Baja is much longer than I think I gave it credit to be. The climate, like the state of California, is remarkably diverse.
After a lovely evening at the fanciest place in Cataviña (also the largest, and indeed rather extravagant for the middle of the desert), today consisted of perhaps the longest very hot ride I’ve done. Not the longest ride in total miles—roughly 600 miles over 8 hours today—but the entirety of it was through the insatiably hot, dry, desolate desert, and consistently at or above 100°F. Even the brief dip out to the West coast at Gurrero Negro was baking hot.
I’ve developed a fascinating burn where my fingers and hands are exposed to the sun by my riding gloves.
My intent was to meet my sister and her guy earlier on this trip rather than later, and every stop I made today was mere minutes behind them. They’re making the trip to the end of thepeninnsula in my sister’s VW diesel golf, which has the advantage of range over me by quite a large margin; her tank will easily cover 500+ miles, while my old Honda Shadow covers roughly 125 miles on a really lucky day before it runs bone dry. Gas in Baja is sometimes hard to come by for a shorter range bike such as mine, and I stopped at the roadside a few times to buy gas from big drums sold ad-hoc. All the guidebooks claim that this is an intermittent phenomenon, but I found it to be fairly reliable. In some cases, there are even roadside signs clearly marking a gas station, which turns out to merely be some guy with a rubber hose and a bunch of plastic gas cans.
Bound to catch them, however, I burned it hard on the long straight stretches through the desert, and being the only vehicle in sight for miles and miles at a time, I easily could peg and hold 100mph. Yes, yes, not the most efficient way to spend the fuel, but I was determined to catch them if I could. I had the advantages of speed and of nimbleness to squeeze past the slower moving vehicles on the road and the blessing of no police who gave a crap about a solitary rider screaming through the desert. The locals seemed to love it, though, and all waved an encouraging hello from the roadside as I went.
The stretch from Gurrero Negro to the Southeast is particularly grueling, and so far also the hottest, but with an amazing payout: cresting the volcanic mountains to glimpse the turquoise Sea of Cortez at the former colonial town of Santa Rosalía can only be improved by the cool, sweet breeze blowing in from the water. Santa Rosalía is a cute, bustling little town nestled in the mountains, where I was able to cool off in a nice cafe on the main drag with some water and a latte.
The road from Santa Rosalia to Loreto is simply breathtaking. It runs amid the cliffs against the sea, past a number of incredible white-sands beaches, with water as mild and beautiful as one could possibly desire. The beaches are sparsely populated, to boot—definitely worth another visit.
Cresting over a bluff with one of the incredible views so common on this road was where I managed to catch my sister and her guy, basking in the sun for a moment, enjoying the view. Mission accomplished.
After our brief reunion, it was on to the final leg of today’s stretch: the rest of the run to Loreto. This was the most harrowing part, as I passed the last gas station some 45 miles south of Santa Rosalia and didn’t fill, thinking that there would be more fuel to find in one of the small towns on the coastal road.
I was wrong.
These towns are little more than hutches on the beach, without so much as a convenience store, and often times consisting of nothing but some reed cabanas stuck in the sand. There isn’t a single soul selling gas from a drum by the roadside, and it would be another hour an a half from where I met my sister before we reached Loreto; another 75-80 miles, by my quick guess. My trip odometer read 45.2 miles when I met them, putting Loreto right at the edge of my range if I had been riding conservatively. I hadn’t been. I’d been burning it at more than 90mph to catch them.
I was at 125.4 miles when we rolled into Loreto, and 125.6 when I sputtered into the gas station at the edge of town. Hah.
Loreto is a beautiful, small town, still proudly showing its colonial roots. We found it to be eminently walkable, deliciously edible, and thankfully affordable. I will definitely come back to Loreto for a longer stay.
Tonight, however, I will sleep well in my cheap ($27!) room with air conditioning, a hot shower with good water pressure, and free WiFi.
Tomorrow, we run down to Cabo.