 All right, bye guys, bye. Oh, you're gonna come with me? Okay, okay, let's go, let's go guys. Hola amigos and amigas. My name is Ryan Van Duzer and I love Baja. I love it so much in fact that this is my third time tackling the epic Baja Divide, a 1700 mile journey down the entire peninsula. It's sandy, it's rough, it's desolate, but boy, is it stunning. This series is all about the Cape Loop at the very southern tip. If you wanna check out my previous adventures in Baja, I will link them below. Okay, it's time for the finale. Vamanos. The roosters are roostering. It means it's time to get up, although they make a lot of noise all night long. That's one of the problems. Camping near a town in Mexico. You're gonna have dogs barking and roosters all night. But that's also kind of the charm of it. Ooh, it's chilly, it's chilly morning in Mexico. Oh, I see some coals. Oh yeah, that tastes warm, nice. Peanut butter jelly time without the jelly. I can't tell you how much I love having a table. It makes life easier. You know what I'm gonna do here? I'm gonna break up a cookie. Oh yeah, this is a deluxe breakfast crepe. Ooh, yummy, yummy, yummy. All right, thank you amazing cactus sanctuary for a place to sleep and Lupe for the tour. Time to cruise. And today, I think I'm gonna be heading, well, not think I'm gonna be on the Sea of Cortez somewhere. My goal is to get a beautiful campsite next to the water. Here we go, back out on the dusty road. No crashes, no flatties, no wormy's. Oh, and it's Thursday. Happy Thursday, everybody. Can't believe you can still see my breath. Ooh, cold. Oh my God. So I was just flying the drone. My heart is pumping. I took it maybe too far away and it lost signal. I couldn't find it for like five minutes and then it said it landed. And I could see on the screen that a car drove by it. That guy just thought and he stopped and he's like, ah, this thing just fell out of the sky. Oh, I'm so glad to see you. Drones sure get some beautiful shots, but man, they can be tricky. They have a mind of their own. It's always a weird transition to go from out there in the quiet, no cars, no humans, to cars racing by 60 miles an hour. I used to do all of my bike adventures on road. That's all I knew for many, many years. And now that there's all these great dirt routes, I try my hardest always to avoid roads because of these things right here. I just don't trust drivers as much these days, especially with all the distracted driving cell phones. So dirt is where I feel safe. My first barking dog of the trip and he gave up pretty quickly. They might sound dangerous, but they're not really dangerous. I've never in my life been bit by a dog. And all of my time riding in Latin America, they chase you a little bit, but if you just make this sound, they usually leave bones in trees. Something I pretty much only see in Baja. I think people are just kind of decorating the great outdoors, you know? And sometimes I like to just get off my bike and listen and look at the birds flying in the sky. Look at the wispy clouds. You know, I try to do this in my daily life too when I'm at home and just sitting in front of my computer editing. Just go outside for a little bit, just listen to the breeze and the birds and just nature. It brings me back to right here, right now, the present moment. And makes me realize that there's a lot more important things in the world than getting frustrated about my computer not working or my bike making creaking sounds. You know, we can get so irritated with just the little things in life so quickly. But then when you go outside and take a deep breath, you're like, oh, it's all good. It's gonna be just fine. It's humbling and it's a good reminder. All right, bike, there you are. And there's the open road. And just over there I think is the Sea of Cortez. Oh, it's the killer Chihuahuas, hi. You're a cute bunch of attack dogs, that's for sure. You come with me? Let's go guys, there's so many of you. Going downhill in this sand, going uphill in this stuff would be a different story. Thank you, gravity. Cruising downhill is always fun. Ever since I was a little kid, I loved riding my bike to the top of hills and blasting down them. Started up there at about 2,000 feet. Now, obviously heading to sea level. Zoom, zoom, zoom. Check that out. That's a beautiful cardon, barbon. Learned about that yesterday with my buddy Lupe. What a cool looking cactus. It's crazy to think how old this thing is. Lupe yesterday said the ones there in the preserve were just like 300 or 400 years old. This one's way bigger. Think about all the world history this thing has lived through. And I just want to take a moment here to give a shout out to my bike, the 600X. It's performed flawlessly. This drivetrain is made for Baja. All the sand and dust that I've been going through has been no problem for the gears and the Gates carbon drive. That pinion is oblivious to what's happening on the outside of it, whereas when I was here before my Trek 1120, my derailleur was constantly getting gunked up with dust and dirt and I had to keep cleaning it out and lubing the chain and not this time. I'm pretty happy with it. And I've been loving the front suspension. Last time I didn't have front suspension, now I do and it just takes the edge off some of the washboard and the rough downhills. I'm really happy with the bike and how it's performing. It was essentially born in Baja. The vision was born in Baja when I was here in 2020 having so many problems with my 1120. And then a few months later, we built this bad boy. It's faster than sand but I could do without those guys. At least they're cool in Mexico. Mexican drivers are very courteous. It's the gringos I have to worry about. You know me, I'm the burrito hunter and check it out. I have a plate of burritos. I'm at a roadside stand right here that has three tables at it. This is my favorite place to eat in Mexico. I don't like fancy restaurants. This is it right here. All right, I'm all burritoed up, beamed up and now I'm gonna go find water. I just asked the guy working there. He said just right over here, there's a water station. They have these water stations all over Baja. They're great. They cost like five pesos to fill up all my water bottles. And what it does is it allows you to avoid buying plastic bottles in all the convenience stores. And so, insert the moneta, put the money in here. Okay. There it is. There's my water. Love it. Liquidees, liquidees. Up hill of the entire ride, I think. You can see down there, where I'm going to gain some altitude. Just gotta go through these mountains and get to the sea. That's where I came from today, way out there, those mountains. And I'm steps away from the sea. I'm not usually a fan of graffiti out in nature, but this says, disfruta la vida and joy life. All right. I like that and I do that. This is a tough one. Come on, buddy. Can you tell by my breathing how hard that one was? Probably doesn't look that steep on the camera, but it is. Whew. I wasn't expecting that today. That was hard, but it was good. I can feel it. Damn it. Come on, buddy, you can do it. Fill yourself up. You're tubeless. It's the sidewall right there. That's a tough one to fix. Right on the crease. Here's my little baking strips. I don't know if it's gonna work. The hole's so teeny. Okay, so there's shoved one in that hole too. I don't know about this. Okay, so the hole is bigger than I thought. I just wedged in a baking strip in there. So we have one baking strip right here along the crease near the rim. And another one right here. For now it's holding. We'll see how long this lasts. No, I have a tube. This is the first time I've ever had a cut along the seam on the side of a tire, any tire. Usually it's on the top, just puncture wounds. But I think I've been running my tires so low because of sand that it just slammed on one of these rocks when I was going downhill fast and boom. There you go. But I'm gonna get there. It's all good. Rocky. Looks like I just blew one of the baking strips. Ah, man. It just popped right out. Gonna try one more time, just jam another one in there. All right, here we go again, one more time. Let's go, I got a date with the beach. Luckily that really hasn't taken too much time, maybe 15, 20 minutes total. And I should be getting close. Should be getting really close to the sea and finding my epic campsite. I've been waiting all day for this. I don't know what it's gonna look like, but man, I'm excited about it. That's what I've been waiting to see all day. I can smell it, smells salty and good. That looks pretty good. Yeah. It's my own private cove right here. It's a little harder to get into the water when it's a bunch of slippery rocks, but I am determined, woo hoo, look at that. I'm sitting here right now, looking up at those awesome clouds and really just enjoying them. I've been taking time to appreciate the little things, the simple things in life, like clouds and just looking up every now and then. They're pretty sweet. I love watching them move across the sky. And it's really special to be here right now, listening to the waves, to be on my own little private cove, to be on this bike trip, to be in Baja, to take another step back and to be on this planet and to be able to do this for a living, to ride my bike and share stories with you. It's an absolute honor. Even when it's hard sometimes and even when I'm confused about the content I'm making and the message that I wanna put out and I feel like maybe I'm burning you out and saying the same things over and over, but I love it, I love it. And being on this trip has really re-energized me. At the beginning I was kind of unsure of the future and I still am to a degree, but this trip has really helped energize me and motivate me and it's been fun to run around with my cameras and get all these cool shots and interview people and ride my bike and push myself physically and be in one of my favorite places in the world. I love Baja with all my heart. There's a reason why I keep coming back. And yeah, I feel good. I needed this trip. This trip has been therapy for me in so many ways physically and mentally. And I'm grateful for it. I know you hear me say the word grateful a lot, but really gratitude plays a huge role in my life, in my everyday life. Just being grateful for all the little things and all the beautiful things and all the big things and even the hard things and the sad things that all teaches me a lesson. And here I am one week away from being 45 years old, excited about my birthday, excited about 2024, excited to create more content and hopefully evolve my content in a way that excites you and excites me. And yeah, life is amazing. It really is, especially when I'm, look at this. Look at this. Maybe I'll see a whale out there. But this is exactly where I wanted to be. This is my final night out. I will finish tomorrow. I only have about 20 miles to go. This is where I wanted to be. I was like, okay, on night six, I want to be somewhere alone on the Sea of Cortez. And I made it happen. And that flat tire tried to get me and slow me down, but we overcame that. And those kind of things used to really frustrate me. I wasn't really a good mechanic. I'm still not an amazing mechanic, but I don't get as flustered with that kind of stuff anymore. So thank you so much for coming on this journey with me. And we still have some more. I'm going to wake up tomorrow and have some fun. And I'm feeling good. My heart feels happy. My soul feels happy. And I've still got some more soul searching to do. Always, we all do. Every day I want to be a better human, a better man, a better brother, son, future boyfriend, future husband, maybe father, who knows? Who knows? I feel like life is just getting started for me. And here I go again. I'm grateful for it. Look at this. Look at that. I'm all tucked in. And I've got the wave machine turned on. It's going to be a cozy night. Buenas noches. Not a bad place to wake up. The waves are a lot rowdier now than they were yesterday. Oh no. Oh, it's dead. It's dead. Ah! Oh, no shaving today. Damn, that's a first. Thank you, epic camp spot. This was an amazing place to spend the night, my final night of my adventure. Now I'm going to ride down the coast to Los Barriles, about 20 miles from here, and it's going to be a beautiful day. It's Friday. All right, here we go. Goodbye, private sea cove. Let's roll, baby. I'll never forget this camp spot. This is one of the best I've ever had. Here we go. No more flatties, crashes or whammies. I hope those plugs in my tires hold for 20 miles. Man, this place is beautiful. So check this out. My Garmin, the solar Garmin right here, has been going strong for seven days. I have not charged it once. It still has 25% battery. I do have it on battery saver mode, so it saves even more. But this Baja sun is keeping it alive. And no, I'm not sponsored by Garmin. I just think it's pretty amazing when you get a piece of equipment that is just impressive, you know? Can it be me eating burritos? Yes, it's me eating burritos. I'm really dragging this morning out. I could have just kept going, but I stopped by this cute restaurant next to the ocean. And I'm gonna eat some burritos, because, hey, I'm in Baja. These are definitely the best burritos I've had on my entire trip. We're having a parade here. Hi guys, hello, hello. Are you seeing this? Amazing. I gotta take advantage of being next to the beach. This is too special. And my mom said it's like four degrees in Colorado, so. This is it right here. I like it here. You know, Baja means a lot to me. Over the years of coming here, my first time being 2010, I've done a lot of growing up. Shoot, I've done a lot of growing up. Just this week, it's only been a seven day trip, but it's been really impactful. And that's why I love biking. That's why I love getting outside and pushing my body. You know, you feel alive. For my very first bike trip, that's what I've always told people, is that I feel alive when I'm out there on the road, waking up in the woods or on the side of a beach and packing up my gear and just figuring it all out and moving forward and having fun and connecting with awesome humans. That's what it's all about. And it's nice to come back here now on my fourth trip. Finish the Baja divide finally, you know. And just sit here and look out into the ocean, the sea, listen to the waves and realize what a privilege it is to be here and to be sharing these stories with you. It's an absolute honor to create these videos in hopes of inspiring you to go out and challenge yourselves. La vida es buena! Woo! Viva Mexico! Viva Baja! Oh, and please tell all your friends to watch my videos and like and subscribe. And if you have the ability, consider joining my Patreon. You'll get early release videos with no ads and direct access to be able to chat with me about anything for as little as $3 a month. And that's what keeps my channel going, keeps it moving forward. So thank you once again for joining me on another Mexican adventure. Stay tuned for more fun stuff, of course. And as always, get off your couch and get out there.