A 15 month Adventure of an Intrepid Norfolkian: The GOOD, the BAD and the MEXICAN

Hola todos, I am going to try and make this post reasonably short and sweet and tell a few stories of what has happened over the past week or so. I am going to do this in 3 parts: the first part - the GOOD, the second part - the BAD and finally - the MEXICAN...

A little quiet beach on the coast of the Sea of Cortez

I prefer the "good news" first of all so I am will go over a few of the pleasant memories I have had while cycling along one of the world´s longest penisulas - Baja California.

The GOOD

One name. Bill. This guy is one of the craziest, unorthodox and astonishiing hosts I have had the pleasure of staying with. So I was cycling into the tranquil town of Mulegé and was greeted by a plump ol´ American ex-pat in his 60s by the name of Bill. This man clearly had a soft spot for rum and by the time I had met him (4:00 PM) he was on his way. He insisted on giving me a tour of the tropical town and did so by taking me in his battered Land Rover (clearly from his driving in the pas) at this point I knew I was in for a ride. The town was stunning and Bill seem to achknowledge everybody in the town, despite the perplexed faces that were returned and this included the army and police. After my tour was over, Bill had forced down copious amounts of tequila and rum down my gullet hole and we went to meet some of his mates: Tim and Scotty. Now these guys were interesting characters; between them they shared stories of running from the law in the deep south of America and were telling me some infamous stories of their younger days of drug raids and interesting border crossing. We must have returned no later than 9:00PM, when we crawled back to the house; as Bill said, "it is ok as long as you don´t hit anything", but I was skeptical to his logic and when he kept slurring out words like the ¨the bastard road is moving¨ and ¨I am too drunk¨, I buckled up and prepared for the worst. We rustled somet drunken meal of rice with sweetcorn and some random salad sauce, clonked out on the sofa ready for a long days cycling the next day. Which did not happen.
Raul. Or maybe I should say the Saint of La Paz. This guy found me struggling on the road about 100km from La Paz with little water about to prep up for a saucy wild camping session. Apart from offereing us a lift to La Paz, which I kindly refused. He filled up my bottles of water and shared some good information on the ferries in La Paz. Not only that, but from the jist of what he was saying, I think he said he would drive out to me in the morning and sort me out some desayuno (breakfast); I was hopeful, but knew it was unlikely. However, in the morning sun, this god of a man came all the way out (50 miles) to meet me with 3 huge burritos packed with succulent meat and fresh vege. Delicioso.
Glenda: If you chaps are keeping up to date with my FB page too, you probably have witnessed the platter of food I got presented being in this woman´s prencese for a matter of minutes. I apologise for the food photo. Nobody likes a picture of food. Who cares? Anyway it was a welcoming treat for tired legs. She also kindly showed me all over La Paz, BCS, went snorkelling and out for dinner multiple times and coffee in the morning. This woman has a heart of gold and she has let me stay for 3 nights, until I can get a ferry over to mainland Mexico.

Bill and his bashed-up-mobile

Raùl and the burritos. Mexican food is pretty damn good.

Glenda and the Banquet of Mexican food

Again it comes down to the people that have made this adventure so wonderful this week. It is not only the unknown, the beautiful scenery I cycle through that excites me, the smells of ~~road kill~~ the spots of rain being enveloped by the hot asphalt road (nothing better) ~~and the crackles and blasts of~~ ~~engine braking and tyre squeeling as I come close to death~~ ~~when wild camping in the middle of a desert~~ and that feeling of splashback on your toes - from the rain; not from piss. But it is the hospitality of the people is what has made this adventure great so far and I hope a few of them people are achknowledging that right now if they are reading my blog.

P.S: that was my attempt to be imaginitive. Go easy on me.

It looks so surreal. I think I hit 45mph going doing this hill

Little bearded dragon. These little cretins have a fantastic defence mechanism of rolling over and playing dead...

Casual land slide on the main highway

Enough about the soppy good times, over to the bad times. I know for a fact that everybody is a bit sadistic at heart and love a good crackle at somebody else´s misfortune. So I hope these bad boys float your boat and put a smile on your faces.

The BAD

Probably the funniest story I have is of being severely dehydrated in the middle of the desert with the next town a mere 25miles away. I had pretty much ran dry of liquids and it was getting late - 7:00PM (which is the usual time to set up camp). I knew I would be in trouble if I didn´t find water, but luckily I came across a nice stagnant pool of green liquid. First and foremost, I had bathed myself to cool down and then filled up a couple of 2 litre bottles for camping and purifying. This was the first time I actually had a chance to test out the Steripen, which is meant to use UV waves to kill all bacteria and viruses in water. I was sceptical for one reason and that is there is no obvious change to the water all you see is a little glowing light for 48 seconds and then it is meant to be pure. Anyway, I drunk it all the same. Along with the green stagnant water, I emptied the drained water from my canned tuna, which was pretty tasty (take note peeps), the drained sweetcorn water, which was ok and the left over water from boiling pasta - which wasn´t so good. Looking back at the situation, if any passer-by would have seen me (highly unlikely because there was nobody around) scrapping for the last drips of water from the tuna can, only God knows what they would have thought of me. However, I felt surprisingly refreshed after the banquet of different coloured liquids and crawled into my tent. In the morning, I made it to the next town in good time and necked a 3 litre bottle of cold Coke, like you do.
On one particular day, the heat was way too much (as per usual) and there was literally no shade cover in sight. In the end I had to crawl in the flood pipes under to the road to take cover; to say these pipes were accomodating, would be a lie: I just about squeezed in and drifted off to sleep in the dirt and darkness for a few hours... I was awoken by an extremely loud clatter, I remember thinking what the hell is that. I peered out of my pipe and the sky was black and about 5 miles west of me there was a storm a brewing, and it was a big one. I thought better of letting it pass in my little pipe, so instead I hopped on the bike quick and sprinted away. The bastard was catching me though and at one point, I nearly jumped out of my skin when a bolt of lightning flashed in my mirror and must have been less than half a mile away. Then came the small tornados, I was quite pleased actually because I actually cycled through a small one and it was pretty cool. Anyway I got about 10 miles down the road and had enough of running and was getting thirsty, so migrated to a cosy roadside bar and got myself a Tecate. It is all they had. I could have murdered a refreshing Coke. Plus I ate some cheese. And salami. Good story. Poor ending I fear. Apologies, I didn't get a picture of the pipe, I was in a bit of a rush.
Among other things, My rack bolt snapped and had to do a Petrol Station repair, which was pretty lucky; bearing in mind I got a good dose of the trots (as a guy from Norfolk would put it), it was probably from that tasty stagnant water I had a few days before. On the bright side, I had the luxury of a toilet, albeit without toilet roll; in the end I had to use the Spanish Science book I had been reading for some supplies (I found that gem on the road).
Along with the broken rack, another camera broke. Yippee, hence the shitty photos.

Nut that sheared off that connects the rack to Ingrid. An integral part I have been told...

Stagnant water that I had the pleasure of consuming (along with the Steripen)

Storm and Tornados

So there it is peeps a few more stories from an intrepid Norfolkian and his beloved Ingrid the On-One Inbred. The one month mark has been hit and I suppose it is only fair that I give you a little beard shot (you should be familiar with this if you read my other blog).

A little treat for the ladies ;)

To finish up, I was reminded by my Mum and by the hundreds of people uploading pictures on FB that graduation day had been and gone, therefore II thought it was only fair that I did my own rendition of the special day - Mexican style...

The MEXICAN