Mulege

We left the beach at Santa Rosalia expecting to hit a store right away but ended up eating snacks on the road before getting to San Lukas not far along.  There we filled a water dromedary and got some other snacks and supplies.

The road was rolling, and went quickly.  We kept waiting for Dave and Ushi to catch up (later learning that they had a number of flats on the trailer tire probably due to cactuses in the desert at Viscanois and the beach sand dislodging the spines). The ride down the canyon into Mulege is incredible, and the palms and water give the area a hidden treasure island kind of feel.  Arriving in town, we ate ceviche and fish tacos (over and over for days), and located a cheap hotel in town to stay at - and so beautiful as to warrant another rest day!  The grapefruits off the tree were so sweet that they didn't even require sweetener.

Mulege is a land of mysterious memories for me as I spent time here with my dad twenty odd years ago.  The town tickled my memories while I was here and the heroic mulege archway spoke of old tales i'd heard here.  Mulege was once the site of a battle between the mexicans and americans in which the local regiment used tricks to keep the americans at bay until mexican reinforcements could arrive. Mostly though,the town has incredible seafood.  Yum!

examining the strange seed pods of one of the local trees

Santa Rosalia

The start of the days ride out of San Ignacio was a hard one.  The morning showed promise as there was no wind at all but once we got on the road and up out of the valley the wind was a howling. The first large hill was brutal. We were going straight into the wind and it was not forgiving. I was ready to call it a day 4km in. Luckily we rounded a corner and the wind died down a little but on most of the downhills I actually slowed down and had to peddle. A little frustrating.

Most of the day was spent on a very gradual uphill that made you feel like you would never gain any speed. Then we came to the steepest grade on highway 1. Those that got to the top of the hill first waited for the rest to show up in order for Maggie to film us all going down the mountain on her go pro.  Everyone sped ahead so I was basically the star of the show. The road didn't have any guard rails and had many sharp curves so it was quite scary riding down.  

We arrived in Santa Rosalia late afternoon, spent some time looking for a cheap hotel but never found any as they were all full.  Then a lady stopped to talk to us asking about our story and such.  Paul and Alexa are quite fluent in spanish so they did most of the talking.  They asked where a cheap place was to stay in town was, the lady didn't know of a place but instead said she would take us to a beach that her boss owns so we could camp.  We followed her vehicle there with quite the train of cars piling up behind us (because we were going bike speed, not car speed lol). We made our own convoy.

We got to the beach and only stayed there because we were promised a really gorgeous sunrise; the beach was extremely windy otherwise throwing sand everywhere.  Eventually the wind died down a little, and the temperature never dipped much lower than 20C so the evening turned out to not be so bad.

The sunrise we were promised definitely delivered