Making haste, making plans

Feb 18th-19th

It had begun to dawn on me that if I kept up my current pace, I'd be lucky to make it through Mexico to Guatemala in my time frame, let alone any further into Central America. After spending more time than I had planned on my ambassador projects so far in Mexico, I had barely made it 10% of the way through the 3500km of road between me and Guatemala.

I knew the sweet spots for my ride were going to be places where the welfare needs were greatest, places that tourists and travellers frequented (for Angel Muling and volunteering), and places that were good to do bike touring. With this in mind, the desert lying immediately in front of me in Baja, beautiful as it may be, seemed like a reasonable part of the road to skip through. In fact, I had been told that Chiapas and Oaxaca in southern Mexico were of the neediest Mexican states, and I wondered if my time and my tires would be better spent there.

In any case, it was time to put aside the charity work for a while and make haste. I figured I would hitch through some of the desert, then ride through the rest of Baja as quickly as I could, and then make more plans from there.

Never having hitch-hiked before, I wasn't really sure how it was going to go. However I had had some pointers from people I had met on the road, and figured I could always take a bus as a last resort. As it turns out, it took almost no time at all to find someone. In the parking lot outside Mama Espinoza's that morning, I spied a vehicle that had passed me the day before. A big van with a long trailer, and seats strapped to the trailer. I asked them if I could get a ride south and they said fine. It turns out the were a support crew for a team of dirt bike riders that were going down Baja. They could take me as far as Chapala. It wasn't as far as I wanted to go, but it was such a good start, and they had room for my bike so I said yes. I threw the bike on the back and off we went into the desert.

Cacti and palm trees look strange together... pero asi es Baja

Huge piles of rocks!

A sea of cacti

Crazy looking cacti

I ended up staying with the guys - Justin, Martin, Mark, Steve, and the rest of the 17 odd riders - for the next 24hrs, as they wound their way via Bay LA that night, to San Ignacio the next morning. We cruised through the surreal desert scenery, with its Dr Suess style cacti and massive boulder fields, and watched as the red hills of the desert seemingly sunk into the blue water of the Sea of Cortez in Bay LA. It was spectacular and I hadn't seen anything like it before. Bay LA itself was small, and quiet, which is I guess partly why I found an abandoned trailer park right on the beach where I could pitch my tent for the night. The next day, heading south, the scenery was less spectacular, with long broad expanses of uniform desert scenery. A lot of freakin cactus. I wasn't too upset about not riding this bit.

The peninsula and abandoned RV park in Bay LA

Mmmm, pointy. And bad for tires.

We reached San Ignacio, and there I parted ways with the guys. It had been great hanging out with them, but I needed to keep moving. I wanted to get to the Bahia de Concepcion, which I had heard was beautiful to ride along. I was also itching to get back on the bike again after being cooped up in a van for a couple of days.

This time hitching was a little harder. I had to stand on the side of the road with my cardboard sign and my thumb out. It took a few hours, but someone eventually stopped. Some guys who worked in CREEAD, a drug and alcohol recovery centre with locations throughout Mexico, stopped and helped me get my bike into their stationwagon. It was fortuitous in that I got to talk about the welfare work that they did, and what I was doing, but as I watched the speedo climb above 130km/hr on those narrow roads, I began to wonder if getting back on a bike again was a wise idea.

The gang! In Bay LA

Justin, Martin, and Mark, in San Ignacio.

So it was not without some relief that I disembarked in Mulege, thankful to them though I was. I asked around and heard there was a free beach to camp on not too far away. As I rolled towards it, in the dark, seeing fewer and fewer people and buildings around, I began to wonder if I had taken a wrong turn. I was about to turn around and go back into town to find a hostel, when I stumbled upon the quiet beach I was looking for, and to my surprise, some fellow travellers, Benjamin, from France, and couple of his friends. After expecting another night alone, I found myself amongst new friends, sitting around a fire, cooking quesadillas with fresh local cheese, and drinking some strange liquor. It was one of those unexpected and idyllic travelling moments, that only seem to happen when you put yourself out there, that wait for you impossibly at the end of the limb you went out on.