observations

There are a lot of motor­cy­cles in Oax­aca, and the vast major­ity are work­ing motor­cy­cles, not recre­ational rides. Here are a few of the bikes I spot­ted today, includ­ing a few brands you prob­a­bly haven’t seen in the US.

Every man­u­fac­turer rep­re­sented in Mex­ico has a 125 sin­gle, they are the work­horses of the city courier and deliv­ery rider scene here. This lit­tle blue Bajaj ‘Wind 125′ is a rel­a­tively new a clean exam­ple:

Bajaj

And these are Vento’s DS-styled work­horse, called the ‘work­man’:

Vento

Saw this blue BMW whizz by today and what a bit sur­prised; BMW’s are not a com­mon sight here in oax­aca, this is an expen­sive motor­cy­cle here:

BMW F650GS

Obvi­ously this Vento 200 cruiser has aspi­ra­tions above it’s cur­rent lot in life:

stick­ers are cheap here.

Here’s some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent, a Suzuki TS185 two-stroke, with a lit­tle added style via a cus­tom tank paint job:

suzuki

This is Yamaha’s lit­tle 125, called a Pul­sar, I think. This par­tic­u­lar one appears to have been drafted into gov­er­ment ser­vice:

yamaha

This is one of the locally man­u­fac­tured knock-offs of the Honda CG125 cargo:

ita­lika

and this is another of the local knock-offs. This par­tic­u­lar exam­ple is pretty typ­i­cal of the con­di­tion you see on the street. If you look care­fully, you’ll see that it has no bezel or glass over the instru­ments any longer.
Obvi­ously, Honda really hit the nail on the head with the CG125, every­one makes a copy now!

dinamo

And this is the pin­na­cle of locally made bikes, an Ita­lika EX200. a 200cc air-cooled sin­gle, wrapped in swoopy body­work and snazzy exhaust cans!

ita­lika

well, that’s all for today, folks. might not be a post tomor­row, as it’s Inde­pen­dence day down here, and we’ll be down­town tomor­row evening for the fire­works and cel­e­brat­ing! Viva Mexico!

enjoy, y’all!
black­dog