RIDES OF A LIFETIME: BAJA, MEXICO
Because you meet the nicest people when travelling by bike.
I’m wearing full bike gear, as usual, and the heat is killing me. It’s my fifth day on that little bit of land that sticks out south of California called Baja. Think ‘Baja 1000’ (the thousand mile desert rally from Ensenada in the north to La Paz in the south). But don’t be confused by the word ‘California’, it’s 100% Mexican and surprisingly, to me, my fellow Mexican motorcyclists are also struggling in the 42o heat.
Despite the hotness, and with ten litres of additional fuel on board, I merrily plough my way south through the desert sands and cacti, passing through Ensenada and striking out for La Paz. I feel like one of those Baja 1000 riders although, if the truth were known, my off-road skills are nothing to boast about.
It’s all a far cry from where this leg of my journey began, high above the Arctic Circle where I fight deep snow as I make my way to Tuktoyaktuk at the top of the Dempster highway – a 600 mile dirt road in the Northwest Territories which leads to the Canadian Arctic Ocean. Only then am I content to turn the bike around and point it south for the 19,000 mile journey to Ushuaia at the bottom of the world. Some years earlier I set out, from my home in the small village of Quin, County Clare in the west of Ireland, on a motorcycle journey that morphed into a round the world extravaganza. My bike? A 2003 Kawasaki KLR650 bought in Poland for €1000, called Agnieszka which is Polish for Agnes. To start with Agnieszka and I venture unassumingly east across the Irish Sea to Wales then across the Bristol Channel
to England and on down through Europe and across Turkey, Georgia and Armenia into Iran and onwards into the Stans before swinging north to Siberia, Mongolia and onwards into far eastern Russia to make the hop across to the North American continent.
On this leg I’m travelling north to south, unlike crossing Asia which I ride west to east. There’s such a difference: west to east means cutting through many time zones while the weather and length of day remain much the same; north to south takes you on a climatic roller coaster ride from the frozen tundra to temperate, desert, tropical, back to desert, temperate and tundra again. All possible within the same time zone.
Solo riding’s always suited me; solo you are the architect, the engineer, the planner and the executioner of something fantastic. Looking back on a journey you are 100% the owner of it. Nobody can ever take it from you. It’s yours and yours only. And, it’s so much easier to meet people when you’re solo, so you’re never really alone. But all of that changes in La Paz…
La Paz, like any town that’s somewhat touristic has many hostels. I never bother to read reviews, preferring just to pick one at random. So in the town of Loreto, the previous evening, I book a hostel in La Paz. Hostels always offer the possibility of charging devices, food
and maybe even a beer which can also mean recharging your ‘social interaction battery’.
The next day I arrive in La Paz at about 3pm, early by my standards. I ride the bike around the back of the hostel, past a little bar area and park. As I do I catch a glimpse of a guy wearing biker trousers and boots – he’s already enjoying a beer. After gathering my overnight stuff I walk past the bar where we both offer a smiling ‘hello’ to each other and he asks if I fancy a beer. ‘For sure, just let me throw this stuff inside.’ I duly return to the bar and we introduced ourselves. His name is Pete Myers ( Bike, September 2019), a motorcyclist from Bristol, UK. We are instantly comfortable in each other’s company and Pete hands me a well-deserved ice cold bottle of Corona which goes down magnificently well. We immediately set about interrogating each other about the respective routes which got us here, and then plans that lay ahead. Pete’s come down from Alaska and has a thing for national parks, particularly in the USA. He asks about my onward route and I explain I’ve already made a quick stop at the port of La Paz to find out if I can book onto a ship to get across to mainland Mexico the following morning. I mention to Pete the famous ‘Spine of the Devil’ route in mainland Mexico from Mazatlán to Durango. Coincidentally Pete’s plans are almost identical so we agree to share each other’s company for a day or two.
The following day we ride to La Paz to purchase passage on a cargo ship to Mazatlán. There’s no online booking so we stand with about forty truck drivers, in a stifling portacabin, jockeying for position and secure passage. Chaos. 12 hours later, just after sunrise, we’ve crossed the Gulf of California and are docking alongside at Mazatlán…
Already the morning heat is building as Pete and I roll off and head towards the ‘Spine of the Devil’ and Durango. Over the next few days our route continues to the beautiful colonial city of Zacatecas and on to Gaudalajara, before arriving in Mexico City.
We are now on the fifth day of our shared journey and it is becoming clear we have much in common. Of course we are bikers who enjoy international travel, we both love Mexico and we both love tiny, nondescript, restaurants, wild camping and/or hostels. We like to start about 10am and stop about 7pm, we both prefer back roads and we both share the same comfort level regarding pace. But most importantly we both love, as Pete would say, ‘to smash a beer or two,’ at the end of each day. We joke a lot about the fact that an English man and an Irish man could get on so well and we never experience the so called ‘day three syndrome’ where sometimes patience can become frayed.
We both have different plans for Mexico City so go our separate ways, yet we keep in contact and meet up once or twice. However, our departures from Mexico City coincide and our duo journey continues. We meet at an agreed rendezvous point in the city and ride the incredibly busy Viaducto Rio de la Piedad outbound towards the city of Oaxaca. My diary entry on the day reads: Picture this... We’re riding our motorbikes out of Mexico City in the early morning sunshine on the very busy Viaducto Rio de la Piedad. This viaduct is perched on pylons fifty meters high above the city. There’s another viaduct crossing below and
‘Solo riding’s always suited me; solo you are the executioner of something fantastic’
two more, one to the left and one to the right, each delivering huge volumes of high speed traffic to and from Mexico City. It feels like we’re being sucked along by the massive volume of traffic on this six lane motorway and at speeds much higher than we’re comfortable with. There’s a huge truck immediately to my right, another to my left and I’m perched in the middle looking at and hearing the frightening roar of the massive wheels rotating just feet away and on either side. You need eyes everywhere! I daren’t slow for fear of being rear ended by the impatient driver behind me, nor can I speed up because of the traffic in front. The viaduct is so high that I see the city’s favelas and snow covered mountains in the distance. I can even smell breakfasts cooking. Finally I muster up the courage to sneak a split second glance at my GPS to try and get a handle on the layout of an upcoming interchange. Should I be in the left lane or maybe the right one, or maybe neither? I decide that priority must be given to simply staying alive and that if we miss our exit then what about it? The GPS should reconfigure. I am genuinely in fear for my life but yet why am I smiling? I’m in Mexico. I’m on a mission. I feel alive! We’re going to Oaxaca.
We meander to Oaxaca and on to the beautiful and touristic city of San Cristobal de las Casas, a fantastic colonial city in the south of Mexico. Onwards from there we explore many of the Mayan ruins on the Yucatan peninsula.
One particularly remote camping place springs to mind: three kilometers up a very steep dirt road leading from a small village we find a little dead end track leading behind the crest of a hill, and totally out of sight of the main track. We erect our tents and cook a little food and, as usual, drink a can or two of beer. It’s nearing full darkness and we are lost in conversation about something or other when just behind the hill crest, where the road is, we hear a single gunshot. Instinctively I lower my voice to a whisper, but when the second gunshot fires out I’m stunned into silence. Pete and I look at each other. It’s so near to us. We immediately assume someone has been murdered out on that lonely road. We crawl, quietly, to the top of the crest but by now it’s too dark to see anything. We retire to our tents but neither of us sleeps. At sunrise we ride back down to the turnoff and likely being the first people to travel that road on this new day we are sure we’d be the ones to come across the slain body. But there’s nothing and we are left without explanation.
We continue from Mexico into Belize and Guatemala. Antigua Guatemala is a stunningly colourful city and the landscape is dotted with volcanoes, some active. Later Guatemala’s jewel in the crown, Lake Atitlan becomes our home for a surreal few days before crossing the border to El Salvador and onwards into Honduras. But, by now a problem is looming for both of us…
The plan works like this
My plan is to end this stage of my journey in Costa Rica where I will put the bike into storage and continue to South America the following year. Pete’s plan is to continue on to South America at this time, so we will say our goodbyes in Costa Rica but only after we have dispensed with Nicaragua. However, at this time Nicaragua is experiencing significant civil unrest; we read about many travellers cancelling their journeys south, some even shipping from Miami to Cartagena, Colombia to avoid Nicaragua. Others coming north terminate their journeys in Costa Rica.
We monitor the situation daily but remain determined to punch through Nicaragua and on into Costa Rica. In the end we make a deal with a Nicaraguan guide who we find on Facebook. He says he can escort us through the conflict in what turns out to be a mad 12 hour dash. It’s to work like this: we cross the border into Nicaragua, meet him at a particular place just inside the border, hand over $50 each then he provides safe passage to the Costa Rican border. We and some other travellers form a convoy and follow him for 12 hours. He’s continually on the phone getting local updates from his contacts about hotspots. In turn we detour around them. It’s a tense day but thankfully we are duly discharged at Nicaragua’s southern border late that evening. We’ve made it to Costa Rica. Before going our separate ways we spend a number of very chill days lounging around the small town of Liberia. Costa Rica is truly a beautiful country with incredible mountains, lakes and beaches. It’s nice down time after our incredible journey that began all the way back in Las Paz nearly a month earlier. But, inevitably, Pete and I finally say our goodbyes as I return to Ireland for a period and Pete pushes south. We have become lifelong friends purely as a result of that unlikely meeting at a hostel in La Paz and we continue to monitor each other’s travels. Good times. The best of times.
‘We hear a gunshot. Instinctively I lower my voice to a whisper, but when the second gunshot fires out I’m stunned into silence’