We woke up early with the intent to reach La Paz by early afternoon. I went to take a quick shower to find that the water was not running. Chris used his broken spanish (¿Broke ass Spanish?) to ask for water. The reply was that there was no water in the morning. No shower this morning.
We were on the gulf side of Baja, I was breath taken by its beauty but there was not time to stop. Uncle Domino had a plane ticked to Zihuatenejo arriving in only 3 days. No time to waste! I felt a little sad as I passed through the tranquil town of Mulege, located in a small vally that opened to the sea. The palm trees lined the small river, providing shade and fruit to the area. The climate was noticabley cooler. In my opinion, the gulf was much more senic than the coast, it is one of the places I will am eager to return to.
We passed through a couple towns, none had gas directly off the road side so we continued on. it was about 80 miles on my tank. The is roughly the 2/5 of the operating range of my bikes. I had an extra gallon in my pannier so in a pinch we could both travel 25miles further or one of us could go 50miles and return with gas. Regardless we could still press on a bit. I saw signs to the next town Loreto was 200kilo. Which is damn close to 120miles. If Lorado was the next town this one was going to be close. It would be close the maximum range of the bikes with 4 gallon size gas tanks.
We pressed on, our tanks were reaching a low we had never experienced. To conserve on gas we began to play Tour de France, taking turns drafting one another at the optomal speed of 55mph. In this case drafting means when following your buddy getting as close to the rear end of his bike as possible. Both drivers work hard to not accelerate or decelerate suddenly. Both drivers duck low on the bike to lower air drag so that the person driving the bike in the rear saves fuel. Chris hit his reserve and we knew there wasn´t much left. The Clark tank on his bike was different then mine, reserve could mean another 30miles or it could mean 10. Cars and trucks would pass us and look at us like we were crazy. David caught up with us while we were playing silly buggars and mimed drinking a beverage. Just as he passed Chris ran out of gas but we had a plan. I was too lazy to unpack my gear to get to the gas so we decided to tip chris´s bike onto its side allowing fuel on the right side of the tank to drain to the left side where the petcock siphoned off the fuel. This double the reserve distance from 20miles to some were around 40 if you are playing silly buggars and drafting off eachother. The town was only 5miles away, no problem. David noticed we had droped out of his rearview mirror and returned to see up proping up a bike. He must have though we crashed the bike or something. A few minutes and we were at our favorate store, PEMEX, the Mexican gas station.
The bottom of Chris´s tank at the PEMEX station. Very empty!
We took a break and stoped at a convenience store and bought some soda, chips and tp. We also picked up some beer for the gas station attendents for good karma, they were thrilled. The soda break ended up being too long about 1.5 hours. David then notified us that we had crossed time zones, oops didn´t account for that. The pressure was on, we began to driver faster and faster, becoming more and more brazen about passing slow vehicles. The rolling hills didn´t help with visibility. Our arrival time in La Paz was late, nearly 4:30 and we still needed to find the place and get the paperwork done as we were not sure that the store would be open on Saturday. It turned out to be on the oppisit side of town neer the ferries. We rushed in a panic that the Banhersito, the vehicle licensing agency would close at 5:00 and we would be forced to catch a Monday Ferry. In hind sight this was completely stupid as Chris´s mexico guide book said that the banjercito actually closed at 1:30 Friday but was open on Saturday. I thought Chris was out of his mind, we were traveling out of La Paz at a incredable rate. If we continued this we would shurly end up in Cabo.
We reached the terminal a couple minutes befor 5:00 and were informend the Banhercito was closed. Crap! The guard informed us it would open at 9:00 the next morning. A great sigh of releaf followed. Still pumped from the rush to the terminal we headed back to town to settle in. David lead this time because he had a GPS with destinations programmed in. Coming around a corner we encountered a Semi that had crossed over the center line. It gave David quite a spook as his pannier cleared by a matter of inches, but that was the last bit of excitment for the day.
We booked our stay at a local hotel with an open courtyard that fit all our bikes. The court yard was furnished with plants and a small coocking area. The rooms surrounding the yard had double doors with pad locks. Our room was quite big with a two story ceiling, three full size beds and room to spare. The shower and bathroom was a walled off half way to the ceiling with a curtain instead of a door. The water was hot and the overal conditions quite cleanly, no bugs or leaks. It felt good to get the sweat off my skin and the grease out of my hair.
The door to our room, double doors and a pad lock. I love the warm colors down here.
David and I in the court yard loading up for the ferry
We took a detour and had a drink on the water front where we bumped into a Canadian couple riding Harlies. The sun set over the gulf with a beautiful sillowette of a palm tree. David got an excelent picture. Hopefully I can get it and post it. We then bounced and got another beer and taquila. Before going to be we grabbed some food from a street vender. A local was proud to practice his english and ordered the best off the menu for us. Tired and full we went to bed feeling safe and secure knowing the morning would not be another shit show in Mexico.
No comments:
Post a Comment