Baja Trip: Day 4

Today is another short day, which is good because Justin, Joe, Abe, and Juddy are staying in Guerro Negro to help Justin get a nut to fix his front sprocket issue.  Even though his "fix" was incredible, it still needs to be fixed.  The rest of the group will head out towards our hotel in San Quintin.  We will be doing less than 300 miles today, but we will be riding the amazing twisty roads just south of Mama Espinosa's in El Rosario, which I could honestly ride every day.  They have some of the most spectacular twisties that I've ever ridden.

Our first rest stop of the day was at the intersection that splits off towards Bahia de Los Angelos.  We stopped here on our way down because it was scorching hot, but today was quite the opposite.  It stayed overcast all morning and was very chilly, which was a welcomed changed from the blazing hot temperatures we'd been riding in over the past few days.  We hung out for a bit and I took the opportunity to take some pictures of the local flora and fauna.  Desert plants are so neat looking!

After that stop, we headed on to Catavina and stopped at The Hotel Mision Catavina.  This is surely a diamond in the rough.  I wasn't able to see what the rooms looked like, but judging by the attention to detail they paid to the common areas that I saw, I would hope that the rooms would match that cleanliness.  Joe looked into us staying here, but the prices were almost double the prices we were paying for our other hotel rooms, which was ok with all of us.  Here are a few photos I snapped of the Hotel Mision Catavina.

We collectively made the decision to skip lunch in El Rosario and just ride straight on the our hotel in San Quintin, the Old Mill Hotel.  We were all looking forward to unloading the bikes and taking it easy, plus John said that there are some local shops in the area and I am DESPERATELY wanting to buy a Mexican blanket to bring back home.  I think that would be a great token from this trip.  Well, it turns out that we made an excellent decision in coming straight to the hotel, because it was 2-3 miles off of the paved road on a dirt road.  And little did we realize that a section of that dirt road was deep sand and silt.  We were all doing fine in the gravel and dirt, but as soon as we hit the sand I watched 3 guys in front of me going into pretty gnarly tank slappers and then crash and shortly thereafter I did the same thing.  4 of us in total crashed in the sand.  Come to find out, when you get into sand you are supposed to stay on the gas to keep the weight off the front wheel, but I did the exact opposite because I got scared and I rolled off the throttle, which caused the bike to take me on a wild ride for a few seconds.  I thought I captured it on my GoPro, but come to find out my SD card was full so the camera shut off before we hit the dirt road.  *sad face*  That would have been some awesome footage!!

I survived my crash and we got all of the bikes back up and I duck walked the bike through the rest of the sand and on to the gravel section.  Once we all got to the hotel we did damage inspections.  Greg tweaked his ankle pretty good, so they were checking to see if it was broken or just sprained.  "Luckily" it looks to be just sprained, but I hate it that anyone got hurt.  He was the only one that seemed to have injuries resulting from the crash.  I somehow ended up on top of the side of my bike, but I also had a death grip on my bars so I think it slung me over the side of the bike and I was just laying on top of it.  During my incredibly graceful mechanical bull ride, I tweaked the engine guard on the left hand side of the bike and it was pressed all the way up against my plastics.  Luckily, one of my new RX3 friends, John from Washington, found a piece of angle iron and, with the help of a "few" more guys, he was able to bend the engine guard back out and away from my plastics.  I have some scratches, but that adds character and will just be where I put my fancy Baja Inaugural Run sticker that CSC gave us all!  :-)

As I was unloading my bike, I noticed that there was a local artist set up near the ocean and when I looked I cheered out for joy as she was selling some blankets!!  I quickly unpacked my bike and then went over to inquire about a blanket.  Neither she nor her daughters spoke much English, but I spoke enough Spanish to get by.  They were asking for $10 for a blanket, so of course I bought myself a very colorful one to remember this trip by (or as one of the Johns put it "to pad my fall when I'm leaving this hotel tomorrow.)  *On a side note, let me tell you how glad I am to have made my new RX3 friends.  They are all such amazing guys and are so nice!  They have kept me smiling and laughing this entire trip!

After I bought my blanket, I met the guys for dinner at the hotel's restaurant and I ordered the molcajete de pescado, had a margarita, and the finished up with splitting some churros and fried ice cream with the guys.  A well earned, incredible meal! 

As the sun was starting to set, the other group still hadn't made it to the hotel and we were getting concerned that they might have issues in the sand on the way in if it was dark.  Luckily, right as the sun set we heard some engines coming up and there they were!  The better news was that none of them crashed in the sand and that Justin had his nut!  :-)  They went over to the restaurant and to watch the big fight with the rest of the group and I decided to come up to my room to catch up on my blogs and to get an early night of sleep.  My adrenaline has worn off now and I'm exhausted!

Plan for tomorrow is to catch breakfast at 7am and then roll out around 8.  It's a 4 hour drive up to the border of Tecate (per Google Maps) and then I will split off from the group once we cross the border and will head for my hotel, which is still tbd.  Greg gave me a great recommendation for a hotel, but I will see if it works out tomorrow once I'm back in the States.


Goodnight my friends!!