Batopilas (Chihuahua, MX) - cont'd

Batopilas itself is just a little village, but it can only be described as very charming. I liked the place as soon as we arrived. Laid back vibe, a nice square, and a few streets with old houses painted in a variety of lively colors. We got a room for 2 nights in a very nice small hotel right on the town square for 300 pesos/night (23$). From the bang for the buck point of view, this is our best accommodation so far. We've been in slightly cheaper hotels before, but nowhere as nice as this once. The fact that we are not in a touristic area definitely works in our favor right now, as budget wise we have been living at roughly half of our average daily allowance for a few days now. We have also found great tiny restaurant just around the corner. It only has about 3 tables, and the lady who runs the place makes home made meals in her own kitchen. The food is delicious, and we ate like kings for not even 6$ each.

The next morning, we took the entire day in Batopilas just to relax. We went to back to the same restaurant for breakfast, and then walked the village and surroundings for about two hours. The rest of the day was spent chilling: napping, reading, catching up on the blog and classifying and backing up all the pictures we have taken so far on the trip.

In the evening, we were just hanging out on the town square, chatting with two locals, one of them being a member of the municipal council. The square got pretty empty around 9 PM. Around 9:30 PM, we noticed some suspicious activity going on. Cars came to a restaurant, and only then we noticed that some of the men getting out of the vehicles were carrying assault rifles. The town official explained to us that narcos were active in the area, as a lot of marijuana is grown in the surrounding mountains. However, he reassured us that they don't bother tourists, as long as you mind your business. It was still a weird moment, as there two armed cops standing on the square, but they were completely ignoring what was going on... It was obvious that the town officials and the narcos had an arrangement here.

Town square in Batopilas 

 Courtyard of our hotel in Batopilas

 Improvised bridge

Los Mochis, MX to Batopilas, MX

The day after (Tuesday, Nov. 6th, Day 20), we took the ferry from La Paz (130$ for bike and rider) towards Los Mochis on mainland Mexico. The ship took off around 3 PM, and we arrived at destination at about 9:30 PM. 

 Baja: done. Hasta la proxima.

There was  a few other motos on board, and we later met their owners. Jose Luis and Jimmy were heading back from the USA on their Harley Davidson Road Kings. They toured the States for the past month, and were on they way back home. There was also Gerardo, who was heading back home as well on a borrowed Can Am, as he had an accident with his own bike two days earlier. Conveniently, Gerardo was from Los Mochis, so once we were off the boat, he brought us directly to a hotel, and then we all went for supper together. The food was great, and the guys really friendly. Since we had mentioned at some point that both of our tail lights broke and were holding on with electrical tape, Gerardo's nephew, Antonio, offered that we pass by tomorrow by their family dealership to get that fixed.

The morning after, we went to Mega Autos Mochis, and the guys brought us to a car body shop that they deal with. Juan, the owner of the shop, welded both of our tail light brackets, reinforced them, and even gave them a coat of paint. After doing all of this, he refused any payment at all. So far, Mexicans have been very kind to us (except for one little kid in a village in Baja, who called me a ''pendejo'', because I didn't have a sticker to give him - he thought we were Baja racers.. LOL). 

 Waiting to disembark the ferry, with the other Mexican riders we just met

Juan working on one of the light brackets

 The bracket, welded and reinforced

With the guys from  Mega Autos Mochis and Center Valen G. Muchos gracias, amigos!

At around 1 pm, our tail lights were better than new, and we took off for El Fuerte (some facts here), which is about 70 km from there. The weather was HOT, probably around 35 deg. C. At this temperature, the air doesn't cool you down anymore, and it just feels like you're in front of a big hair dryer. On the road, we ran into a few convoys of police and military pick up trucks, with heavily armed and masked men. A reminder that we are indeed in a region where the drug problem is a reality. 

El Fuerte itself is a small town with a nice main square. However, one afternoon is more than enough to visit, as it is really just slightly bigger than what I would call a village. We are enjoying these small towns so far. The vibe is very laid back, and definitely a nice change from what life is back home. Places like this make you realize how much we are always rushing left and right, and not taking enough time to pause to enjoy the present and spend time with family and friends.

Palacio Municipal, El Fuerte (built between 1903 and 1907)

Partial view of the river (rio fuerte) from the highest point of the city

The next day (day 22), we were off for a 160 km of dirt roads through the mountains, in order to arrive to Batopilias. I was initially wondering why Mihai seemed to be excited about a village in the middle of nowhere, which doesn't even have paved roads leading to it. I get it now. 

The ride to Batopilas took us about 7 hours. Although the distance wasn't great, the road was very twisty and bit technical for heavy bikes in some areas. You really don't want to rush things, when missing a turn means falling off a cliff and crashing a hundred meters further down. The ride was very scenic too. We've been warned that we would be going through areas where there are drug plantations, but people seemed to agree that if we mind our business and just pass through, we wouldn't have any problems. It has been indeed the case, and it was yet another great day of riding.

The road to Batopilas

One of the easy sections of the road

Having a great time... What an awesome place to ride!

Basketball court in a (seemingly) abandoned village. Pass me the rock!

La Paz, Baja, MX (cont'd)

We spent most of our day off in La Paz looking for a solution to fix my broken headlight. The local motorcycle shop couldn't help, so we looked around for an auto parts store. We ended up finding a car light with almost the same lens dimensions for only about 7$. A little trimming, a few tie wraps, and four bolts later, you almost couldn't tell that the light is not original. 

A few screws and tie wraps did the trick

Finished product

In the end, the repair took most of the day, so we haven't really seen that much of La Paz. The area where we were staying at was pretty nice. It was close to the Malecon, which in mexican cities by the sea is the road that follows the beach, and has many restaurants and cafes all along. There are few tourists around at this time of the year, so we were one of the very few guests in our hostel.

 Malecon in La Paz

 Another view of the Malecon

Malecon at sunset

 Some church in La Paz

Courtyard of our hostel

 Inside the hostel

 20$/night room. Basic, but clean.

Baja, MX

We left San Diego in the morning of Wednesday, October 31st. After stopping by at a Fedex office to ship a box of stuff we decided not to carry further, we were off to the border crossing at Tecate. Although Tijuana is only a few miles away from John's place, he advised us to cross into Mexico in Tecate, as the border post is small and quiet. We rode about an hour on a very cool twisty road, and were there in no time. Getting the paperwork done was hassle free, it took us under an hour and the customs personnel was very friendly. We got our temporary vehicle import certificates done there too. These are not required on the Baja peninsula, but since we are going to take a ferry to mainland Mexico from La Paz, we wanted to have these made right away, to get it out of the way.

In Tecate, we made a quick stop to withdraw some Pesos, and we took off for San Felipe, which is about 370 km south-east from there. The road was a mix of cool twistes and some straightaways in flat lands, altogether a good day of riding. We arrived in San Felipe just after dark, breaking our no driving by night rule on day one :/ We found a pretty nice hotel in the center of town for 40$ a night (which is kind of expensive for Mexico, but not for Baja..more on that later). We unloaded the bikes, got some beers at a nearby tienda, and then had our first meal. I took some SPICY tacos with beef, chicken and pork. I figured mind as well go hard from the start, eat everything, and if I was going to get sick, then I would get that out of the way early in the trip.

The ambiance in town was festive, it was Halloween night, so families were hanging out and kids in costumes were running all over the place. Back at the hotel, a short session of web surfing and we were off to bed. The first day in Mexico had been a good one.

The next day, we woke up fairly late, had breakfast and hit the road South. This was going to be a short ride. At the hotel in San Felipe, we had met a group of friends for the States who were down here for a few weeks with their enduro bikes. They suggested to us to stay in Gonzaga bay, where apparently we would find a cool spot to camp by the sea. This is also where they were heading, so we would see them again later that day.

After riding a little less than 200 km of paved road, we were in Gonzaga in the afternoon. We stopped at a nearby hotel/restaurant, had some beers and chatted with the owner. We then got a sweet camping spot right by the beach for 10$, which was great, since after two expensive weeks in the USA, we wanted to start spending less than our 75$/day budget. We set up camp, and then met with the American riders at the hotel/restaurant in the evening. Very cool people. One of them, Casey, not only took our bill, but also later gave us some detailed off road GPS routes going south towards La Paz. It turned she knows Baja really well. Her family owns a house in Gonzaga, and she also runs the www.bajagpsguide.com website, of which I heard about a while ago when planning for the trip. (Thanks again, Casey)

Mihai happy to be in Baja

Gonzaga Bay

Our camping spot

The next day, we took off to ride the first route given to us by Casey. From Gonzaga, the pavement ended and it was all dirt. We stopped by Coco's Corner on the way. Coco has a certain fame among people riding Baja. He's a half-legged ermite living on an improvised ranch in the middle of nowhere. He mainly lives off from selling beer to his visitors, so we obliged to a cold one before continuing on. 

Hanging out with Coco

Coco's Corner

From Coco's, we got on the gps route. We were excited, since this also the path of the famous Baja 1000 race, which will be held two weeks from now. The first hour or so was great, just the right amount of difficulty for our heavily loaded bikes. Things got a little complicated once the route started running along a dry river bed, and the trail became deep sand. This is where our struggle began. A few factors contributed to this:

• We didn't have much of a breakfast (ramen noodles, Snickers bar, and a Red Bull)
• For some reason we had been morons and didn't bring any food or enough water
• Did I mention that  the loaded bikes are damn heavy?
• Mihai didn't sleep well the night, before and has a high-revving metabolism, which means food often or his batteries get low.

By the time we had done the first half of the route, Mihai was burnt out and I was getting seriously tired too. We ended up bailing out after 90 km of dirt, and got back on pavement. The sun was low, and we needed food and drinks badly, as well as a place to stay. We found a room at a truck stop in Nuveo Rosarito after sunset. This is also where we met Ivan Ramirez (www.ivanramirezracing.com), a professional KTM/Red Bull factory rider, who stopped by for a meal on the way back from practice runs

Looking back, it had been a great day of riding:

• No injuries (a few close calls, though)
• The toughest days are the most memorable ones
• Beautiful scenery
• We had dumped the bikes multiple times, so now they have even more character (read scratches), which adds to our adventure rider credibility :P
• We have encountered a few race teams in trucks and buggy's  who were pre-running the course before the Baja 1000. These guys go seriously FAST, it's very impressive to watch.

Pumped for some off roading

Riding along a dry river bed

Broken tail light no. 2

Exiting one of the many deep sand passes

Obligatory helmet shot, surrounded by cactuses

Happy to see pavement, at last

The next day, we took off for a day of paved road riding all the way to Loreto. The route was a mix of good twisties, but also some boring and very straight sections. Loreto itself is a nice little town, usually fairly touristic, but a bit deserted at this time of the year. We found a decent little hotel for around 30$, and had tasty supper and breakfast the morning after right around the corner. I'm digging Mexican food so far, especially the hueves rancheros for breakfast, which are eggs on a tortilla served with a vegetable saute and salsa.

The first half of our final day towards La Paz has been awesome riding along the coast. About half way through the day, we arrived to La Concepcion. Casey has given us a GPS off road track from there to La Paz, but since the on road riding had been very fun so far, we decided to continue on the pavement. We also decided not to take the off road route, because it was 170 miles of dirt roads, and we felt like it might take us too long to cover. So we stuck to the Carretera 1, which turned out to be very boring all the way from La Concepcion to La Paz. I do regret that we didn't opt for the dirt route, after all. 

We're in La Paz now, and will be spending a day here before taking the ferry to mainland Mexico on Tuesday. I need to look around on Monday to see if I can repair my headlight, as it has been shattered by a bolt sometime during the day. I only noticed it in La Paz. Fortunately I have an auxiliary LED light, but I'm a little concerned that the broken light might become an excuse for corrupt cops to try to get a bribe later in the trip.

My conclusion of what I have seen of Baja is that off road is where it's at. There are some really nice paved stretches, but I wouldn't come here again just to ride on pavement. Our loaded bikes are not the right tools for the trails here: they are way too heavy. I encourage anyone to ride Baja, but come with a proper dirt bike on a trailer, and do one day runs, just like our American friends did it.

Green Baja de Sur, along the east coast of the peninsula

Shattered headlight. RIP HID.

Random Thoughts:

The southern part of Baja surprised us: as much as most of the inland is dry and desert-like,  the eastern coast is mountainous and very green. 

I'm slowly getting used to the Spanish speaking environment. The lessons that I took in Montreal are paying off, as I understand quite a bit. I practice a little here and there, and try to learn a few new words every day, but it's difficult to make sensible progress when you spend most of the day on the motorcycle. I will be looking into taking a week of intensive intermediate Spanish either in San Cristobal (South Mexico), or in Guatemala. 

Prices in Baja are high. We found decent accommodation for around 30$ a night, but the food is not far away from US prices.

From what I've seen so far, Mexicans drive well. I haven't seen anything reckless here in the past 5 days.

We ran through a few miltary checkpoints on the main roads. The soldiers were polite, and most of the time just waved us though. We haven't seen any cops on the road, so no problems at all with corruption.

Gas stations are nationalized (Pemex). Fuel sells for a little under a dollar per litre.

We haven't felt threatened anywhere so far. The only time we got a little worried is when we camped on the beach in Gonzaga bay. Around midnight, a small motor boat without any lights on approached the spot where we were. It turned out it was just fishermen, but if the boat had reached the shore, we would have seriously thought about jumping on the bikes and getting the hell out of there.

The food is tasty and none of us got sick yet.

The tail lights on both our bikes broke, so they are now both held in place with some electrical tape (Mihai-tech style :) 

San Diego, CA - The Tire and Pants Saga

We left Vegas at 10 am on the 10th day into the trip (Saturday, October 30th). This was going to be fairly short day by our recent standards, only 400 something kilometers to San Diego.

An abandonned gas station in the Mojave desert, somewhere along hwy 15 between Vegas and San Diego

300 km later, we stopped in San Bernardino to pick up our new tires. Chapparral Racing is by far the largest motorcycle dealership I've ever been to, it's a freakin Walmart for bikers. Tons of bikes and gear on display. I actually had to take a picture, because the store is really impressive.

There was another section just as big as this, with thousands of tires. I didn't get a photo of that, though.

We also bumped into another bike from New Zealand there. Brian and Joanne have been travelling all over the USA on their BMW 1200GS for the past 6 months, and were just finishing off their trip in California. It's always fun to exchage with other travellers. Weather was great too, 30+ deg. C, sunny and dry. In Montreal, I'm a sweaty mess above 25 deg. C (humidity), but here 30 deg. C felt just right, especially after several cold days on the road.

We arrived in San Diego (actually, Chula Vista, which is the southern part of town, only 3 miles from the border with Mexico) just before 7 pm. The last 100 something km's were all 6 lane (in each direction!) highway, with up to 9 lanes in certain places. Everyone drives at 120+ km/h, lots of cars, and the many embranchments made the navigation a little difficult. I didn't enjoy that part of the ride (our bikes are a little slow for that), but the highways are impressive for sure. Even Toronto does not compare.

Our hosts in Chula Vista were John and Lisa. They are both members of a known motorcycle forum called Adventure Rider, which Mihai and I have been reading for years. The forum has a section called ''tent space'', where members can offer accommodation to other travelling motorcyclists. Since we needed a bit of time to do some maintenance on the bikes (oil change, new tires, chain and sprockets, etc..) and I thought it would be cool to hang out with someone local, I contacted John through the website 2 weeks before leaving Montreal (he had signed up in the ''tent space'' section) to see if he would be willing to have us over for 2 days. John and his wife Lisa gave us the green light, so here were were at their door step in Chula Vista.

Working on the bikes at Lisa and John's place.

California baby! Palm trees right at your door step.

The days in San Diego were fun, even if we were busy from morning till night, and ended up running out of time to explore the town a bit. We were complete strangers, and our hosts welcomed us and treated us like good friends and we had a good time hanging out together (thanks again, guys!).

We spent the morning of the first day in Chula Vista to shop around for the few items we were unable to score in Vegas. Mihai wanted to look for a new pair of motorcycle pants (a specific brand and model), since his current ones don't fit well (so baggy that he looks like he looks like a skater). It makes sense: you want to be comfortable in gear you will be riding in for several months at once. There are a few bike shops in the area, but none of them carries the brand. So no success on that day :/

The afternoon was spent installing new tires and chain and sprocket kit on my bike, and that was pretty much it for that day. Dinner with our hosts and we were in bed early.

John's Triumph Speef Triple. What a bike... love it.

Lisa's classic BMW R80. These are getting hard to find.

We started day 2 by servicing Mihai's DR. Everything went smoothly, until all there was left was the front tire installation at around lunchtime. For some reason, the bead on the damn thing would not sit no matter what we tried (sorry, getting a little technical here...). We wasted another hour messing around with it, and then took a break to go back shopping. We got back to Mihai's front wheel late afternoon, but again, no success and much frustration. Dinner and chit chat with our hosts, and we're off to bed.

We are now into our 3rd day in San Diego, and I've finally caught up with the blog. In the morning, we gave up and Mihai took off to a nearby bike shop to get his tire installed. However, an hour and 20$ later, the dealer didn't do any better than us the day before, so we're back to square one. At least it felt good to know that our amateurism wasn't at fault..lol. We will just leave it as is for now.

Getting back to the pants, the only shop that had them in stock is in Los Angeles (approx. 200 km north from here). Mihai would have got them yesterday, but most bike shops are closed in California on Mondays. Sundays are good business for motorcycle stores, so the employees get the following day to go out and ride. So at 11:30 am this morning, Mihai took off to LA to get the pants, whereas I finally had a few hours to write and post some pictures. Keeping this thing up to date will take some effort. Just like with homework back in the days, it is so easy to procrastinate. But I have to say, we have truly been busy so far and had not much spare time at all (except in Moab, where on the only quiet evening, I gave up on the blog in favour of whiskey..lol).

Tomorrow we will finally be in Mexico. The closest crossing from here is in Tijuana, but John has advised to us to go a little further east to Tecate. Apparently, the border post is much smaller and, unlike Tijuana, has little traffic. So the next update will be from somewhere in the Baja. Can't wait to be there!

Mihai finally returns from LA with DA pants. Alleluiah!

With Lisa and John, on our last day at their place. Do these pants make my ass look fat? lol

Random Thoughts:

Some of my buddies have previously visited the San Diego area and really liked it here, so once again I'll be leaving a place where I wish I had more time to hang out it in. I guess this will happening often during this trip... 6 months might seem long, but it is not considering how much ground we have to cover.

I'm in California and I have no swimming trunks. I went to a Walmart close by, and they only had three left over XXL pairs. Wtf?

We've had the best burritos in a long time, in a shop close by to Lisa and John's. Looking forward to more mexican food (I have my Cispro and Immodium pills and my E.colli vaccine taken, so hopefully things will not get too nasty ;)