Querencia 🇲🇽

Over the course of about two weeks I rode from La Paz in Baja California Sur to the city of Mexicali at the border with the United States. I haven’t come across solitude like this in a long time. Many times it reminded me of riding on the Ruta 40 in Argentina. It wasn’t a very eventful time but I did enjoy it. Carefully studying the map showed some streches between towns of up to 200 kilometers; at times I was carrying 15 liters of water and enough peanut butter and Nutella to get me through just about anything.

I spent one rest day at a nice campground in La Paz that I’d heard about from a few other cyclists. The ride from the boat ramp where the ferry landed was a few kilometers and I quickly found myself at the gate to the Peace Center RV camp. There was a phone number on the door and the owner Pavel gave me the code for the lock-box over the phone. His cousin Mario would be back later that afternoon. After covering a lot of distance the past few weeks it was nice to relax and not be moving. I made a coffee and sat around a bit doing what exactly, I don’t remember. Mario gave me a few recommendations for fish tacos and I went to investigate. Mexico and Central America are the cradle of mais so I was surprised to now be asked if I wanted “maíz o harina” tortillas at the taquerias. All along the peninsula I found flour tortillas and burritos, two TexMex staples hinting at my proximity to the border.

Eventually I left La Paz and hit the road. I wasn’t sure how bad the mid-summer heat would be in the desert but had resolved to be riding before sunrise every day. I woke up that first morning, so early that I just felt tired all day. I was never on the bike before sunrise. My routine has gotten me this far, why change a winning formula? Instead, most nights I would ride about thirty minutes to an hour past sunset after it had finally cooled off a bit and then jump into the desert for a quick “stealth spot.”

On my first of many such nights I had rested my bike against a small concrete wall and was enjoying how quiet the desert was. I sat in that spot until it was dark and got up to cook and setup camp. I walked over to my bike and saw a weird, long thing with a diamond pattern lying in front of me. I stopped and thought maybe it’s a snake and sure enough it slithered on a bit and took up a more aggressive position. The near perfect silence of the desert was suddenly broken by the distinctive rattle of the “Cascabel de Baja.” I took a few steps back and basqued in how awesome this was; to revel in the multitude crazy ways that nature expresses itself and how special it felt to be visited by such a neat little creature on my first night out here in the desert. After a few minutes of posturing by the snake, it moved on and that was that. One of my most memorable nights in camp that took me completely by surprise. “Oh yeah, that’s right, there might be snakes out here,” I was thinking.

For the second year I celebrated my birthday on the bike, this time in the city of Insurgentes. The night before, I rolled into the 4 Points RV park shortly after sunset. There were a few people sitting around having a beer and we began chatting. It was the owner having some friends over, the RV park was closed but I could stay anyways, no worries. The owners mom was inside and invited me in for a tamale dinner. She works in Oregon as a teacher and coordinator of a state wide Spanish immersion program. I camped out front of their house and we had breakfast together in the morning. I was wondering when you’re supposed to tell someone you just met that it’s your birthday when it’s the day of your birthday. “Hey good morning, it’s my birthday?” After breakfast I told them I’d step outside to call my family because today was my birthday, which was met with laughter and felicidades.

After la Ciudad de Insurgentes I made a 90 degree turn toward the east and received a nice tailwind for my birthday. About an hour before sunset I had an issue with my rear tire that required some work. The Surly Extraterrestrial tires that I had been using had been mostly good, but the last two that I had, had both failed around the same time (way earlier than the other three I had used) in the same way. Strange. I was by myself in the desert and liked having a problem and feeling in control. I had what I needed to keep moving I just needed to get to work. Unfortunately, I’m not sure why, but the two times that I was on the roadside with my bike in pieces no one ever stopped to ask if I needed anything. It took about an hour to swap a few things out in the rear tire and I was on the move in time to find a campsite. That night I camped in the desert down a little dirt road that led to a microwave repeater station. The night skies were consistently incredible.

After my turn toward the east I rode along the Gulf coast of the Baja peninsula, which was incredibly humid and much less comfortable than the Pacific coast. On the Pacific coast or anywhere inland, the night time temperatures dipped comfortably into the low 20’s Celsius, which made for great sleep. But on the Gulf coast it was still well into the 30’s around midnight, which made for uncomfortable nights. In the town of Santa Rosalía I stayed with the fire department again and they told me about the town’s history. There had been a French mining company in operation here since the 19th century until about the 1950’s. The church in town had been designed by Gustav Eiffel and was originally built for the 1889 Paris Exposition (i.e. “World’s Fair”). Afterwards it was transported to Baja, Mexico for use in this French mining town, which was easy enough as the whole building is made of sheet metal.

Each time that I crossed from the Gulf side to the Pacific side I also had to climb up and over the ridge of mountains that runs the length of the peninsula. Leaving Santa Rosalía was no different and upon cresting the ridge I was confronted by a strong westerly headwind. I made it to the very small town or San Ignacio where Othon and his family run a Casa de Ciclista, a cheap place for cycle travellers to stay. I took a rest day there and found a new rear tire that another traveller had left behind hanging in a tree. It’s way smaller than the tires I had been using and looks a little disproportionate on my bike. The tire is branded Chaoyang from the Hang Zhou Rubber Factory, I’d never heard of it, but it’s been working just fine.

The distance between settlements became even greater in the state of Baja California. I’d check with people what the distance was to the next place where I could find water and food and then double and triple check that and hit the road. These stretches felt very desolate and the environment was harsh and inhospitable. Unfortunately, there was a lot of roadside litter, disconcertingly mostly Tecate beer cans, and I often found parts of the peninsula rather depressing. There were many half-completed or partially destroyed construction projects sitting sun bleached in the desert and plenty of abandoned camper vans and trailers left to rot very slowly in the desert. Eventually, though even these long quiet stretches came to an end and I reached the town of San Felipe. I took a break, ate food, rested, had coffee, filled all of my water jugs and got ready to keep going. That night I camped at Chateau San Felipe, a small vineyard here in the desert that I was surprised to come across. I chatted a bit with Art the owner and he said I could camp out, no worries.

I had imagined myself here in Baja waking up early, seeing every sunrise from the bike, and generally just going super fast. Make no mistake, I was going fast but maybe I just thought it’d be easier and I had by no means magically become a morning person. By this point, less than 200 kilometers south of the US border I was exhausted after many days of nothing but cycling; there’s not much else to do and the one rest day I took was spent practically loitering in the yard at the Casa de Ciclista. I had also wanted to ride a century (i.e. 100 miles) on my birthday but that didn’t come to fruition. I woke up that morning at the vineyard, fixed a flat tire, and hit the road around 08:00 AM. On some weather charts I had seen strong prevailing winds in this last part across a big open salt flat north of the Sea of Cortez. I had silently held out hope that I’d get to ride those winds. When I set off that morning I thought it would be two more days to the city of Mexicali and the US border but as soon as I was on the bike I figured today’s conditions were perfect and I’d do it in one.

On my last full day in Mexico I rode my longest day yet and covered 181 glorious kilometers through a truly barren landscape. My little bike computer measured 51 degrees Celsius, the hottest I think I’ve ever experienced; my brake levers were hot to the touch and the water I was carrying wasn’t particularly refreshing. Every 50 kilometers or so I found a shop to buy some drinks and the closer I got to Mexicali, a few taco stands here and there. The tailwind was incredibly strong and it made me think of a couple that I had met way down south in Argentina. I had spent the better part of a morning cycling into an absurd headwind and had covered maybe 15 kilometers. They were going the other way and had told me, almost apologetically, that they had already covered over 100 kilometers and it wasn’t even lunch time. We had a good laugh about it and parted ways but the memory stuck with me. Sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down.