July 8
An ideal day on this trip would be1 ½ to 2 hours of riding in the morning, 1-2 hour break over some food and talking to locals, then 1 ½ to 2 hours of riding in the afternoon, then setting up camp. Depending on road conditions this could mean any number of km - mostly our limits are about the comfort/state of comfort of our asses and mental fatigue. Caveat to this schedule is the temperature. The aforementioned schedule works well in the Pacific Northwest or Canada - but in… let's say the Sea of Cortez where it is angry hot and humid - this schedule won’t do. In this weather where it is always humid but only over 95 degrees after about 1-2 pm (let me just say that again - on the Sea of Cortez side this time of year it is ALWAYS 90+ % humidity and only in afternoons and evenings it is over 90+ degrees. No bueno). So, right - it’s best to do all riding before 2 pm. So again today we did a hard and long 4 hour ride from Santa Rosalia to Loreto. And we are at the whim of the road on when/where we can stop, as we don’t stop unless there is a safe place to do so. It is very tiring… we are hopeful mainland Mexico won’t be this humid and this far between for stops.
Highlight! We rode one of the absolute best stretches of Baja today. As Ernie said, it was seemingly right out of a magazine. Red rocks, green saguaros, yellow flowers, black asphalt, white sand, baby blue sky, and ice blue water - ice blue like the irises of the White Walkers. Sweeping turns around steep cliffs. No guard rails, no power lines, no billboards. Truly breathtaking - especially watching Ernie 100 m ahead in the scene. It all deserved a soundtrack. Although we still have a few hundred km to go in Baja, that stretch will be hard to beat in this beautiful Mexican State. It was a road of dreams.
At Yolanda Rivera’s Del Mar Camping and RV park. Very nice lady - I’m curious as to her story. In my feminista mind she is single and has left some crappy life in US America and come here to start this business and provide a better life for her kid (who could use a few manners… Ernie thinks he is just curious and that his curiosity will make him more worldly/that he is lucky to have access to people from other places. I’m sure Ernie is right...). There are only two other people here - an RV with Oregon plates and solar panels (and Yolanda says they never “show up”) and a very old trailer with Arizona plates that houses the only other person we’ve interacted with here. He has a t-shirt on that says “SECURIDAD” and cruises around with a walker. He is very sweet, and we had a few giggles. This last interaction we had was a bit confusing… Ernie and I were sitting and reading in the one “breezy” spot we found which is right by the common area/bathrooms/sinks/etc. (we are both reading The Pearl by Steinbeck). He left his trailer and came over and washed his dishes in the sink, and afterwards, instead of going back to his trailer, he sat down in the common area with us. I kept looking, said “Buenas noches”, but he just played with his phone. Couldn’t ever catch him looking up wanting to engage. As a good northerner though I kept asking “why would he come sit here with us if he didn’t want to engage?”. After about 20 minutes he went back to his dishes, touched them, and they were dry. So the best I can figure his nightly routine is eat dinner, stroll on out to common area, wash dishes, hang out until dishes are dry, then return to trailer.
In between 3 and 5/6 pm we had a nice (albeit HOT) walk around town. Had some cold cervezas from a bartender who was seemingly desperate to serve some cervezas. (It is not tourist season. There are few to no gringos here in this weather). There is a camino de la playa (which although is a bit out of our way) we took for most of our exploring, and not only did we see our first million sally lightfoot crabs (and their jumping), but we also saw our first flying bat rays. Ha ha!! Flying up and out the water… splash!!!! The pelicans turn in disgust at their frollicking. The pelicans turn in disgust at us walking by. I hope we see many more of all of the above.
Two things I’ve forgotten to mention on earlier posts about crossing Baja - the potholes and the saguaros in bloom. They are some mighty large ones here (both potholes and saguaros, but that was in reference to the potholes). The kind that we could nose dive into… they have been one of the biggest road hazards so far. Luckily there are “crews” that attend to the pot holes - i.e., two wheel drive pickup trucks with 2-3 men tossing shovels-full of ground up asphalt into them. Since this kind of work is done in summer when it's over 100 degrees, the chunks just melt into the highway. Perfect! And then the blooms on saguaros. In my limited botanical experience the flowers of plants are mostly relatively proportionate to the plant itself. This is not the case with the saguaro. This cactus is 10-30+ feet high and its flowers are probably ~6” in diameter. And there are only a few dozen per saguaro. It looks more like a plant with chicken pox than a succulent trying to spread its seed.
“Ernie, what would you like to remember about today?”
“The jumping rays. They are beautiful and surreal and so unlike anything I have ever seen in the Northwest. If they flapped their fins just a little faster I bet they could fly. And the hopping crabs. They are almost like fleas. Very quick.”
July 9
Ok Sea of Cortez. You are beautiful and rocky and I adore your critters, but HOLY HELL you are hot. Another night of lying awake sweating and hating. Discomfort eventually forcing us to move in the “morning”. We had a very slow and very quiet pack job to get west ASAP.
After we got gas and water and rode fast enough to start the process of getting our kevlar gear to peel away from our skin, the plan was an ~175 km ride from Loreto to San Carlos on the Pacific Side. It proved to be the straight and boring stretch the map indicated it would be, so we again planned on hitting it hard early in the day and being done by the afternoon. We asked Yolanda if there was camping there and she said no, but we just couldn’t believe it. There is this beautiful paved road to the Pacific side for whale watching during the tourist season and there must be someone who has an RV park or camping or something! Alas… no. Yolanda was right. After a drive around town (which didn’t take long) we decided to go into the “Sports Bar With Information for Tourista”. We ordered some agua con pina (not pineapple juice - but water with fresh pineapple squeezed in - yum!). Then we order sopas con pollo (chicken soup) and chilaquitas (don’t know translation, but it was cheese, tortillas soaked in tomato something). The sopas looked like plain old broccoli, chicken and potatoes in water but WOW was it good. The chilaquitas were a hot mess. Anyway, right after we ordered we asked the waitress (as this was the place for information for tourists) if there was any place to camp. She paused, looked outside, and said “un momento”. She popped her head out the doors of the restaurant and talked to the man walking down the street. He proceeded to come inside and pull up a chair. Crispin. Senor Crispin Mendoza. And the next 2-3 hours began! He spoke english so we started with what we wanted/were looking for, which was camping in San Carlos. Long story short - no. He gave us some ideas but none seemed safe and/or pleasant. But then the chatter began! Politics, history of San Carlos, the environment, fishing, and whales! He has been a whale watching and sport fishing tour guide for 45 years. He was the first one to open such a business in San Carlos. When he first started, since he was the only guide, everyone knew Crispin. But now that there are so many guides, they don’t know him any more (the competition doesn’t want the newcomer to be so quickly introduced to the best!) … After a good hour at the “Sports Bar” the food showed up and he said “have your lunch and come to my house after. I live right where your bikes are parked”. So we did! We sat on his beautiful patio, met his wife and doggies, visited some more about life and happiness and the “value” of money and life. He showed us some of his favorite pictures of whales (including one of a fully erect gray whale phallus). Please, if you ever come to Baja to whale watch, go with Crispin Mendoza! See our Google Map image for his tele. Gracias por todo Crispin!
After the joy that was Crispin and San Carlos we decided it would be best to just head back NE to Ciudad Constitution and camp in an established campground, as it was only about 50 km and we had seen two caracaras on the way there and maybe we would see more on the way back (caracara = in our opinion the most bad ass bird of prey on baja). We arrive to “La Misiones” around 4 pm. The driveway/vehicle gate is locked but a small herd of teenagers are exiting through the pedestrian gate. We turn our motos off and just sort of wait/hang… not knowing how to proceed. Within a minute or so we see a few teenage girls carrying a drunk/mildly injured girl and a young man with keys unlocks the gate, gets his Dodge Charger, loads up the girl, and takes off. She can walk and was sort of laughing so while we felt sorry for her there is no need for alarm or authorities. We pull into the campground, park, and head to the office. No one… There is a pool with an additional dozen teenagers (~14-16 years old) but no adults anywhere. We go to the little store next to this place and ask the worker there what he knows about this place. The owner of the tienda seems surprised that La Senora (the owner) is not here. We wait about an hour, during which we connect to wifi and find the only other RV park/campground in town looks like a refinery, so we decide to just set up camp. Lots of hummingbirds! We talk a bit about them and how they migrate, and we wonder if any of them are Sarah’s hummingbirds (Hi Sarah! Our neighbor on Prescott who, with Roger, feeds all kinds of birds on their corner lot). At some point either an adult or the kid with the keys and the Charger will be back and we can pay and figure this all out. Well now it's about 8 pm and the kid with the Charger is back, locked the gate, but did not come to us. Our working hypothesis is that La Senora is on a vacay and that she left her son the keys and instructions, and the only reason we got in is because he had to open the gate to let his injured friend out. Since we are surrounded by them, Ernie and I are hoping that these kids and us have come to an agreement: we don’t care what you are doing and won’t bother you and you don’t care what we are doing and won’t bother us.
Admittedly I’m a bit nervous about how we are getting out of here tomorrow… the gate is locked and some 15 year old with a giant set of keys who is currently drunk and swimming and singing is somehow in control of our ability to exit this place?!?
All power and hopeful understanding aside, I am happy to realize that my disdain for teenagers in/as a collective is international and without bias - i.e., regardless of skin color or gender or geographic location or cultural influence, I find the juvenile gaggle of teens to be annoying and pathetic. I have nothing against the single teen, or the small group of teens working with and against each other to figure out how the fit into whatever they are trying to fit into. It is the collective mentality that ruins them. The group at this camp is about 3 girls and 10 boys. Drinking Tecate Lights. Smoking and coughing while smoking. Total and complete disrespect and ignorance for “things”. And by that I mean things that cost money - 16 is the age at which money is becoming very important yet with no responsibility for the big ticket items. 16 year olds need money to have fun but don’t pay bills or rent or cars like 18-20 year olds do. So they treat “things” the worst compared to any age group. Younger that 16 they have parents who scold, and older than 16 they have the responsibility themselves. I realize I’m lumping a lot of people into one group and pooping on them... But as I watch them throw their garbage into the cacti and spit at each other and beat on their cars and play their music too loud or curse real loud then look over just to see if they can get a reaction out of us… I want to wave my magic wand and make them grow up so they stop treating people and the earth poorly. I asked Ernie what he thought of what was happening witht he teens and he said “the guys are interested in hopefully touching a nipple tonight. I don’t know what the girls are interested in”. Ha! But then we talked about whether it was our privilege that made us not this way as teens. Neither of us had a childhood experience where we behaved that way. Sure we did annoying things, as kids are always annoying, but never that group-mob kind of mean...
And POOF. The party just ended… all dozen of them packed themselves and their contraband up and left. Is La Senora coming home???
No joke! La Senora just got home. With two yellow labs. In the summer when it is slow she rents the place out to groups of teens for parties - kind of like renting a bowling alley for the afternoon. This all explains their entitled behavior, so I’ll eat that part of my previous diatribe. Them renting out the joint still doesn’t explain their mistreatment of it and us, so I can still sit on my pony thinking about group teen behaviors.
Smelt something really fragrant coming from yonder so Ernie and I took a walk. Holy cow! This enormous white bloom! Bigger than my head! Smells so good!
Side note - it seems the pics I’m posting on Google Maps aren’t coming through correctly/properly/in their entirety/etc., so if anyone is actually reading these posts and can figure out what I’m doing wrong/how to fix so that you can see all the pics I post correctly - please tell me! Internet is crazy slow here so it's hard to troubleshoot.
“Ernie, what would you like to remember about today?”
“Everywhere we go people are always warning us about something. It just seems like in the US it was banditos and now it’s the protests in Argentina. It just seems like a funny thing to bring up to travelers. And I wonder what is the intention there? Or is there an intention there? What are people trying to say? What is the psychology behind this whole thing?”
And then began a long talk about the psychology behind the whole thing…
July 10
Very tough day… rode from Ciudad Constitucion to La Paz, about ~220km. The first and minor issue is that it is very boring. Biologically and geologically it is the most uninteresting part of this state. I feel bad for all the people who just come to Cabo or La Paz and think THAT is what Baja looks like! Other than another caracara flying and a single road runner, no wildlife. And geologically… totally boring! And no farming, no towns… I suppose there were some grand and interesting santuarios (more on those in a bit). And then the really tough part of the day - the construction. Here in Baja when they are repaving the road they divert traffic to the sand, dirt, gravel mess off the side of the road. Sand + gravel + moto = very difficult riding. It wasn’t even that many km, but it was sooooo hard. I honestly can’t believe we both made it on both stretches without falling. And the cars and trucks were mostly patient but still riding our tails and putting on pressure. Thought I was just going to burst into tears afterwards.
Then arriving into La Paz… it’s just a mess. Lots of cars, nothing is on the grid system, streets aren’t labeled. We got lucky in where we pulled off to check our map in that we were only a few blocks from our campsite. The lady who runs this place (didn’t catch her name) is adorable. 80 lbs wet. Started this place with her husband in the 50’s after they were married. Its a bit run down and a bit expensive, but its got great view! She didn’t have any camping spots with shade and her son was like (in spanish) “Ma - they are on motorcycles - put them in the corner shady spot even though its not a real spot”. And she did! She made the exception… :) Agenda after getting off our bikes was 1) find food and 2) find store for cerveza y hielo (beer and ice). We only had to walk a short way to find some pollo picante gorditas (yum! But - and can’t believe I’m saying this - too much carb. One layer of corn outside of Mexi food is plenty - two is too much). Then across the street a modelorama. We don’t know what modelorama means, but they pretty much only sold beer and ice and chips. Which is pretty much all we needed. And on the way home we walked by a house that was throwing away a styrofoam cooler, so tonight we don’t have to drink our beers fast if we want them cold! Fiesta!
In between the gorditas and the modelorama we walked a bit out of our way to 1) walk off the gorditas, and 2) visit a giant grocery store. Turns out we both enjoy going to grocery stores while traveling just out of curiosity. It is part of the insight into the culture and habits of an area. (And good to do while one is full and not hungry). It was in fact huge - at one point we saw “Walmart” and I asked Ernie if he thought it was a Walmart but he said the sign was comparing the prices to Walmart. Meaning this store was cheaper than Walmart. (To which I thought, what is cheaper than Walmart in Mexico?!?). The three things that stuck out the most were the watermelons, the fish, and the chicarrones. The watermelons were enormous. Too big for most Mexican women to pick up and put in their carts. Too big to fit in carts! Second, the fish section. Most of the fish was sold as whole fish and not filets. This was great. The Mexicans know what kind of fish they are buying whereas in US America we get filets of mystery fish. And then the chicarrones. Or I guess more acurately the chicarrone maker. You know how when you go into Ace Hardware and there is the popcorn machine and you can help yourself to a bag? Well imagine a popcorn machine twice as big as those and filled with pig skin instead of popcorn. There were some bags already filled - just like the popcorn at Ace. Or you could fill your own bag. There were heat lamps on the top and the cart could technically be wheeled any where around the store. The whole thing brought me equal parts pleasure and disgust.
Back to the view I spoke of… I suppose this is our reward for making it through the construction. Dolphins! We are watching dolphins and frigates and pelicans come into the bay and feed and frollick. Well, not the pelicans. They have such an attitude I love it. Oh! And the parakeets. I’m not sure if they are native or what - will have to look that up.
Santuarios… I am really not sure of their history, but we are confident of their purpose. They are tributes to those who died in car accidents. Some are small, maybe the size of a suitcase. Made of cement with name painted on and perhaps some plastic flowers. Others are the size of our tent, with multiple dimensions and symmetries and a place to sit and pray for those lost. Crosses and statues of Jesus or Lady Guadalupe are all around them. And then a few are very grand, bigger than some houses we have seen. One even had a life size Jesus statue. Some paint the path from the road to the santuario, some add toys or trucks (like semi trucks for the truckers that have died). One was even in the shape of a semi truck. Ernie thinks the bigger ones are actually places for truckers or people to stop and pray for a while. I think they are where rich people died…
“Ernie, what would you like to have in our notes for today?”
How desolate this part of Baja is. It is flat and monochromatic. Dull and dusty. And how we saw dolphins and how slowly they swim. That there still are dolphins on this planet and we haven’t betrayed them all yet. I was thinking about the Chinese shipping container on the back of that truck we saw and their logo was two dolphins. There is an irony there.”
July 11
Cover your ears kids….
FUCK. Maybe I’ll fill in more later, but for now...
1) we got stupid lost in La Paz this morning. Ended up doing a two hour circle looking for any of the several roads that head south to Los Cabos. Asked and asked and ended up at an Applebee’s with Wifi. (As a reminder, all of this is in full moto gear at 100+ degrees and 90% humidity and traffic and speed bumps and traffic and Mexican traffic “laws”).
2) While at Applebees, in addition to memorizing a map and way out of La Paz over some shit scramble, we google “camping in Los Cabos” and come up totally empty. It is pretty much hotel only (probably could talk an RV park into letting us as its off season, but no shade at most RV parks that say “no tents” on their website). Also, it is noon by now and LC is over 200km away… should we just abort doing the last stretch of Hwy 1 around Los Cabos and get on the ferry to Mazatlan?!? (Ferry only runs Tues and Thurs). Long story short we decide YES.
3) get to ferry, get tossed around to different lines and people. Need to buy X permit and have Y and Z paperwork. Don’t have A and B paperwork, have to go C office to get it, which is way back in the part of La Paz we just got lost in(but bonus! We knew how to get there yay!)
4) get to the place where we need to get what we need to get… we can’t get what we need there. No es possible. Only possible at borders. Tijuana or Tecate or Mexicali. Starting in 2015 tourists need an FMM card, and it is tourist responsibility to get it. I.e., it is not automatic at borders because North Americans can hang for 7 days without an FMM card. If we exit through the northern border if Baja, no problem, but if we want to get to mainland Mexico we HAVE TO HAVE IT. THERE IS NO GETTING ON FERRY WITHOUT THIS CAR. Long horrific pause, crying, imagining riding motos back up through Baja, over to Texas, then to Mazatlan - some 2000-3000 miles away some month later. In this heat with everything we just did… Cry. Cry. Cry. Ernie is as solid as a rock. Tara is cry cry cry. (And I do hope I come back to this post at some point and write about the facility all this happened in, a seriously surreal shit hole). In Ernie’s solid as a rock state he suggests we fly to Tijuana to get the paperwork. That could work! From what we understand, it is about us a people, not about how we got here or how we are traveling around here. We don’t need our motos to get this card...
5) Tara remembers a hotel with a gated parking lot in the mass amounts of driving today. Plan in motion and details get filled in fast. Get hotel and sweet talk manager into keeping bikes here while we are gone. Must have a safe place for bikes. Give dude who’s sole purpose in life is to watch the gated lot 500 pesos to check in our babies every so often. Check. Buy plane tickets. Check. We leave July 12, do paperwork in Tijuana July 13, fly back to La Paz July 14. It’s possible we could do everything in less time, but we decide to play it safe, and the next ferry isn’t until July 18th anyway. Eat tacos. Check. Find and book hotel in Tijuana. Check. Take all gear off bikes, bring to hotel room, repack for both our mini trip to Tijuana and for locking up everything in hotel. Check. Relax. No “Check” on that one yet…. As clw taught me to say, “entonces”
But the most important bits of the day - the people! At the ferry terminal, the immigracion office, this hotel, the randoms we asked for directions - they were/are all amazing. Kind, patient, spoke english and spanish. Such incredible people… they have no reason to be so kind and yet they were/are so so so kind. We got the feeling that we weren’t the first gringos to have this issue since the instating the FMM thing, yet they still handled it all with grace and kindness. The people and places of Mexico are not an ocean of kidnapping, bandidtos, drugs and bribes as US Americans seem to think it is. As big of a jackass that Trump has been towards this country, we haven’t felt that resentment at all. Mexico has been awesome to us. To be clear, all of this was our fault, not theirs.
“Ernie, Mr. Awesome, what would you like to say about today?”
(Pause). “I guess today was about problem solving. And they seemed like artificial problems caused by governments. An artificial pain the ass. If we got the piece of paper we could stay here for as long as we wanted we could do that. We couldn’t go to Mazatlan but we could go to Baja. And who is to say that Mazatlan is any better than Baja. The only purpose for this form is to try and get some level of committment that we aren’t going to stay in the country. Which is kind of funny as Mexican’s might be as committed to not have gringos staying in their country as we are so artificially committed to Mexicans not wanting to staying our country. It is beneficial to both of us to have each other in each other’s countries.”
An ideal day on this trip would be1 ½ to 2 hours of riding in the morning, 1-2 hour break over some food and talking to locals, then 1 ½ to 2 hours of riding in the afternoon, then setting up camp. Depending on road conditions this could mean any number of km - mostly our limits are about the comfort/state of comfort of our asses and mental fatigue. Caveat to this schedule is the temperature. The aforementioned schedule works well in the Pacific Northwest or Canada - but in… let's say the Sea of Cortez where it is angry hot and humid - this schedule won’t do. In this weather where it is always humid but only over 95 degrees after about 1-2 pm (let me just say that again - on the Sea of Cortez side this time of year it is ALWAYS 90+ % humidity and only in afternoons and evenings it is over 90+ degrees. No bueno). So, right - it’s best to do all riding before 2 pm. So again today we did a hard and long 4 hour ride from Santa Rosalia to Loreto. And we are at the whim of the road on when/where we can stop, as we don’t stop unless there is a safe place to do so. It is very tiring… we are hopeful mainland Mexico won’t be this humid and this far between for stops.
Highlight! We rode one of the absolute best stretches of Baja today. As Ernie said, it was seemingly right out of a magazine. Red rocks, green saguaros, yellow flowers, black asphalt, white sand, baby blue sky, and ice blue water - ice blue like the irises of the White Walkers. Sweeping turns around steep cliffs. No guard rails, no power lines, no billboards. Truly breathtaking - especially watching Ernie 100 m ahead in the scene. It all deserved a soundtrack. Although we still have a few hundred km to go in Baja, that stretch will be hard to beat in this beautiful Mexican State. It was a road of dreams.
At Yolanda Rivera’s Del Mar Camping and RV park. Very nice lady - I’m curious as to her story. In my feminista mind she is single and has left some crappy life in US America and come here to start this business and provide a better life for her kid (who could use a few manners… Ernie thinks he is just curious and that his curiosity will make him more worldly/that he is lucky to have access to people from other places. I’m sure Ernie is right...). There are only two other people here - an RV with Oregon plates and solar panels (and Yolanda says they never “show up”) and a very old trailer with Arizona plates that houses the only other person we’ve interacted with here. He has a t-shirt on that says “SECURIDAD” and cruises around with a walker. He is very sweet, and we had a few giggles. This last interaction we had was a bit confusing… Ernie and I were sitting and reading in the one “breezy” spot we found which is right by the common area/bathrooms/sinks/etc. (we are both reading The Pearl by Steinbeck). He left his trailer and came over and washed his dishes in the sink, and afterwards, instead of going back to his trailer, he sat down in the common area with us. I kept looking, said “Buenas noches”, but he just played with his phone. Couldn’t ever catch him looking up wanting to engage. As a good northerner though I kept asking “why would he come sit here with us if he didn’t want to engage?”. After about 20 minutes he went back to his dishes, touched them, and they were dry. So the best I can figure his nightly routine is eat dinner, stroll on out to common area, wash dishes, hang out until dishes are dry, then return to trailer.
In between 3 and 5/6 pm we had a nice (albeit HOT) walk around town. Had some cold cervezas from a bartender who was seemingly desperate to serve some cervezas. (It is not tourist season. There are few to no gringos here in this weather). There is a camino de la playa (which although is a bit out of our way) we took for most of our exploring, and not only did we see our first million sally lightfoot crabs (and their jumping), but we also saw our first flying bat rays. Ha ha!! Flying up and out the water… splash!!!! The pelicans turn in disgust at their frollicking. The pelicans turn in disgust at us walking by. I hope we see many more of all of the above.
Two things I’ve forgotten to mention on earlier posts about crossing Baja - the potholes and the saguaros in bloom. They are some mighty large ones here (both potholes and saguaros, but that was in reference to the potholes). The kind that we could nose dive into… they have been one of the biggest road hazards so far. Luckily there are “crews” that attend to the pot holes - i.e., two wheel drive pickup trucks with 2-3 men tossing shovels-full of ground up asphalt into them. Since this kind of work is done in summer when it's over 100 degrees, the chunks just melt into the highway. Perfect! And then the blooms on saguaros. In my limited botanical experience the flowers of plants are mostly relatively proportionate to the plant itself. This is not the case with the saguaro. This cactus is 10-30+ feet high and its flowers are probably ~6” in diameter. And there are only a few dozen per saguaro. It looks more like a plant with chicken pox than a succulent trying to spread its seed.
“Ernie, what would you like to remember about today?”
“The jumping rays. They are beautiful and surreal and so unlike anything I have ever seen in the Northwest. If they flapped their fins just a little faster I bet they could fly. And the hopping crabs. They are almost like fleas. Very quick.”
July 9
Ok Sea of Cortez. You are beautiful and rocky and I adore your critters, but HOLY HELL you are hot. Another night of lying awake sweating and hating. Discomfort eventually forcing us to move in the “morning”. We had a very slow and very quiet pack job to get west ASAP.
After we got gas and water and rode fast enough to start the process of getting our kevlar gear to peel away from our skin, the plan was an ~175 km ride from Loreto to San Carlos on the Pacific Side. It proved to be the straight and boring stretch the map indicated it would be, so we again planned on hitting it hard early in the day and being done by the afternoon. We asked Yolanda if there was camping there and she said no, but we just couldn’t believe it. There is this beautiful paved road to the Pacific side for whale watching during the tourist season and there must be someone who has an RV park or camping or something! Alas… no. Yolanda was right. After a drive around town (which didn’t take long) we decided to go into the “Sports Bar With Information for Tourista”. We ordered some agua con pina (not pineapple juice - but water with fresh pineapple squeezed in - yum!). Then we order sopas con pollo (chicken soup) and chilaquitas (don’t know translation, but it was cheese, tortillas soaked in tomato something). The sopas looked like plain old broccoli, chicken and potatoes in water but WOW was it good. The chilaquitas were a hot mess. Anyway, right after we ordered we asked the waitress (as this was the place for information for tourists) if there was any place to camp. She paused, looked outside, and said “un momento”. She popped her head out the doors of the restaurant and talked to the man walking down the street. He proceeded to come inside and pull up a chair. Crispin. Senor Crispin Mendoza. And the next 2-3 hours began! He spoke english so we started with what we wanted/were looking for, which was camping in San Carlos. Long story short - no. He gave us some ideas but none seemed safe and/or pleasant. But then the chatter began! Politics, history of San Carlos, the environment, fishing, and whales! He has been a whale watching and sport fishing tour guide for 45 years. He was the first one to open such a business in San Carlos. When he first started, since he was the only guide, everyone knew Crispin. But now that there are so many guides, they don’t know him any more (the competition doesn’t want the newcomer to be so quickly introduced to the best!) … After a good hour at the “Sports Bar” the food showed up and he said “have your lunch and come to my house after. I live right where your bikes are parked”. So we did! We sat on his beautiful patio, met his wife and doggies, visited some more about life and happiness and the “value” of money and life. He showed us some of his favorite pictures of whales (including one of a fully erect gray whale phallus). Please, if you ever come to Baja to whale watch, go with Crispin Mendoza! See our Google Map image for his tele. Gracias por todo Crispin!
After the joy that was Crispin and San Carlos we decided it would be best to just head back NE to Ciudad Constitution and camp in an established campground, as it was only about 50 km and we had seen two caracaras on the way there and maybe we would see more on the way back (caracara = in our opinion the most bad ass bird of prey on baja). We arrive to “La Misiones” around 4 pm. The driveway/vehicle gate is locked but a small herd of teenagers are exiting through the pedestrian gate. We turn our motos off and just sort of wait/hang… not knowing how to proceed. Within a minute or so we see a few teenage girls carrying a drunk/mildly injured girl and a young man with keys unlocks the gate, gets his Dodge Charger, loads up the girl, and takes off. She can walk and was sort of laughing so while we felt sorry for her there is no need for alarm or authorities. We pull into the campground, park, and head to the office. No one… There is a pool with an additional dozen teenagers (~14-16 years old) but no adults anywhere. We go to the little store next to this place and ask the worker there what he knows about this place. The owner of the tienda seems surprised that La Senora (the owner) is not here. We wait about an hour, during which we connect to wifi and find the only other RV park/campground in town looks like a refinery, so we decide to just set up camp. Lots of hummingbirds! We talk a bit about them and how they migrate, and we wonder if any of them are Sarah’s hummingbirds (Hi Sarah! Our neighbor on Prescott who, with Roger, feeds all kinds of birds on their corner lot). At some point either an adult or the kid with the keys and the Charger will be back and we can pay and figure this all out. Well now it's about 8 pm and the kid with the Charger is back, locked the gate, but did not come to us. Our working hypothesis is that La Senora is on a vacay and that she left her son the keys and instructions, and the only reason we got in is because he had to open the gate to let his injured friend out. Since we are surrounded by them, Ernie and I are hoping that these kids and us have come to an agreement: we don’t care what you are doing and won’t bother you and you don’t care what we are doing and won’t bother us.
Admittedly I’m a bit nervous about how we are getting out of here tomorrow… the gate is locked and some 15 year old with a giant set of keys who is currently drunk and swimming and singing is somehow in control of our ability to exit this place?!?
All power and hopeful understanding aside, I am happy to realize that my disdain for teenagers in/as a collective is international and without bias - i.e., regardless of skin color or gender or geographic location or cultural influence, I find the juvenile gaggle of teens to be annoying and pathetic. I have nothing against the single teen, or the small group of teens working with and against each other to figure out how the fit into whatever they are trying to fit into. It is the collective mentality that ruins them. The group at this camp is about 3 girls and 10 boys. Drinking Tecate Lights. Smoking and coughing while smoking. Total and complete disrespect and ignorance for “things”. And by that I mean things that cost money - 16 is the age at which money is becoming very important yet with no responsibility for the big ticket items. 16 year olds need money to have fun but don’t pay bills or rent or cars like 18-20 year olds do. So they treat “things” the worst compared to any age group. Younger that 16 they have parents who scold, and older than 16 they have the responsibility themselves. I realize I’m lumping a lot of people into one group and pooping on them... But as I watch them throw their garbage into the cacti and spit at each other and beat on their cars and play their music too loud or curse real loud then look over just to see if they can get a reaction out of us… I want to wave my magic wand and make them grow up so they stop treating people and the earth poorly. I asked Ernie what he thought of what was happening witht he teens and he said “the guys are interested in hopefully touching a nipple tonight. I don’t know what the girls are interested in”. Ha! But then we talked about whether it was our privilege that made us not this way as teens. Neither of us had a childhood experience where we behaved that way. Sure we did annoying things, as kids are always annoying, but never that group-mob kind of mean...
And POOF. The party just ended… all dozen of them packed themselves and their contraband up and left. Is La Senora coming home???
No joke! La Senora just got home. With two yellow labs. In the summer when it is slow she rents the place out to groups of teens for parties - kind of like renting a bowling alley for the afternoon. This all explains their entitled behavior, so I’ll eat that part of my previous diatribe. Them renting out the joint still doesn’t explain their mistreatment of it and us, so I can still sit on my pony thinking about group teen behaviors.
Smelt something really fragrant coming from yonder so Ernie and I took a walk. Holy cow! This enormous white bloom! Bigger than my head! Smells so good!
Side note - it seems the pics I’m posting on Google Maps aren’t coming through correctly/properly/in their entirety/etc., so if anyone is actually reading these posts and can figure out what I’m doing wrong/how to fix so that you can see all the pics I post correctly - please tell me! Internet is crazy slow here so it's hard to troubleshoot.
“Ernie, what would you like to remember about today?”
“Everywhere we go people are always warning us about something. It just seems like in the US it was banditos and now it’s the protests in Argentina. It just seems like a funny thing to bring up to travelers. And I wonder what is the intention there? Or is there an intention there? What are people trying to say? What is the psychology behind this whole thing?”
And then began a long talk about the psychology behind the whole thing…
July 10
Very tough day… rode from Ciudad Constitucion to La Paz, about ~220km. The first and minor issue is that it is very boring. Biologically and geologically it is the most uninteresting part of this state. I feel bad for all the people who just come to Cabo or La Paz and think THAT is what Baja looks like! Other than another caracara flying and a single road runner, no wildlife. And geologically… totally boring! And no farming, no towns… I suppose there were some grand and interesting santuarios (more on those in a bit). And then the really tough part of the day - the construction. Here in Baja when they are repaving the road they divert traffic to the sand, dirt, gravel mess off the side of the road. Sand + gravel + moto = very difficult riding. It wasn’t even that many km, but it was sooooo hard. I honestly can’t believe we both made it on both stretches without falling. And the cars and trucks were mostly patient but still riding our tails and putting on pressure. Thought I was just going to burst into tears afterwards.
Then arriving into La Paz… it’s just a mess. Lots of cars, nothing is on the grid system, streets aren’t labeled. We got lucky in where we pulled off to check our map in that we were only a few blocks from our campsite. The lady who runs this place (didn’t catch her name) is adorable. 80 lbs wet. Started this place with her husband in the 50’s after they were married. Its a bit run down and a bit expensive, but its got great view! She didn’t have any camping spots with shade and her son was like (in spanish) “Ma - they are on motorcycles - put them in the corner shady spot even though its not a real spot”. And she did! She made the exception… :) Agenda after getting off our bikes was 1) find food and 2) find store for cerveza y hielo (beer and ice). We only had to walk a short way to find some pollo picante gorditas (yum! But - and can’t believe I’m saying this - too much carb. One layer of corn outside of Mexi food is plenty - two is too much). Then across the street a modelorama. We don’t know what modelorama means, but they pretty much only sold beer and ice and chips. Which is pretty much all we needed. And on the way home we walked by a house that was throwing away a styrofoam cooler, so tonight we don’t have to drink our beers fast if we want them cold! Fiesta!
In between the gorditas and the modelorama we walked a bit out of our way to 1) walk off the gorditas, and 2) visit a giant grocery store. Turns out we both enjoy going to grocery stores while traveling just out of curiosity. It is part of the insight into the culture and habits of an area. (And good to do while one is full and not hungry). It was in fact huge - at one point we saw “Walmart” and I asked Ernie if he thought it was a Walmart but he said the sign was comparing the prices to Walmart. Meaning this store was cheaper than Walmart. (To which I thought, what is cheaper than Walmart in Mexico?!?). The three things that stuck out the most were the watermelons, the fish, and the chicarrones. The watermelons were enormous. Too big for most Mexican women to pick up and put in their carts. Too big to fit in carts! Second, the fish section. Most of the fish was sold as whole fish and not filets. This was great. The Mexicans know what kind of fish they are buying whereas in US America we get filets of mystery fish. And then the chicarrones. Or I guess more acurately the chicarrone maker. You know how when you go into Ace Hardware and there is the popcorn machine and you can help yourself to a bag? Well imagine a popcorn machine twice as big as those and filled with pig skin instead of popcorn. There were some bags already filled - just like the popcorn at Ace. Or you could fill your own bag. There were heat lamps on the top and the cart could technically be wheeled any where around the store. The whole thing brought me equal parts pleasure and disgust.
Back to the view I spoke of… I suppose this is our reward for making it through the construction. Dolphins! We are watching dolphins and frigates and pelicans come into the bay and feed and frollick. Well, not the pelicans. They have such an attitude I love it. Oh! And the parakeets. I’m not sure if they are native or what - will have to look that up.
Santuarios… I am really not sure of their history, but we are confident of their purpose. They are tributes to those who died in car accidents. Some are small, maybe the size of a suitcase. Made of cement with name painted on and perhaps some plastic flowers. Others are the size of our tent, with multiple dimensions and symmetries and a place to sit and pray for those lost. Crosses and statues of Jesus or Lady Guadalupe are all around them. And then a few are very grand, bigger than some houses we have seen. One even had a life size Jesus statue. Some paint the path from the road to the santuario, some add toys or trucks (like semi trucks for the truckers that have died). One was even in the shape of a semi truck. Ernie thinks the bigger ones are actually places for truckers or people to stop and pray for a while. I think they are where rich people died…
“Ernie, what would you like to have in our notes for today?”
How desolate this part of Baja is. It is flat and monochromatic. Dull and dusty. And how we saw dolphins and how slowly they swim. That there still are dolphins on this planet and we haven’t betrayed them all yet. I was thinking about the Chinese shipping container on the back of that truck we saw and their logo was two dolphins. There is an irony there.”
July 11
Cover your ears kids….
FUCK. Maybe I’ll fill in more later, but for now...
1) we got stupid lost in La Paz this morning. Ended up doing a two hour circle looking for any of the several roads that head south to Los Cabos. Asked and asked and ended up at an Applebee’s with Wifi. (As a reminder, all of this is in full moto gear at 100+ degrees and 90% humidity and traffic and speed bumps and traffic and Mexican traffic “laws”).
2) While at Applebees, in addition to memorizing a map and way out of La Paz over some shit scramble, we google “camping in Los Cabos” and come up totally empty. It is pretty much hotel only (probably could talk an RV park into letting us as its off season, but no shade at most RV parks that say “no tents” on their website). Also, it is noon by now and LC is over 200km away… should we just abort doing the last stretch of Hwy 1 around Los Cabos and get on the ferry to Mazatlan?!? (Ferry only runs Tues and Thurs). Long story short we decide YES.
3) get to ferry, get tossed around to different lines and people. Need to buy X permit and have Y and Z paperwork. Don’t have A and B paperwork, have to go C office to get it, which is way back in the part of La Paz we just got lost in(but bonus! We knew how to get there yay!)
4) get to the place where we need to get what we need to get… we can’t get what we need there. No es possible. Only possible at borders. Tijuana or Tecate or Mexicali. Starting in 2015 tourists need an FMM card, and it is tourist responsibility to get it. I.e., it is not automatic at borders because North Americans can hang for 7 days without an FMM card. If we exit through the northern border if Baja, no problem, but if we want to get to mainland Mexico we HAVE TO HAVE IT. THERE IS NO GETTING ON FERRY WITHOUT THIS CAR. Long horrific pause, crying, imagining riding motos back up through Baja, over to Texas, then to Mazatlan - some 2000-3000 miles away some month later. In this heat with everything we just did… Cry. Cry. Cry. Ernie is as solid as a rock. Tara is cry cry cry. (And I do hope I come back to this post at some point and write about the facility all this happened in, a seriously surreal shit hole). In Ernie’s solid as a rock state he suggests we fly to Tijuana to get the paperwork. That could work! From what we understand, it is about us a people, not about how we got here or how we are traveling around here. We don’t need our motos to get this card...
5) Tara remembers a hotel with a gated parking lot in the mass amounts of driving today. Plan in motion and details get filled in fast. Get hotel and sweet talk manager into keeping bikes here while we are gone. Must have a safe place for bikes. Give dude who’s sole purpose in life is to watch the gated lot 500 pesos to check in our babies every so often. Check. Buy plane tickets. Check. We leave July 12, do paperwork in Tijuana July 13, fly back to La Paz July 14. It’s possible we could do everything in less time, but we decide to play it safe, and the next ferry isn’t until July 18th anyway. Eat tacos. Check. Find and book hotel in Tijuana. Check. Take all gear off bikes, bring to hotel room, repack for both our mini trip to Tijuana and for locking up everything in hotel. Check. Relax. No “Check” on that one yet…. As clw taught me to say, “entonces”
But the most important bits of the day - the people! At the ferry terminal, the immigracion office, this hotel, the randoms we asked for directions - they were/are all amazing. Kind, patient, spoke english and spanish. Such incredible people… they have no reason to be so kind and yet they were/are so so so kind. We got the feeling that we weren’t the first gringos to have this issue since the instating the FMM thing, yet they still handled it all with grace and kindness. The people and places of Mexico are not an ocean of kidnapping, bandidtos, drugs and bribes as US Americans seem to think it is. As big of a jackass that Trump has been towards this country, we haven’t felt that resentment at all. Mexico has been awesome to us. To be clear, all of this was our fault, not theirs.
“Ernie, Mr. Awesome, what would you like to say about today?”
(Pause). “I guess today was about problem solving. And they seemed like artificial problems caused by governments. An artificial pain the ass. If we got the piece of paper we could stay here for as long as we wanted we could do that. We couldn’t go to Mazatlan but we could go to Baja. And who is to say that Mazatlan is any better than Baja. The only purpose for this form is to try and get some level of committment that we aren’t going to stay in the country. Which is kind of funny as Mexican’s might be as committed to not have gringos staying in their country as we are so artificially committed to Mexicans not wanting to staying our country. It is beneficial to both of us to have each other in each other’s countries.”