Southern Exposure

Monday and Tuesday, November 24 and 25

The next day we got up early, had señor Alfonso’s tasty coffee (which he prepared for us every morning by saving it in a termos) and were on our way to La Paz. The ride of about 300 miles was quite boring and exhausting. The scenery could be compared to dry flat deserts of Arizona with short mountain chains blocking the horizon on both sides.

Most of the time you could see the straight road for miles ahead and that would just amplify your desire to be done riding and off the road and the bike. It is on these straight endless roads when you feel the nagging pain in your back, shoulders and neck.

Half way to La Paz in Insurgentes we ran into two adventure riders from San Diego whose bikes we noticed in Santa Rosalia and had a short conversation with them. They have already been down to Cabo and were on the way back north. We were jealous of their cool bikes – a KTM and a BMW – they are definitely much faster than ours. Matt and I disagree on their names, so we won’t post it here. Keep in touch, guys!

The road seemed to last forever, but we finally reached La Paz at about 4:30 pm.

It took us about 40 minutes to find a suitable hotel. Matt and I are still trying to figure out the best strategy for getting around an unknown town and finding a hotel that would fit our budget. The one disadvantage of our Rough Guide travel books is that they don’t rate the hotels by price. We try to go by the book descriptions, but it usually takes a few trials to find a good value hotel that is not completely “ghetto.” Trying to maneuver the bikes around unknown narrow city streets, looking for street name signs (which are very rare), having one person get off the bike to check the hotel rates, makes things a bit difficult and we become impatient with each other fast as we try to figure out the best plan of action. We finally found the right place. Matt parked his bike on the street and went to deal with the receptionist who wanted the pay upfront. The bike seemed to sit pretty steady, but a minute later fell down on it’s right side against the curb, bending heavily the right pannier. (I dropped my bike on the right side earlier that day too when we stopped for gas at the station, though no severe damage for me). Matt was visibly frustrated as we were unloading, but I was pretty sure we would be able to fix it the next day at some welding shop.

To make things even more difficult, when I asked the receptionist about the ferry schedule to Mazatlan, which we were supposed to take the next day, he told us the ferries have been broken for a few months now and they anticipate to renew the service only about two months from now. That meant we would have to take the 3-4 day ride back to Ensenada on the same road we came down. We almost lost it! Thinking about riding that road back was more than either of us could handle at that time.

We unloaded the luggage and ran to the ferry office which was mentioned in our book as fast as we could. The building looked like it has not been open for a few months. What he said must be true we thought, though deep down we refused to believe it. We found an Internet cafe and checked out the ferry website. It mentioned nothing about the ferries being out of service. Frustrated, we came back to the hotel and asked the receptionist to call the ferry office. He did so (for $5 pesos), and we found out that ferries in fact are in service and there is one leaving the next day at 8 pm. It was a great relief tinged with irritation that the receptionist had caused us such a panic. Though its worth mentioning that the next day a motorcyclist from Vancouver BC who was staying at our hotel told us that the ferries were indeed out of service as recently as four days prior, and was very surprised to hear that they were back in service as he had to rethink his route due to the ferry unavailability earlier.

The next morning we went to the ferry office (different than the one mentioned in the book) and without any problems got our ferry tickets. It turned out the be much more expensive than we anticipated for two people and two bikes – $485. (The prices went up November 20). We also decided to upgrade to a private cabin vs a seat in a main salon in order to get a good night sleep and have a productive day of riding the next day as neither of us wanted to stay in the overly touristic Mazatlan.

Matt was able to fix his pannier for free at a bike shop in the morning. In the afternoon we wondered around the city, which is quite large by Baja standards, with a happening downtown, and a pleasant and not so touristy waterfront. We arrived at the ferry terminal 3 hours in advance, boarded the ferry without any problems, and were quite amazed at how nice, clean and upscale our room was, bigger than some hotel rooms we were staying at (and it even had a shower!). And the sheer size of the ferry, which has a few restaurants, two bars with dj booths and a dancing floor, a swimming pool (albeit not functioning), a game room, a kids play room, and a few shops, is quite inpressive. It’s like a small cruise ship, though the only people on it were truck drivers and a few random travelers, including us.

As the ferry took off, we said final good-byes to Baja and went to our cabin to have a picnic type dinner and celebrate our first milestone adventure over a bottle of wine. Thanks for the recommendation, Ant! Tomorrow we will be on mainland. We are yet to decide if we go along the Pacific coast or venture into the central part of Mexico to see the old colonial towns.