fuer ein paar Fotos von unserer Reise durch Baja California hier clicken --- click here to see some pictures of the Baja and us Hello all!
We are sitting in our couchsurfing.com host´s house in Mulege, Baja California Sur. We arrived yesterday afternoon after an easy 65km ride from Santa Rosalia. It is now day 12 on our journey and we can´t be farther from our previous life! It has been pretty intense - we just finished biking the first 537kms and have gone 440 km hitching with a very cool trucker and german settler.
So I´ll start from the beginning with more detail this time. Previously I wrote that leaving your boyfriend on the side of the road is the worst feeling ever, but now i think that the worst is really leaving your daughter and her boyfriend on the side of the road in Mexico as they start their crazy one year journey. So sorry mom! Mom and Anna drove us from the border to Ensenada, we had a nice lunch, then drove to just outside of town where we packed up and started on the highway and they went home to New Mexico through the Tecate crossing.
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We left Ensenada on the highway called Mex 3 towards San Felipe, on the Sea of Cortez. It was a nice ride, lonely roads with hardly any traffic. We camped in the evenings and cooked our own dinners and snacks, but breakfasts were in the little ranches where we filled up on water before heading out again. It was pretty quiet the first few days until we got into San Felipe - we stayed there at a campsite for a night before heading back out on Mex 5 south. From San Felipe to Puertecitos we had a great time - the road was paved and nice. About 10km beyond Puertecitos the road wasn´t paved but was said to be graded gravel road that was passable. We got about 20kms along and were suffering horribly on the rock-sand-washboard road. There wasn´t much traffic going past us at all - I was getting so desperate for it to end that I was even considering asking the military truck with 5 young soldiers with guns to give us a lift when a big red pickup drove past and stopped when we flagged him down. Turns out he is a german immigrant to the US who has been staying with his german wife in Mexico for the past few years. He took us about 40km over the roughest part to where he had to turn off to his little beach house and we rode another backbreaking 10km before making camp on a beautiful cliff overlooking the sea.
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The next morning we got up early and rode another 10km or so to the next settlement called Alfonsinas in the Miramar area. We sat at the crossroads of the `highway´and the road that led to the beach community for about an hour. No one who was going towards Chapala (Mex 1) had room for 2 people and 2 bikes and all our gear. I was getting hot and looking longingly at the sea. Finally we decided to camp at the beach for the night and relax and start trying to get to Chapala in the morning. So we road down the dirt road. The first beachhouse we got to was empty - it looked like no one had been there for a long time and the next few houses down were vacant too.... so we sort of unpacked on the patio, went for a swim, made some lunch and relaxed. Since it was our anniversary, Swen went to the gas station to buy us a few beers to celebrate. While he was gone, a pickup drove up. Turns out it was Jack, the owner of the house. I was trying to look innocent, not like a burglar or bum, explaining that it was so hot and we are biking to argentina and we are just resting and will be on our way, but he stopped me and said it is fine, we could stay and camp. Phew! We chatted for a while, he left and invited us to his house down the road for a drink later. Then a few minutes later his wife Gretchen drove up and said we´d better camp at their house because the security guy from the community would come by and kick us out. So we packed up and went to their house. They have a cute beach house with a trailer in back that they let us stay in with a nice bed. We had such a nice conversation and time sharing all our stories - turns out they have hosted quite a few travellers and exchange students. They took us for dinner at the one cantina up the road where we met another biker from Germany who had just arrived - he is travelling since 5 months and started in Alaska! He hitched a ride the whole way from Puertecitos so didn´t have to suffer the horrible road.
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The next day friends of Jack & Gretchen lent us their kayak so we could paddle out and watch the whale sharks that moved into the bay! They were huge - some about 30 feet long and 5 feet across! They are plankton eaters and gentle, so we got very close and had a good look! It was still a bit scary though, and we left when one went under the kayak and softly tapped the kayak with his huge tail. Then the neighbors of Jack and Gretchen - an Argentine woman named Sonia and her American husband Ron - took us out on their boat to see the sharks again, and also to go fishing. We didn´t catch anything but it was still fun. Then Sonia waterskied a bit and we went back to the house. What a day! And then, Jack took Swen and gave him a lesson in driving a 4 wheeler so we then rode the 4 wheeler out far on the beach, over some dunes for a while. We got home and Gretchen had made a great dinner. What a nice 2 days!
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We planned to leave in the morning on the last 70km of dirt road towards Chapala. Jack went all over trying to find us a ride but no one was going that way. No worries, I thought, we would start out and flag down any passing truck. Gretchen packed us off with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, appleas and carrots and all our water bottles full. Then we started on the road to hell. It was awful. So hot and sooooo slow riding the most awful road. Normally we go about 60-90km a day (in 4-6hours) so a full day of only going 45km is very very hard! And all the cars that passed were going the other direction! Not a single car in the 2 days it took us to get out. Thankfully we got water from some cars and trucks that were going the other way. We almost kissed the ground when we got to the paved highway Mex 1!
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So we had an early lunch and set out again - after about 10km we flagged down a semi who stopped and gave us a ride 400km through boring, hot, flat, not so pretty desert to the town of San Ignacio. He was a cool guy who´s boss at the truck company is a big cyclist too and so he picks up people all the time and helps them take a break from the heat. He had a nostradamus book he was reading, too! So he let us off in San Ignacio, gave us a can of tuna (`from just up the coast!´), and said he was heading to Santa Rosalia the next morning and would give us a ride those 80km if we wanted. So we camped out, had hot showers in the campsite that felt soooo nice and got up at 6 to meet him for the last ride. We got into Santa Rosalia, had a great breakfast of fish and shrimp tacos at a roadside stand and head out the 65km to Mulege where we had a place to stay with our new Couchsurfing friend. And, funnily enough we met our German biker friend from Alfonsinas! He is staying here too and will travel with us the next few days to Loreto. There is also a couple from Belgium here, they are backpacking all the way to Argentina. They started in Canada a few months ago. So we all are having a great time here at the house with all these travellers and our nice host. Tonight we are making sushi with some fresh shrimp and washing our clothes - Bill has a washing machine! ...
Swen and I and Tom will leave in the morning and camp somewhere tomorrow night on the beach in Bahia Concepcion and get to Loretto the day after. We are planning now to get some Kayaks in La Paz as well and go for a few days by kayak around the islands there with Tom, as he is a kayak teacher back in germany! So we will post more soon with more stories of our adventures! Photos will be coming soon as well, but here upload doesnt work...
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Thanks for all the love and support and encouragement! Hasta pronto!
Kat y Swen
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