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