Thursday 29 December 2016

Baja California - North


As I sit here in a motel reception in Loreto, Baja on Thursday, Dec 29th I have ridden consecutively for 15 days and am 3/4 way through Baja California. I'm tired and dying for a few days off the bike. It's been a tough old section of the route. Always an endless road ahead, very few towns, very few cyclists, desert and cacti. But as I look back through my photos to see which ones are worth writing about I smile. Today I'm tired and bored and feeling a bit down in the dumps. But as I look back through my Baja trip I see so many highlights and memories of so many good days and magic moments. Writing this blog has been a very good exercise me thinks.
Sunset on the road in Baja.
Before I arrived into Baja I had heard that this section was a 'desert' and full of 'retired American snowbirds' (Americans looking for a cheap sunny winter shelter) and that it was not as nice as cycling trough mainland Mexico. I have cycled now through three weeks of desert, met way too many drunken retired American snowbirds, camped out between many cacti (often spectacular) and must have eaten 100 tacos (either shrimp, deep fried breaded fish or grilled beef) but all quite yum. At $1 a pop, a tasty daily encounter. I can't comment yet on the comparison to the mainland but I'm kind of done with the desert and dying to get into Mexico proper.

My first fish and shrimp tacos in Tijuana, Mexico
Delicious ceviche - raw shrimp marinated in lime juice
There are two route options when cycling down the Baja. Either you keep going on Mexico 1 - the pan-american highway - or you cross the mountains to San Felipe and take the quieter east coast. In a moment of madness I decided to take the advice of my lovely Tijuana warm showers host (Sandra) and opted for option two. It turned out to be some of the most challenging cycling I have ever done.

There were nights camping wild in the desert among the cacti in the pouring rain, nights in deserted fishing villages looking for any sign of human life to ask for some water, nights spent at army checkpoints and glorious nights spent with Sweeny Green pitched behind random little restaurants that were on no map but which gave me access to electricity (diesel generators and/or solar), water and human company.
First night of wild camping in the Mexican desert.
Baja starts at Tijuana
Tijuana was a delight. Primarily because of the kindness of a warm showers host called Sandra. She picked me up from the border, brought me out for dinner and beer, brought me home (up 5 ridiculously steep hills) and then brought me to work with her the following day as my bike was in the workshop for some serious TLC.

This is Sandra.
'Made at your table' cesar salad
Sandra brought me to a bar which I would more expect to see in Paris than in Tijuana. It was gorgeous. Jazz music softly playing in the background. A far cry from the crazy border I had crossed ten minutes earlier. However tasty, at $10 for four lettuce leaves it was a tad pricey.
Bar in Tijuana where the Cesar salad was invented - 1927

My first Mole. Chocolate flavoured sauce over Enchiladas. Not really my thing.
My bike pedals had been clicking for a week or two and the cranks were wobbly. So I knew something was wrong. A new bottom bracket was needed. I ended up spending three nights in Tijuana as the bike shop was pretty busy. But oh my goodness, when I got my bike back it sparkled and rode like a Mercedez. It had crossed my mind to get the bike serviced in San Diego before I crossed the border, for some silly reason I thought the service might be better or they would have access to more mechanical parts. Silly me. The service and quality from my first Mexican bike shop was fantastic. And at $50 for a new bottom bracket, new chain, new brake pads, full service and full clean - a bargain!
The old bottom bracket looks a little rusty.
I hardly recognised my bike it was so clean.
From Tijuana I got a bus to Ensenada - as this was where myself and Leann had cycled to. And yet again warm showers came to the rescue.

What a Christmas tree. 
Christmas time family breakfast in Ensenada. Eggs on ham.
And of course refried beans.
Antonio, Mara and their 3 teenage boys host cyclists from all
over the world every week of the year. It's how the kids have learned English.
Little did I know leaving Ensenada that that would be the end of warm showers, breakfast eggs, comfy beds, light switches that work, taps which have running water coming out of them and HUMANS!!!
Ear phones a bit of a necessity. God bless Radio 4's Desert Island Discs.
Some kms of Baja Norte road. 
Some more kms.

At the cross road of Mex 3 and Mex 5 is an army checkpoint. On that particular day it was my aim to get to that checkpoint. Where there is army, there is water was my thinking. The army then sent me a couple of kms down the road to the nearest shop where I spent a very happy evening camping with Jesus (pronounced Hay-Zuz) and his wife and family. Jesus was very proud to show me his thermometer. As I was now on the east side of Baja California which is divided from the mainland by the Sea of Cortez, temperatures during the summer can reach a balmy 50 degrees celsius.

Jesus and his family ran a small roadside restaurant. It had no electricity except for a few hours during the evening when he ran a diesel generator. During this time I charged my phone while the kids watched cartoons on the TV. They also had no running water. All the water they used for drinking, cooking, washing was bought in large 20L drums. At this stage I'm surprised if water actually comes out of a tap in Baja California.

Jesus pointing out that temperatures can reach 50C in the summer.
Jesus offers me my own room for the night.
4 stone walls AND a roof, quite the luxury.
Jesus' wife and son. We drink coffee, eat oranges and chat until
late in the evening sitting around a large log fire in the kitchen.
The following morning I ask can I cook my porridge in their kitchen. As I boil my oats, raisins and powdered milk (pot on the right), Celia fries beans and boils green tomatoes and chilies (pots and pans on the left). The beans go into the tortillas as a base layer, while the green tomatoes make the yummiest salsa. They eat all this with fried chicken for breakfast. Quite the cultural difference.

Boiling green tomatoes and chilies while I cook porridge.
I did not much enjoy pushing Sherpa up this road. Crazy! 
From San Felipe south
One of the more interesting nights was spent in the little fishing village of El Huerfanito. At dusk I turned off the road onto a dirt road to the beach. I had seen some structures from a distance and thought there might be human life and therefore water. And just as if it were planned a man called Nacho appeared outside the first shack. He was more than happy that I pitched Sweeny G in a kind of garage beside his shack. It was blowing a gale at this stage and I was so glad of the shelter of three plastic walls and a tin roof. Nacho moved some chairs and work benches so that Sweeny G could fit snugly into a sheltered spot. He had very little but as with all other Mexicans I have met, was happy to share anything he had with me.
Sweeny Green tucked neatly into Nacho's garage with three walls and a roof.


I had heard about the illegal fishing of the Totoaba fish. It's a fish that is only found in the northern part of the Sea of Cortez. Seemingly the Chinese will pay a Mexican fisherman 6000 usd for the bladder. Its trade started three years ago.

According to the drunken retired Americans I met, a workman in Baja earns 200 pesos per day (10 usd). So based on that, one fish is worth about two years of a workman's salary. I thought it a little odd that Nacho lived in a fishing shack with the usual no running water or electricity but had an iPhone 6 and a brand new pick-up truck. I noticed it but thought nothing of it.

However I began to put the pieces of the jigsaw together when at 3.19am the following morning I was woken in my tent to the sound of male voice and many flashing torches. I knew something dodgy was going on but stayed quiet and still in my tent. Although I'll never be sure I had a gut feeling that there was a deal going down in El Huerfanito that night involving the famous fish.
Sunrise in El Huerfanito. My 5* hotel included the commonly seen
car seat converted into a comfy armchair.
Ronnie's road sign
A highlight of this part of the ride down the East coast was when I came across this sign at kilometre 133. I had met a guy who was fixing his car on the roadside a couple of days earlier. We chatted, his name was Ronnie. He said that I was more than welcome to pitch my tent at his house a couple of hundred kms up the road if I needed somewhere to stay.

Cardboard sign stuck to KM 133 road marker.
Ronnie's cardboard sign.
The sign reads 'Ireland to Panama 2017, one more mile to the beach for a deserved rest, Ronnie' and the picture of a shamrock. He had forgotten my name. He had stuck this cardboard note to the signpost with steel cable ties. Very professional. It was only 11am when I passed this sign on this particular day, so it didn't suit to stay the night. But I did call in. I had a shower, topped up my water, was given 1L of cold mango juice, a mug of coffee and two tasty grilled chicken sambos. The road providing yet again.


This is Ronnie sweeping sand from the porch of his beautiful seaside residence.

Some accommodation stats on the trip so far:

Total number of nights of this trip: 122
Total number of nights I have paid for accommodation: 31 (28%)
Nights spent in Sweeny Green: 51 (46%)
Nights when I have been offered a free bed (inc. with Vancouver Hardiman family): 21 (19%)
Nights in a motel/hotel/hostel: 11 (10%)
Nights with a warm showers host: 29 (26%)

Highlights
  • generally camping behind random restaurants along the way. Poor Mexicans with very little offer the cyclist everything they have. Very humbling.
  • seeing Ronnie's message stuck to a sign post
  • fish tacos
  • finding a cheap hotel in a tiny village high up in the mountains after 24 hours of pouring rain
  • doing 35kms per hour for two days straight with ferocious tailwinds
  • cycling through the desert
Lowlights
  • getting hit by the wing mirror of a pick-up truck on Mex 3 in the mountains between Ensenada and San Felipe. Ouch. My left arm was black and blue for a week.
  • endless boring flat road with only sand to look at as far as the eye can see
  • general lack of other cyclists
  • cycling through the god damn desert

Wednesday 14 December 2016

Yosemite National Park

Take I

Yosemite is one of the most beautiful places in the world I have ever been. Now as I write (I'm in Mexico and it's Dec 13th, 2016) I have actually been to Yosemite twice. For my first trip I was so kindly offered a car by two cyclists - Herbie and Shannon - and just told to go, that I would love it. So I did as I was told. It was a six hour drive north of LA and my first time driving in the US. I was a little apprehensive setting off but quickly got the hang of it. I will forever be grateful for the loan of my very own Toyota Corolla.

Sunrise and sunset are particularly spectacular.
The merced river flows through Yosemite valley
The famous Half Dome
I just hung out in the meadow at sunset on both days. Heaven.
Campground 4 is open all year round. It costs $6 per night to camp. Bargain.
Pitching tents close together means you all share a campfire at night.
What a treat.
Spontaneous sing-song round the campfire. This pic shows 4 pretty serious rock climbers.
German, Canadian, American, Dutch.
Yosemite is the Mecca for granite climbing. And campground 4 is where the rock climbers stay. 
Yet again my porridge was stolen by a racoon. So breakfast meant left with left-over
chick pea curry and spaghetti from the night before. A yummy Happy Pear recipe.
The Happy Pear 5 minute recipes are particularly good for camping.
Hiking up to Yosemite Falls. My legs ache for days after
as I haven't walked anywhere for months.
As I left before sunrise I stepped over several bodies in sleeping bags.
They had arrived overnight and were waiting to register at campground 4.
Take II

For the last few days of Leann's two week holiday we decided to rent a car and head north since Yosemite was only a ten hour drive away from San Diego. Although it was only three weeks after my first visit the conditions could not have been more different. Whereas I was in shorts and t-shirts applying sun cream, three weeks later with Leann we were trudging through snow and stepping carefully on restricted and blocked trails over ice. Oops. A bit of planning and research might have come in handy. Sorry Leann.
The hike up to Vernal Falls takes a while as we step carefully on the ice.
But we made the most of our time in Yosemite. As you do. After almost 12 hours of driving we pitched our tent in the dark, in the rain. The following morning after 10 hours of gorgeous deep sleep we woke in a puddle. We tried to cook our porridge... but cooking with layers of thick gloves is difficult. Washing pots in freezing water is even worse. We went to the visitors centre and found that although most trails and roads were closed, a few remained open. So off we went. Six hard boiled eggs tucked snugly in our hiking backpack.
Hiking with all our layers on - we still aren't very warm.
It was a very long shot. But three weeks earlier I had met a retired American working in the visitor centre. We chatted about cycling and he just happened to mention if I ever returned to Yosemite, to get in touch as I could stay in his cousin's cabin. I never gave it a second thought as I never for a moment thought I was going to return. So I threw away the piece of paper with his mobile number. His name was Don. Well three weeks and one very wet tent later I went looking for Don. And voila. As if by magic I found him and he said we could stay in his cabin no problem. What a piece of luck. Landing on our feet yet again. One night we even had a campfire on the deck and roasted carrots with honey in tinfoil.
Don's cousin's cabin was a haven during 3 cold and wet
days in Yosemite.
Honey glazed carrots baking in the campfire on the cabin deck on our last
night in Yosemite. We borrowed a few logs from the neighbour's garden.
It's low season. No one was home. Honest.


LA to Ensenada, Mexico

Where do you start when you haven't written anything in six weeks, and so much has happened every day that you can't order your thoughts at all at all. I'll start with a map.


I knew my friend Leann would be arriving into LA on Nov 25th 2016. I had a couple of weeks to spare so amongst other things ended up at this Buddhist monastery in Escondido outside San Diego. I'll talk about that again. This post is about our trip from LA to Ensenada, Mexico.

I joined Leann in Anglesey, Wales this summer (2016) on her annual family camping trip and in a moment of madness around the campfire after a couple of glasses of vino Leann said she might join me on my cycle. She hoped her mother-in-law might help out with the kids. Her hubby Tom agreed it sounded like a great idea. And so voila - on Nov 25th there I found her, hiding behind her bike box in LAX airport arrivals. 

I had arranged for us to stay at a Warm Showers house on Leann's first night in LA. As the hosts already had cyclists staying, they kindly built up their own tent in their garden for us to use so that we didn't have to build our own tent at 10pm. We ordered an UberXL (big one to fit the bike box) from the airpot. My first Uber experience. What a great app. I'm a fan.

Leann - crazy lady (and mum of 3, including 8 month old Freddie) holds aloft the famous
Pacific Coast sign outside one of the best Warm Showers host houses on the west coast.
Myself and Leann met in Chile in 2004 and cycled together for a month or so. Getting back on the bike together was really special. As if we just picked up where we left off 12 years previously. I was so delighted that she made it. What a blast!

Leann's first breakfast in the US. First came the apples, then the cinamon, then the porridge,
then the honey, then the raisins. A feast.
Back on the road together after 12 years.
A down jacket needed for breakfast on the beach at 8am.
(after escaping from a campsite without paying)


Two tea-aholics chatted happily in the kitchen in San Diego over a cuppa. Linda and Tom weren't even on the Warm Showers database... they just happened to cycle with a guy called Ron who happened to know someone who knew Jill who I had stayed with in Santa Barbara. Five minutes after this picture was taken, they offered us (along with dinner of macaroni and cheese) two free passes to San Diego zoo. And such is life without a plan that when two zoo tickets come your way you happily say 'yes please, and thank you'.
We picked fresh lemons from Tom and Linda's lemon tree for our journey to Mexico

Tom climbs up on a ladder and picks 2 fresh
pomegranates for us to take on our journey
Only in the US.

San Ysidro and Tijuana, along with San Diego make up one big city on the US/Mexican border. After we had changed our last dollars into Mexican pesos and as were heading to buy our visas I spotted a guy waving madly at us. He was running towards us saying 'hey, did we meet on the boat from Victoria (Vancouver Island) to Port Angeles a few months ago?'. 

When I looked carefully I recognised the three Canadian cyclists. We had met almost exactly three months earlier on a ferry on my first proper day cycling on this trip. They recognised my bright green Ortlieb front panniers. God bless their eyesight... and memory. We had cycled more or less the same route over three months and just happened to start on the very same day and finish at the very same time on the very same day. It's such a small world. 
Bumped into 3 Canadian guys at the Mexican border.
I had met them on a ferry three months previously.
Delighted to be reaching Mexico. Let the real adventure begin.
No sooner had we crossed the border into Tijuana than we ran into a little bit of trouble. Trouble in the form of a busy 6 lane highway at rush hour with no hard shoulder. God only knows how we ended up on it, but once we were on it, we couldn't get off. We climbed and climbed, me slow as a snail with my big heavy bike and 4 pannier bags. Leann like a gazelle on her skinny tyres. 

We then descended on this noisy, dusty, pothole filled, scary motorway. At the first exit we headed for out. The exit led us to the town of Playas de Tijuana. Where on earth were we? And what the hell were we going to do if all roads in Mexico were like the one we just found ourselves on? 

And no sooner had we got our thoughts back together than an angel called Luisa appeared and said hello and asked us if we were ok. Ten minutes later we were cycling behind Luisa's car to her house. She had offered that we pitch our tent in her garden. Ten minutes after that we were drinking tea with her family and eating delicious fresh Mexican pastries. What a welcome to Mexico!

Luisa makes us the Mexican 'cafe de oya'.
Coffee in a pot basically.
Leann makes us all a fruit salad using the pomegranates
from Tom and Linda's San Diego garden.
After leaving Playas the Tijuana we headed off on the toll road called the 1D. We had been told that cyclists love it because it's the best paved road in the country AND it had a wide shoulder. Five minutes is all we lasted. The police showed up and kicked us off. So we had no option but to stick out our thumbs and hitch a lift. The first pick-up stopped and took us to a section of the road where we could exit off the motorway. Schade - as they say in German.
Saved on the toll road by a kind (and very handsome)
man in a pick-up truck.
We had an interesting Warm Showers experience that night. Ian allowed cyclists to stay in the basement of what used to be a youth hostel. On this particular night we shared his huge but slightly messy basement with a Canadian couple. Two tents and four bikes fitted easily in the shabby basement. There was a working light bulb, a loo and a plug socket. All a bicycle tourer needs.

Leann inside Sweeny Green in Ian's basement.
The free basement camp spot came with a beach front table and chairs.
Would you believe. We never managed to swim in the sea.
We tried a couple of times but the waves were just too strong.
Every Mexican city seems to have an enormous Mexican flag in the city centre.
Our first night in a hotel (a 20USD luxury) meant I had to hide
in the bathroom while cooking porridge. Luckily no smoke alarms.
South of Ensenada we decided to get off the main road and head out on a peninsula Google maps showed us, to see if we could find a quiet camp spot. 

We eat our first tomales on the road to La Bufadora (the blow hole)
The small tomales stalls all seems to sell olives and honey too.
Leann shows these Mexican kids pictures of her own children
back in Manchester. Everyone had the same comment 'they are so white'.
A gorgeous wild camp spot on the ocean. 
Little did we know but our 2 bikes behind us had a puncture each.
Note to self - watch out for thorny camp spots.
The night before this picture was taken we had popped into the local pub in La Bufadora, as you do. We asked some locals if there was a restaurant open for breakfast. On Mondays everything in this particular town is shut so an American couple we spoke to offered to collect us from our camp spot and take us to their house for breakfast. Richard appeared the following morning at 8am in his pick-up - there is always a pick-up involved - and brought us home for eggs, bacon, fried spuds and heaps of fresh fruit. Yum.
This lady spends her day collecting tortillas which fall off the conveyor belt
and packs them in piles of 12 to sell.
After spending the morning changing and patching inner tubes we headed south. The highlight of the day was a Tortilleria we came across. Basically a little shop/factory making and selling corn tortillas. We walked in and the owner's son gave us a tour and showed us how the Mexican staple was made. We left with a big bag of warm fresh corn tortillas.

Highlights
  • warm showers hosts - as always
  • arriving into Mexico and being offered a place to pitch our tent in someones back garden within about one hour of being in the country
  • Leann's cooking
  • drinking beer for the first time since Vancouver
  • staying in my first hotel of the trip
  • learning that you can listen to Google Map directions on your headphones while you cycle
  • singing random songs with your friend at the top of your voice as you cycle along
  • getting back into the habit of boiling 12 hard boiled eggs 
Lowlights
  • getting a puncture each on the same day after wild camping in a thorny camp spot
  • me pinching the brand new inner tube in Leann's bike, then having to repair the old tube with multiple patches
  • it rains for the first three days of Leann arriving in the US, we sleep in a wet soggy tent
Reading
All the light we cannot see by Anthony Doerr