EL TOUR DE BAJA- DAY TWO

SABADO 11/17/07

Ride stats

Start time: 8:35 am

Distance: 103 miles

Average Speed: 15.5 mph

Ride Time: 6 hours 38 min

Total Ascent: 6360 feet

Average Temperature: 75 F

Ensenada to San Matias

Spanish lesson of the day: No frenar con el motor / No jake braking

Almohada / Pillow

¿ Julito quieres pancakes? / Julio do you want some pancakes? (Julio goes back to his mom’s kitchen to remember the word “pancakes” in Spanish- no luck on this one-)

The most important spanish lesson learned below.  "Money isn't everything but without it you do not eat"

We slept next to the ocean with the waves crashing and some truck traffic jake braking by our campsite. Not as cold as last night, but a good night overall. We had a strange

Elvis sighting by our campsite; he was sleeping next to our camp with his Mexican hound dog (he barked in Spanish).

Breakfast was served with Andres' Pato eggs, pancakes, coffee and juice. We need all the energy that we can get, today will be our longest day in the saddle.

Departing Ensenada was a smooth ride all the way into town, finding the road out of town was another story, after a couple of wrong turns we were pointed in the right direction by the locals. A long climb started towards our destination, a two way road with no shoulder and enough truck traffic to keep our concentration at a maximum. Today's diet of choice was climbing; we basically climbed all day to get to our destination. Our camp location will have to be scouted by

our support team.
Most of the ride was in deserted roads with no stores to get supplies; we ran out of water but were lucky enough to find a small town store by Heroes de Independencia. Water, gatorade, Pedialite, and junk food felt really good at this point.

Somehow, today's distance is always 90 miles to go. We keep going and going but our destination does not appear to come soon enough. 

Sunset came and went during a flat repair for Roobik, after the repair, we started using our rear “blinkies” since night time was quickly approaching.

As we got close to our calculated distance and meeting point, we made radio contact with our trusted support team who had started search and rescue operations right at sunset.

Natasha and Claire did not find a suitable campground, many of the campgrounds shown on our map do not exist any more! They managed to arrange accommodations outside a restaurant in San Matias.

At Abigail’s, our host Ruben, prepared quesadillas,

burritos, and cooked our fish. Ruben gave us buckets of

hot water to take a bath and made sure that all of our needs

were taken care of. It was another great spot to spend the

night in Mejico. Jessie made friends with some of the locals.

Before going to bed Hans gave Roobik a “tent to tent” talk on techniques and tips about riding in the paceline. It was a well intentioned workshop but a chalkboard might work a lot better for future trips.

Ride Stats from the day on Motion Based

Tour of Baja Day Three

Tour of Baja Index