BAJA — A Bike Story

For us, Baja’s allure is hidden past the large and rough cities of note and tucked past mountains that require a detour from the Pan American Highway. A tough mountain crossing and demolished roads await but the charm of Sea of Cortez side of Baja is well worth the journey. Our most memorable time of this stretch was our time at Playa Cristina.

At kilometer marker 83 on highway 5 lies a small family owned and ran restaurant where we were gifted with the kindness of these amazing people. Hector and Christina commute from San Felipe to open this restaurant on weekends which caters mostly to the snow birds of the area. The restaurant sits on their own private beach with palapas for those looking to spend a few nights camping. At no cost other than ordering food at their restaurant we spent three nights eating delicious food and drinking tasty margaritas. Charles had lost his tent poles a few days prior and was left to string up his tent. This allowed for the three dogs of the neighborhood to cuddle with him each night.

Hector and Christina’s kindness kept expanding as we found that our money was running low and our next ATM was over 200 miles south. We were obviously stressed about this as Hector offered to give us a ride back to San Felipe to use the ATM. Hank rode with Hector back to San Felipe and Charles and Evan were put to work at the restaurant. Evan back behind the bar and Charles serving. We couldn't be more grateful to Hector and Christina for being such great people. We already know that we will be back in the future to visit them again.

The road back to Highway 1 only got worse. The road went from washed out asphalt to pure dirt and rock. At one point we missed our turn which apparently had no signage other than a small cardboard sign that we missed. Continuing on we noticed that our GPS coordinates seemed to be to far off to be a positioning error. With only one supply spot on this road we could not afford to miss it. Not sure where we were, we had one choice, use Jerome the drone. Lifting him off and scanning the area we realized we did in fact miss our turn but luckily there looked to be a road ahead of us that would bring us to the correct road without backtracking. 6 miles and one flat later we reached CoCo’s corner. A small market where the man himself, Coco waited for us. Apparently he had spotted us in San Felipe and was awaiting our arrival. He had bought over 80 acres of land in this remote area. As far as we know he had only built this small house where he provided travelers with water and small snacks. Coco had lost his legs to an infection years ago and was left in a wheelchair. A unique character, he is pretty famous to those who traverse this road, locals and foreigners alike. A charity was started to get him a truck with handicap driving so he could get to town when needed. A few Frankenstein campers sat in the lot which he let weary travelers rest for the night. The next morning we assisted him in installing a light on one of posts outside. A very stressful experience for all parties, we were scolded for our lack of Spanish as Coco began to get frustrated in our handywork. Sign and blood pressure raised, we moved on to finish our off road riding back to highway 1.

During our time cycling in Baja we meet over 30 other cyclists. Only two of them heading north, we had a lot of company as we headed south. At one point we counted 15 cyclists at one campsite. Baja is a real bottleneck for cyclists in this region as many do not want to cross through the mainland border. We entered the bay of conception on our own as we spent a few more days than the others enjoying Mulege. On our second day, Thanksgiving, we were at the local market stocking up on supplies when we meet other cyclists Patrick and Leigh. Talking led to sharing drinks and stories together which led to us staying at the small beach another night. It was a great Thanksgiving. Tamales were served tent side in the morning as well.

Our road from Loreto to La Paz would take us inland, away from the beautiful coast line that you can stare out for hours, to desert and cactus. We felt we had our fair share of cactus counting and decided to head mainland from Loreto to Oaxaca. We scheduled a three week Spanish course in the city and were excited to gain a foundation of the language past “Que?”. Backing up our bikes we took a bus from Loreto to Cabo where we had a flight to Oaxaca.

Section of Highway 5 destroyed by the Hurricane.

Coco of Coco’s corner finishing up the sign he had us put up for him.