We're leaving Mexico tomorrow. "What? How the hell did that happen?" Well, thank you for asking, reader. Allow me to continue answering that question.
PUERTO VIEJO
(That's what Joe keeps calling Puerto Vallarta). After we had our stellar beach day despite the most regulatin'est efforts of PV's chubbiest narc, we had two nights left. The first I spent satisfying my parent's unquenchable lust for blog posts. The second we spent at an adult theme park that travelers and maps and the government refer to as "Sayulita." In between we rented waverunners. I weren't fast. Tim went fast. Joe and Kali went fast. Then Kali went to the beach, because Joe injured her. I was confused when I looked for them and only saw an empty waverunner chillin' by its lonesome. I was less confused and more concerned when I saw one long-haired figure rescue-swimming a second long-haired figure. The concern that replaced said confusion was waylayed when I saw that Kali was not dead, but rather just in too much physical agony to continue. Don't worry, parents, it didn't last and Joe has gone the four days since without hurting Kali even once.
Puerto Vallarta is right down the coast from Sayulita. We knew a little about Sayulita. Namely that a friend of mine had just been there for a while and loved it, and that people are less generous with their property there than in other parts of Mexico. Our Couchsurfing host Samy was also fond of the surfing town and successfully talked us into spending Saturday night there. I definitely don't regret it, but there was nothing Mexican about the experience. We walked by a burger joint where the pony-tailed blond surfer said "weh muustly duh buhrrgers." Pretty sure whatever he mostly does is not food and not legal. We checked out a few more places before returning to our live-in-the-moment beach bum friend who informed us that "we muustly duh buhrrgers." Fully. The burgers were amazing, a sure sign of foreign presence. I also have to admit to misjudging the amount of " bum" on our beach bum server. He didn't even smile when we asked for the leftover piña coladas from the neighboring table. (But in my defense, when we asked for his opinion of the women who order them, he described the, as "owknow, thurr mellow.") It is a paradise in ways. It's beautiful and clean and totally supportive of any addiction you can think of. We drank top shelf tequila in the street and called it a night.
MOVE OVER EL CHAPO
We said goodbye to our new friends on Sunday and headed north to Mazatlan, which is where the ferry from La Paz dropped us off, making it the only city we will have seen twice on the trip. It's also the city in which legendary druglord El Chapo was arrested while cooking beans in his hotel a couple weeks before our arrival. The building was surprisingly modest. Respect. We, on the other hand, sprung for an expensive but pretty regular hotel right on the boardwalk. This and the neighboring hotels seem to be doing a good job preying on the travelers who are too tired to continue farther down the boardwalk to the nicer, cheaper hotels. We had an ocean view room and a dirty swimming pool. They couldn't tell us where to rent kayaks, but we figured it out on our own (on the nicer, cheaper end of the boardwalk). We paddled to Deer Island and played volleyball with less coordination than I've done anything since I took a bunch of opium and tried to tie my shoes with my hands behind my back. Ooohh Singapore.
The next day was our longest ride yet, and a healthy chunk of our push toward the border. Things were going well until we reached our destination and decided we could put an eighth hour in. As we pulled out from making the decision, Tim was hit by a car. He is no longer with us. He's fine, but he's in the other room. It was a low-speed kiss from a litte pickup. Tim is fine but Kali's luggage setup took some damage. We'll have to get creative with it for the rest of the trip, but we made it that final hour without much concern. We are now in San Carlos, a retirement suburb outside of Guaymas, about 5 hours south of the US. We heard about San Carlos from this greasy old creep at our hotel in Mazatlan and for some reason trusted him. It's fine, but nothing special. We've had some good food, we've balked at getting tattoos, and we've had some solid lounge time. At this time tomorrow we should be somewhere in Arizona, but there is still plenty of time before we're home. The Mexican part of the trip wasn't what I had imagined, but I don't regret any of it now and don't imagine regretting any of it in the future, unless of course when I get home I discover that my roommate Matt has stretched out my jeans. I'VE OFFERED YOU ENOUGH HELP WITH YOUR OWN JEANS, MATT!
CALM BEFORE THE STORM
So, our plans will need to change, and maybe some of you can help. We will still be in Joshua Tree for the early days of next week, but the rest of the trip has been murked by inclement weather. It's freezing in Yosemite and raining everywhere else in Cali for the next ten days. As poetic as it would be to start and end our trip to paradise in sloppy wet misery, well, nobody likes that poem. Other options include camping at Big Sur or going through Vegas. As long as we can reach the Bay Area by the 5th (where we left all our rain gear) so Kali can catch her flight to Nicaragua we will consider anything. Ideas? Recommendations? Southern California REI locations with the best rain gear selection? Holler at your boys (in the gender neutral sense).
The next blog will come from the motherland, and will thus include tails of independent wealth and the safety of automatic weapons. See you then.
Love,
The Dirty Riders
BERG'S EYE VIEW
-Sorry, gotta pack!
-okay fine Joe saw two more dead dogs and tacos are great
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Friday, March 21, 2014
There's Sand In My Ears...
...but now that sand is white. Since I last posted we have traded the black sand and sea snakes of Mexico's southern coast for the white sand and humpback whales mas northerly. That's right, we're on our way home. Technically, anyway. Right now we're in Puerto Vallarta with a bunch of Couchsurfers. Here's how we got here:
HASTA LUEGO CUYUTLAN
We had one more day at the house in Cuyutlan after our last talk. It's been a while since I've highlighted any expats, so I'm back one mo' 'gain with a doozy. Danny. Oohhh Danny. We could tell you were off from the start. A Canadian from Alberta in town on sabbatical. That's fine. You were towing a boat. You have (or some generation before you had) clearly achieved some definition of success. You asked us about our bikes in a knowledgable way, and coherent enough for someone who may have been on cocaine. I'd put your age at around 45, despite describing yourself as "our age," and I'd put your Spanish at infantile despite you claiming to know some. Danny was friendly, as most expats are to awesome young white travelers, but totally oblivious to the fact that we-din-givva-fuck. He finally earned some curiosity when he jumped unexpectedly and passionately into an account of his recent ayahuasca experience in Guadalajara. Basically, it was the best thing he's ever done and also maybe altered his mind permanently. Oh well. Hasta never, tweaker.
The last thing on our Cuyu to-do was back in Manzanillo. The snorkel gear we haul with us has gone grossly underused. The whale shark was the only success we'd had with it so far, unless you count the "abundance" (couple) of fish Tim saw during his auto-voyeuristic pee break off the boat trip from the last post. Who brings goggles on a pee break? Which now makes me think, maybe "abundance of Fish" in that context was actually a clever declaration of phallic pride, in which case GOOD ONE FISHEL SORRY WE DIDN'T COME LOOK! (The sea snakes in the first paragraph were actual serpents, not a reference to that joke). This trip was to a shipwreck. And after first driving to the opposite side of town, we realized the shipwreck was at the exact same beach we had gone to for the boat trip two days prior. The 300 foot tanker sank within swimming distance of shore in 1959 and is so shallow that the stacks stick out of the water. The black sand and port activity made it a murky affair. There were some fish, but we were mostly too scared to dive beyond what we could see or stick our heads through any of the windows. The monochromatic muck added to the mystique of the ghost ship though and I had never seen a shipwreck before so I was happy enough. Tim and I swam out from another section of the beach for some acceptable enough reef action, we ate some silently protesting clams, and headed off to the movie theater.
ZOOM ZOOM BAM BAM
Options were limited at the theater given our time and language constraints, so we got tickets to Need For Speed. Any movie in English is great when you're traveling, so nobody was worried... not about that anyway... I couldn't find my necklace... I flushed and started sweating when my habitual chest fondle lacked the typical jingle, and one of the first things that crossed my mind was "How am I going to explain this on the blog? Will I even live to blog again??" The necklace has three pieces on it, given to me by my grandmother, my mom, and Danielle, all of whom make my leading ladies list. Each piece is different and irreplaceable. Gram gave me a similar necklace before my pre-blog trip to Brazil, and I won't say that it saved my life, but I will admit to rubbing and kissing it while sitting behind an abandoned building on an abandoned road, arming the taxi full of my friends with the most weapon-like artifacts I could find in the front seat for the fight to the death we had mistakenly convinced ourselves was about to go down (bootleg gasoline stop). Divine or not though, the necklace was meaningful. I gave my comrades their movie tickets and sped off back to the beach to look for it. On the way there, I creamed a bird, right on the windshield. I saw it coming for long enough to say "ah shit" and duck my head behind the windshield before I hit it. There were feathers, but no blood - a clear sign that I was to forge on. I was really hoping the necklace was still at our table and not in the urinal trough where the cross-eyed attendant had watched me change clothes and bathe with the one liter bucket of water he filled from a well.
I pulled in and checked the parking spot we had used, now occupied by a big white van. No luck. I asked the restaurant workers, who remembered our table and hadn't see it but helped me look. Nope. Fuck. Fuck you, pervert del baño. What sort of show am I going to have to put on for you to give me my god damned accessory back? For the record mom, Gram, and Danielle, I would have done a lot. Luckily a second scan of the sand next to the big white van answered my prayers. There it was, mostly buried and all sandy. Didn't care. Picked it up and kissed it and sped off. So long, pervwad! I was late to the movie about driving fast and I was in l awless Mexico on a motorcycle, so I made pretty good time getting back to the theater and was primed for a dose of nostalgic adrenaline as I watched some money-grubbing nerd's live action interpretation of one of my favorite video games ever (sup Stu).
TIME APART
...well, not exactly. Aside from our new family, we have been social with no one. We expected to stay in hostels but have only seen one so far and it was full. We are all friends. We all love each other. But shit. A man can't even be with himself without needing a break every hour, let alone someone else 24/7 for three weeks. MAJOR GROUP BLOWOUT. Honestly though, only one so far... not bad. We haven't separated, per se, but we found some other people.
It was good timing and has helped everyone get over the tension hangover that results from all well-intentioned but negligently delayed hash-outs. All appears well, with the help of our current host Samy, an Algeria-born Canadian. We are with three other Couchsurfers - a couple from Texas named Soilo and Jessica and a feller named Rida from Saudi Arabia. I'm sure I'll have intimate insights (assumptions) about each one to share, just not while they're sitting in the room with me. We had a hilarious day at the beach. We loaded all 8 people, a cooler full of beer, a parasol, a boogie board, and other beach necessities. Pretty much everything except helmets because hey, Mexico. Well, sometimes. Outside of the corner store a cop pulled up with his helmet hanging from his handlebar and hassled us for not having helmets. Samy, the complete host that he is, basically just kept talking until the cop stopped playing with his handcuffs, told us to have one helmet per bike even if not on a head, and rode off. Tim rode backward to hold the cooler to the rack. Rida carried the boogie board like a sail on the back of Samy's scooter, and Kali donned the parasol like the experienced moto-jouster she is. We found what we were looking for - a bunch of amused onlookers and a sparsely populated, rocky white sand beach. HAAAAAAAALLELUJAH! We played in the waves, cut our feet, found a dead eel, and got away from our group simply by expanding the group. Gracias a dios. Justkiddingloveyouguys.
KALI'S STIFLING STEED
Kali and Tim have done an especially good job preventing any further gas dumps. I'm going to go ahead and call it petcock blocking now. Pats on the back all around. But her steel horse is definitely the Seabiscuit of the group, if I'm remembering that movie at all correctly. It's had a couple electrical hiccups over the weeks, starting with her aftermarket air horn falling off in the middle of the road. We didn't recover the horn, but Joe eventually installed a new quieter horn, at which point the headlight stopped working. Or maybe it already wasn't working? I can't keep these things straight. All I know is Tim noticed a loose key nested in the wiring and a couple days after removing it, Joe noticed the headlight working again. Joe takes credit for the repair. And Kali's bike is still my favorite of the three. It's not the sleek stallion Joe rides or the Clydesdale Tim and I mount, but it has the most character and is the most fun to ride. It's also the only one I don't get to ride. But I'm also the only person who didn't buy a motorcycle for this trip, sssoooooo....
Tomorrow: skydiving? Snorkel safari? New trip plans? We'll see.
Love,
The Dirty Riders
BERG'S EYE VIEW
-Mexico has lots of iguanas. They are big, but they don't offer much resistance under 850lbs of motorcycle, man, and luggage.
-Alex's road kill count: two, in two days.
-Joe's dead dog count: up to six.
-Aside from today's officer, the police and military have been no problem. We've been waved through every single military checkpoint, and even had a police escort on a day trip from Cuyutlan. We did worry it was a trap since they led us at twice the posted speed limit but nope, they just drive like everyone else.
-In my last trips I've had reports to make on what I've been reading but I've barely cracked 50 pages so far. I'd replace it with random facts I learn from Tim and Joe talking about random socio-political ongoings, but ain't nobody got time for that.
HASTA LUEGO CUYUTLAN
We had one more day at the house in Cuyutlan after our last talk. It's been a while since I've highlighted any expats, so I'm back one mo' 'gain with a doozy. Danny. Oohhh Danny. We could tell you were off from the start. A Canadian from Alberta in town on sabbatical. That's fine. You were towing a boat. You have (or some generation before you had) clearly achieved some definition of success. You asked us about our bikes in a knowledgable way, and coherent enough for someone who may have been on cocaine. I'd put your age at around 45, despite describing yourself as "our age," and I'd put your Spanish at infantile despite you claiming to know some. Danny was friendly, as most expats are to awesome young white travelers, but totally oblivious to the fact that we-din-givva-fuck. He finally earned some curiosity when he jumped unexpectedly and passionately into an account of his recent ayahuasca experience in Guadalajara. Basically, it was the best thing he's ever done and also maybe altered his mind permanently. Oh well. Hasta never, tweaker.
The last thing on our Cuyu to-do was back in Manzanillo. The snorkel gear we haul with us has gone grossly underused. The whale shark was the only success we'd had with it so far, unless you count the "abundance" (couple) of fish Tim saw during his auto-voyeuristic pee break off the boat trip from the last post. Who brings goggles on a pee break? Which now makes me think, maybe "abundance of Fish" in that context was actually a clever declaration of phallic pride, in which case GOOD ONE FISHEL SORRY WE DIDN'T COME LOOK! (The sea snakes in the first paragraph were actual serpents, not a reference to that joke). This trip was to a shipwreck. And after first driving to the opposite side of town, we realized the shipwreck was at the exact same beach we had gone to for the boat trip two days prior. The 300 foot tanker sank within swimming distance of shore in 1959 and is so shallow that the stacks stick out of the water. The black sand and port activity made it a murky affair. There were some fish, but we were mostly too scared to dive beyond what we could see or stick our heads through any of the windows. The monochromatic muck added to the mystique of the ghost ship though and I had never seen a shipwreck before so I was happy enough. Tim and I swam out from another section of the beach for some acceptable enough reef action, we ate some silently protesting clams, and headed off to the movie theater.
ZOOM ZOOM BAM BAM
Options were limited at the theater given our time and language constraints, so we got tickets to Need For Speed. Any movie in English is great when you're traveling, so nobody was worried... not about that anyway... I couldn't find my necklace... I flushed and started sweating when my habitual chest fondle lacked the typical jingle, and one of the first things that crossed my mind was "How am I going to explain this on the blog? Will I even live to blog again??" The necklace has three pieces on it, given to me by my grandmother, my mom, and Danielle, all of whom make my leading ladies list. Each piece is different and irreplaceable. Gram gave me a similar necklace before my pre-blog trip to Brazil, and I won't say that it saved my life, but I will admit to rubbing and kissing it while sitting behind an abandoned building on an abandoned road, arming the taxi full of my friends with the most weapon-like artifacts I could find in the front seat for the fight to the death we had mistakenly convinced ourselves was about to go down (bootleg gasoline stop). Divine or not though, the necklace was meaningful. I gave my comrades their movie tickets and sped off back to the beach to look for it. On the way there, I creamed a bird, right on the windshield. I saw it coming for long enough to say "ah shit" and duck my head behind the windshield before I hit it. There were feathers, but no blood - a clear sign that I was to forge on. I was really hoping the necklace was still at our table and not in the urinal trough where the cross-eyed attendant had watched me change clothes and bathe with the one liter bucket of water he filled from a well.
I pulled in and checked the parking spot we had used, now occupied by a big white van. No luck. I asked the restaurant workers, who remembered our table and hadn't see it but helped me look. Nope. Fuck. Fuck you, pervert del baño. What sort of show am I going to have to put on for you to give me my god damned accessory back? For the record mom, Gram, and Danielle, I would have done a lot. Luckily a second scan of the sand next to the big white van answered my prayers. There it was, mostly buried and all sandy. Didn't care. Picked it up and kissed it and sped off. So long, pervwad! I was late to the movie about driving fast and I was in l awless Mexico on a motorcycle, so I made pretty good time getting back to the theater and was primed for a dose of nostalgic adrenaline as I watched some money-grubbing nerd's live action interpretation of one of my favorite video games ever (sup Stu).
TIME APART
...well, not exactly. Aside from our new family, we have been social with no one. We expected to stay in hostels but have only seen one so far and it was full. We are all friends. We all love each other. But shit. A man can't even be with himself without needing a break every hour, let alone someone else 24/7 for three weeks. MAJOR GROUP BLOWOUT. Honestly though, only one so far... not bad. We haven't separated, per se, but we found some other people.
It was good timing and has helped everyone get over the tension hangover that results from all well-intentioned but negligently delayed hash-outs. All appears well, with the help of our current host Samy, an Algeria-born Canadian. We are with three other Couchsurfers - a couple from Texas named Soilo and Jessica and a feller named Rida from Saudi Arabia. I'm sure I'll have intimate insights (assumptions) about each one to share, just not while they're sitting in the room with me. We had a hilarious day at the beach. We loaded all 8 people, a cooler full of beer, a parasol, a boogie board, and other beach necessities. Pretty much everything except helmets because hey, Mexico. Well, sometimes. Outside of the corner store a cop pulled up with his helmet hanging from his handlebar and hassled us for not having helmets. Samy, the complete host that he is, basically just kept talking until the cop stopped playing with his handcuffs, told us to have one helmet per bike even if not on a head, and rode off. Tim rode backward to hold the cooler to the rack. Rida carried the boogie board like a sail on the back of Samy's scooter, and Kali donned the parasol like the experienced moto-jouster she is. We found what we were looking for - a bunch of amused onlookers and a sparsely populated, rocky white sand beach. HAAAAAAAALLELUJAH! We played in the waves, cut our feet, found a dead eel, and got away from our group simply by expanding the group. Gracias a dios. Justkiddingloveyouguys.
KALI'S STIFLING STEED
Kali and Tim have done an especially good job preventing any further gas dumps. I'm going to go ahead and call it petcock blocking now. Pats on the back all around. But her steel horse is definitely the Seabiscuit of the group, if I'm remembering that movie at all correctly. It's had a couple electrical hiccups over the weeks, starting with her aftermarket air horn falling off in the middle of the road. We didn't recover the horn, but Joe eventually installed a new quieter horn, at which point the headlight stopped working. Or maybe it already wasn't working? I can't keep these things straight. All I know is Tim noticed a loose key nested in the wiring and a couple days after removing it, Joe noticed the headlight working again. Joe takes credit for the repair. And Kali's bike is still my favorite of the three. It's not the sleek stallion Joe rides or the Clydesdale Tim and I mount, but it has the most character and is the most fun to ride. It's also the only one I don't get to ride. But I'm also the only person who didn't buy a motorcycle for this trip, sssoooooo....
Tomorrow: skydiving? Snorkel safari? New trip plans? We'll see.
Love,
The Dirty Riders
BERG'S EYE VIEW
-Mexico has lots of iguanas. They are big, but they don't offer much resistance under 850lbs of motorcycle, man, and luggage.
-Alex's road kill count: two, in two days.
-Joe's dead dog count: up to six.
-Aside from today's officer, the police and military have been no problem. We've been waved through every single military checkpoint, and even had a police escort on a day trip from Cuyutlan. We did worry it was a trap since they led us at twice the posted speed limit but nope, they just drive like everyone else.
-In my last trips I've had reports to make on what I've been reading but I've barely cracked 50 pages so far. I'd replace it with random facts I learn from Tim and Joe talking about random socio-political ongoings, but ain't nobody got time for that.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Right Nyeer Da Beech
Plans have changed. None of us are coming home. Just kidding, that plan lives. But the remaining itinerary that we slaved over for nights on end in La Paz is with Roscoe now (rest in paradise). We stayed another night in Ajijic with Belva and Enrique after the last post. They showed us their art gallery and took us out for dinner. It was another restless night though and we were relieved to be heading toward any other place to sleep, despite the warm hospitality. The road to quality sleep is always under construction, as the ancients said. In Mexico there are toll road and free roads. The toll roads are empty and big and fast but they're expensive. The free roads are much more interesting, varied, and scenic, but slower. Google maps is mostly reliable for either option but is not necessarily up-to-date on construction. Our freeway entrance turned out to be a mound of dirt. We saw a bicyclist ride between the barricades and lift his bike up before squeezing between a building and a barrier and figured we might as well check it out. Joe shook his head "no" twice while leading the exploration before shrugging once, clearly signifying "yes." The bikes with luggage were the exact width of the opening, which led across a ridge of loose dirt a few feet wide. Sounded wide enough, barely. A loose foothold or stubborn sand would have sent us into a ditch on either side with no way out. Our greatest offload accomplishment yet. Kali's bike did bite the dust right on the other side of the ridge though, and gave us an hour or so of mechanical concerns shortly after. Bad ass.
We are in Cuyutlan right now, a small beach town, population in the hundreds, a ways outside the major port town of Manzanillo on Mexico's southern Pacific coast. Coming here was part of the plan, as was staying the three nights we have stayed so far. Coming here on the same day as 8 gracious Mexicans and having them spoil us rotten, on the other hand, was not.
We are in Cuyutlan right now, a small beach town, population in the hundreds, a ways outside the major port town of Manzanillo on Mexico's southern Pacific coast. Coming here was part of the plan, as was staying the three nights we have stayed so far. Coming here on the same day as 8 gracious Mexicans and having them spoil us rotten, on the other hand, was not.
FAMILIA NUEVA
I can't imagine we ever would have heard of Cuyutlan if it weren't for the house we were offered here by Joe's and Kali's landlord. It belongs to his brother and was bought semi-recently as a retirement property. It's on the beach. Like, right on the beach. In a town with only hundreds of people. On the southern Pacific coast of Mexico. It's also, as luck would have it, totally run down. But frankly, who cares? The property is spacious, sandy, and full of palms. The white concrete Lego piece of a house is the only structure on it aside from an alter, and it's one of the smallest structures on one of three roads through town. When we first arrived we had to find Silvestre Blanco, a man whose teeth are as blanco as they are existent (not very), to get the keys. We were greeted by his similarly gummy wife and had to wait only a few minutes for Mr. White to return from town. He had not been told we'd be showing up for the keys. Joe told him we had his name and phone number and nothing more. We couldn't tell him anything about the homeowners since nobody has ever actually met them, but this is Mexico and we are white so we probably weren't lying. He let us in and warned us that the homeowner's sister MIGHT be showing up the same day. Oh... Ok... Well, hopefully not, but whatever. We brought tents.
We unloaded the bikes and scooted out for the best roasted chickens yet, washed down with water straight from the coconut and beer straight from the bottle. When we got back to the house, it was swarming with Mexicans. I can't imagine what would happen if a bunch of Americans went to a family beach house and a group of four young dirty Mexicans showed up trying to explain that a friend of a friend said they could stay there at some point, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't end the way it did for us. Claudia, the sister-in-law of J&K's connection-once-removed, called us part of their family before we were through the gate and a little while later Joe finally "met" the homeowner over the phone, who ensured us we could stay as long as we want. I always thought hosting was exhausting. Now I think being hosted is exhausting.
DISFRUTENSE!
Enjoy yourselves! Ugh. Fine. The first night the whiteys went to the Carnaval party in town. It is technically a religious festival but practically just a street party. Lots of young people, lots of stares, lots of Tim. Wen we got back to the house the parents were still awake so we ate and drank and got to know each other. Claudia and Pepe are one couple. They have two adorable daughters - Laura, 3, and Monse, 9 months. Pepe makes beer for a living. He also feeds small quantities of beer to toddlers. The other couple was Sergio, a hardware store owner, and Angelica, a school worker. They had two lively sons of 10 and 5 - little Sergio and Max. They forced me to dance salsa, and Tim forced himself to dance hip-hop(?) to salsa music. We all calculated that big Sergio had at least 40 beers over the long weekend, usually starting with breakfast. I can't say we were exactly dry either but I don't think we combined to match him the second day. We all went down the street to the turtle sanctuary on Sunday before heading into Manzanillo for a boat ride and some seafood. The boat ride was fine but not that engaging. The driver was obviously high and couldn't remember the name of the only town we passed. He also took us to the same two spots a couple times each, but hey, it was a boat. We also have his "business card," which is just pen written on kelly green paper. No surprise there.
The four parents acted like our parents, trying to pay for everything, hold our things while we swam, and telling us incessantly to DISFRUTENSE! every time we protested. We paid for the seafood spread behind their backs and it genuinely offended them. We were dead when we got home but we had agreed to play poker so we stayed up. I hate poker. Luckily Joe likes it and he won, recouping a solid 20% of the feast we mistakenly sponsored. The next morning we'd had enough. They asked what was wrong with me and Tim and Joe said we were hungover, which was nicer than the truth. They were amazing people but we needed them to disappear. The peace and quiet the last 20 hours has been positively succulent.
EL REGRESO
Our trip is now halfway over. Cuyutlan is nowhere near the turning around point we had imagined, but it feels right. Early on we agreed on the value of getting to know places rather than breezing through, constantly unloading and reloading the bikes. Some important parts of our itinerary had to change though. We will skip San Miguel de Allende now, my home for 3 months nearly five years ago now. I'm sad to miss it yet again and hate to flake on my friends there after hyping up the hopeful reunion for the past few months. But better safe than sorry, and we've had one too many warnings to stay out of Michoacan right now. We will see the Puerto Vallarta area now, which we elected to bypass with the previous route plan, then right on up the coast to the border. The magic will continue through the US with stops in Joshua Tree and Yosemite and some ATV rentals in the Oregon sand dunes. But before all that, two more weeks of Mexico. Let's keep this going.
Love,
The Dirty Riders
BERG'S EYE VIEW
-Joe's DDC is now up to six.
-I got sunburned again, but we have aloe vera plants here at the house, so fuck it.
-On a similar note, water straight from the coconut tastes great. Aloe goo straight from the plant tastes like bug spray
-Children are cute, but also sometimes GETTHEHELLAWAYFROMME
-It's cool to ride without a helmet here. It's even cooler to ride with your helmet hanging from your handlebars.
-When speed bumps don't work, use cobblestones. When you want to support the auto shop on every block, use cobblestones with speed bumps.
-My bouncy ball is bouncier than Tim's bouncy ball.
-Iguanas, finally.
-Snacks here come in three flavors: salt, sugar, and nothing.
-Turns out Crocs really are a superior sandal.
Friday, March 14, 2014
Vaya con dios
Have to start this one off with some sad news. Every time I leave the country a pet dies. We had some warning, but yesterday Tim's dog Roscoe went to the heaven store. Roscoe was a fine dog mostly. He taught me many things, some of which include: the absorbent properties of inorganic carpeting; the wide variation in intelligence levels among yellow labs; and that chocolate won't kill a dog even in quantities that might kill a human. Thank you for everything Roscoe. When you see my cat Mario, please tell him we are sorry for ever getting Luigi and Penny. When you see Luigi, tell him we are sorry for always letting Mario eat all of your food.
LA PAZ 4LYFE
We spent five more nights in La Paz after the last time I blogged. That was not the plan. A combination of immigration needs and ferry hangups kept us at bay until Tuesday night, but we had some fun. Joe and Kali successfully fixed her gas dump problem (with the motorcycle) Thursday night. It was good practice... On Friday we became legal. It was pretty easy really. Thanks, Mexico. I hear we're not quite as easy to work with up north. On Saturday we finally got some beach time and had a chance to take out the snorkel gear we brought expecting to be snorkeling every day... but not before Joe and Kali successfully fixed her second gas dump problem of the week. Much faster this time. We didn't see shit, but it was great to be face down in warm water for a while. I got sunburned of course, but only an inexplicable patch on the top of one foot. Whatever. Fuck you.
On Sunday Tim touched another ocean behemoth, but this time he wasn't supposed to. We did manage to go snorkeling with whale sharks. Well, one whale shark. But one was enough. They're way more beautiful than gray whales and being under water with one is wild. They cruise along at an easy enough snorkeling pace but you have to take a few flippers to the face if you want to beat out the other snorkelers for the best position.
The only other person on our boat was Flo, a French student in La Paz for an international business internship. He was a pretty classically slender, cigarette-smoking Frank. We went to his apartment afterward to drink some beers and use his laptop. Tim taught him about sneaker culture and we all taught him that "see you later tonight" from a Seattleite means "thanks for the Internet see you never!" Sorry about that. We'll work on it... later tonight...
Sunday was equally memorable. On the whale shark boat we hugged one side of El Mogote, a peninsula sticking out into the Bay of La Paz. Except for the luxury condominiums at the tip, the peninsula is a long sliver of empty beach. The next day we finally acquired some ferry tickets and got set to head out the following night. In the meantime though, we were determined to find our way to El Mogote. After missing the turnoff and driving an absurd distance along an absurdly scenic waterfront highway, we turned around and missed the turnoff again. The correct road was long and unpaved. It looks glamorous in photos but was mostly miserable on a large, street-oriented motorcycle. My hands were asleep by the time we pulled off but it was well worth the discomfort. With a view of La Paz just far enough away and not a soul on the sand in either direction, we were entirely alone. Stones were thrown, shorts were shed, and everyone voted unanimously in favor of the beach's superiority. We were sad to have spent so much time in La Paz and only found that beach at the end of our stay, but every day there was important for one reason or another.
On Tuesday we attempted to clean up a week's worth of mess from our Chinese hotel room. We did alright, but I was happy they didn't check the room before returning our deposit. La Paz added to the surprising number of Seattle connections we discovered in Baja. One of the few channels on the hotel TV showed Evening Magazine and the guy who checked our paperwork at the ferry terminal has an uncle who lives on Alki Beach. As we pulled up to the dock the modern, sleek ferry depicted on the company's website was disembarking. The ferry left for us was more tanker than yacht. It was the biggest boat I have ever been on and maybe 10% of the space was accessible by passengers. We did have our own cabin for the overnight ride, though, and there was outdoor space and beer, both of which we consumed in stereotypically American portions. When we reached the mainland we hit the ground running, straight to...
TEQUILA!
For obvious reasons our night in Tequila was one of the most memorable and one of the most forgettable yet. The search for the hostel we researched was fruitless but serendipitous. A young street vendor recommended Hotel Loreto, where an infectiously smiley and possibly stoned middle aged man named Luis gave us two rooms and free shots of tequila from his brother's distillery, DonValente. We also agreed to buy a bottle of it for later for around $40, which we didn't feel so great about. Luis hadn't earned our trust yet and at a touristy looking tequila shop around the corner typical Jose Cuervo, Herradura, and Sauza products were selling for less than $10. We bought a bottle of Jose Cuervo Tradicional for like $12 just to be able to try a couple different types, but feeling too spends already we just took it back to the hotel. Luis was waiting for us, and fully intended to give us our money's worth. The one bottle we bought ended up including three more. We all ended up in Luis' room, which was straight out of Scarface. The bathtub, toilet, and bidet were separated from the living room by only one stair and the decor fed our suspicions that the pretty young men posing as employees may have been more harem than staff. The one other person Luis invited that night showed up late, brought only a toothbrush, and did not pass the half-your-age-plus-seven rule.
Luis told us that his brother's tequila was of such high quality that we would not be hungover the next day. And even after waking up to Kali's third gas dump, right in the hotel courtyard, we did feel mostly fine. It helped that Luis made us various hangover potions when we woke up, but everything went to shit when we attempted to find a distillery tour. The two blocks between the hotel and the adjacent Cuervo and Sauza compounds were easy. But the smell of tequila right outside the factories made everyone feel like they had just second harvested a stranger's vomit. We decided to skip the tour and move on.
FAMILIA
I'm blogging now from the neighborhood of Chula Vista, outside of the popular retirement town of Ajijic on Lake Chapala, Mexico's largest freshwater lake. Hosting us is the family of a couple Joe's mom Dana has known for 25 years. Belva and Enrique, the wife and husband, are painters who own a gallery in Ajijic and live in a long but cozy rambler above a golf course with whichever of their children happen to be around at the time (right now their gracious 19-year old son James) and a countless amount of pets. A few hours after stopping to eat two pounds of pork at the first carnitas spot of the trip, we were hungry for more meat. Joe's insatiable craving for steak and the thumbs up from James and his friends led us to Tango, an Argentinian steakhouse. It was ridicubomb. I dont really like steak, but I loved that dinner. Everyone but Joe has leftovers and we paid less than an inferior steakhouse would charge for one meal in the states. We felt pretty good about ourselves, but we all slept terribly. Nobody was feeling even 80% this morning when we ventured out to explore Lake Chapala. And to our disappointment, apparently nobody uses the lake for recreation... or anything at all really. We walked the length of a barren boardwalk today hoping to find a paddle-oriented activity but all we found were some cows and some underwhelming ice cream.
We are back at the house now, resting after lunch with the family. If this blog sounds tired, you now know why. From here the plan has been to stay in the port town of Manzanillo in another free house before riding along the coast to Zihuatanejo. But the only things we've heard about that leg are that Manzanillo is big and ugly and the drive through the volatile state of Michoacan is beautiful but not entirely risk-free, so we have some decisions to make. Next time I blog, you'll know which one we make, but hopefully it will involve some coral reef. We are already nearing the turn-around point, which is making the trip feel short, but we have a lot planned for the return trip. Stay tuned. I'll try to write more frequently.
Con mucho amor,
The Dirty Riders
BERG'S EYE VIEW
-The dead dog count is holding steady, which is good.
-Ad slogan for a restaurant in La Paz called Just Burgers: "More than only hamburgers!"
-Robocop. Pretty good!
-We now all have bright "GAS" signs placed on our bikes/luggage to help with Kali's bike. We'll see if it works.
-Tim doesn't like tortillas. Uh oh...
-Mexican drivers are much more generous than American drivers. Except for the Mexican drivers who are much less generous.
LA PAZ 4LYFE
We spent five more nights in La Paz after the last time I blogged. That was not the plan. A combination of immigration needs and ferry hangups kept us at bay until Tuesday night, but we had some fun. Joe and Kali successfully fixed her gas dump problem (with the motorcycle) Thursday night. It was good practice... On Friday we became legal. It was pretty easy really. Thanks, Mexico. I hear we're not quite as easy to work with up north. On Saturday we finally got some beach time and had a chance to take out the snorkel gear we brought expecting to be snorkeling every day... but not before Joe and Kali successfully fixed her second gas dump problem of the week. Much faster this time. We didn't see shit, but it was great to be face down in warm water for a while. I got sunburned of course, but only an inexplicable patch on the top of one foot. Whatever. Fuck you.
On Sunday Tim touched another ocean behemoth, but this time he wasn't supposed to. We did manage to go snorkeling with whale sharks. Well, one whale shark. But one was enough. They're way more beautiful than gray whales and being under water with one is wild. They cruise along at an easy enough snorkeling pace but you have to take a few flippers to the face if you want to beat out the other snorkelers for the best position.
The only other person on our boat was Flo, a French student in La Paz for an international business internship. He was a pretty classically slender, cigarette-smoking Frank. We went to his apartment afterward to drink some beers and use his laptop. Tim taught him about sneaker culture and we all taught him that "see you later tonight" from a Seattleite means "thanks for the Internet see you never!" Sorry about that. We'll work on it... later tonight...
Sunday was equally memorable. On the whale shark boat we hugged one side of El Mogote, a peninsula sticking out into the Bay of La Paz. Except for the luxury condominiums at the tip, the peninsula is a long sliver of empty beach. The next day we finally acquired some ferry tickets and got set to head out the following night. In the meantime though, we were determined to find our way to El Mogote. After missing the turnoff and driving an absurd distance along an absurdly scenic waterfront highway, we turned around and missed the turnoff again. The correct road was long and unpaved. It looks glamorous in photos but was mostly miserable on a large, street-oriented motorcycle. My hands were asleep by the time we pulled off but it was well worth the discomfort. With a view of La Paz just far enough away and not a soul on the sand in either direction, we were entirely alone. Stones were thrown, shorts were shed, and everyone voted unanimously in favor of the beach's superiority. We were sad to have spent so much time in La Paz and only found that beach at the end of our stay, but every day there was important for one reason or another.
On Tuesday we attempted to clean up a week's worth of mess from our Chinese hotel room. We did alright, but I was happy they didn't check the room before returning our deposit. La Paz added to the surprising number of Seattle connections we discovered in Baja. One of the few channels on the hotel TV showed Evening Magazine and the guy who checked our paperwork at the ferry terminal has an uncle who lives on Alki Beach. As we pulled up to the dock the modern, sleek ferry depicted on the company's website was disembarking. The ferry left for us was more tanker than yacht. It was the biggest boat I have ever been on and maybe 10% of the space was accessible by passengers. We did have our own cabin for the overnight ride, though, and there was outdoor space and beer, both of which we consumed in stereotypically American portions. When we reached the mainland we hit the ground running, straight to...
TEQUILA!
For obvious reasons our night in Tequila was one of the most memorable and one of the most forgettable yet. The search for the hostel we researched was fruitless but serendipitous. A young street vendor recommended Hotel Loreto, where an infectiously smiley and possibly stoned middle aged man named Luis gave us two rooms and free shots of tequila from his brother's distillery, DonValente. We also agreed to buy a bottle of it for later for around $40, which we didn't feel so great about. Luis hadn't earned our trust yet and at a touristy looking tequila shop around the corner typical Jose Cuervo, Herradura, and Sauza products were selling for less than $10. We bought a bottle of Jose Cuervo Tradicional for like $12 just to be able to try a couple different types, but feeling too spends already we just took it back to the hotel. Luis was waiting for us, and fully intended to give us our money's worth. The one bottle we bought ended up including three more. We all ended up in Luis' room, which was straight out of Scarface. The bathtub, toilet, and bidet were separated from the living room by only one stair and the decor fed our suspicions that the pretty young men posing as employees may have been more harem than staff. The one other person Luis invited that night showed up late, brought only a toothbrush, and did not pass the half-your-age-plus-seven rule.
Luis told us that his brother's tequila was of such high quality that we would not be hungover the next day. And even after waking up to Kali's third gas dump, right in the hotel courtyard, we did feel mostly fine. It helped that Luis made us various hangover potions when we woke up, but everything went to shit when we attempted to find a distillery tour. The two blocks between the hotel and the adjacent Cuervo and Sauza compounds were easy. But the smell of tequila right outside the factories made everyone feel like they had just second harvested a stranger's vomit. We decided to skip the tour and move on.
FAMILIA
I'm blogging now from the neighborhood of Chula Vista, outside of the popular retirement town of Ajijic on Lake Chapala, Mexico's largest freshwater lake. Hosting us is the family of a couple Joe's mom Dana has known for 25 years. Belva and Enrique, the wife and husband, are painters who own a gallery in Ajijic and live in a long but cozy rambler above a golf course with whichever of their children happen to be around at the time (right now their gracious 19-year old son James) and a countless amount of pets. A few hours after stopping to eat two pounds of pork at the first carnitas spot of the trip, we were hungry for more meat. Joe's insatiable craving for steak and the thumbs up from James and his friends led us to Tango, an Argentinian steakhouse. It was ridicubomb. I dont really like steak, but I loved that dinner. Everyone but Joe has leftovers and we paid less than an inferior steakhouse would charge for one meal in the states. We felt pretty good about ourselves, but we all slept terribly. Nobody was feeling even 80% this morning when we ventured out to explore Lake Chapala. And to our disappointment, apparently nobody uses the lake for recreation... or anything at all really. We walked the length of a barren boardwalk today hoping to find a paddle-oriented activity but all we found were some cows and some underwhelming ice cream.
We are back at the house now, resting after lunch with the family. If this blog sounds tired, you now know why. From here the plan has been to stay in the port town of Manzanillo in another free house before riding along the coast to Zihuatanejo. But the only things we've heard about that leg are that Manzanillo is big and ugly and the drive through the volatile state of Michoacan is beautiful but not entirely risk-free, so we have some decisions to make. Next time I blog, you'll know which one we make, but hopefully it will involve some coral reef. We are already nearing the turn-around point, which is making the trip feel short, but we have a lot planned for the return trip. Stay tuned. I'll try to write more frequently.
Con mucho amor,
The Dirty Riders
BERG'S EYE VIEW
-The dead dog count is holding steady, which is good.
-Ad slogan for a restaurant in La Paz called Just Burgers: "More than only hamburgers!"
-Robocop. Pretty good!
-We now all have bright "GAS" signs placed on our bikes/luggage to help with Kali's bike. We'll see if it works.
-Tim doesn't like tortillas. Uh oh...
-Mexican drivers are much more generous than American drivers. Except for the Mexican drivers who are much less generous.
Thursday, March 6, 2014
ilegales
As Americans in Mexico we recognize that we are national representatives in an ongoing cultural exchange. An equal exchange means give and take, open mindedness, empathy, and sympathy where shared experiences are possible. In pursuit of such equality, we have been in Mexico illegally this entire time. As I write this, we are still here illegally. Also I crashed Tim and myself again and the hotel room smells like gasoline on account of Kali's fuel being everywhere it shouldn't be and literally nowhere it should be (like, the O.G. definition of "literally"). But wait, I'm jumping ahead.
EXPATS
We left Guerrero Negro (the place with Tim's whale friend) on whatever day that was, headed across the peninsula to the town of Mulege which sits at the mouth of (maybe) the only river in Baja. Or maybe there are tons of rivers. I'm not a scientist. It was another nice ride. Dry again, not too much wind, and very few cars. The most remarkable tidbit from this drive started with a call on my intercom. One beep - that means Tim tapping in from six inches behind me. These intercoms are finnicky though and with 80gb of music set to shuffle you never quite know what's a call from a comrade and what's just another skit from an early Aughts hip-hop album. After a few seconds an abrupt "Alex..." told me it was my passenger but not much else. A few seconds later the "pull over..." that followed revealed little more. The inexplicable black magic of mirrors showed me the rest, namely a beard of brown vomit flowing from the bottom of Tim's helmet onto the road, his arm, the backpack, etc. etc. Food? Tequila? Quien sabe? Viva Mexico!
Joe found a chart online that lists the distances between each town along the transpeninsular highway and we've corroborated the distances with google maps. We've been planning our stops according to the careful calculations of how long those distances should take us given the posted speed limits. We make few stops and average 50-75% higher than the speed limits (people still pass us) and we still take at least an hour longer than our estimates. We have no real explanation, but a few minutes after passing the "43km to Mulege" sign we passed a "47km to Mulege" sign, so who the hell knows. The river through Mulege makes the region an oasis, so the landscape is much more lush. We stopped in San Ignacio on the way in hopes of seeing a pre-fab metal church said to have been designed by GustaVe Eiffel of Eiffel Tower fame. The church was designed to be a model for French missions and won a first-place award in the same World Expo in Paris that featured the more famous eponymous iron phallus. San Ignacio was the cutest town we had seen thus far and did have a nice mission, but not the right one. Side note: there is a lovely older local woman in San Ignacio looking for a mid-50s American man with a pension plan. She'll make you burritos. DISCLAIMER: grandchildren... And the burritos won't taste good unless you're ravenous.
After lunch we remounted the beasts and proceeded down the road to Santa Rosalia, where the historical metal Christ box actually exists. The approach to the town is picturesque for anyone not too swamp-your-pants frightened to unclench from whatever artficial safety handles they found in a blind panic and look out over the sea. The descent from the hills to the waterfront known as "Devil's Staircase" is an extreme network of switchbacks so steep and exposed you'll thoughtlessly abandon your natural instinct for survival in favor of paralyzing idiotic wonder. Santa Rosalia is an old French copper-mining town with an Old West vibe, and it had an unremarkable looking church. We saw it, I took a picture for my mom, and we bizzounced. An unreliable number of kilometers later we reached Mulege. We blindly followed some roads until they ended, and then we kept going. It didn't take long for the road to end and the Sea of Cortez to start. Not the kind of dead end you regret. A few hundred meters down the return trip we stopped at a bar to relieve them of some beers and some answers. We also ran into some expats. The leader of the unpleasantry was wearing a legit Soviet military hat. Pretty typical lifelong asshole really - the kind whose kindness is actually just an ingredient of his assholeness. Conversation never lags with them, though, and that makes brief encounters palatable, especially so far from home. The oyster shooters he bought us were tasty. He exhausted his Spanish lexicon with the word "cuatro" and resorted to a suggestive nod while ordering, to which the waitress responded by fetching the English-speaking bartender. On the way out of the bar Kali finally joined the dropped-bike club. Welcome! There aren't many wrong turns to make in a town so small and we easily found the hotel recommended by our countrymen, but not before baiting another expat. Our new friend Al was on his way home with supplies for tanning the rattlesnake hide he harvested from the day's catch when he saw us cruise by looking murderous as sin and followed us into the hotel lot. We talked for a while and he invited us over to burn some wood and drink some beers. We gave him the classic Seattle Sidestep and moved the convo along before checking in as the only guests in the hotel. It had a nice courtyard and a hotel and we finally had separate rooms so Tim and I could get some intimacy time. Within minutes a woman on an all black bike with a riding onesie rolled in threatening to challenge our most-bad-ass-bikers-in-town status HAHAHAHAyeahright. Seriously though, Risa made us look like bitches. More tattooed, more experienced, traveling sola, and a pink glittered seat. She's from San Francisco and will hopefully show up in the blog again during our trip home.
We got a late start the next morning (which I'll stop saying at this point because that's how every morning is) so Risa left without joining us on our overpriced hike. The hike was worth doing but could have been done better. We saw 10,000 year old cave paintings, swam for two seconds in suffocating water, and learned some interesting local history. The only part of the story that keeps resurfacing (pun intended... wait for it...) is that of the "second harvest." The Baja Peninsula is a desert, which posed resource scarcities for the local tribes. Sometimes they went a week without eating. Food was so scarce and their defecation zones so designated that it was often easier to remember where an old pile of booboo was than a new pile of food. Second harvest. You get the idea. That night we did visit Al, and we were all a bit humbled. Despite knowing that Al is a fellow Northwest native (Portland) some of us cast him off as another inconsiderate entitled American. His house was a large covered patio full of character. His RV is parked "inside" as a guest room and his bedroom wall was tastefully patterned by paint sponges designed from the local cave paintings. His property has been straight murked multiple times by floods, the highest of which covered his pad with 16 feet of water, and my impression was that each reiteration was better than the last. I also gathered that he makes a concerted and successful effort to maintain the aesthetic influence of his dearly departed. We had a nice night and at least a couple of us left feeling sheepish.
MAS PAZ MAS PROBLEMAS
Mulege to the port town of La Paz aw our longest ride yet. It started out with some contention as we passed the Bay of Conception. Al told us it was a nice place to camp and that while passing it we would regret not doing so. Well, yeah, fine, YOU WERE RIGHT AL. We argued for a while but kept driving. I won't name the unhappy party but I will say that it's the same 28-year old male cousin of mine who maintains the most positive attitude about everywhere we go. Things settled down the way they usually do when we stop talking to each other for hours and by the time I crashed us in a sandy detour in front of dozens of backed up travelers Tim was feeling frisky enough to make 40 ounces of cerveza look like a half spritz of Binaca. I forgot to mention in the last post that after the first crash it was Tim who got the bike started again when Joe and I were clueless. Same fix this time. Spirits soaring, we got swindled shortly after at a lunch stop and made it to La Paz for sunset. Crack attack. The good kind of crack attack.
We sit now at the Hotel Pekin, a Chinese themed hotel on the main boardwalk. We're all pretty comfortable here, which is good, because we have to be here for a while. Both Al and our Soviet sartorialist told us, without much concern really, that we had been traveling illegally. When we crossed the border at Tijuana we were ushered right through. Nobody asked for our passports, nobody said a word. We read that we needed documentation for our vehicles at the very least but that the free state of Baja might have different requirements. Once we realized that really was the entire border process we were sitting in the parking lot of the northernmost Walmart parking lot in all of Mexico (I hope). We had also read that because Baja is in many ways its own country we could probably export the bikes at the fery terminal here in La Paz. What we knew nothing about was the tourist card we need, which is basically a travel visa without the stamp. So not only do we have to run all around town paying people and writing formal letters in Spanish, but we won't get a stamp out of it. The ferry we wanted to the mainland leaves on Sunday but there is no guarantee that we'll get our immigration interview by then so we may have to wait until Tuesday, assuming they okay everything. Frankly though, the threat of legal repercussions ain't nun to a boss so Kali spiced things up with a mechanical snafu. Her bike has something called a petcock, which is basically a valve that lets gas flow from the tank to the carburetor (which then regulates gas flow to the engine (or not, I don't fucking know)). The petcock is annoying because you basically have to turn it on when you want to drive and off when you don't and there is no indicator or anything to tell you which setting it's on. It was on all night, which lets the gas flow freely. With no combustion to burn that gas up, it just fills the engine. Once the engine is flooded, it pours onto the ground until the gas level passes below the petcock, which is the reserve level. The only reason I have time to write all of this is because Joe and Kali are disassembling and drying out her bike, changing the oil (which was mixed with gas), and watching some old Chinese man smoke opium out of a three foot wooden pipe. Tomorrow we'll see what we can do about an immigration interview. Since we are here until Sunday night at the earliest, the next post should have some things to say about trying to snorkel with whale sharks and the quality of opium at Chinese hotels in Mexico.
BERG'S EYE VIEW
-IgotsunburnedIhateeverything.
-Joe was all "SUMTHUN BIT MUUHHY" Forrest Gump style and now has something I won't describe happening on his hand.
-The people of Baja are amazing. Drivers are friendly, police are helpful, and vendors give us food as long as we pay double.
-The iPad does not format blog posts in any translatable way. No, I do not type these out without spaces between paragraphs.
-We're finding some kind of groove I think, the curious destiny of all people who really want to be friends. Dissent was inevitable but nothing a little communication can't fix. Despite our alien status, the seizure-inducing VACANCY sign on the Tecate case, and the stereotypical gender dynamics of the current bike repair sitch, everyone is doing just fine.
-Waffles bring people together.
EXPATS
We left Guerrero Negro (the place with Tim's whale friend) on whatever day that was, headed across the peninsula to the town of Mulege which sits at the mouth of (maybe) the only river in Baja. Or maybe there are tons of rivers. I'm not a scientist. It was another nice ride. Dry again, not too much wind, and very few cars. The most remarkable tidbit from this drive started with a call on my intercom. One beep - that means Tim tapping in from six inches behind me. These intercoms are finnicky though and with 80gb of music set to shuffle you never quite know what's a call from a comrade and what's just another skit from an early Aughts hip-hop album. After a few seconds an abrupt "Alex..." told me it was my passenger but not much else. A few seconds later the "pull over..." that followed revealed little more. The inexplicable black magic of mirrors showed me the rest, namely a beard of brown vomit flowing from the bottom of Tim's helmet onto the road, his arm, the backpack, etc. etc. Food? Tequila? Quien sabe? Viva Mexico!
Joe found a chart online that lists the distances between each town along the transpeninsular highway and we've corroborated the distances with google maps. We've been planning our stops according to the careful calculations of how long those distances should take us given the posted speed limits. We make few stops and average 50-75% higher than the speed limits (people still pass us) and we still take at least an hour longer than our estimates. We have no real explanation, but a few minutes after passing the "43km to Mulege" sign we passed a "47km to Mulege" sign, so who the hell knows. The river through Mulege makes the region an oasis, so the landscape is much more lush. We stopped in San Ignacio on the way in hopes of seeing a pre-fab metal church said to have been designed by GustaVe Eiffel of Eiffel Tower fame. The church was designed to be a model for French missions and won a first-place award in the same World Expo in Paris that featured the more famous eponymous iron phallus. San Ignacio was the cutest town we had seen thus far and did have a nice mission, but not the right one. Side note: there is a lovely older local woman in San Ignacio looking for a mid-50s American man with a pension plan. She'll make you burritos. DISCLAIMER: grandchildren... And the burritos won't taste good unless you're ravenous.
After lunch we remounted the beasts and proceeded down the road to Santa Rosalia, where the historical metal Christ box actually exists. The approach to the town is picturesque for anyone not too swamp-your-pants frightened to unclench from whatever artficial safety handles they found in a blind panic and look out over the sea. The descent from the hills to the waterfront known as "Devil's Staircase" is an extreme network of switchbacks so steep and exposed you'll thoughtlessly abandon your natural instinct for survival in favor of paralyzing idiotic wonder. Santa Rosalia is an old French copper-mining town with an Old West vibe, and it had an unremarkable looking church. We saw it, I took a picture for my mom, and we bizzounced. An unreliable number of kilometers later we reached Mulege. We blindly followed some roads until they ended, and then we kept going. It didn't take long for the road to end and the Sea of Cortez to start. Not the kind of dead end you regret. A few hundred meters down the return trip we stopped at a bar to relieve them of some beers and some answers. We also ran into some expats. The leader of the unpleasantry was wearing a legit Soviet military hat. Pretty typical lifelong asshole really - the kind whose kindness is actually just an ingredient of his assholeness. Conversation never lags with them, though, and that makes brief encounters palatable, especially so far from home. The oyster shooters he bought us were tasty. He exhausted his Spanish lexicon with the word "cuatro" and resorted to a suggestive nod while ordering, to which the waitress responded by fetching the English-speaking bartender. On the way out of the bar Kali finally joined the dropped-bike club. Welcome! There aren't many wrong turns to make in a town so small and we easily found the hotel recommended by our countrymen, but not before baiting another expat. Our new friend Al was on his way home with supplies for tanning the rattlesnake hide he harvested from the day's catch when he saw us cruise by looking murderous as sin and followed us into the hotel lot. We talked for a while and he invited us over to burn some wood and drink some beers. We gave him the classic Seattle Sidestep and moved the convo along before checking in as the only guests in the hotel. It had a nice courtyard and a hotel and we finally had separate rooms so Tim and I could get some intimacy time. Within minutes a woman on an all black bike with a riding onesie rolled in threatening to challenge our most-bad-ass-bikers-in-town status HAHAHAHAyeahright. Seriously though, Risa made us look like bitches. More tattooed, more experienced, traveling sola, and a pink glittered seat. She's from San Francisco and will hopefully show up in the blog again during our trip home.
We got a late start the next morning (which I'll stop saying at this point because that's how every morning is) so Risa left without joining us on our overpriced hike. The hike was worth doing but could have been done better. We saw 10,000 year old cave paintings, swam for two seconds in suffocating water, and learned some interesting local history. The only part of the story that keeps resurfacing (pun intended... wait for it...) is that of the "second harvest." The Baja Peninsula is a desert, which posed resource scarcities for the local tribes. Sometimes they went a week without eating. Food was so scarce and their defecation zones so designated that it was often easier to remember where an old pile of booboo was than a new pile of food. Second harvest. You get the idea. That night we did visit Al, and we were all a bit humbled. Despite knowing that Al is a fellow Northwest native (Portland) some of us cast him off as another inconsiderate entitled American. His house was a large covered patio full of character. His RV is parked "inside" as a guest room and his bedroom wall was tastefully patterned by paint sponges designed from the local cave paintings. His property has been straight murked multiple times by floods, the highest of which covered his pad with 16 feet of water, and my impression was that each reiteration was better than the last. I also gathered that he makes a concerted and successful effort to maintain the aesthetic influence of his dearly departed. We had a nice night and at least a couple of us left feeling sheepish.
MAS PAZ MAS PROBLEMAS
Mulege to the port town of La Paz aw our longest ride yet. It started out with some contention as we passed the Bay of Conception. Al told us it was a nice place to camp and that while passing it we would regret not doing so. Well, yeah, fine, YOU WERE RIGHT AL. We argued for a while but kept driving. I won't name the unhappy party but I will say that it's the same 28-year old male cousin of mine who maintains the most positive attitude about everywhere we go. Things settled down the way they usually do when we stop talking to each other for hours and by the time I crashed us in a sandy detour in front of dozens of backed up travelers Tim was feeling frisky enough to make 40 ounces of cerveza look like a half spritz of Binaca. I forgot to mention in the last post that after the first crash it was Tim who got the bike started again when Joe and I were clueless. Same fix this time. Spirits soaring, we got swindled shortly after at a lunch stop and made it to La Paz for sunset. Crack attack. The good kind of crack attack.
We sit now at the Hotel Pekin, a Chinese themed hotel on the main boardwalk. We're all pretty comfortable here, which is good, because we have to be here for a while. Both Al and our Soviet sartorialist told us, without much concern really, that we had been traveling illegally. When we crossed the border at Tijuana we were ushered right through. Nobody asked for our passports, nobody said a word. We read that we needed documentation for our vehicles at the very least but that the free state of Baja might have different requirements. Once we realized that really was the entire border process we were sitting in the parking lot of the northernmost Walmart parking lot in all of Mexico (I hope). We had also read that because Baja is in many ways its own country we could probably export the bikes at the fery terminal here in La Paz. What we knew nothing about was the tourist card we need, which is basically a travel visa without the stamp. So not only do we have to run all around town paying people and writing formal letters in Spanish, but we won't get a stamp out of it. The ferry we wanted to the mainland leaves on Sunday but there is no guarantee that we'll get our immigration interview by then so we may have to wait until Tuesday, assuming they okay everything. Frankly though, the threat of legal repercussions ain't nun to a boss so Kali spiced things up with a mechanical snafu. Her bike has something called a petcock, which is basically a valve that lets gas flow from the tank to the carburetor (which then regulates gas flow to the engine (or not, I don't fucking know)). The petcock is annoying because you basically have to turn it on when you want to drive and off when you don't and there is no indicator or anything to tell you which setting it's on. It was on all night, which lets the gas flow freely. With no combustion to burn that gas up, it just fills the engine. Once the engine is flooded, it pours onto the ground until the gas level passes below the petcock, which is the reserve level. The only reason I have time to write all of this is because Joe and Kali are disassembling and drying out her bike, changing the oil (which was mixed with gas), and watching some old Chinese man smoke opium out of a three foot wooden pipe. Tomorrow we'll see what we can do about an immigration interview. Since we are here until Sunday night at the earliest, the next post should have some things to say about trying to snorkel with whale sharks and the quality of opium at Chinese hotels in Mexico.
BERG'S EYE VIEW
-IgotsunburnedIhateeverything.
-Joe was all "SUMTHUN BIT MUUHHY" Forrest Gump style and now has something I won't describe happening on his hand.
-The people of Baja are amazing. Drivers are friendly, police are helpful, and vendors give us food as long as we pay double.
-The iPad does not format blog posts in any translatable way. No, I do not type these out without spaces between paragraphs.
-We're finding some kind of groove I think, the curious destiny of all people who really want to be friends. Dissent was inevitable but nothing a little communication can't fix. Despite our alien status, the seizure-inducing VACANCY sign on the Tecate case, and the stereotypical gender dynamics of the current bike repair sitch, everyone is doing just fine.
-Waffles bring people together.
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Gringos Mojados
Today was the first dry day of the trip, and we still got wet. But nobody is complaining today. It would be pointless to be upset with a gray whale anyway. More on that later. The blog hasn't taken off yet and I feel empty of flavorful words at the moment but enough has happened already to force my hand. Lez break it down.
AMURRCA
The trip started smoothly enough, or something. We packed until after midnight on Monday and managed to leave only a half hour late from Seattle in the Penske on Tuesday morning, which we took to Southern California to avoid riding the motorcycles through cold, wet weather. As most people who read this already know, there was no such weather in the Northwest that week, but it's cool we found it later. Alex driving, Joe riding shotgun, and Tim mushed on the space between the only two seats that come in a three-person Penske. Not bad for a few blocks. Give it the 15 1/2 hours it took us to get to my aunt's house in Marin and you'll never envy Tim's catalog-worthy posterior again. We woke up early Wednesday morning in Marin, mushed Tim again, and reached Santa Ana at around 4 to drop off the truck. All three bikes made it there, but ours didn't make it out of the truck with the chain still on, which I had installed myself just two days before. So obviously, that made no sense... Anyway I expertly reinstalled the chain in the back of the truck with one of the five remaining spare links we brought. A few minutes later I was in a neighboring parking lot expertly reinstalling the chain with one of the four remaining spare links we brought. The third time did prove to be the charm, but only because it was the first time I used all of the pieces that come in a spare chain pack. Next time I open something I've never seen before, I'll assume everything inside has a purpose.
Valuable lessons learned and logged, we hit the highway to finish the trip to San Diego where we met Kali and spent our last stateside night with her gracious friends, Jaycee and Mario. Mario was a bro in the most endearing of ways, and his successful career in insurance sales was an unexpected essential. He sold Kali a couple days worth of insurance that we decided she needed to both drive the last few miles in California and then to cross the border. We left much later than expected, but we did leave, so hey... that's good...
MEHEECO
Crossing into Tijuana, the weather met our expectations. It made it easy to "meh" our concernst over not having acquired any of the legally required(?) vehicle import documentation we expected to buy at the border. At this point we mostly just try not to talk about what might happen on the way out of the country without that paperwork. Because of our late start we only made it to Ensenada, one of the northernmost towns on the Baja peninsula. The town was fine - touristy, overpriced, comfortable enough. That stuff always applies in a special way to cheapskates though, which is why the first room we walked into at our hotel of choice was adorned wall-to-ceiling with mirrors and had a swooping red vinyl sex chair. We laughed of course, but were fully prepared to settle in when a friendly sex hotel worker-or-patron directed us to a more appropriate room, this one with two beds and a number on the door that matched the number on the key. Somewhere over the course of that other shit I wrote, group tensions had already risen. Group uncertainty will rain on a traveler's parade more than: Friday morning I don't actually remember if we had a concrete plan (a group trip necessity that continues to elude us) because all I remember is the rain. I'm going to say that we probably wanted to drive really far that day but desire lives in the world of luxury and we lived in another world that day so who really knows. I can say, though, that we did not drive really far that day. We made it to San Quintin, just a few hours away. Wikipedia told me a few minutes ago that the Baja peninsula has some of the least precipitation on the planet. For future reference, all of it falls on Friday, February 28th... so watch out. On the brink of suicide we took a turnoff with a hotel sign and ended up at a resort on an expansive beachfront compound that put us up for cheap and had everything required to foster the sensation of being inside a building - namely walls and a ceiling. On top of that though, a bar. Our chemical happiness over the next few hours facilitated the bartender's financial happiness, hopefully so much so that he didn't mind Tim and I emptying the bar of other tourists with a loud and spirited argument about jack shit.
Tensions remained the next morning as the group flipped and flopped to Tim's justifiable and irrepressible fury, only to decide last minute to go against his wishes and leave our (sunny) paradise for... somewhere else. We aimed for Guerrero Negro, chosen for its distance from San Quintin and its legendary whale watching. The ride was 400km (figure it out, yankee scum) and we barely made it by nightfall. The first third of the leg was a fantasy. There was: sun, music, smooth roads, twisties, epic desertscapes, a cow. There was not: traffic, tension, communication, shits to give about anything. The remaining two thirds were fucking. weak. In my memory everything turned when Tim and I hydroplaned across a flooded road, looking cooler than you have ever hoped to look but getting wetter than we had been since 18 hours earlier. After that the hills left and the winds came. With little topographic protection we lost some serious velocity. We weaved through most of the rain, but there was still enough to get us dirty and wet and cold. Also, Tim and I crashed. Tim threw his helmet. Everyone peed. We kept going. It was dope. We made it to Guerrero Negro (in the rain) and picked a hotel with secure parking. To appease Tim's distaste for Mexican food (...) we ate pizza from a place with a young white cook. He convinced the owner to let us bring beer in as long as we kept it hidden. They forgot to tell us not to dropkick the empty bottles under the table, dummies.
LAS BALLENAS
Joe woke up early the next morning and accidentally woke everyone up, as practiced. Luckily, it jump started our best day yet and likely one of the most memorable of the trip. He researched and reserved a whale watching trip in a nearby lagoon. We all like whales because we are good people, so everyone was down. The drive to the lagoon, captained by a friendly guide who had a name of some sort and gave us mayonnaise sandwiches, took us through a chunk of water-logged land used for harvesting salt. Guerrero Negro is home to the biggest salt mine in the world, which, pretty effortlessly it seemed, extracts salt from the sea water through evaporation. $alt. We saw a couple glistening vessels in the distance as we approached the launching grounds and were sufficiently excited to maybe have seen a couple whales. That probably wasn't even worth mentioning because THEN WE SAW LIKE 100 GRAY WHALES A FEW FEET AWAY AND ONE SPLASHED US WITH HER TAIL AS SHE WENT UNDER OUR BOAT AND TIM FUCKING TOUCHED OOONNNNE! It was crazy. It was like Jarassic Park in the water. Tim was like that kid who I think was named Tim and got shocked when he peed on the electric fence. Or maybe he just touched it and I'm thinking of pee because Real Tim won't stop peeing every 30 minutes. Anyway the whole thing was shocking, humbling, beautiful, and befuddling. It was surreal. We've been riding that high all afternoon and it has injected a raging hit of black tar positivity straight into our jugulars. Tonight we plan again. We have plenty of photos and three other versions of everything I just wrote to share. We love you all. Back soon.
BERG'S EYE VIEW
-The pizza place we chose had a young white cook who they sent out to translate. We decided his name is Forresst, he is 25 years old, and he knocked somebody up while studying the whales for his Ivy League biology program and has been here ever since.
-Tim loves every place we go. It's pretty special, but we aren't appreciating it enough yet.
-Joe's Dead Dog Count, heretofore referred to as JDDC: 4.
-We have now had tacos for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Flavored have included birria, al pastor, carne asada, fried fish.
-I'm pretty sure we've mostly had tasty food, but we've been referring to quite a few things as being "on the delicious side of the nausea line at least," so... I don't really know... -The military checkpoints have been unexpectedly smooth. We've been waved through every single one.
-We (don't really deserve to deserve to include myself in this particular collective to be honest) DEFINITELY all got the right bikes for this trip. The roads have required us to do some pretty bad-ass-but-actually-tame-but-still-bad-ass dual sport riding already. I expect mainland roads to provide more challenges.
AMURRCA
The trip started smoothly enough, or something. We packed until after midnight on Monday and managed to leave only a half hour late from Seattle in the Penske on Tuesday morning, which we took to Southern California to avoid riding the motorcycles through cold, wet weather. As most people who read this already know, there was no such weather in the Northwest that week, but it's cool we found it later. Alex driving, Joe riding shotgun, and Tim mushed on the space between the only two seats that come in a three-person Penske. Not bad for a few blocks. Give it the 15 1/2 hours it took us to get to my aunt's house in Marin and you'll never envy Tim's catalog-worthy posterior again. We woke up early Wednesday morning in Marin, mushed Tim again, and reached Santa Ana at around 4 to drop off the truck. All three bikes made it there, but ours didn't make it out of the truck with the chain still on, which I had installed myself just two days before. So obviously, that made no sense... Anyway I expertly reinstalled the chain in the back of the truck with one of the five remaining spare links we brought. A few minutes later I was in a neighboring parking lot expertly reinstalling the chain with one of the four remaining spare links we brought. The third time did prove to be the charm, but only because it was the first time I used all of the pieces that come in a spare chain pack. Next time I open something I've never seen before, I'll assume everything inside has a purpose.
Valuable lessons learned and logged, we hit the highway to finish the trip to San Diego where we met Kali and spent our last stateside night with her gracious friends, Jaycee and Mario. Mario was a bro in the most endearing of ways, and his successful career in insurance sales was an unexpected essential. He sold Kali a couple days worth of insurance that we decided she needed to both drive the last few miles in California and then to cross the border. We left much later than expected, but we did leave, so hey... that's good...
MEHEECO
Crossing into Tijuana, the weather met our expectations. It made it easy to "meh" our concernst over not having acquired any of the legally required(?) vehicle import documentation we expected to buy at the border. At this point we mostly just try not to talk about what might happen on the way out of the country without that paperwork. Because of our late start we only made it to Ensenada, one of the northernmost towns on the Baja peninsula. The town was fine - touristy, overpriced, comfortable enough. That stuff always applies in a special way to cheapskates though, which is why the first room we walked into at our hotel of choice was adorned wall-to-ceiling with mirrors and had a swooping red vinyl sex chair. We laughed of course, but were fully prepared to settle in when a friendly sex hotel worker-or-patron directed us to a more appropriate room, this one with two beds and a number on the door that matched the number on the key. Somewhere over the course of that other shit I wrote, group tensions had already risen. Group uncertainty will rain on a traveler's parade more than: Friday morning I don't actually remember if we had a concrete plan (a group trip necessity that continues to elude us) because all I remember is the rain. I'm going to say that we probably wanted to drive really far that day but desire lives in the world of luxury and we lived in another world that day so who really knows. I can say, though, that we did not drive really far that day. We made it to San Quintin, just a few hours away. Wikipedia told me a few minutes ago that the Baja peninsula has some of the least precipitation on the planet. For future reference, all of it falls on Friday, February 28th... so watch out. On the brink of suicide we took a turnoff with a hotel sign and ended up at a resort on an expansive beachfront compound that put us up for cheap and had everything required to foster the sensation of being inside a building - namely walls and a ceiling. On top of that though, a bar. Our chemical happiness over the next few hours facilitated the bartender's financial happiness, hopefully so much so that he didn't mind Tim and I emptying the bar of other tourists with a loud and spirited argument about jack shit.
Tensions remained the next morning as the group flipped and flopped to Tim's justifiable and irrepressible fury, only to decide last minute to go against his wishes and leave our (sunny) paradise for... somewhere else. We aimed for Guerrero Negro, chosen for its distance from San Quintin and its legendary whale watching. The ride was 400km (figure it out, yankee scum) and we barely made it by nightfall. The first third of the leg was a fantasy. There was: sun, music, smooth roads, twisties, epic desertscapes, a cow. There was not: traffic, tension, communication, shits to give about anything. The remaining two thirds were fucking. weak. In my memory everything turned when Tim and I hydroplaned across a flooded road, looking cooler than you have ever hoped to look but getting wetter than we had been since 18 hours earlier. After that the hills left and the winds came. With little topographic protection we lost some serious velocity. We weaved through most of the rain, but there was still enough to get us dirty and wet and cold. Also, Tim and I crashed. Tim threw his helmet. Everyone peed. We kept going. It was dope. We made it to Guerrero Negro (in the rain) and picked a hotel with secure parking. To appease Tim's distaste for Mexican food (...) we ate pizza from a place with a young white cook. He convinced the owner to let us bring beer in as long as we kept it hidden. They forgot to tell us not to dropkick the empty bottles under the table, dummies.
LAS BALLENAS
Joe woke up early the next morning and accidentally woke everyone up, as practiced. Luckily, it jump started our best day yet and likely one of the most memorable of the trip. He researched and reserved a whale watching trip in a nearby lagoon. We all like whales because we are good people, so everyone was down. The drive to the lagoon, captained by a friendly guide who had a name of some sort and gave us mayonnaise sandwiches, took us through a chunk of water-logged land used for harvesting salt. Guerrero Negro is home to the biggest salt mine in the world, which, pretty effortlessly it seemed, extracts salt from the sea water through evaporation. $alt. We saw a couple glistening vessels in the distance as we approached the launching grounds and were sufficiently excited to maybe have seen a couple whales. That probably wasn't even worth mentioning because THEN WE SAW LIKE 100 GRAY WHALES A FEW FEET AWAY AND ONE SPLASHED US WITH HER TAIL AS SHE WENT UNDER OUR BOAT AND TIM FUCKING TOUCHED OOONNNNE! It was crazy. It was like Jarassic Park in the water. Tim was like that kid who I think was named Tim and got shocked when he peed on the electric fence. Or maybe he just touched it and I'm thinking of pee because Real Tim won't stop peeing every 30 minutes. Anyway the whole thing was shocking, humbling, beautiful, and befuddling. It was surreal. We've been riding that high all afternoon and it has injected a raging hit of black tar positivity straight into our jugulars. Tonight we plan again. We have plenty of photos and three other versions of everything I just wrote to share. We love you all. Back soon.
BERG'S EYE VIEW
-The pizza place we chose had a young white cook who they sent out to translate. We decided his name is Forresst, he is 25 years old, and he knocked somebody up while studying the whales for his Ivy League biology program and has been here ever since.
-Tim loves every place we go. It's pretty special, but we aren't appreciating it enough yet.
-Joe's Dead Dog Count, heretofore referred to as JDDC: 4.
-We have now had tacos for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Flavored have included birria, al pastor, carne asada, fried fish.
-I'm pretty sure we've mostly had tasty food, but we've been referring to quite a few things as being "on the delicious side of the nausea line at least," so... I don't really know... -The military checkpoints have been unexpectedly smooth. We've been waved through every single one.
-We (don't really deserve to deserve to include myself in this particular collective to be honest) DEFINITELY all got the right bikes for this trip. The roads have required us to do some pretty bad-ass-but-actually-tame-but-still-bad-ass dual sport riding already. I expect mainland roads to provide more challenges.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)