Happy New Decade!

The last pictures of a Mexican Thanksgiving. After San Miguel we stayed in Guanajuato. A super-bustling city of narrow streets, colorful houses, steep staircases, and corpse museums.

To the three readers of this blog, we are not done with this quaint little hamlet yet. Fear not! Get your search engines ready for ‘San Miguel Real Estate’ because you’re going to be moving to Mexico after you peruse this set.

The first couple of days of a Thanksgiving trip to San Miguel de Allende, Guanjato, Mexico. A cute, artsy town that is popular with Americans for good reason. Thank you to my brother Davy and his girlfriend Shari for being so hospitable for the duration of my trip.

3 days of biking south in Mexico and we ended up in Chetumal. Most of Christmas Day was spent catching a boat to the island of San Pedro, Belize.

For the holiday season Jeff and I went where it is warm. These pictures are from 2 days at the condo of his awesome aunt Carol in Akumal, and one day of biking south where we stopped at the Mayan ruins in Tulum.

For our last full day in Mexico we left the bikes in the hotel room and spent 12 pesos on catching the bus to Cabo San Lucas. We ended up going to Pelican Beach to try to snorkel. The water was just cold enough to make it tolerable for a little while. Definitely a tourist mecca.

The next day we put our packed bikes in a taxi, had a lovely ride to the airport, and I spent my last hours in Mexico reading in the airport. The plane flight over to LA was wicked awesome.

The next day we did about 10 M’s to catch a ride with the owner of the RV park who was driving to Cabo San Lucas, about 100 miles down the road. We were skipping a hot 60 mile ride on the main highway. Our planes were leaving in 2 days from San Jose Del Cabo, so we decided to get a hotel room there.

San Jose Del Cabo is about 20 miles from Cabo San Lucas and completely devoid of the nightlife that constitutes part of the fame of its sister city. There is a bus that runs between the two cities and costs about a dollar (American).

The dirt road snaked around hills by the ocean. The scenery was amazing. The road was challenging.

The dirt was replaced with sand. When the sand was relatively hard it was manageable, but bike tires do not ride well through soft sand.

Eventually we had the opportunity to leave the sand and get back on pavement. The paved road may have been the hilliest road I have ever seen (I am not exaggerating). You would finish a hill and think “damn that was hard” and then there would be another, larger one. Repeat this about half a dozen times. We all ran out of water.

It was another tough day of biking, and incidentally ended up being our last full day on the road. The riding from La Paz had taken its toll on our desire to bike. We thought we could do the last 60 miles to Los Cabos on a paved road along the beach, but we learned the road was only paved for 10 miles. Spending our last days of the trip biking on 50 miles of who-knows-what kind of conditions was unexciting, to say the least. The idea of relaxing by the beach was rapidly gaining appeal.

Leaving La Paz was rough. Lots of stores were closed because of the holiday and finding food in the morning was challenging. Also, we ended up biking about 9 miles in a completely wrong direction, and so we started the day with 20 M’s before we went anywhere.

We also decided to not take Highway 1 out of La Paz. We thought a side road would have less traffic (which it did) and take us closer to the beach (which it did). What followed was possibly the 2 hardest days of biking I have ever done in my life.

Taking the 286 out of La Paz starts with a 15 mile up-hill (maybe 20?). Due to our misstep in the morning we did that in the hottest part of the day.

The giant uphill was followed by a downhill of about the same distance, most of which was on a single straight-away. It was wild to be coasting in the same direction at over 30 mph for half an hour. It was glorious.

Our route abandoned the paved road (which ends) and crossed some mountains on a dirt road. We did this in the late evening. It was rugged. By the time we were camping I remember any sort of movement was a serious challenge.

Loreto was the sight of some of our less-good decisions of the trip. An unfortunate encounter with some local hooligans left us a bit demoralized. We were running out of time on the trip and decided getting a ride to La Paz, about 200 miles to the south. The biking between Loreto and La Paz was mostly a long and straight bit of highway through the desert. No one was too worried about skipping it.

We spent several hours by the highway 10 miles outside of Loreto in the late afternoon trying to hitchhike. Finding a ride for 3 gringos and their bikes so late in the day turned out to be more difficult than anticipated. We ended up biking back into town and catching one of the fabulous baja buses late in the evening.

The bus ride was probably my favorite ride ever. The road was passing us by as we lounged comfortably and without worry. It was one of the only times in my life I didn’t want the journey to a destination to end.

We arrived in La Paz around midnight that night. Exhausted, we managed to find a cheap hotel downtown.

The next day was New Years Eve and for the first time all trip we would be staying in the same place on 2 consecutive nights. Jeff and I did a 30 mile day ride. It was great to bike without the weight of our bags.

New Years in La Paz ended up being a bit of a let down. There was a stage setup on the waterfront, but the only ‘music’ we saw were cheesy guys with too much makeup lip synching. It was awful. The event seemed to consist of people that didn’t know how to have a good time. Probably me just being judgmental. I felt the Mexican government was to blame for this crappy celebration.

Another day of biking and we were in the town of Loreto.

A brief morning walk to secure breakfast and baked goods from a big-deal bakery and we were back on the road. Outside of town we stopped to talk to the first bike tourers we’d seen, 2 girls from Switzerland who had spent the last 2 years biking from Patagonia.

The road was going south again so our tailwind returned. We were cruising near the gulf in the warm sunshine.

We stopped briefly in Mulege (muy popular con los gringos). It was a quaint little town with lots of huge palm trees and the only riverish sort of thing we saw in the baja.

The evening consisted of rolling hills right along the gulf and some of the most spectacular scenery we would see all tour. We ended up staying on the beach at a little spot called Buenaventura, owned by a man from Madison, Wisconsin and his mexican wife. They had eventually married at the cost of 150 pesos to appease the Mexican government so they would allow him to stay in the country.

A chilly morning led to a hot day. The wind was either a head-wind or a cross-wind, as the road going due east. We biked 30 miles to San Ignacio and stopped for lunch at a tiny place with a lovely covered porch owned by a lady with a fondness for frogs.

James was having some knee issues and this was the second day of me riding on a rim that I felt was going to collapse. It was hot and everyone was feeling a bit worn out. We decided to take a bus to the coast town of Santa Rosalia, about 40 miles down the road.

An extremely disinterested younger bus station worker cast doubt as to whether our bikes would be a problem or not. As we were outside waiting a postal employee who spoke decent English sparked a conversation with us and offered to shove our bikes into the back of his postal truck and take us there.

The cab of the truck held 3 people and I offered to ride in the back with the bikes. There was a sliding door that stayed open and I spent an hour taking pictures, listening to music, and watching the desert drift by, happy to be done for the day.

At Santa Rosalia he dropped us off at the bike shop, which incidentally overlooked the ocean. Jeff and James scouted the local deets while I waited for the store to reopen. Eventually the helpful owner of the modest store found me a replacement wheel from a mountain bike in the back, trued the wheel, and changed the cassette, tube, and the tire. For all of that for I was charged 300 pesos, about 25 dollars.

He cautioned that the wheel shouldn’t be trusted, and I should get another ASAP. I ended up riding on it for the rest of the trip.

In Guerrero Negro running errands (ATM, a mercado stop, internet, and breakfast) got us off to a relatively late start. A little ways down the road Jeff noticed that my rim had a crack in it. Not good. A spandex-clad local mountain biker said that the next place to get it fixed would likely be Loreto, about 180 miles down the road.

That was not happy information for me. I figured I would just ride on it until that wasn’t possible anymore. It wasn’t very comforting thinking your rear wheel could have a catastrophic failure at any moment.

When it was clear would would be camping that night, and evening stop for groceries and beer resulted in me leaving a my warm orange Patagonia jacket outside the market. My biggest tour mishap ever.

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.