As I'd told the boys last night, I had no intention of going to Mexico City; the idea had no appeal at all for me. Instead I rode back up the Pan-Am a short way to the Xilitla turnoff and headed west, or rather southwest, over the Sierra Madre Oriental.

The road climbed past villages, above hard-worked fields. Young boys stood by the road to watch me pass, chewing on lengths of sugar cane like candy.

The Sierra Madre Oriental isn't one of North America's great mountain ranges - nothing to compare with its Occidental brother - but it isn't exactly a hole in the ground either. The sun had come out now and the day was getting a lot warmer than yesterday, but still it wasn't what you'd think of as tropical.

Another familiar feature of rural Mexico, and not as cute as they look in pictures; the damn things wander casually out onto the road, often just around blind curves. And if you hit one, you have automatically bought it, and you will be amazed at what an expensive animal it was; and if you hit one on a motorcycle, it will in every sense be your ass.

I rolled into a little village that wasn't on the map, but that was the scene of a busy open-air market. Saturday, of course; I'd forgotten.

Across the road was a tiny dirt-floored eatery where a grinning old woman served me quite simply the best mole con puerco in the known Universe. Or if there's any better anywhere else I couldn't stand it.

Jalpan had a surprisingly fancy church, for such a remote little town. Here the road forked, and - at least the northbound branch - quickly developed great vileness. I held Suzie down to a mere 50 over the worst stretches, and still got banged and vibrated till I started to worry about my fillings. On the other hand my respect for the big Suzuki increased greatly. Any other bike I'd ever had, something would have broken or shaken loose, but nothing did.

Up at Rio Verde the ruinous track intersected with a much better highway. While I topped up the tank with Pemex Extra, a flashily-dressed woman, broad of hip and big of tit and sporting a spectacular head of dyed-red hair, came over and wanted to know if I was all right. She spoke good though heavily accented English, and she seemed genuinely solicitous; she warned me to be careful, there were "crazy fockers" driving these roads. She was very obviously a whore, but, judging by the car she drove off in, she must have been a pretty successful one.

I headed west again, over more mountains, passing decrepit old trucks groaning and blatting their way up the grades, watching for others coming the other way - everybody happily passing on the blindest of blind curves; after a while I was doing it too, riding in Mexico develops a certain fatalism or else you'd die of fear.

San Luis Potosi is quite a considerable city, and an old one, going back to the tail end of the sixteenth century, when the Spaniards founded a mission there and then, soon afterward, discovered gold and silver, which they figured was more like it. Quite an attractive place, too, though inevitably a trifle pricier than the small towns where I'd been hanging out. Even so, I found a cheap but clean hotel on Calle Xochitl (which I never learned to pronounce).

It was too early for dinner, especially after that to-massacre-for lunch, and anyway by now I had fallen into the Mexican habit of having a big lunch and then snacking in the evening. On the plaza a young Indian woman was selling various comestibles; and for practically nothing she produced an enormous ear of fresh corn and roasted it over a kind of crude brazier, right on the sidewalk. That took care of me for the time being, so I went back to the hotel and gave the bike a quick once-over, without finding anything wrong, and then stretched out on my bed for an hour or so, giving my bones a needed rest.

So far I was enjoying San Luis Potosi, but then things went to hell. In the evening, as darkness fell, I went out for a walk, and met up with an unspeakable little turd of a cop, drunk as shit and with a serious attitude problem, who harassed me for over an hour and then suddenly turned maudlin and decided I was his new amigo, which made him even more obnoxious. He confided the reason for his hostility toward gringos: he had tried to go to the States to work, but had a runin with la migra and got deported. Finally I pulled out a handful of low-denomination peso notes - about five or six bucks' worth - and handed them over; which of course was what he'd been after all along, but out of sheer return prickishness I'd made him work for it.

The encounter might have been funny, or at worst merely annoying, if I hadn't been so tired; but as it was it ruined the evening for me, and I went back to the hotel and turned in. I didn't want to walk around any more anyway; I might have run into the little insect again. He was the only cop in Mexico who ever gave me any trouble, but he was plenty.

And next morning I was still in a bad mood, and while I went out and had another look at the city - and it was worth looking at; there were some fine old buildings - I never really got into it. That son of a bitch had soured me on a perfectly valid town, and the realization pissed me off even more.

It wasn't all bad, though. I had a great conversation with some street musicians, and later I got to talking with some friendly college-boy types. (I told them the story, and they were sympathetic; cops like that, they said, disgraced Mexico.) Later on, as I was having breakfast, a gay guy tried to pick me up, which could be considered a friendly gesture too....

But still and all, I was ready to leave this town; and, after breakfast, that was what I did.