Going south

Wednesday 20th March

I get up with the sun, get on my bike, and get gone. The road from Miraflores is drawn like the stroke of a coarse pencil over wrinkled parchment, over a landscape tan, dry, and broad. Dusty horizons, broken by austere mountain ridges, lie over weathered land pierced by wandering arroyos. I see myself from above, impossibly tiny, like an ant on the broad mark swept by the pencil. I know I'm moving, but the ant looks perfectly still, and there is a strange silence...

The silence is suddenly broken by more silence, but one that is more familiar. Earthly. I am me again. I can feel the grips of my handlebars through my gloves, and sweat on my forehead. A pressure in my right foot tells me I am leaning on it. I am breathing heavily. I have stopped. From nowhere, I feel a gentle wind on my face. I remember now. I have been cycling all morning, as the road dove down into and up out of the gullies of the arroyos. It has been hot and tiring. I came up onto the plain again, and felt the wind change, and I stopped.

There it is again - I am looking to the right, to the west, and I feel it on my right side. It is coming from behind me now. The quiet joy of small fortune tugs the corner of my mouth ever so slightly upward. I turn back to face my immediate future, standing up on the pedals and pushing and leaning down into them, knowing that with every push I am carried slightly further, I am slightly lighter. I fly with the wind, faster and faster on the flat, straight road. Each push of the pedal seems easier than the last, until I am going impossibly fast, and I feel that joyous feeling of flying, as if the rules of the earth have taken a little vacation. Physics has sent me a postcard from wherever it is, as I look at the bike computer and see the numbers spinning like a poker machine...

A huge roar follows the image of a jet plane flying across the sky in front of me, and tells me that physics didn't go that far after all. My eyes focus on the airport of San Jose del Cabo, sitting on the edge of a big arroyo not far away. The wind has left. I cycle into and out of the arroyo, and am enveloped by urbanisation. Sparse industrialisation gives way to city sprawl and a heavily trafficked transport route. Now it's as if each push of the pedal gives me less, and less. Stop lights stop me, and roadside debris glares at me, all sparkling broken glass and pointed metal. The zona hotelera rears up like a tidal wave of gringolandia, towering with shopping centres, Starbucks, and exclusive hotels, telling me I am near the water. I want to take photos of it all, because it is so strange after the calm of the nature of Baja.

The road arrives at the coast and turns west, towards Cabo San Lucas. I am almost swallowed up by the oppressive heat, the humidity of the coast, and the hills thrown up like someone flicking out a towel to get sand off it. The headwind stretches the road out to much more than the 30km it says on the signs. Ever so slowly, Cabo comes into view, comes closer, until finally, I am there.

I am drained, and strangely exhausted. Lisa, my host in Cabo, hands me a beer. It's cold. It's a light beer, a cycling beer. We talk. Lisa has to go. There are tacos. I sleep.