2023 Tour de Baja Divide
“Wait just a minute! That box looks too big!” Larry had already cleared his bike box with customs and the attendant was in the process of launching it onto the conveyor belt for transport to the plane when an officious lady brought everything to a halt. Pulling out a tape measure she declared that the box was 10 inches too long. Southwest Airlines, seemingly alone among airlines, has an impossible standard for the size of bike boxes--a mere 62 linear inches, the definition of linear inches being WxLxD. Fortunately for me they only measured WxL and my box just barely came under those measurements. Larry’s? No.
Bringing out a box cutter and duct tape Larry was able to downsize his box, but a single wheel wouldn’t fit. They allowed him to carry the wheel onto the plane as a carry-on! Crazy! With that we were off and flying to Cabo San Lucas and our most excellent adventure was about to begin.
We’d been planning this adventure for more than six months. I am not a big bicyclist—Larry is. He has three Leadmans to his credit--all the races of Leadville in one year, including both the 100-mile run and 100-mile mountain bike race, and he has raced the Continental Divide Race from Banff Canada to the Mexican border. I didn’t even own a bike, so my first order of business was to get a gravel bike. After some research I settled on the Surly Ogre, purchasing the beast from a local bike shop.
After a couple solo test rides Larry and I set out to try a ride together on the easy Santa Fe Trail—a mild Rails to Trails trail that extends north to south along much of the Front Range. No match for Larry I struggled to keep pace. 25 miles into the ride we turned around at Palmer Lake. Larry quickly disappeared again. I pedaled furiously trying to close the gap. Entering a gravelly downhill I took the turn too wide and caromed off into the grass, catapulting over the handlebars. I lay there in shock with a throbbing pain in my shoulder. Ten years previously my quest to complete the Leadman had ended ignominiously when I crashed on the 100-mile bike race and broke my collarbone. Today’s sharp pain turned out to be the same collarbone, confirmed after a trip to the ER at Fort Carson. After looking at the x-rays the doc determined that is was a clean fracture and would heal by itself with just a sling and no strenuous activity. I should be able to ride again in six weeks. In the meantime, I set myself up on my deck with a trainer.
There were other obstacles along the way, including a stolen bike (the Ogre) and two replacement bikes returned, before I finally found the ideal bike, a Bombtrack with 3” tires and Jones handlebars—perfect for the Baja Divide.
Once my collarbone healed I got in daily rides of 25 to 40 miles before we tested out our bike packing systems with a successful 100-mile overnighter from Colorado Springs to Cripple Creek and back. We were ready for Baja.
Day zero--Cabo San Lucas
November 12th, 2023
After unpacking and reassembling our bikes in our AirBnb near the airport we got a taxi to check out the scene in Cabo. Color us nonplused. The ATMs in town were either broken or gave only dollars. We did find Sammy Hager’s famous Cabo Wabo bar but we only took selfies from the outside, not bothering to go inside since neither of us were interested in imbibing—we’re both teetotalers.
As we walked around looking for a suitable restaurant a man asked us in perfect English what we were looking for. We answered pizza. He told us to follow him, he knew of an excellent pizza restaurant. We followed at a distance, skeptically, but after several blocks he did show us a good pizza place. Then he started asking for money. I gave him a dollar. Not enough. Larry gave him a five and he left us in peace, grumbling. On the way back to the AirBnb I had to direct the taxi driver since he had no clue where he was and didn’t even have a phone for navigation. Even after we had finished the ride to San Diego we both agreed that Cabo San Lucas was the low point of the entire journey.
Day one--Cabo to Todos Santos (57miles)
I chose our AirBnb because it was both close to the airport and close to the Cabo Loop, a 3 to 5-day loop from Cabo San Lucas to Todos Santos, La Paz, and back to Cabo. We took the west (left) side of the loop, heading initially for the town of Todos Santos.
We had downloaded both the Cabo Loop and the entire Baja Divide course onto our electronic devices, Garmin 840 GPS computer on the bike and the Komoot app on our phones. We also had National Geographic maps of North and South Baja with the route marked in pen.
About 30 miles from Cabo we came on a solid barbed wire fence directly across the route with no gate. Somebody didn’t want us to continue there. I tried following the fence along both directions, looking for a hole or a way around, but it was a no go. The only way to get past that fence would be with a wire cutter. We backtracked to a road that led to El Pescadero and Highway 19, which we followed into Todos Santos, arriving just as the sun set—57 miles on day one. We found a hotel, cleaned up, and headed out on the town for dinner. Later I overheard Larry on the phone with a friend saying, “I would be happier if we were going faster,” a sign of conflicts to come.
Day two--Todos Santos to campsite (30 miles)
This was a tough day. For one, it was another scorcher—near 90 degrees F, 32 C, for two, I crashed on a steep downhill, opening up a large gash on my elbow, though fortunately suffering no broken bones, and Larry crashed in some sand, jarring his knee giving him pains for a couple days, and for three, we had some significant sections of deep sand. Finally, I wasn’t eating enough and found myself bonking. We managed only 30 miles in nearly 11 hours.
Day three--campsite to La Paz (50 miles)
I needed to get some better bandages for my wound and we needed to resupply so we opted to go directly to Highway One for an easy pedal into La Paz. La Paz is the largest city in Baja California South with a population of over 200,000. We cruised its streets while looking for a hotel near the town’s Walmart.
The first hotel was completely booked by crew and participants of the Baja 1000, a motorized race that traverses the length of the peninsula and happened to be starting that night at midnight from La Paz. The next hotel was a puzzle that began with trying to find the office. Inside the gated entrance to the hotel a woman was tending a taco stand. I asked her if they had any rooms. She said no. I noticed a whiteboard behind her that advertised rooms with prices and pointed it out to her. She admitted that they did have rooms but for some reason that I didn’t understand she wouldn’t offer them to us. I continued to pester her in my limited Spanish and she finally got on her phone and I assume called the hotel owner after which she said we could have a room, but it wouldn’t be ready until later that afternoon. Okay. Off we went to Walmart.
Day four--La Paz to beachside campsite (69 miles)
We began the day with 30 miles of easy road to San Juan de la Costa where we got food and water from a small tienda. After San Juan the road turned to gravel, where we encountered only one vehicle for the following 40 miles! Along the way we came on a large shrimp farm with three built ponds. Larry had been waiting for me there when a one-armed employee came out and showed him where he could get water. When I showed up he gave me an extra bandage for my wound. Nice of him!
Eight miles later we came on Punta Coyote with four primitive houses, though they did have solar panels and a satellite dish. There was a group of people sitting in the shade and talking but they showed no interest in us. Two dozen donkeys roamed the grounds.
To finish the day we had two very hard climbs where we had to hike a bike before we descended to the sea. I chased three wild donkeys to an ideal beachside campsite where the Sea of Cortez lapped at the shore. A flimsy shack, some thatched roof structures and some trash remained from former inhabitants but no one appeared to have been there for a while.
Day five--San Evaristo to Campsite on the Rio Purificación—16 miles
The day began with an easy 10-mile ride from our picture postcard campsite to the idyllic fishing village of San Evaristo. Upon descending to the village, we followed our noses to “Lorenzo and Maggie Mae’s” restaurant, where their “tween-age” daughter spoke excellent English and served us our fill of omelets, juice, and coffee. We filled all of our water bottles and bladders and finally rolled out of there around 10 am.
OMG! The heat of the day was on for a four-mile climb up most of which we were pushing our bikes--just too many large rocks to ride it. It took us four hours to cover four miles! The hill broke both of us but Larry more than me. To add to his misery, on the following downhill his rack broke. He actually carried one of his panniers on his back while walking his bike until he figured out how to cobble his system together adequately to ride again.
While we were having a snack break two young guys from Utah came down the road on dirt bikes--the first Americans and the first anyone we’d seen doing the Divide. They were both big mountain bikers but not having time to do it on bicycles they were doing it motorized. We were relieved when they said that we would be coming on a river four miles further down the road. We pushed on and found a campsite close to the river shortly before dark.
Larry was bonking badly. All night he was shaking, throwing up, and he thought he was dying. At two in the morning in a moment of despair he pushed the search and rescue button on his Spot Satellite emergency beacon!! Crazy since we were in the middle of nowhere, far from any semblance of civilization. How did he think he was going to be rescued??
Day six--Campsite on the Rio Purificación to the Ranchito by Mission San Francisco—15 miles
The next morning, Larry didn’t think he could continue. He said he needed medical attention and he asked me to go look for help.
I pedaled down the road and across the river where the night before we had seen a house and heard voices. I roused an older man and asked him if he could drive us out of there, but the truck in front of his house had a bad transmission. When I asked him if there were any stores or anything around he said there was a store eight kilometers down the road, but not in the direction we were going. There was a school about five kilometers up the road in our direction. We found the school later but it was closed because it was Saturday.
When I returned to the campsite I told Larry that we were going to have to get back on the bikes. No one was coming to the rescue. We packed up our stuff, with Larry leaving a lot of gear at the campsite on account of his broken rack not being able to hold as much. I told Larry that he has to do penance later to make up for it by picking up litter elsewhere.
We saw a sign for the town of La Soledad where our cheat sheet said there might be food. We pedaled about half a mile off route to a house where I asked for any tiendas. Nothing. When I asked if La Soledad consisted of just his house he said that there were four more houses down the road but we would find nothing there.
We had another steep climb but the road was better and we enjoyed magnificent views of canyons. Near the top I stopped to rest in the shade unaware that Larry had also stopped not twenty feet beyond me. Another long downhill brought us to a house on the river just before the Mission San Francisco. We inquired within and found that they gladly support riders. It was early afternoon, but Larry needed to decompress after his difficult night. They made us lemonade and let us take a siesta in their hammocks and later prepared a hearty meal. We set up camp amongst the dogs, chickens, turkeys, goats and cows. In the early evening hours, we were serenaded by a chorus of dogs barking, cows mooing, and donkeys braying and in the morning we awoke to roosters crowing. Our hosts had breakfast ready for us at 5:30 so we could hit the road at sunrise to beat the heat of the day. Larry had fully recovered.
Day seven—Ranchito by the Rio to Ciudad Constitución—67 miles
Meanwhile there was an active search and rescue operation going on because of Larry’s pushing his Spot emergency button two nights before. A man on motorcycle stopped us and showed us the notice that we were actively being searched for. He took us to a school where we could connect to WiFi and contact our families. He took a video of us saying that we were okay.
Mostly good roads with one steep climb featuring spectacular views brought us out of the canyons. We arrived around noon at the Mission Gonzaga and found a loncheria for lunch. While we were eating, four police officers pulled up and again questioned us concerning the Spot alert. They took our photos and questioned us to make sure we were okay. They also gave us some bottles of Electrolyte and extra bandage wrap for my two wounds.
After the mission we decided to take what we thought was a good road to the highway and proceed directly to Ciudad Constitución. The last six miles of the road to the highway were horribly sandy. Larry especially had a hard time with his narrower tires. The sun had already set when we finally made it to a motel three miles before the city.
The motel owners gave us a ride to town for dinner and we thought we could get a taxi or an Uber home but there were none to be found! We had to walk three miles back to the motel!
Day Eight—Ciudad Constitución to La Ley de Agua Numero Uno
Number one priority was getting Larry’s rack repaired. Number two was finding an ATM to give us pesos.
Michael, the motel owner, who is English met us at the Ley supermarket where he said that we would have a high probability of finding ATMs that work. Sure enough, we each got plenty of pesos for the next week.
Michael also took us to a welding shop for Larry’s broken bike rack but they couldn’t weld aluminum.
Next, we pedaled around trying to find the Colosio Bike shop finally finding it at 9 am when it was supposed to be open. I asked a man who was working next door if he knew the owner. He called him on his cell and told me that he would be opening up in 30 minutes, so we went for breakfast.
Back at the bike shop the owner looked at the rack and said he couldn’t fix it but he knew a shop just three blocks away that could weld aluminum.
They looked at it and at first said it would be ready the following day. Okay, another night in Cd. Constitución. A little later he came back and said twenty minutes. Even better! They welded it together for 600 pesos (about $35) and we were back in business.
Back over to Ley’s supermarket again for provisions and water and we were back on the road again.
After 26 miles of straight, flat, boring, mostly dirt roads including several miles of city dump we reached “La Ley de Agua numero uno”, a small pueblo where we got a little water, sodas and chips from a scroungy, filthy tienda. As darkness approached, we pedaled out of town to find a campsite surrounded by cactus and under a sky of stars.