 Hola amigos and amigas and welcome to episode 4 of my series on the Baja Divide Cape Loop. I am currently about 100 miles into this 225 mile journey. I've ridden my bike through sand, up mountains, past beautiful oceans, jumped in some water, made some friends. I'm having the time of my life. You ready for more? Let's do this. I'm loving the sound of the sappos, the frogs. And we have a beautiful sky this morning. It's like peach colored. So one of the things that I've started doing more during my morning routine is stretching the older I get, the more I realize it's very important to keep my body in shape. And of course riding your bike is healthy, but you're sitting on a seat all day hunched over. My hips especially get tight and that's what I focus on a lot. I've been waking up at about 6.30 and it's dark and pretty chilly and it takes me about an hour and a half to pack all of this up. So it's a little after eight and it's time to rock and roll. Thank you epic camp spot. This is one of my faves of all time. I'm going to walk up this river bed for a little bit and make it back to the road. Wow. Wow. That plant, I'm going to show you this plant, is one of the most evil ones here. So from far away this just looks like a regular old tree, but as you get closer you see it's true colors. Look at these guys. Evil. Do not brush up against one of these. But it does have these cool little yellow poofs. Look like something out of Dr. Seuss. Yep. Everything in Baja wants to poke a hole in you. All right, I'm back on the road. Let's do this. No crashies, no flaties, no whammies. I'm about 20 miles away from a town called Totos Santos on the Pacific side. And I think I might take a short day. Good morning, shadow. You know what I'm grateful for already today is that today's sand is not anywhere nearly as deep as yesterday's sand. And I'm cruising right through it. I'm going to become a champion at riding my bike through sand after Baja. Oh, I spoke too soon. Good morning, Baja. Cow. The desert vacas are pretty chill. You just ride right by them and they just kind of stare you down. They're like, yeah, man, do your thing. I'm guessing they're used to seeing bike packers now. The Cape Loop is pretty popular. I just wanted to stop here and show you something. Here is a roadside shrine. And even on this little road that I've been going on for the last two days, I've probably seen 15 to 20 of these along the road. And all over the highways everywhere in Mexico, they have these shrines with the Virgen Guadalupe in there. And there's usually a place to light candles. And I think it's just a good omen for the travelers passing by. They come by in the mornings. They light the candles. They leave them here. They pray and the Virgen protects them. It's a slow down. It's upshadow. Man, that's quite the wide arroyo. Every morning's got to start with a little bit of sand, right? How you doing, bud? Have a good day. For a little snack, little morning snack, and I turned on my phone here just to check up on life. And I see that last night, Michigan won the national title in football. Good for them. I don't care too much about these two teams, Michigan-Washington. I'm a CU Buffalo all the way, but good for Michigan. That's pretty cool. I always like it when a non-SEC team wins college football national championship. You've heard me talk a lot about how much I love Mexico. And I love Mexico. It's one of my favorite countries for sure. But this right here is one of my least favorite aspects of Mexico. And I don't know enough about how the government works to know maybe they're not providing trash service for people. So they feel the need to just dump trash all over the roads. But this is insane. We're right outside of a big popular town, Totos Santos. And this whole road that I'm riding along is covered in just trash. People obviously come with their trucks and just dump it out here. And it's heartbreaking. It's a bummer. We should know better, right? And maybe it's a culture thing. The United States used to be this way way back in the day. You know that slogan, don't mess with Texas? I don't know exactly when that was. But that was about not throwing trash, not littering. And now in the United States, like it's pretty unheard of for somebody just to toss trash out their window. And maybe that's what's needed in Mexico. I don't really know. But this right here is a big bummer. I've traveled all over Mexico and it's the same everywhere. And they need to get it together. The whole planet does. You know, I was in Rwanda last year and they take this seriously. They would ever consider leaving trash on the ground in Rwanda. And they made a change, I think, 20 years ago and now you'll never see trash along the roads of Rwanda. I think that same attitude needs to come to Mexico. Maybe it's not an attitude, but a complete culture shift. You know, and we're not perfect in the United States either. There's definitely trash and there's things that we do that is obviously not good for the environment. And as a whole on this planet, we're realizing now that humans are really hard on planet earth in so many different ways. And if we want our planet to be beautiful and pristine for future generations, the time is now. The time is yesterday. We need to get it together. Christmas wrapping for presents, lots of boxes from toys. Yeah, leave it in the desert. Okay, rant over. This is funny. I'm riding into Totos Santos and I see Colorado State University on this old water tower along with some restaurant. I wonder what Colorado State does here. Maybe some sort of exchange program or maybe they just sponsor that water tower. I don't know. That is not my college, by the way. Mine is the University of Colorado. These are the Colorado State Rams, our enemies. My first order of business as always, burritos. I was looking for a cheap hotel because I'm cheap like that. I found this Totos Santos hostel and look at it. Look, they're giving me a glamping tent. Woohoo! Eso! Me encanta! Look at this. Oh yeah. Well, this will be much nicer than my tent. Gracias amigo, mi amable. I love situations like this. I got to stay in a tent like this in Africa and Rwanda last year and it was so fun. Ah, nice easy day, not even 20 miles total. I have all the afternoon to chill, but mostly I'm here to charge up batteries, those drone batteries go by quick. I'm all out. And this place was about $65, which seems like a lot for a tent, right? But hotels in Mexico have gotten really expensive. I remember on my first trip when I rode from Honduras to Boulder in 2005, I could find cheap hotels for like $10 or $15. Now I was just looking online, everything in Totos Santos was well over $100. This is a tourist town, Gringo town, so prices are definitely higher, but still, not cheap anymore, but this is definitely worth $65. And I want to show you something amazing about this Garmin 1040 solar. It's solar powered, and I still have 42% battery after four days. That is incredible, and that really is the reason why I love this thing. It's definitely more than I need as far as all the functions. I pretty much just want to know where to go, the left and right turns, but the solar makes it all worth it. This is how you do some dirtbag laundry. I just throw my stuff in a sink like this and go to town. And it really reminds me of when I lived in Honduras back in 2005. This is how I washed my clothes for two full years. So I'm pretty good at it. Today I got the black bean version. These aren't available in every small town store. These big cities have them, and they are my favorite. And it's going to be nice to sit here and enjoy this in a little tent village here. One of my favorite things about hostels is that you meet people from all over the world doing interesting things. And I just met this woman right here, Amy. Amy is from England. You just finished the entire Baja divide. Yeah, mostly few shortcuts, but I did ride the whole length of Baja. Wow, well, how'd you choose it? Why'd you come here all the way from England? All the way from England. Time of year, I wanted to do a trip in November, and this came up. And then I thought Baja would be super interesting to see. And I love to travel by bike. For me, it's more about the travel than the biking. So I wanted to see Baja, and it was the perfect way to see it. Cool. Is this one of your first trips? How'd you get into all this madness? No, this is my third big trip. My first trip was a crazy, spontaneous decision to cycle from Cornwall to Scotland in 2022. We were having a nice summer, and I was between jobs, and I just wanted an adventure, so I set off on my bike. And I had no idea about bike touring or bike packing. I just wanted to do something crazy, and I did it. And then it opened up this whole world of bike touring. And then a few months later, I went to New Zealand, did top to bottom of New Zealand, which was just best ever. Loved it so much. And then I ended up working in a bike shop in Australia to save up for my next trip, and then I found Baja. Baja, what was it like traveling as a solo female down Baja and on a very difficult route? Challenging, definitely challenging. Huge ups and downs every day. I'm sure everyone would experience that. I found I didn't always feel safe, even though I never had any bad experiences with people. I had a lot of local people telling me to be super careful and that they would never let their daughters do this kind of trip. And that kind of made me feel a little bit scared. So I had a lot of precautions. I used a GPS tracker. I didn't actually wild camp on my own in the north of Baja. Only once I got into the Cape Loop did I wild camp on my own. I only wild camp if I met other riders out on the trail. What do your parents think about this? A lot of people ask me that. And I was actually speaking to them today. And they are very relieved that I finished. But I was thanking them. They're really encouraging, actually. They're really good. They worried about me a lot, I'm sure. But they were always really encouraging. And we're happy that I was doing what I wanted to do. What have you learned about yourself? I've learned that I can do it on my own. That it's possibly more, not more, you have a different kind of fun when you're with other people. But you also get such a sense of achievement and such a joy out being on my own. Do you have any advice for women out there who might want to do this on their own as well? Take the necessary precautions that people advise. But don't be put off by everyone telling you that it's really dangerous. Like, don't let fear stop you from doing something that you want to do. But use your gut instinct. And just, I don't know, everyone tells me be safe. So just be safe. You've got to keep the parents safe. My mom is the same way. I'm 45 years old and I have to text her. Every night, the letter, no, I'm OK. That's good, that's good. So, favorite parts? I love visiting all the missions. There's a huge amount of missions in Baja and such a rich history. And I didn't know that was something that I would be particularly interested in. But actually, as I came down, the peninsula, almost ticking them off as I went to see them was part of the fun. And then whale watching. Whale watching on the Cape Loop from my tent. I could sit in my tent and the sun was going down and the sun was coming up. And I could see whale tails flying up and whales jumping out of the water. It was really special. So I know there's not a lot of frijoles in England. Are you a fan now? I think I've turned into a frijole. I've eaten so many beans and tortillas. They've been, they've done the job. Yeah, I think I need a break from them. And this is your bike, huh? Look at that big, early beast. You got the big fat. Big tires. Big tires right here. You got a big bag up front. Yeah, this is in your new edition. Good luck charm here. Yeah, this was from New Zealand. Oh, very cool. So drop bars on the Baja divide. You're tough. And you had two panniers in the back? Yeah, and my tent on the back. Nice, very cool. I am proud of you. That's a big deal to do all of Baja. And yeah, I wish you all the best of luck on your future adventures. Thank you, thanks. So Amy's not the only one out here riding bikes long distances. I have a new friend, Mike from Germany. Hey, how you doing, buddy? I'm great, thank you. So how far have you been riding your bike from? I'm riding my bike from Alaska, Fairbanks. I started in mid of June last year. And yeah, I'm now on Baja California. That's crazy, that's a long way to go, man. Long way to go, yeah. And I noticed your bicycle here is just, what is this? Yeah, that is my children's bike. It's a steel frame Bötcher travel bike from the German brand. Just solid XT shifting and v-brakes, simple v-brakes. And on 10,000 kilometers so far, I had only two flats. No flaties, that's amazing. I love my tires, so the Schwalbe Marathon Plus Tour. Those are my favorite tires too. All right. It's because they're German, right? Yeah, they're Germans. You know, I also have a very well-known German component on my bike called Pinion. Oh yeah. The Pinion Gearbox. Yeah, yeah, that's something very sophisticated in my eyes, yeah. Is there a reason why you chose such a simple bike? I did once a bike trip in Southeast Asia and I got a bike more or less from the rubbish and went on that from Kuala Lumpur to North of Thailand and it was just fun. So the bike cost me just 100 euros and I could fix everything by myself. So I think better be able to fix it and keep it simple, yeah. That's very cool. What's your favorite part about traveling by bike? Favorite part? You move your body every day, it's great. You can stop whenever you want, you meet, you can stop to talk to some people. You need, sometimes you need a bit of help from somebody and you can go into the bushes for camping which I really like on this trip. Yeah. What's been your favorite part of Baah? This is a pretty special place. It's really a special place. I must say I mostly like the strip between Los Pereles and San José del Cabo. We were going diving on this marine park and we could just set up the tents wherever we wanted and directly in the morning we saw some whales in the sunrise and it was just beautiful. What do you think, do you think you're going to do more of these adventures in the future? Yeah, I would love to. Actually the biking is for me just one thing which I really like to go, moving my body. It also has to do something to do with being outside and moving my body and I don't know where I will go next but for sure I will go more on the bike. Nice. Do you think you'll always take a simple bike like this? Actually no. I wanted to go normally the Great Divide and I figured out I'm not be able to do that with my setup. I bet you could man. If you've taken that thing from Alaska to here you could get that on the Divide. Yeah, I mainly run on pavement and my bike weighs, I don't know, maybe sometimes more than 100 pounds with all the food and water on it. Wow man. It would be more fun with a proper mountain bike and go the dirt roads. I love dirt roads and I would just enjoy it more with a proper bike. Right on man, give me a high five. You've done it, so you're done with your trip now, right? I'm done with my trip. I will enjoy a bar a little bit more going a bit around here further with the bike and then I will end my trip here, yeah. Congratulations. Thank you. This tent is so cool and I'm loving this big bed. I kinda wish it would pack down so I could bring it with me on all my bike tracking adventures but I think it's just a little bit too big and I'm not gonna be able to see the stars tonight and I can hear traffic still. You know what, I really enjoyed today. I love being in the town. I've loved making friends here at the hostel. I love being social. I love hearing other people's stories but I kinda came down here to be out in the desert on my own so I'm excited to head back out and just get dirty. It's too fancy here for me, at least now.