World tour: Days 113 – 128

Tuesday, 15 October, 2024 – Wednesday, 30 October, 2024

After 6 nights in Malarrimo camp in Guerrero Negro, it was time to finally move on. We planned to start early to avoid the heat, but at the end, nothing went as planned. The biggest setback we had was the accident with our tent. When we were taking off the waterproof flyer, one of the tent poles broke, and we have no idea why; there wasn’t any strong wind in the last week. Our opinion is that the tent shouldn’t break this fast; after all, we didn’t set it up more than 100 times. We will try to use the warranty on the tent, but in the meantime, we had to fix it up somehow. Luckily, we bought a tent pole repair kit before we left, hoping that we wouldn’t need it. It’s just a metal tube that MSR sells, a bit wider than the tent poles, and it’s intended to work like a sleeve that you put over the broken pole and tape it up at the edges. It worked well, and the MSR poles were extremely easy to take apart and then put back together. But one thing we hated about the kit is that it comes in just two different sizes, small and large, which indicates the diameter of the metal tube. We had to buy a large size, but it was too wide for our poles, so we had to tape the poles with some electrical tape to fill the empty space. After a while, this tape squished in some spots, and now the pole looks bent. It’s not that hard to make different diameters for the repair kit, so this feels like a poorly made solution. Now we just hope that MSR will replace our broken pole.

This whole process took around an hour, so it was clear that we wouldn’t be as early as we planned to. On the way out of town we stopped to buy some water, and we almost got taken advantage of again, but we were slowly getting a bit more experienced. The guy wanted to sell us 14 liters of water for 30 pesos, while having an advertised price of 25 liters for 15 pesos. This shows the white tax that almost everyone wants to charge you, especially if you don’t know the language. What we’ve learned is that almost everywhere you can bargain for a price, people just make up prices in their mind according to the situation and try to get out as much as possible.

Even though we started late from Guerrero Negro, we did almost 70 kilometers that day. The road was flat and the wind was in our backs, so we were lightning fast. Luckily so, because there wasn’t any place for us to sleep by the road for almost 70 kilometers; there was a fence on both sides of the road. We stopped at the first appropriate spot—around 2 kilometers of unfenced road. We took a right turn off Highway 1 and set up a tent in the dry riverbed, somewhat hidden from the road and nearby village. There is a general rule to not sleep in dry riverbeds, especially if there’s green vegetation around, but this one didn’t look like getting wet anytime soon.

The night before day 114 was again very cold, the dew fell, and our tent was wet in the morning. Because we were almost always choosing camping spots where we were well hidden, it wasn’t a problem to wait for the sun to dry our tent. This way we weren’t risking forgetting to dry the tent during the day and then setting it up wet in the evening (again).

We had a short break in Vizcaino, where we restocked on food in Ley’s, but from then on we didn’t find any shade until we were on 50 kilometers, but at least we had a wind in the back. We stopped under a tree by the road, where we stayed for a couple of hours. Because we weren’t in a hurry, we decided to take a right turn towards Punta Abreojos, leaving HW1. The reason for this is that we wanted to swim in the Pacific Ocean, and this was the last spot between Guerrero Negro and La Paz where we could easily do so. It would be a small detour, around 80 kilometers one way to the coast. The road there was in noticeably worse condition than Highway 1, with more potholes and rougher asphalt. After doing almost 70 kilometers in a day again, we steered off the road and found a quiet spot between the cactuses. The place wasn’t ideal; there were a ton of cactus spikes in the sand, so we had to dig a hole about 10 centimeters deep on the spot where we would set up a tent. It was windy, so we had to use pegs for the tent, and we managed to lose one in the morning in the deep sand. Oh well, less weight to cycle with.

Day 115 was probably one of the worse ones on our journey. We were in a bad mood, and we didn’t really want to cycle, but there wasn’t anywhere we could stop and stay. We had a headwind all day, having to pedal downhill to go only 8 km/h. Not much to say about that day. We stopped in the afternoon in some abandoned gravel pit, and we set up a tent in one of the holes to hide away from the wind. Our only motivation was that we would at least have a strong tailwind on the way back. Right?

On Friday, day 116, we finally reached Punta Abreojos. We had over 25 kilometers of unsleepable road; there wasn’t anywhere we could hide; everything was completely flat without any vegetation. The previous day we really stopped at the last appropriate place.

Punta Abreojos is a small village with one main road that is partly paved, while most of the side roads are made of gravel or semi-hard sand. We found a school with free public wifi, next to which was a small plaza with a few benches and some shade—the first such place that we saw in Mexico. We spent a few hours there, video-called home, sent an email for our tent warranty, and updated our Instagram. We were tired of the same food every day, so we wanted to go eat out, and the only place that we found open was Deli’s restaurant with Venezuelan food. We were the only guests, and our experience there was amazing; we got a warm welcome, we could watch Deli cook, and she served us food professionally. We had chicken in tomato sauce with parmesan, and beef steak with sauce made of wine and vegetables; both with rice, potatoes, tomatoes, and Venezuelan garlic rings on the side. We paid 230 Mexican pesos per person (around 11€), and we would gladly go again. The portion size was quite big unless you’re starving like we were.

There wasn’t any campground in Punta Abreojos, but we wouldn’t go in one either way; we had a better idea. We left the town in the south and cycled a bit over 1 kilometer on a hardened sand road close to the beach; then we took a left turn towards the ocean and pushed our bikes a couple hundred meters. We got sand everywhere, but the place we found was amazing! We were hidden behind a sand dune to avoid the strongest wind, and we had around 20 meters to the ocean.

Since it took us two days of cycling to get from HW1 to Punta Abreojos, we didn’t want to simply turn around the next day. So we decided that day 117 would be our rest day. We had enough food and water with us to stay on the beach for a whole day. We took our tent down in the morning because we didn’t want to get even more sand inside, then we tied a tarp between the bikes and some spiky bush to make a shade. It was a chill day, and we loved it. We read books and jumped off our sand dune. We also went for a walk on the beach, and we found a bunch of seashells and lobster shells.

In the evening we did some stretching on the beach, and that’s when we made a new friend. A man ran past us with his two dogs, and one of the dogs decided to stay with us for a while. He had an empty water bottle in his mouth, and he wanted us to throw it to him, so we did. This is how we spent the next half an hour, playing fetch with the dog, and he just didn’t want to go home. It was very fun, but at the end we had to send him away because we were worried about his owner missing him. Then we set up a tent again, and we had one more visitor—a curious coyote that came close to us. It wasn’t interested in playing fetch, so we shooed it away.

The morning of day 118 was fun. We woke up and took down the tent, then we headed for one more walk on the beach, and we saw that it was full of sea lettuce. This made the waves look green, and the feeling of standing in the water while the waves hit you was funny. It was almost as if the ocean was grabbing you and trying to pull you in. We happened to be in the right place at the right time, and we saw around 5 dolphins playing in the waves. We weren’t fast enough to go and swim with them, but just seeing the dolphins was already an experience on its own.

We left the sand dunes and went back into the town. We still haven’t swum in the Pacific Ocean, and we were about to change that. Two days ago we saw a beautiful beach in the town, and we decided to stop there and check off one of the items on our bucket list for this trip. Water was cold but very clean, the waves were smaller there, and the small-pebble beach looked like the one from the Hawaii postcard. The only downside was the amount of washed-out things from the sea, as you can see in the pictures below.

On the way out of town, we stopped at public wifi again, and we found around 2 liters of water to wash our clothes. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. It was around 4 PM when we finally left Punta Abreojos, and we knew that there was around 30 kilometers to the gravel pit; we decided to sleep on the same spot as on the way there because there wasn’t anything better before that. We had less than 2 hours before it would get dark, so we were in a bit of a hurry, but we managed to get to the spot at around 6:10 PM; it was after the sunset, but it was still bright enough to be seen on the road. It got completely dark around 6:30 PM.

Monday, day 119. After getting up and packing our gear, Iris taped up Primož’s knees because they hurt and were sore from the previous day. From then on we cycled very slowly, not only because Primož pushed the bike up most of the steeper hills but also because we had wind in our head again! Our plan of having a quick return back on HW1 was blown away. After 20 kilometers we took a break, but there wasn’t any shade, so we had to improvise and put up a tarp between bikes and a thorny bush next to the road. The sun was strong, and because the wind was blowing from the inland, it was also hot—a bad combination. We just hoped that the wind would turn in the afternoon like it did most of the prior days, but sadly, that day it didn’t. So we had to continue, and after 10 more kilometers we called it a day.

We found a small shadow by the road and stopped there. But we weren’t the only ones who fancied a shadow—there were A TON of flies around us, possibly the most we’ve seen until now. And they weren’t afraid of people and would often not even move when you waved them off. We felt like cows in the barn. The only consolation we had was that the flies would go away after 5 PM and that they were not mosquitos. Just before it got dark, we moved behind a small sand dune, barely hidden from the road, and cleaned a small area of sand to place a tent there. We were amongst the cactuses again, and apparently we missed one cactus spike when we were cleaning the spot, because in the morning Iris’s air mattress was empty, and she woke up on the ground. We found a spike of a cactus about 5 cm long under her. Now, both of our mattresses were punctured—Primož’s was already slowly leaking air for the last 2 weeks, and we couldn’t find a hole.

As soon as the sun came up on the morning of day 120, so did the flies. Primož did a session of stretching in the morning, and his knee was getting a bit better. We did around 25 kilometers to the intersection with Highway 1, and then we had a break there next to some old abandoned house. We had a decision to make: should we have a long break and do around 10 more kilometers, then sleep somewhere outside, or should we push for 25 kilometers and go to a campground in San Lino. Iris’s birthday was coming up in a few days, and we wanted to be in a campground when it arrived. We were leaning toward the option to go directly to the camp and be there for a few days, but on the other hand, it would be cheaper to just sleep one more night in the wild and go to the campground tomorrow. In the end, we decided to go directly to the campground in San Lino. We didn’t see any point in passing time outside just waiting for the evening when we could already be in the camp at around 2 PM, having wifi and electricity to actually do some work on our phones.

There was a military checkpoint on the way to San Lino. We read comments on iOverlander regarding this military checkpoint; a lot of people got something stolen from their RV, or soldiers asked them for some money, but luckily we didn’t have any problems passing it (we still hid all of our valuable items). A young soldier was standing there, eating crackers and mumbling some Spanish. Maybe a native speaker could understand him, but we certainly weren’t, so there was an awkward moment when he apparently said that we can go, but we were just standing there looking at him and trying to figure out if there was a question asked or what. We couldn’t decide, so we just answered “La Paz”, which confused him. At the end, all of us were confused, and he just waved us off.

The towns of San Lino and San Ignacio are located in the middle of a large oasis; we started seeing a lot of palm trees and green vegetation as we were approaching them, which was a weird sight after a few weeks of mostly cactuses and dry bushes. We went to the small shop in San Lino, then we headed towards the Los Petates campground that we found on iOverlander. It was a nice campground right next to the water, and it was surrounded by palm trees. Their regular rate is 250 pesos per night (around 12 euros), but we decided to test our luck and ask if we could get any discount since we were on bikes. After some thinking, we got offered a price of 100 pesos per night (5 euros), which was already better than we expected. But because it didn’t hurt, we asked if it’s cheaper if we stay for 4 nights. Some more thinking, then the guy said 300 pesos for 4 nights! That’s definitely the best price we got for camping, and we couldn’t believe that it was in the nicest campground we’ve seen.

Let’s look at the map. We were currently cycling on a huge Mexican peninsula, composed of two Mexican states: Baja California on the North and Baja California Sur on the South. Our plan was to take a ferry from La Paz to Mazatlán, which is a city in the Mexican state of Sinaloa. From there, we would ride on the Devil’s Backbone road (Espinazo del Diablo) to Durango. But there is one problem with the state of Sinaloa: a war started a few weeks ago between several cartels and the army. In the Los Petates campground, we met a couple on a motorbike who came from there, and David strongly advised us to reconsider our plan of cycling on the Devil’s road. This made us think, so we reached out for help in a WhatsApp group for cyclists in Mexico, and every response that we got was to not go from Mazatlan to Durango. There was a second option of going south from Mazatlán by the coast, crossing Tepic and Guadalajara, but it was bad timing for us; there was an outbreak of stomach flu spread by mosquitos, and hospitals were getting full because of it. And if locals were getting sick, we probably wouldn’t stand a chance.

Because of that, we had to make a new plan, and it seemed like we wouldn’t take a ferry from La Paz. We left this for the next day; the only thing we still had to do was fix Iris’s mattress and watch a movie in the evening.

Wednesday, day 121, was our first full day in the campground. We had a beautiful spot right next to the water, and we learned that this oasis was full of life. The water came from an underground river that made a smaller lake, and this oasis was one of a few in Baja. There were fish in the water, we saw a huge frog, and the loudest animals were funny ducks that were diving in the water and running on it, making loud splashing noises that occasionally woke us up at night. During the night came a bunch of cows, a few horses, and a donkey; they would walk around our tent on the way to the water, and we would hear the sound of their hoofs on the ground. They also came sometimes during the day when the camp was almost empty, but they were shy and didn’t want to be petted. We saw some huge birds that would dive down from the sky into the water, and then they left with a fish in their claws. And last but not least, we had company whenever we went to the toilet during the night—they were occupied by a few big cockroaches that didn’t like the light from our flashlight. The palm trees were so full of dates that they were constantly falling down; sometimes on our heads, mostly on our tent, and once on the first night, one fell on the bikes and triggered our bike alarm.

On the same day, Iris went to the town of San Ignacio, around 1 kilometer away from the camp, to buy some groceries and water. While there, she met two cyclists, Oscar and William from Belgium, who were riding from Alaska to Argentina on a tandem bike. Later that day they came to the same campground as we were in, and we spent a pleasant evening together with guitar playing and singing songs in English, Slovenian, and French languages. It may not have been the most pleasant thing to listen to, but we had a lot of fun. William and Oscar ride to collect money for a charity, and they are accepting challenges from people on Instagram; when they complete one, the challenger donates some money. If you’re interested in that, you can check out their Instagram profile @tandemtraverse to see what they’re doing and maybe even give them a challenge.

Oscar offered us to make a recording of us on bicycles with their drone, and it came out amazing. We were astonished by the completely different viewpoint that the drone gives you. If nothing else, it opens you to a possibility to see where you are from the air and what is around you, but besides that, it also makes pictures and videos that you can’t get any other way. We have to admit that this made us think about getting a drone for ourselves in the future.

Friday, day 123, was Iris’s birthday! We couldn’t buy a cake anywhere, so we had to improvise again, this time with two chocolate croissants, a few chocolate wafers, and birthday candles made from palm leaves. We made a video call home and told them about another change in our plans. In the evening, we watched a movie and drank a couple of cold beers.

Let’s talk about our plans. Most of our trip ends up being improvised; we do some planning, but at the end we just adapt to the situations that arise, and we like it that way. But this time it was different. We didn’t want to risk getting into an active war zone, so we actually did some real planning, we researched the situation, and we asked locals about their recommendations. And after all that, we made a decision to not go over to the mainland of Mexico. Going by ferry to Mazatlán was out of the question; the only option we had was to take an airplane from La Paz to Guadalajara or Mexico City. But to be honest, we were already thinking about this for a while, and we didn’t plan to continue south from Mexico City anyway. If there weren’t problems in Sinaloa, we would cycle to Mexico City and fly home from there. So flying from La Paz to Mexico City didn’t make any sense if we would then just fly out.

What will we do then? We’re coming home for the holidays! We bought airplane tickets from San Jose del Cabo at the south tip of Baja to Frankfurt, Germany, on December 4th. We plan to stay home and spend time with family and friends over Christmas and New Year. We still want to cycle in South America, but we will have to hit the dry season, starting in June, which gives us a lot of downtime. We have 3 main objectives for the meantime:

Improve our broken Spanish. We plan to spend at least 2 months intensively learning Spanish, probably with the help of an online course. This will have the biggest impact on the second part of our trip, making it way more enjoyable and social, since we want to be able to speak with local people.
Better planning. For the first part of the trip we didn’t have any strict plan; we were just improvising on the go, and we learned a lot from it. But for the second part we want to have a planned route; we want to do research on what we want to see and what we want to experience, then plan the trip around that. We feel like this way we will get more out of our time on the road.
Doing a side trip. We don’t want to stay home for the next few months; this would be too big of a break for us. We’re not completely sure where we’ll go and how, but right now we have an idea of going backpacking somewhere in Asia for at least a month.

We’ve learned a lot from the last 4-5 months of living on our bikes, and we already have a long list of things we would change for future travels, so this break in between gives us a perfect chance to improve our bike setup, gear list, and much more.

Ok, back to the current trip. So we stayed in the Los Petates campground for a week around Iris’s birthday. A lot of the time we spent planning our return home; from making an approximate timeline for the next month, to buying plane tickets. We also caught up a little bit on the blog and the diary. One day we did our laundry, which made the whole campground stay without the water for three days; we’re not sure why; our suspicion is that the water level in the water tank was already low when we arrived. And we unofficially borrowed a couple of kayaks one morning and went for a ride on the water. Every evening someone new came to the campground, but we were the only long-term guests; everyone else left the next morning, so we had the camp completely to ourselves through the day.

We left the campground on the Thursday morning of day 129, but before we could do so, we had another problem: the rear derailleur on Primož’s bike got a bit bent, so we had to fix it and adjust it for the first time on our trip. We were lucky that it happened in the camp where we had wifi; it would take us way more time if we didn’t have YouTube available.

Some more pictures: