Mexico 'Long Way Around'
Our version, 2008
Sixteen days in Mexico, well that was the plan. Start the adventure in Tecati and ride the Baja Peninsula from the top to bottom. From La Paz half of the participants would fly home while the other six would take the ferry to the Mexico mainland, ride through Copper Canyon and continue on to Arizona to meet up with the chase vehicle and then fly home. Just a simple eighteen day excursion.
The first incident happened three weeks before kick off when Roland C. broke his shoulder on a snowmobile which brought our number to eleven. The second was when John M. missed his flight from Toronto to San Diego. Not his fault. Homeland Security randomly selected John for further scrutiny which consisted of a 45 minute wait and a 13 second inspection of his documents. Luckily there are numerous flights to San Diego and John was rescheduled two hours later. I cannot say enough about the U.S. Homeland Security Service, actually I'll say nothing!
After an extended lunch in San Diego, quite extended due to HLS, we were off to the Baja entry point of Tecate where we purchased our Mexico Visitors permits. These permits may be purchased many places but can only be paid for at a Mexican bank. We of course were just outside of the banking hours, thanks to our extended lunch, thanks to……..okay, okay, I'll give it a rest although this visitors Permit issue will come up again later.
Finally we are off to El Hongo and the to Rancho Ojai/KOA and a cozy cabin for some needed shut eye.
Day One begins with breakfast in the motorhome and soon we are dressed, packed and on our way. The enclosed trailer would stay here for the week while Barry's toy-hauler would be the chase vehicle. With limited space in the motorhome and one extra motorcycle our spare stuff had to be very limited.
The first days ride should have been an uneventful easy day on mostly dirt roads to Cayote Cal's at Eréndria just south of Santo Tomas. In a section of single-track early in the day John Donnovan crashed and took a handlebar in the ribs. Not a good way to start a ten day ride. Though he finished the day 'Baja Johnny' was out for the remainder of the ride and would be relegated to group 'bartender' a job he took to with relish. We had split into two groups today with my "A" group doing some extra distance and arriving after dark. Interesting to find out how our headlights do, or do not, function in the dark.
Day two, Eréndria to El Rosario was planned to be a somewhat shorter day with the two groups doing different routes. Team "A" finished late again at MaMa Espinoza's, our first time in this town, but before the need for headlights. The "B" team, Barry's group, had wonderful stories of the Malcolm Smith advised trail they had ridden along the Pacific coast which is apparently accessible only during low tide conditions.
For day three, El Rosario to Cativina, we had a partial route on GPS but much of the day was based on some lines drawn on a map by the Baja King himself, Malcolm Smith with explicit instructions that these directions never be published or shared. The day came together just as we had hoped though a crash by Damon Wilding, our youngest rider led to my decision to shorten the day for Damon, his father Doug and me. The rest of the group got to ride the Bill Nichols 'single track' which everyone agreed was the best of the week. Halfway through our guys met another group of riders led by the creator of the trail, Arizonian, Bill Nichols himself. I'm sorry I missed this but maybe next year.
Cativina is a village we stay at each year with a swank El Presidente hotel, newly renamed the Desert Inn, a new Pemex Station which never has gas and the strongest margaritas I have ever drank. Our "B" team leader also thought these Margaritas were powerful and when used as a chaser for hot salsa, could actually keep a guy off his motorcycle for two days! I promised not to mention our "B" leaders name so I won't.
The Day four instructions from Malcolm were to look for an asphalt boiling tank and take the trail near there. I had narrowed the location down to about a 10 kilometer stretch of highway and it was probably more good luck than good management when I happened to glance back over my shoulder and spy something which might have been such a tank. It was, and the trail that followed was another for the memory books, with a long steep crooked and extremely rocky downhill which I am convinced that I could not have ridden the trail backwards. Luckily, we didn't have to. It was with some trepidation that we preceded into this trail, as in Baja, when trail goes down it usually has to come back up again. This time though the elevation stayed consistent and we eventually came to a dirt road which led to Coco's Corner, one of the better known points of interest in Baja.
Coco showed up about 20 years ago at a remote intersection in the Baja and began selling cold drinks. He's still there and is quite insistent that all travellers who stop, sign his guest book. If I had more time it would certainly be interesting to leaf through his collection of signed books. After Coco's we ran some the Baja 1000 race course the damp Valley of the Cirios. We then rode some of the neatest and unused two-track I have ever ridden. John McCoy lost some engine oil from a cracked sight glass today but this was quickly fixed with some Quick Steel, a quick fix for almost everything and a penny.
This day ended in Bahia de los Angeles, or better known as; 'Bay of LA', where we met an interesting resident formally from Florida who informed us that Canadian Al Perrett is having a house built there. We also met Bill and Janine Atchison from Red Deer reroute to South America riding a loaded BMW Dakar.
Continuing south from Bay of LA we traveled the regular dirt road which had been recently graded and made for some quick travel. Portions of this days route commonly used for the Baja 1000 race and gas was found as usual on a back street in El Arco where we encountered two more Canadians from BC.
To be continued, someday, if someone asks.
