Issue 163: Baja Haha…

Eloise and Joy sidestep their wintry 50th celebrations to go push heavy bikes somewhere warmer instead.

Words and photos Eloise Lindenberg

Hey, this feature looks even better when viewed via Pocketmags; you get the full graphic designed layout on your device FOR FREE! It’s not quite as beautiful as the paper magazine but it’s better than a basic webpage.

Early scupper

The adventure almost got scuppered before it had started when British Airways clean forgot to transfer the bikes to the plane we’d changed onto in London, thus enforcing a 24-hour delay in San Diego until they could find and pop them onto the next day’s flight. Never having had an airline misplace my bike before, it felt strange to be wandering around a city in a new country without it. I felt a little bit lost, even. Cities aren’t my favourite places at the best of times, and my bike helps me cope with them. Additionally, I realised that when you’re travelling in this way, your bike and everything you own strapped or bolted to it is the closest thing to home you’ll have for the duration of your trip. It’s your island of familiarity in a vast ocean of new places and experiences, whatever those might be. So I’ll admit my eyes went a bit swimmy as we watched the next day’s BA flight float down from a nigh on imperceptible dot in the sky, sink down over the city and land out of sight beyond the terminal building. We scuttled across the highway to the arrivals hall, excited at the prospect of finding two cardboard bike boxes waiting in a corner by the luggage carousel. Hurrah! I felt safe and oriented in this new place once more, and the adventure was back on!

As it happened, the adventure turned out to be trickier to get into than we’d anticipated. Setting out into a vast and parched landscape at the time of year when I’m normally battening down my metaphorical hatches and waiting out the winter storms took some getting my head around. But by sheer good fortune, after crossing into Baja, we avoided the winter rain and snow showers famed to turn the desert dust into unrideable mud the consistency of peanut butter, as well as a series of wildfires that closed the route seemingly days after we’d rolled through. Nonetheless, we woke daily to frozen water bottles and a crust of condensation on the inside of the tent. Those first nights were less about sleeping and more a series of naps while we waited for the sun to come up and warm our bones once more. When it dropped behind the mountains around 5.30pm, it abruptly took any warmth with it. The airline blanket we’d ‘borrowed’ off our flight (despite the Do Not Remove From The Aircraft label) helped a little; we wore all the clothes we had to try to sleep in. In the morning, it took ages before our fingers had warmed enough to be able to pack up our frozen kit. We were rarely rolling before half eight.

Never believe the storyteller’s version

Having taken at face value the authors’ estimate of 42 days to complete the route, I was dismayed at our frequent inability to reach even the required 40 miles a day. The route terrain was stunningly beautiful but technically tough. Sharing large sections with the Baja 1000 off-road vehicle race route, it was steep, off-camber, eroded and washed out for miles at a time. And if it was flat, it was often across the deep sand of vast dry river beds. Easy miles were few and far between. (Our newly met pal Eric, from Salida, Colorado, nailed it on the head some weeks later. He declared the seven miles of sandy washboard into a raging headwind towards Mulegé that concluded a beautiful but challenging four days’ remote riding across from the Pacific coast, was a “massive helping of suckass stew”.) What dusty towns we encountered in the north of the route bore little to keep us beyond a resupply of water and highly processed, long shelf-life snacks from a roadside tienda. On a particularly memorable night early on, I could have cried when the advertised (for 600 pesos only!) and days-long anticipated agua caliente campsite shower turned out to be tepid at best, its ‘fresh out the Pacific a hundred yards away’ seawater rendering our soap absolutely useless. More content than me to feel like a dirty wet wipe for a few more days, Joy later consoled me in our tiny tent with the offer of the last tortilla and slice of avocado for dinner. And the reminder that tomorrow was another day, and that surely the route would get easier, or more enjoyable, or perhaps even both.

Hilariously, that next day proved to be our toughest yet. It was 27 miles, tops, 15 of which involved pushing our metaphorical shopping trolleys of belongings up steep and gullied granite jeep tracks strewn with fine gravel. With little purchase underfoot, our shins banged into the pedals again and again. We kept going until the 5.30pm sharp sunset found us completely alone on a high desert plateau ringed by brooding mountains of deepening purple. Within minutes of us throwing up the tent and shaking out our sleeping bags, the Milky Way was stretched silently across the universe above us, making us feel suddenly very small and insignificant, but also incredibly lucky to be there. The following morning, I rose first for that all-important wee and to give Joy room to get dressed and pack up the sleeping kit. To loosen up my stiff, chilly limbs, I wandered through the scrub towards a giant cardon cactus, in which a pair of eagles had set up home. They met my gaze and held it, and in the silence of that high and solitary place, I felt my shoulders finally relax a little. I think that’s when I began to ‘get’ the magic that is Baja, and where, coincidentally, the fun to funk ratio began to swing in the right direction.

The magic is real

Trail magic is alive and well. And it found us late afternoon, the day after my sandy hell meltdown outside Bahía de Los Ángeles. We’d copped an unusually hot weather window and had gone through four days’ worth of water in less than two. Only a single, possibly tourist, car had passed us all day, and they’d not even slowed for the Buenas tardes amigas! Todo está bien? that we’d learnt was customary out here, where strangers looked out for each other. Both pushing our bikes now, tongues like sandpaper, we were debating whether to wait till dark to keep on moving to a ranch some 15 miles on, when a clapped-out old sedan came sputtering along up the hill. With my ten-word Mexican Spanish vocabulary compared to her three (she’s the advocate on our expeditions to France), Joy shoved me out into the road to flag them down. They stop, and I do my best to enquire as to whether they’ve any water to sell us. The old man in the back seat stubs out his fag and cracks open a brand new barrel of water (everyone buys bottled water in Mexico as the plumbing is so sketchy), beckoning for me to bring my 4L canteen. He ignores my request only to part fill it, hands it back brimming, and then points out Joy’s on her bike. They don’t take no for an answer, and when we giddily ask how much we owe them, a hand waves us off from a window as they drive on, wishing us ¡Buen viaje! Thanks to them, we make the ranch we’re headed for with relative ease, and we’re all smiles once more.

Though the poverty and rubbish of the towns and hamlets we pass through never sit entirely well with me, we’re continually amazed at how those with the least often give us the most. On the Pacific coast, about halfway down, and after a morning of riding huge salt flats straight into a raging headwind, we roll into a hamlet of shacks, fishing boats, a curious-looking HGV trailer, and a scabby dog or two. The route notes list El Dátil as a crucial resupply point for the next 90 miles. But I’m struggling to see how. Yet within minutes, ten-year-old Inez has herded us off our bikes and directed us into the village supermarket that is that old truck trailer. It has everything we need, including fresh drinking water. Thereafter, onto her folks’ porch, establishing that we are indeed ‘very hungry’ and sending her mum indoors to address that, while the village men eye us in a curious but not unfriendly manner. We leave an hour later, replete and fully restocked. Veteran bike packer and Frenchman Roch, with whom we share the miles that day, is unsurprised. His theory is that wherever you go, as long as you “Open yourself up to the universe and all your needs will be met – just like that!” I can’t argue.

Even the desert, which I initially feared for its vastness and seemingly barrenness, becomes a place we love spending time in. We get to know the various cactus species, and note how they change as we move south towards warmer and sunnier climes. I’m blown away at how these enormous plants are sustained purely from the fog that seems to blow in off the Pacific most dawns. And I’m never more aware of the animals we share this space with than in the morning when we first roll out and the tracks in the sand of who’s gone before are laid bare for us to see. Above us, turkey vultures perch on top of cardon cacti, their wings held out wide either to warm, dry or cool. We never find out which.

Come to Baja in February, they said…

Even further south, warmer nights also mean better sleep. But I always keep one ear cocked for the distant coyotes which might approach and take a toothy interest in the bikes and gear outside the tent. On Valentine’s Day, it’s getting light, but I’m still cosily asleep when a strange and occasional sound pervades my dreams. Unable to identify it, my brain fails to weave it into whatever I’m dreaming about, and I begin waking, trying to figure it out. Definitely not those naughty coyotes, or even a cow grazing nearby, I know that much. It’s the deep sound of air moving through a large tube, every few minutes. I give up and roll onto my front to join Joy in peering out of the tent. Nearby, Eric’s already fumbled his glasses on and is scanning the mirror-calm waters of Bahía Concepción. The mountains across the bay glow pink in the pre-dawn light; a truck sounds its air brake along Mex 1 far away. Otherwise, silence. Then, suddenly, a thin sliver of black breaks the surface about a mile out, and a second later, a heavy exhalation and deep breath in echo across the water as a grey whale heaves and dives out of sight. We can’t believe our luck, and like giddy school kids, we wriggle out of the tents in case we see it again. It obliges us over and over as we brew coffee on our tiny wood stove and agree that there shall be no rushing off just yet. The sun is high in the sky before we finish breaking camp and roll off into the building heat of another day, absolutely buzzing from what we’ve just been treated to. Joy wishes me happy Valentine’s Day and, slightly annoyingly, lays claim to our whale sighting as being the best gift ever, which I will never top.

“What? The? Actual? You mean, there’s no more Panditos left?!”
“You said you’ve got another bag in your stem cell?”
“That’s the one I passed you when we last stopped, you absolute spanner!”
“Oh. Shit. Sorry. Well, for what it’s worth, the last one was especially good. Thank you. You’re very kind.”
“Oh, PISS off!”

Joy’s impish grin does little to quell my inner five-year-old’s rage at not having any more sweets till the next town, and I stalk over to sit in a tiny patch of shade to fume for a bit. I thought it was hot that other time, but this is really hot. Again. I settle my increasingly skinnier tail on a chobbly bit of volcanic tuff and find it instantly uncomfortable. I shift my weight from one cheek to the other when suddenly my perch tips over, and I collapse arse-first onto a mat of jumping cholla cactus stems. I leap to my feet with a howl of pain from deep within my soul, knowing through recent and bitter experience that that’s only the half of it. The spines of these exceptionally well-evolved succulents are barbed for hitching rides on whoever does what I’ve just done. They don’t pull out without a fight. I manage to get rid of them by vigorously and comically yanking at my shorts, glaring at Joy, who’s had to turn away while her shoulders shake in silent and uncontrollable mirth. Inexplicably, it’s contagious, and as the throbbing in my nethers eases, the giggles take over. As much at the absurdity of this whole venture as much as anything else. This’d never have happened on a fifties cruise to Norway, you know, Joy points out. And as the one whose idea this was in the first place, I’m reluctantly forced to agree. We remount our steeds and ride on.