into mexico and first week

palapa in Bahia Conception, Playa burro













CROSSING INTO MEXICO SEPTEMBER 28TH 2006

This is where the trip really begins, I have been planning and getting ready for this moment for about a year. To my surprise the border crossing was easy and painless although the heat is incredible over 100 degrees. For those who don’t know I hate the heat, sounds crazy for a guy headed to Mexico and Central America, it’s like sending a polar bear to the tropics, oh well I should acclimate or die trying. We chose to cross at Mexicali across form El Centro, California. This allowed us to avoid the craziness of Tijuana. I have been working on my Spanish for a few months now, I finally was going to get a chance to try it out at the border crossing. After a few sentences of my newly learned Spanish the border officer looked at me and said “just speak English” I must have been talking to fast for him.



Jay at border crossing in Mexacali











After crossing the border we headed south to San Felipe, it was a hot run through the Sonora desert, very hot and dry. When we finally hit San Felipe we pulled into town, it’s a tourist trap with loud music blaring and overpriced beer. Not the scene we where looking for at least not for now, so we headed south with out much forethought. It was getting late and dark as we were about 45 minutes south of San Felipe. That was than we realized there was no where to stay or nowhere to eat. We finally found an abandoned fishing camp it was old and broken down but it was right on a beautiful beach that we had to ourselves. Now that we had our accommodations taken care of we realized we were not going to be getting any room service so we went to bed hungry and conserving water. There is a lesson to be learned here on our first night, we need to have a destination in mind for each day and have some kind of emergency rations on hand, let’s see how many more times we fuck that up in the upcoming stories, I bet it won’t be the last time.















Me sleeping the first night




I woke that morning to an incredible sunrise rising over the Sea of Cortez, I’m not one for sunrises the usually happen much too early for me but I am sure I will be seeing a lot of them in the next few months. Still hungry we packed up and got ready to leave pavement, our plan was to run off road for a 120 miles through Puertecitos to Bahia San Luis Gonzaga than hooking back up with the highway in Nuevo Chapala, this is part of the Baja 1000 race course. The road was very rough, some sections I would not even call a road more like a suggestion of direction. It was slow going but I enjoyed the challenge the roads offered, we had very few problems, Jay got stuck in a small ditch but we were able to pull him out. The large pockets of deep soft sand presented the biggest problem, it is extremely hard to control your bike. It is like rowing a raft down the river with toothpicks for oars. After a few trial and errors I came to the conclusion you just give it a lot of throttle and go, like riding a snow mobile in powder. The only other people we saw for three days were four guys form California on motocross bikes, we ran into them a couple of times, one guy had a pretty good crash on a section of road that had been washed out.
The camping on the beaches of the Sea of Cortez was an incredible experience, we both brought our snorkeling gear so we would do some snorkeling in the morning before heading out for the day. The marine life is thriving in the sea, the abundance and diversity of fish, turtles, plants,
coral and water birds is amazing.






lost and confused
































Coco at Cocos Corner, not only is he a conisour of panties but quite a collector.
I caught Jay sniffing them all.




Yesterday we finally got back to pavement and marked roads, I was glad to see it. About 40 miles before we hit pavement we stopped at this place called Coco’s corner, it is in the middle of nowhere. Some say Coco is a little crazy, I’ll just say he has a lot of character, He’s and old one legged man that lives in the desert and runs a tiny stop-off catering to travelers coming down one of the most desolate road in the world. I think he was a little disappointed we didn’t have a beer with him, but it was 9:00 a.m. not that I am opposed to a morning beer now and again but those roads were hard enough sober so we had a coke and chatted with old Coco for awhile.
That night we stayed in a town called Guerro Negro on the Pacific side, not much of a town, in the winter when the whales are migrating it is know for whale watching, and the town does produce 10% of the worlds salt, but it was pretty uneventful, after I type this sentence I will probably never think of the town again. What was memorable was a night in a motel you forget how good a shower feels after not having one for a while and it sure feels good to sleep in a bed even though I think the soft sand of the beaches was more comfortable than the run down beds in the Motel Los Bellini.





There was a great view of the Sea of Cortez out this window but sorry her ass got in the way of the shot













Woke up the next morning and headed south down Highway One once again. Our destination for the day is Bahia Concepcion. We had to cross the peninsula one more time to get back to the Sea of Cortez side. It is always much hotter when you cross over but worth it. Not far from our destination my tie down strap got caught in my brake and drive shaft, what a mess! After I had a melt down I got to fixing the problem, I think it took longer for me to have my fit than to fix the problem. It did involve taking my rear brake apart and a lot of cutting around my drive shaft but I got it back on the road. It was the middle of the day and around 105 degrees on the side of the road, so I was happy to get back moving and headed to the beach. My brakes were not 100% which had me worried because we were in a very curvy section of road that winded out of the mountains as it returned to the sea. My brakes did eventually return to normal as I moved along, I haven’t gone to far yet and I’ve already had bad gas, broken sparkplug wire connector and now I get my strap caught up in my rear wheel, makes me wonder what’s next.
After getting to Bahia Conception, Playa Burro to be exact, we rented a nice palapa right on the beach. After my days events I figured it was time to drink a few cervasas and get into the Don Julio, it immediately made me feel much better. That night as we set up our camp on the beach a couple of guys offered to rent us some sea kayaks for the next few days, so we negotiated a good price and got the boats. There is an island about 2 miles into the bay that I thought we need to get to that night, I still think I had a little buzz from the beer and tequila when I formulated this plan but it seemed like a good one. I built a fire on the beach so we would have a beacon to find our way back to camp and off jay and myself go into the darkness. Things were going great until about half way there I could feel my boat taking on water, I started paddling faster but soon realized I wasn’t going to make it. I called out to Jay about 200 yards shy of the island that I was going down, he came over to me just as my boat fully swamped and I came swimming out, you think he was a coast guard veteran not an x-marine the way he towed me and my swamped boat the rest of the way to the island. After draining out my boat I came to the conclusion that the problem with the boat was it was too small for my fat ass, so I switched boats with jay and we headed back to the beach. The fire I had lit had long since gone out so we had a little difficulty finding our stretch of beach, we eventually got back had a few laughs at my expense and crashed on the beach until morning. Woke up to another beautiful sunrise, kayaked around the bay (this time in the blue boat!) did some snorkeling and headed south to Loreto where I am now. Now that I’m all caught up I will try to keep this blog updated..
















Early morning kayak, even the pelican was enjoying the sunrise