mountain all day and then interrogated and tortured at night. He was released into the hands of the Red Cross at the end of his ordeal but there’s a lot more in there so read his book! Here’s a video that ABC did soon after his release and article.

The Motos parked on the Malecon in front of the gym.

The first night he took us into his routine of working out at a little gym on the malécon so we rode down there and I decided to work out my legs since they needed some strengthening for the trip. This turned out to be a mistake. I could barely walk for the next four days. But luckily I could relax by the infinity pool and write in between hobbling to and fro.

Glen was working on his new book so it kept him pretty busy so we stayed out of his way or helped him with his new computer in between him showing us pictures of his travel and regaling us with stories from around the world including the interminable days and nights of his imprisonment. He told us of one instance in which he was teaching the younger soldiers (from ten to eighteen…) Jujitsu moves and self-defense. All of the children had put down their rifles or machine-guns and were being guided by Glen in a similar formation as his classes in California when he noticed that they were all unarmed now. He could run over and grab one of the guns and pretty much mow them down and make a run for it. But they were kids. Could he really live with himself killing unarmed children who for all intents were innocent? He couldn’t and so he continued the lesson and endured the nightly beatings and torturing for another few weeks. Ya gotta love kids.

We rode around town with Glen a few times, he on his bright yellow BMW with custom Jesse Luggage saddle bags, and Josh and I on my bike (funny that Josh continuously ridiculed me for getting a BMW yet always chose to ride it rather than his own motorcycle whenever he could) and I was amazed but not surprised at his riding style; very aggressive but in a safe manner that bespoke of his many years wielding his machine through treacherous jungle or urban jungle as is the case in many third world cities. He would push through intersections and practically run a few cars of the road if they weren’t giving him enough space!

Some pics of the Malecon that stretches for miles of Mazatlan.

A great photo if I might say so myself.

After a few days of relaxing and sightseeing around Mazatlán it was time to head south for Sayulita just north of Puerto Vallarta. We rode away from my first ever stay at a condo and headed to the historic downtown for some coffee before we got under way. It turned out to be a festival day and it was getting late so we found a little room and spent the night enjoying the nightlife with some college students we’d met that we ran into again as well as someone who lived at Glen’s condominium. An organization had set up a movie screen on a small street near a bar and a cross-section of Mazatlán society came out to watch ‘Cinema Paradiso’ so we grabbed some beers and joined them. It was the first time Josh had ever seen the film and since it was in Italian with Spanish subtitles Josh was somewhat lost at times. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house, I mean street, at the end. We then took a tour of a great little hotel on the plaza with our friend Guy and were given the history of the gazebo (some mayor had replaced the ornate classical metal one with a concrete modernist take on the gazebo which everyone in the city hated, it was then taken to the mayor’s hometown where they hated it but they were stuck with it, Mazatlán then had a new one made to look like the old one but got it all wrong). After the long history lesson we decided to call it a night so that we could make the next day an early one of riding.