South America 2008

I guess we were a lot more tired than I thought. Instead of leaving at the break of dawn, we got up lazily, walked around a dead Ensenada looking for breakfast or a place to change money with no luck, and struck out of town around 10 am.

We were surprised to find great riding just 10 minutes or so south out of Ensenada. There was about forty miles of great, rolling twisties through green hills and valleys. If you ever ride a motorcycle to Ensenada, it is worth your time to check out Highway 1 for at least an hour south of town.

I have to explain about my bike because I’m sure that Roar will. After a quick lunch of carne asada tacos on the side of the road. (The road was the only thing paved. Everything off of it was dust, sand, or dirt.) I saw a little bit of mud and had to take off through it. Small patch of mud, not much mud on the bike, right? Wrong. For that tiny bit of fun, my bike got a healthy dose of mud and looks like I did some decent off road riding. Don’t be fooled……

We stopped in the town of Rosario when we hit the 2:30 pm mark. The time between 2 and 4 pm became important to us because we had to plan where we would end up. With some huge stretches of highway in the middle of the Baja desert it’s not too hard to find yourself stranded at the end of the day or even running out of gas.

We asked the gas station attendant at the Pemex about the next place that had hotels. He said that Cataviña was the next place and that was 150 km (about 90 miles) away. On the map, it looked pretty desolate past it so we decided we would have plenty of time.

The road to Cataviña became the twisted and gnarly road that motorcyclists love. Baja was turning out to be one big surprise. I thought it might be limited to great off road riding, which we were not doing at all. But the paved roads were fun and in great shape, overall.

I had my second scare on a tight, unbanked, downgrade curve. I was behind a car and could not see very far into the turn because of the mountain. I briefly glanced straight ahead to see about a hundred foot drop off. I quickly returned my concentration ahead into the curve because as my friend, Gordy, says, “Look where you want to go and not where you don’t want to go.” Halfway into the curve and a large, thin patch of sand passed from underneath the car. I tried to aim for an opening but I was already committed. I hit the patch and my front wheel slid about six inches, caught traction on the asphalt again. The adrenaline hit my system as I thought it would have been bad to slide off the road and down the slope of rocks. But, concentration and good riding fundamentals and the bike did what it was supposed to do. Still scared the crap out of me. I won’t lie….

Cataviña was a two hotel stop out in the middle of nowhere. 4 pm and tired from all the twisties we called it a day. Only a 200 mile day but not too bad for just starting out the trip and getting our riding legs underneath us.

Really, we were out in the middle of nowhere and the beauty of the desert was really incredible. Too bad the small market had a million watt flourescent Tecate light otherwise we would have seen the milky way in the sky. We went to the only cafe in town, which was heated by a wood stove. (Electricity out there was by generator.) Some more Dos XX and shrimp burritos and we called another early night. This time we were serious about waking up early and making the next day a long riding day. It turned out to be that and then some…..