From sand to sea in Baja

Mulege, Mexico to Mazatlan, Mexico
Mar 15, 2014 – Mar 24, 2014

A Thai jungle in the middle of the Baja desert

Evening light in Mulege making it look more like a lush scene from South East Asia than Baja. We stayed an extra day in Mulege to enjoy the breathtaking views the oasis town has to offer. The Mission Santa Rosalía de Mulegé was founded in 1702 and is flanked by giant cacti, but a few steps away is a view point with vistas resembling luscious South East Asia rather than the dry arid Baja we had come to expect

The Zebra is introduced to a baby whale

Next it was off to A. Lopez Mateo to do some whale watching. The Grey Whales come to the west coast of Baja every year to calve their little ones and raise them in the protected lagoons until they are strong enough to face the open oceans.
While the Wolf and I were at first reluctant to bother mothering whales, the government supervision, eco friendly motors and apparent desire of the calves to interact with our small boat put us at ease, so off we went with a few other couples to see if we could find some ballenas. We were successful and spent an enchanting hour with a mother whale and her playfully curious three month old baby.

A windy ride to the windy town

We faced a long, straight and very gusty ride down to La Ventana, a known kitesurfing mecca on the Sea of Cortez. A dust storm kept our bikes at lean even on the straights of Mex 1. We reached Baja Joe’s 5 hours later where kiters were also struggling with the 40kn gusts. It was no wonder we almost blew off the road! A few tequilas later, we had the pleasant surprise to see our Alaskan buddies from Coco’s corner pop in. It was a lovely and long night at Playa Central exchanging tales from the trails and promises of future adventures together….maybe in Alaska?

1st World kite foil race

The foils ride really smoothly but there is no graceful way to dismount!Another good surprise was us catching the final rounds of the first Kite Foil Gold Cup racing. Some familiar faces from San Francisco, John and Jon, were rubbing elbows with some young and wicked fast young French racers. In the end Maxime Nocher won an impressive first place well ahead of John Heineken.
We spent a large part of Monday relaxing on the beach and marvelling at how damn fast those guys are on the foils (although, hilariously, there is no graceful was to dismount the things) The Wolf even managed to squeeze in a kite session of his own before the wind died down for the evening.

Mechanical hickups

Our third and least favorite surprise was to discover that the Zebramobile’s FMF exhaust was falling apart. With a bit of help from Dago Castro from Moto Speed Baja The Wolf was able to patch things up…Mexican style 🙂

A long ferry ride to Mazatlan

B_baja2_43It’s on a massive ship from Baja Ferries that we turned the page of this Baja chapter. We left the Zebra and Wolf mobiles huddled between semi-trucks and loaded cars, strapped to the boat railing to do our own huddling with 50 other passengers. Despite the reclining seats, it was a long night punctuated by the screams of toddlers and the special audio effects of American blockbusters dubbed in Español. Cross-eyed and fuzzy, we woke up in Mazatlan not quite ready to tackle mainland Mexico. But we boldly proceeded forward nonetheless.

4 thoughts on “From sand to sea in Baja

  1. Pingback: Wolf and Zebra's adventure: San Francisco to Ushuaia - Horizons Unlimited - The HUBB

  2. Tractorking & Fabuloso

    Hey guys, all caught up.
    Me and Cheska from WVFC here.

    Following your trip,looks awesome so far….jealous we are..good luck and if you need any moto parts shipped at some point we are happy to help!

  3. Anastasia Sarris

    this inspires me to give up my day job!! reading about W+Z adventures during bus rides to work sends me in a wanderlust mode x

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