Mexico & the first 1000 miles

Jim writing. We entered Mexico at the Tecate border crossing on February 1, 2019, and did so with some flare and notice, as Carol dropped her motorcycle crossing over the gargantuan speed bumps (moguls!) at the exit from the crossing. I was in front, and after being waved through by the border guard, I turned right to park in order to go to the “imigracion” office for our tourist visas. But as soon as I stopped a guard started telling me “no”; turns out you can’t park there, you have to go out onto the street, park and walk back. Carol, behind me, sees all of this and is sort of half way turned to follow me when she realizes we need to go out – so she turns to go out and finds herself stopped right up against these “speed bumps” (“topes” in Spanish) that were made from ~8″ diameter steel domes embedded in the asphalt, sticking up about 4″. They are the worst kind of speed bump we’ve encountered for a motorcycle; you really need to have some momentum to carry you over them and it is sort of a crazy scary ride as these bumps toss your front wheel to and fro. But now Carol is stopped with her front wheel right up against the first row of bumps, and as she moved forward, starting from a stop, the domes pulled her front wheel sideways and the bike went down, blocking all border traffic into Tecate. Carol single-handedly, for a few minutes, shut down the Mexican border at Tecate 🙂 I am watching all of this in my rear view mirror, and we are talking by helmet coms, so I know she is ok. As I start to get off to help, I see that a team of young Mexican federal police have jumped into action to help her, so I let them do the heavy lifting. I had my GoPro camera running, and the picture at the start of this blog is captured from the footage. As Carol said – “Mexico, here we are!”

The guard told me we had to exit the border crossing (at the speed bumps) and turn immediately right to park along that side of the building. But I knew from my advance research via Google Maps that the street he was pointing to was one way, and the way he was pointing for me to go was against traffic! So I said something to him about this and he shakes his head and says it is ok. Of course – this is Mexico! Going wrong way down a one way street for a few yards to park is no big thing, at least if a federal police officer is telling you to do it! Even then I managed to park at an incorrect space (I think it was essentially “employee only” parking). We were finally guided to park on the street sort of half on the sidewalk. Whew – after that getting our tourist visa was straightforward, and the immigration officer was kind enough to give us a six month visa, so we have no pressure in terms of our time here in Mexico (we plan about three months). We could not get the Temporary Vehicle Import Permit (TVIP) for our motorcycles because the Banjercito office (agency that administers these permits) was closed that day. The TVIP is not needed in Baja, and I knew from my research that it is possible to get this in La Paz, where we will ferry to the mainland, so I was not taken back when the immigration officer told me as much.

We drove from Tecate south on Hwy 3, the “Ruta de Vino”, into Valle de Guadalupe and the wine region of Baja. We stayed at the Hotel Valentino for two nights, and enjoyed some great wine and food, with one epic story. Our son Daniel had recommended a restaurant to us based on a visit to this region he and his family made last year. On the map it was very close to our hotel – a few kilometers. So we got on my motorcycle (Carol on back) and using Google maps to light our way, we headed out on our brief journey. An important set of details; it had rained a lot in the days before our arrival, and most of the roads off of the main highway are dirt. In fact the road to our hotel was dirt and involved driving through a couple of long muddy puddles, but it wasn’t so bad. With that in mind – Google routes us down the street, then turns us right onto what devolves into an isolated, rutty, muddy farm road. And it is dark, pitch black, no moon. The road is bad – lots of puddles and mud, but I’m doing ok – better than the car in front of us that I had to keep stopping for. And we only have a few kilometer or so to go. Then at some point the car in front stops and turns around – he decides “this isn’t a road for me!”. After I let him by, I pull up to where he was and I see why – the road ahead is just a giant puddle for maybe 30 yards. But Google says we only have a km or so to go, and I’m on a GS after all! So we talk about it and decide to go for it – but at that particular water hole, Carol got off and walked while I forded the flood alone. And I made it! Carol caught up with me and we continued to the restaurant – and as we were getting off the bike a parking lot guard came over to us. I looked at him, pointed the way we had come and said; “El camino es malo!” (The road is bad!). To which he laughed, nodded his head and said “Si!”. Then he commenced to explain in gestures and bits of English and Spanish that if we left going the other direction, it was a much better route. Google didn’t like it because it was twice as far, but it was a short ride that way to asphalt and infinitely better all around – that is how we went home! I wish we had taken some pictures of that road – it was epic. One positive thing (besides the great story) was that it gave a chance to try the Continental TKC-70 tires, which I switched to for this trip, in the mud. They did well

After two nights in the wine country, we headed to San Felipe and Kiki’s RV Camping and Hotel Resort – a motorcycle friendly (owner is a rider) place we stayed at on our previous trip to San Felipe in 2016. To get there we had to head first west into Ensenada, and then east on Hwy 3; a lovely, lonely stretch of Baja highway that goes from the Pacific, connecting with Hwy 5 on the Sea of Cortez (east) side of the peninsula. Only excitement was one intersection in Ensenada – and as we approached it I had a flashback from three years ago: “Oh yeah – I remember this from last time!” It is a horrible intersection, which you approach coming up this VERY steep hill, so steep you cannot really see what traffic is happening in the cross road ahead, and then right at the top, at the apex and sort of “infinity point”, you are supposed to come to a stop. On a fully loaded motorcycle. Coming to a stop on level ground takes concentration – stopping on a steep hill and blind to traffic just ahead is a nightmare. We made it safely through, but it was no fun. If you are routing through Ensenda to San Felipe using Google Map routing, and especially if you are on a motorcycle, beware.

San Felipe was wonderfully peaceful, just as we remembered from before – only the weather was not as nice. It was in the upper 60’s, and we had hoped for warmer weather. But I realize that at that same moment most of my friends and family in the states were in various states of deep freeze and/or winter storms of various types, so we were happy to put on a sweater and call it good 🙂

We stayed two nights at Kiki’s, and then on Wednesday, February 6, we headed south on Hwy 5 along the eastern shoreline. Somewhere south of Ensenada, my trip odometer hit 1,000 miles, which seemed a milestone of sorts, and a good ending point for this blog. Next post I’ll describe the unpleasantness of Hwy 5, and also the beauty and lovely isolation of this stretch of Baja road.

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