A Wee Jaunt Around the World

While I have about 4 different entires half completed I wanted to drop a quick note to confirm that our travels have so far not encountered any sort of swine flu scare. Though does it seem odd to anyone else that the latest Mexican tactic to curb the spread includes sending it´s citizen´s travelling?

At any rate, we are currently in Puerto Escondito after having spent wonderful moments along the Pacific Coast between Puerto Vallarta and Acapulco, in Taxco, Mexico City and Oaxaca. We plan to depart for San Cristobal early May 3rd putting even more distance between us and the majority of reported flu cases.

Puerto Escondito is a lovely little town with an amazing surf break (stay off the beaches at night though!). Food along the Malecon is top notch and there is a constant flow of short and long term international visitors. Big thanks to Nina and Sara from Denmark for being the most interesting fellow travellers we´ve had the pleasure of spending time with thus far.

I promise more stories and photos as soon as possible. For now rest assured we are safe and happy and have loved every moment of our time with our neighbors to the south!

All my best,
August

At the end of the day, regardless of the flat tire delays, we had lovely visit to El Fuerte, a quaint town north of Los Mochos where we ended up staying the night. Our guides and hosts, Ray and Paul, members of the Mochos motorcycle club were fantastic and even struck us a deal at the hotel just behind the fort itself after having treated us to a delicious dinner at the El Cortez restaurant.

Mazatlan, the next destination and current location has treated us well so far. More surf, more great food though not at all the party town we had anticipated. At first glance it seemed a vacation destination past its prime but upon further inspection it seems a tourist town with an actual industrial base and thus without the need to cater entirely to the tourist needs. Senior Frogs seems to be the only strictly tourist attraction and with all intensity I recommend NOT visiting, having a drink or bite to eat or even checking out the souvenir shop at Senior Frogs.

Our next destination shall be Puerto Vallarta during Mexico’s Semana Santa and promises to be a new adventure.

After two days camping at Playa San Pedrito, a beautiful beach outside Todos Santos (home of the Hotel California) we moved on to Cabo San Lucas with newfound friend, David. We met David while checking out the surf at a beach in Cerritos and he proved a fantastic friend through to Mazatlan and a great resource for the area having already completed a motorcycle voyage through Central and South America.

Todos Santos and its surrounding communities and beaches were lovely, still lots and lots of desolate desert that we were tiring of when we finally arrived in Cabo San Lucas during the peak of America’s Spring Break!

Yes, Spring Break in Cabo San Lucas is everything Chris and August had thought it would have been when they opted not to participate while attending university. Highlights include:
- the “puppies” show at 4pm at Mango Deck on the beach.
- wave runner adventures without throttle limiters
- Chris’ scuba adventures including the largest puffer fish he’d seen and a fist fight with a seal
- Impressive nightlife…to say the least
- Fantastic surf outside San Jose del Cabo
- The hotel Los Jazmines, odd, interesting, CHEAP, and every convenience needed within a 2 block radius
- And downsides that prolonged the stay: food poisoned August, down for 5 days & carburetor problems that took 6 days to resolve.

All and all a fabulous little adventure in Cabo San Lucas and on the evening of March 28th we boarded the ferry in La Paz destined for Topolobampo, mainland Mexico!

As an overall report the trip so far has been fantastic and far more adventure already than we possibly could have imagined. We can only report on the people of Baja so far but absolutely every local with whom we’ve interacted, including the military at their numerous and sometimes sudden and unanticipated checkpoints has been absolutely lovely.

To keep things short we present the highlight reel of our first two weeks in Baja:
- Overall amazing feeling to be finally on the road and utterly surreal to anticipate as we ride along that this is actually to be our lives into the foreseeable future.
- No problems entering at Tijuana and driving immediately around on toll roads to head quickly south.
- So far we’ve stayed in San Felipe, Coco’s Corner, Guerrero Negro, Punto Arena (just outside Mulegé), La Paz and Playa de Pedrito (just outside Todos Santos).
- OUTSIDE TODOS SANTOS WE PET WHALES IN THEIR NATURAL HABITAT!
- The members of the San Francisco Motorcycle club staying outside Mulege were fantastically friendly and welcoming and made us feel quite cool.
- The Trailwing tires we started out with were terrible on anything but hard packed dirt. We finally traded them out for knobbies in La Paz and are loving them (sand no longer means certain death!).
- Next stop in Baja is Cabo San Lucas and then on the the mainland by ferry from La Paz to Topolobampo. August’s looking forward to the mainland!

Final anecdote though the stories could flow freely: On day 3, after traveling for hours and hours at low speeds off road, through sand and deep gravel through the hot empty desert we rounded a curve to arrive at Coco’s Corner. We had heard that it was an important part of the Baja 1000 and altogether worth stopping to check out. We were not going to make it to Guerrero Negro before dark so planned to stay there to sleep.
As we pulled up the Mercedes Unimog came into clear site along with the ten M-16 toting marines standing around what appeared to be a man on his knees.
Your fearless adventurers glanced at the scene and back at each other with looks of shear terror wondering whether to jump on the throttle and hope they couldn’t catch us (unlikely) or hop off and see what it might take to talk our way out of whatever trouble we’d stumbled into. As we decided facing the music was our best hope and began dismounting the bikes the man on his knees beckoned us in with a loud, friendly voice and the marine commander let out a chuckle. The man, it turned out, was Coco and had in fact lost his legs to diabetes, or in his words, bad circulation.
Indescribably relieved we brought the bikes in, grabbed two Tecates and spent one of the more surreal nights of our lives listening to Coco’s insane stories, alien sighting reports, hollering into the darkness to hear his voice bounce and bob around his mountains and giving us a hard time for anything he could think to.

After much delay we are finally crossing the border and beginning the adventure very early (4am) Wednesday morning.

The plan is to cross at the Tijuana/San Diego border and hop immediately onto the MEX 1D toll road to the Mex 3 toll road at Ensenada and arrive in San Felipe in the afternoon.

Chances are great that the adventure will have begun by then and we will have a great handful of stories to tell but no internet connection with which to do so. Once we find one again we will recount top stories and certainly one day actually include some pictures!

For now, big thanks to Kate and Millie in San Diego for putting up with us there.

Out!

On Saturday evening, 2/21/2009 we arrived in San Diego CA for the final bit of State side adventuring and travel preparation before departing on the real trip!

Since August arrived in San Luis Obispo in early January our time has been mainly consumed with working on the bikes. We brought two Suzuki DRZ 400 motorcycles down to its bear structure (photos to come, it turns out this site is not nearly as handy as I had first hoped) and re-built them to hold 8gallons of gasoline and all the gear we will need to live and record our adventures and tools enough to re-build the bikes if/when necessary, as well as give us the most comfortable ride possible.

This type of mechanical pursuit, it turns out, requires an impressive amount of patience and time, hence the 1.5 month departure delay. All seems to be rolling along quickly and we anticipate being on the roads of Baja before March and soon thereafter on the roads of mainland Mexico and be beyond!

We would like to give some special thanks to our good buddy Ted in Los Osos for putting up with our mayhem for so long at home and to the folks at Maglio Inc. for putting up with our mayhem for so long at work! Next entry ought to be from south of the border!