Our Christmas present was more tailwind that helped us to bike around 85 miles, our biggest day all tour. There was hardly any traffic, it was our own private highway. We ate warm food for all 3 meals. All in all I thought it was an excellent Christmas.
The previous night the couple renting us the hotel room mentioned a possibility of 60mph winds the next day. We didn’t think much of it at the time.
In the morning we had birria and set down the road in what was already a windy day. About 10 miles later the road came up over a large hill and into a tremendous headwind that required serious pedaling to go anywhere. The road changed direction, entered a valley, and the headwind turned into the most intense crosswind I have ever experienced in my life.
Biking in a straight line required seriously leaning into the wind. The gusts at this point we thought were around 60 or 70 mph. You would be doing your best to bike in a straightish fashion and a gust would come along and the feeling was as if someone was giving you a hard push off the road. The road was elevated with no shoulder and the consequences of failing to stay on pavement would not have been pleasant. When the gust stopped you would inevitably over-correct and go back to the left, which was occasionally in the direction of an oncoming 18-wheeler.
It was scary.
We stopped at a pullout and just standing upright required focus. Everyone agreed biking in winds comparable to a tropical storm was not safe. We found a spot that was sheltered from the wind and layed down in the dirt and thought about what we should do. I distinctly remember thinking what was wrong with me that this was how I decided to spend my Christmas. After about an hour and a half of feeling more trapped by the weather than I ever had in my life, we decided to try to get a ride.
Leaving our sheltered spot and approaching the road, it was evident that the wind had died down considerably. I suggested we try biking in it and, if we felt it was unsafe, get a ride.
Biking in a 30mph wind turned out to be reasonable.
As an early Christmas present, for the last hour and a half of daylight, the wind was directly at our backs. We biked 25 miles in a little over an hour as the sun dipped below the mountains. After the events of earlier, biking at 30mph in relative peace (since you were matching the direction and speed of the wind) was amazing.
We spent Christmas Eve camping near several large cacti on the outskirts of the small town of P.P. Prieta. The evening was calm and we were able to have our first campfire of the trip.
Packing up at sunrise was a chilly endeavor. The morning was windy and the wind would continue all day, keeping us in our jackets. We stopped at a few tiny places for water and food.
We ate lunch at a restaurant in what was essentially someone’s living room. Another place had a no-nonsense older woman wearing a Tecate baseball cap selling us bottled watter, galletas, and a dense sweet bread she had made for 5 pesos.
We got a hotel room in the tiny town of Catavina. There was no lock on the door. The owner said he gets around that with his constant vigilance.
A morning passing more large farms led to a day full of uninhabited desert. We experienced our first of half a dozen or so military checkpoints. Our bags were very casually searched. The traffic dropped dramatically.
As dusk was rapidly turning to darkness we thought we might be approaching a town, but a stopped truck driver informed us we had about 40 clicks left (over 20 miles). The terrain had become hilly again and we were exhausted, so it was time to camp.
We quickly found a spot near the highway. A large cactus watched over us and kept us safe during the night. Nights were surprisingly cold at this point.
Having never done a bike tour in the winter, we discovered that 4 hours less daylight makes a big difference in terms of how far you can go in a day. Getting up early seemed to be the best plan.
For breakfast we discovered birria, a popular dense soup with shredded beef, onions, and cilantro served with tortillas.
Closer to San Quintin the terrain flattened out and traffic picked up due to the presence of several huge commercial farms. A few key shoulders kept us out of the way on the larger uphills.
Our first day of biking. The terrain was relatively hilly. We were to discover this was a common occurrence in the Baja. The road seemed to be relatively new in many places and had a shoulder that was about 6 feet wide for most of the way. San Vicente was a small town and we got a hotel room for 300 pesos, (about 20 dollars).
Over Christmas break myself Jeff ‘Business 3000′ Spence and James `2006’ aka ‘Butch’ Searls biked about 800 miles in the Baja Peninsula of Mexico. A plane, a train, and a bus brought us to our starting location.
