Run for the border

Sunday morning I took off from LA, I probably got out of there around 8-9am. It was raining most of the way again but once I got to San Diego I was able to dry off a bit.

At the border I made my last stop to make sure I had everything I needed before I went into the warzone (tijuana) like an extra gas can, a belly full of food, some extra water, mexican vehicle insurance. This all seemed to take longer than it needed to and I didnt even cross the border until about noon or so. I forgot to pack a watch so the time of day has been something I haven't even thuoght about much.

Crossing the border all happened very fast and I was cruising through thinking I had to stop somewhere but I just drove right through without any problems which I thought was strange, I was sure I had done smoething wrong but didn't care enough to turn back. The road right after the border throws about a million road signs with different arrows and spanish writing on them so needless to say I had no Idea which way to go. I knew I was heading for Ensanada and spotted it on a sign so I headed that direction and eventually got out of tijuana. I didn't stop in tijuana, and didn't really have any desire to. The whole place smells absolutely terrible, like an overflowing port-o-potty spitting out car exhaust. None of the cars have emission controls and the gasoline they sell called pemex* isn't made to burn clean, it's meant to burn dirty and cheap which makes riding a motorcycle in traffic pretty rough on the lungs. I'll admit that I had a terrible first impression of mexico and was starting to wonder if I could enjoy being in such a shithole.

As soon as I got to tijuana the mood relaxed, the smell faded, and the coast appeared. The roads were nice, probably because they had a toll road every 10 miles or so to pay for maintenance and such. The ride was pleasant and I began to take in the very first little bit of the next 1000 miles of beautiful baja countryside I was about to discover. The one thing I was concerned with was the police because of how many warnings horror stories we all here. I just kept my cool and cruised through, not bothering anyone and keeping to myself. No problems.

Ensanada is about 70 miles from tijuana which was a good place to spend my first night in mexico. It is the most populated city for about 300 miles down the baja coast so I grabbed a nice little hotel room there (that I could bring my motorcycle into, of course) for about 25 bucks. After unpacking, studying my map, and watching some bull fighting on TV I decided to head out and get a feel for the people. I walked around ensanada a bit and went to a small resturant for some authentic mexican dining. I found a clean looking little place on a corner, and picked up the menu to find the house specialty was different varyations of baked potatoes. Not exactly what I had in mind but I was hungry so I just grabbed a cheese burger there and figured I'd hit plenty of taco stands later on.After the sun went down, I grabbed a beer and went back to the hotel room to relax. Drank about half of it and switched over to water before I fell asleep unexpectedly.

I woke up fairly early on monday and tried to get a good solid early start but I noticed in my travel guide that you need something called a "tourist card" to go south of ensanada. Apparently I was supposed to stop at the border to pick one up, oops. The tourist card ended up being a pain in the ass, took me about 2 hours to get, and then after eating something I ended up not getting out of there until 11am. This bummed me out becuase my target town for the night, Guerrero Negro, was 378 miles away and I had no desire to ride in the dark.

I rode and rode along the pacific baja coast, taking in the beautiful oceanside and mountains coupled with nice little mexican villages where the only paved road is the one going right through the middle, the mexican highway 1. I didn't have any reason to stop much along the way except for gas which I stopped wayyy too often for because people had told me a lot of gas station's run out of gas and I should never pass a working one. I know now that I can go much futher than I thought without stopping at a station.

As soon as I passed El Rosario there was literalle nothing for about 260 miles. That includes no gas stations, resturaunts, mini marts, fast food joints, none of that crap. Just pure unadulterated, winding road, rolling hills, and dessert as far as you can see. I rode for hours and the sun began to sink. I was almost out of water and I suspected I was nearly out of gas. I wasn't worried about the fuel becuase I packed an extra gallon on the back of my back so I knew it would get me an extra 50 miles after I ran out.

I began to consider taking my bike into the dessert and finding a hidden place to camp. I wasn't looking forward to it because I had barely any water, and the only food I bought for the trip was a big bag of beef jerky which I left at Max's house back in petaluma. The night was going to suck but I just figured that's why they call it an adventure and looked forward to what kind of critters I might wake up next to, heh heh. I stopped at the side of a road when I saw a man who had a pickup truck with two barrels of gasoline in the back that he sold to people running low on gas and decided to buy a tanks worth off of him. I figured it was cheap insurance just in case there wasn't another gas station since the last two I had passed were abandoned. After I stopped, I snapped a photo of the man and his girlfriend and started getting ready to go. Just as I was doing so, 4 guys rode by on KTM adventures and a BMW. One of them stopped to ask for a place to camp and turned out that the four of them were in the same situation as me so I buddied up with the guy and rode on to find his friends. They had stopped at a tiny market which was across from a resturaunt so we grapped a six pack at the mini mart and headed to the resturaunt for dinner. The "resturaunt" was really just some family's house and the mother would kick burritos, tacos, and shrimp for people on the road if they decided to stop in. I think I had two burritos (the size of an american taquito each) and some rice and beans for about 35 pesos (~3.50 us) and it was pretty good stuff. That's when I learned the word "machaca" which is a salty, sun dried beef. Turned out that the four guys are firefighters from the tahoe area, what a coincidence.

After dinner, we decided to head back to an abandoned RV park we had passed between the gas man and the resturaunt to camp out for the night. We ended up drinking a beer or two in the starlight and camped out on some old cement slabs. It was very nice out and there wasn't a light for miles so the stars were magnificent to say the least. I fell asleep looking forward to whatever the hell the next day would throw at me. I was definitely ready for it (or so I thought)