Baja Sur

By the time we arrived on the cool west coast of Baja’s Guerro Negro we conferred and decided that today would be a good day to find a nice cheap hotel and grab a shower to wash some dirt and salt off of our bodies. We found an expensive one for 25 bucks and settled into the room so we could get some food and find an internet café. I had to run to the bank and when I returned Patient was already out and about. I killed some time hanging on the boulevard sipping on a forty of Mexico finest in a brown paper bag. I sat in a plastic chair, soaked in the sun and wrote a bit in my journal as the busy street filled with the traffic of life in Guerro. Some locals stopped to chat it up with me and I made use of my meager Spanish to communicate with them. I learned from those conversations (more like utterances) that the town came to be because of its location to a lagoon that now produces more than 1/3 of the world’s salt. Another nearby lagoon is famous for its births. The gray whales start migrating south from the cold waters of Alaska in September and arrive sometime starting in November to give life in the warmer waters of Baja’s bays and lagoons. Scammon’s Lagoon lies directly south of Guerro and come November we would have had to pay double for the small room due to the flocks of tourists that come to see the phenomenon. After learning enough lessons (about two forties worth) from the locals I moved on to a nearby internet café to take care of some bullshit bills and whatnot. Patient returned from his walkabout with a funny story about looking all around town for a bar. He did find one bar, and it was all that and a little more…





It felt good being out of touch for a few days lost in the sands of Baja’s barren eastern coast and Guerro seemed like a huge bustling city compared those days. We hurried out of the city the next morning in search of remoteness again. We made a good days ride back to the east coast and into the bay of conception. The entire bay of conception is made up of numerous smaller bays that encompass a total of some fifty miles and dotted with islands and a long peninsula jutting north to protect the bay from the currents of the Sea of Cortes. We found a nice remote beach somewhere in all that mess with a few palapa’s and decided to stop for the day and take it all in. Patient had had a run in with a loosely fastened tie down right before the bay began and was reasonably frustrated with having to get the mess out of his rear brake pads in the midday heat. So when we arrived at the tired looking establishment in playa el burro he downed a beer before it even sat on the table. He ordered another and walked around the beach to try and calm his nerves. He returned a few moments later and ordered a shot of tequila, sucked in back and ordered another. At this point I realized he was in the mood to drink and watched the scene unfold. In my want of my woman I was compelled to snap a photo of this Hungarian woman who was strolling around the bar where the debauchery occured...





By the time someone came to our palapa to charge us for its use the sun had just set and night was beginning to show only the sliver of a moon that was rising in the south east. The guy wanted to know if we were interested in renting some kayaks and I haggled with him for a good full day’s price if we could get them that night and have them for the rest of the day tomorrow. Having no other business at his beach he reasoned that some was better than none and went to fetch the boats. Patient, a fine river paddler, was swimming when the deal went down and came in from the tepid sea with a smile to see the boats. He sat in one on the beach to feel it out and mentioned that it might be a little tippy. I retorted that since he was an experienced boatman that one was his. In his buzzed up state he grabbed his headlamp, lit a fire on the beach, said vamos, and off he went into the bay’s scarcely moonlit waters. I asked what the fire was for and he said we would need a beacon… I sat atop mine and quickly flipped it over. I guess that in all the stupor I’d had quite a few myself and had to pull it together to get situated atop the kayak. After the flipping of the kayak I thought better of bring my beer and left it behind on the beach and followed Patient into the dreamy bay. By the time I got the hang of it Patient was a good hundred and fifty yards ahead of me. It seemed like my boat was more swift though and in no time I was right on his tail. When he saw me gaining he stated that we were headed for the big island, so I kept on pushing the boat as hard as I could. After about another ten minutes of paddling I heard him call my name. "Jay. Jay, where are you?" I was now about thirty yards in front of him so I turned my boat around and saw him turn his lamp on and I signaled him without a vocal response. He then said, "I’m taking on a lot of water and I think my boat is sinking." Great is all that could come to my beer clogged mind. I paddled towards him and when I was about ten yards out, he leaned sideways and easily swam out of the boat. He said the boat had been taking in water for some time and thought he could still make it to the island. However, the island was further than we had anticipated and once he realized he wasn’t going to make it, he called for a rescue. I had to pull all 270lbs of him plus his water logged boat into the island. It was only a couple of hundred yards but the current near the island was strong and swift. When I hit the beach (more like volcanic rock garden) I was tired and thirsty for my tall cold beer I had left behind. We had to drain his boat and I cut my foot on the crusty lava beach. We took a short break and paddled the two miles back to the now unlit beacon. I grabbed my now warn forty and crashed into the soft sand atop my poncho and gazed at the Milky Way dreaming of finer things like Stoli, Cush, and blonde women, the one I miss most in particular.





The next morning the sun was glowing a brilliant orange and we got in the boats again for a tour of the small bay in the lustrous light. After the tour we paddled to the other side of the bay, ate at the sight where the debauchery occurred and paddled some more. We found a reef filled with fish and snorkeled into the underworld where words have no meaning and beauty lies in every breath. Patient found a school of fish about forty yards in diameter and swan in their delight in amazement of how simple things can become when you seem so small and unimportant…
After the enlightening morning we packed up and headed into Mugele, a small town north of playa el burro. We heard from a local who stopped by when Patient was dealing with his brake issue that Mugele was the capital in Baja Sur for one day each year because the Mexican Navy held off an American assault in said town decades ago. The local said that the governor was supposed to show up and a big party was going to go down in celebration of the stand off. When we rolled into Mugele it appeared that the town was uniformed of the celebration as the streets were empty. We tried to stop at an internet café instead to send some emails and whatnot but even they were bored out of their minds. The power was not working and the heat was beginning to consume me whenever I wasn’t moving trough the stale air. Patient and I were both ready to ride so we forwent the nonexistent party and headed south to Loreto.




We arrived in Loreto looking for an internet café and some food before we would continue south to the next town and stay there for the night. We found the café quickly but also found that they too were not getting any power at the moment. The security of such things is not a given here so we looked for a restaurant to kill time and await the resurgence. The heat was stifling and I was becoming cranky in its defeat of my mind and body. I noticed a restaurant with the words ‘aire condicanido’ on the window and saw many people sitting inside the building. Patient noticed the people as well and said "I guess you wanna eat there since it seems like the place where the locals eat?" I said with a wide smile, "that, and they have air!" When we walked into the building it hit me. No power, no air. Defeated again I sat anyway and asked for a menu. My mind wasn’t working well and the power issue at the café didn’t seem to correlate in the thirty steps I had to take to get to the restaurant with air. I had some very good fish tacos for a measly amount of US coin and was satisfied with the experience anyway. Moreover, half way through the meal the air was restored and I ate in the cool breezes of powered machinery… Speaking of powered machines, I had noticed a problem with my radiator fan shortly after leaving Guerro Negro and couldn’t resolve the issue myself. So we returned to the café and took care of our internet business (mine to search for a reputable shop to fix me up and Patient to work on his blog) and discussed whether or not we wanted to ride more or stay here. I was personally done riding for the day and Patient gave in to my will so I asked the lady at the café about a nearby hotel. She referred us to a somewhat pricey place but we took the room anyway because they had air and the heat was stifling that day.




I tried to take a cold shower but the stifling heat (have I mentioned that the heat was stifling yet?) must have been boiling the water in the pipes and not allowing for such a refreshing experience. In turn, I took one in lukewarm water instead. When the sun began to glow I thought it would be good to go for a stroll and get some photos around town in the late afternoon light. I made my way back to the café in search of subjects to photo on my route. When I arrived at the café the sun had already set and gone away for the day. The heat was still apparent but no longer stifling and I wanted to see if my emails were returned yet. I had found a BMW dealer in Cabo online and tried to contact them. I had also found an email for the main distributor of Kawasaki in Mexico and sent him a distress call as well. To my surprise Mr. Martin de Villa of Monterrey Kawasaki had promptly reached out to me with an offer of assistance. In today’s corporate world I have yet to find complete satisfaction in my experiences with major corporations. However, Mr. de Villa was not only offering help but he seemed sincere (as much as an email can be) as well. I returned his email and felt happy (beyond the heat of course) with how the day had progressed.



When I left the café I was standing on the sidewalk drinking the town in when I saw two very tall black men approach me form the east. I think I recognize one and call his name out as they pass me. Tommy Johnson turns and say’s "do I know you?" I’ve ran into people in far flung places before so I wasn’t too amazed that I ran into Tommy that evening in Loreto. TJ was a baller that I had worked with as a coach’s intern on the Aztecs basketball squad in college. Things like that do however always remind me that it’s nice to know that the world is much smaller than we think really is…




The next day we made the 250 mile haul down the rest of the peninsula to La Paz and found Motos Baja, a Honda dealership that Mr. de Villa hooked me up with and took the biggest city of our tour in. The kawi ran hot and I had to keep her moving to compensate for the lack of having a fan. The hot humid air wasn’t the best option to run the bike in but it was all I had to keep her running just under redline on my temperature gauge. Patient found us a hotel where they let him park in the lobby because they didn’t have a parking lot and we went our separate ways to tour the city. I found a skate park and shot a ton of photos of some kids then went for some pizza and beer. It was the first non-mexicano comida I’d eaten on the trip and pizza was a nice substitute… We had traipsed through Baja in six short days without a layover day and we both wanted one badly. We wanted a day away from the bikes and decided to take one here. On Wednesday the 4th of October we awoke, fetched my bike from Motos Baja and rode to the ferry station to get some tickets for the ferry to Mazatlan for the 5th. Upon arrival we found changes in our plans before our very eyes, as the ship was broken and not running to Mazatlan tomorrow. Friday, we ask? The attendant then explained that the ferry will run again when it’s fixed but that could be tomorrow, next week or maybe next month. Like the power that goes on and off at will we were at the mercy of the mexicano rule of maybe manana, and decided to forgo our day of rest and go ahead with the other ferry that runs to Topolobampo, 300 miles north of Mazatlan…