Mexican touchdown happened a few weeks back but we've been far to busy having some time off to write anything. But the good news is we are now beck in action and should be regularly updating our diary as before. First impressions have been positive and we really enjoyed our two weeks in the sleepy town of El Centenario down near La Paz. Making friends with the lady on the corner of our street who cooked up sandwiches and 'super burros', joining the local pack of dogs (which included our lovely neighbours Chris and Jae!), popping into La Paz on a bike fixing mission and above all indulging in the confort that four simple walls and a roof can provide. In fact it was the first time Ruth had ever have two weeks off on holiday doing very little! We hope to have improved the website a little and you should notice a nice little map pinpointing the location of the week's exploits on this page and all proceeding. This diary entry is however all about our first week cycling in Mexico as we get into the swing of things, adjust to the weather, figure out where to sleep and pedal from beer stop to refreshing beer stop!

After a couple of weeks of doing sweet nothing the time had finally arrived; we had to get our bums back on our metal horses and pedal into the steamy heat of Baja California. It was for just this reason that our chosen start time was well before the sun had started its morning sprint up from behind the horizon and this was to be something we'd be making a habit of. More by necessity than pleasure it must be said, as at this time of year the days really are scorching hot, mosquito-filled affairs punctuated by heavy thunderstorms. So it was. Chris waved us off into a morning chorus of dogs barking and cockerels crowing as we bumbled our way through the darkness towards the main road that would take us through the desert to a town we'd heard much good stuff about. Todos Santos. Thankfully it was flat as we cycled through the morning, with the heat suspiciously conspicuous by its apparent absence. Our self-created breeze was keeping the temperature gauges in the green allowing us to, regrettably, cycle right into the middle of the furnace! Once the nice flat ground was over and a few hills presented themselves to us Ruth started to read the troubling warning signs of heat stroke, at which point we agreed unanimously to not be on the bikes after 11am ever again, 'cause it sucks! But we made it into town eventually and tucked into some fish tacos, flavoured by the sweat dripping off our upper lips, and made inquiries around as to where to sleep that night. It was our mate Francisco the policeman who produced the goods and effectively ordered us to sleep in the dainty pavilion right smack in the middle of the town square, for all eyes to see! We thanked him later by buying him a corn type desert we struggled to remember the name of, which he accepted without outwardly demonstrating his appreciation (although his hunger was plain to see...). Now, it's hard to convey exactly how it was that Francisco made us feel so obliged to follow through with this but, with a beer inside us for courage, we went to setting up camp right where it felt so wrong to do so. Putting our blushes to one side to make way for sleep.

We were keen on getting out of our rather too privileged position in Todos Santos; both for the embarrassment aspect and the thought of the looming daily heatwave. We were semi-successful as we got out of the town centre toot sweet but were held back a little by our first puncture in Mexico! Some snazzy teamwork got us rolling again down the coastal road towards "Los Cabos". A rather endless one with far fewer pit stop opportunities than we had hoped for (particularly when we had our hearts set on sitting in a little roadside food stall tucking into burritos and coffee). No, the luxury lifestyle would have to wait as we found no such place and instead made do with a small town church, one of the corners of which was perhaps the windiest place in Baja California and the only reason we were able to avoid melting. Along the way we met with a man who we initially thought was selling water as the walked down the highway in the other direction but it turned out he was desperate for a drink himself and was walking the length of Baja! With parting words of advice that we should worry less about scorpions while more about centipedes and that to purify water just add a bit of salt and a squeeze of lime, we each went our separate ways. On our own crazy paths. Today we had arranged to meet with a couple from Ruth's home town who had been travelling the Americas themselves by van until the pandemic drove them to sell their little home and move to volunteering on a ranch in Baja California, where we were to meet. We let them sleep off a siesta after finding a place to get some food (by this point breakfast had merged into lunch) before heading down a sandy track to meet up. It was lovely to get to know the couple, Lydia and Jaume, and of course they had plenty of amazing stories to tell from their adventurous lifestyles. They delighted us by taking us down to the beach to release some baby turtles into the pounding Pacific surf before spending an evening cooking Spanish omelettes over a chat and a few beers.

Days start early on the ranch, to patrol the beach for turtle nests before hungry locals dig them up for breakfast, people drive down the beach and smash them or the local wildlife get their hands on a tasty treat. But we were not allowed to help out as it would make the quad bikes too heavy, although maybe it was for the best as we didn't have a clue what really to do. So we said our goodbyes in the cool of the morning and make our way back onto the road and into Cabo San Lucas, the nearby town otherwise known as "Gringoland". We'd contacted a guy the day before about camping and so, in good time, we rocked up at Martín's humble home near the centre of town where we could pitch our tent in the garden while he explained a few local issues to us, all the while feeding us with guayaba fruit from a tree in his garden. We were still not used to the heat though and found the only way to pass the day by was a siesta in the tent (where the darn mosquitos couldn't get to us!). We ventured a stroll out to the harbour side, however gave up after getting shouted at in English by every bar within 20m of us and having sweated out a few kilos of salty water. The only remedies were beer and hot dogs cooked in Martín's garden where we spent the evening chatting occasionally with the man himself and to his young niece who came by to mutter random words, touch everything and present us with flowers she was picking in the garden.

The morning routine was becoming second nature now, so we chewed down a quick breakfast in the darkness of the tent before setting to it. Without forgetting of course the stockpile of guayabas Martín presented us with as he fared us goodbye. We uneventfully cruised into San José Cabo and sought refuge in various places before finally setting on a little park which had the water sprinklers going, so we could cool off in the improvised showers from time to time. Oh my goodness, it was bliss! This gave Ruth the motivation to start researching about cycling in Mexico and stumbled upon an amazing sounding network called the Red de Apoyo Cicloviajero Mexico who are volunteers dedicated to tracking people traversing the country by bike, providing advice on the local situations as they pass through and help people planning routes. Eventually we had to seek out some lunch and chose an outdoor place on the main drag through town, which happened to have the biggest fan I've ever seen blowing water droplet filled air at us. The tacos were as equally impressively in size, stuffed with so much that the inevitably messy business proved to be just that and more. We had agreed to stay with a Warmshower host for the first time in a long while and at 8pm Génesis found us and took us into her lovely home and cooked up some delicious flour tortillas (more on this in this weeks audiolog!) while we waited for her partner César to finish work. We passed a lovely evening trading stories with the event culminating in me getting a haircut, long since needed! Well bedtime didn't quite suit wakeup time the next day but it was well worth spending the evening with these guys (we hope you're able to go on your own tour in the near future!).

My bike was feeling jealous of Ruth's this morning, having not had a puncture for a while, and so decided to pop as soon as we got on the road after leaving Génesis and César's place. Luckily they had provided us with an inner tube just that morning so it got some instant use! We were behind schedule a little and it was certainly warm, so as we passed by a stall selling "Pitaya Snow" we were intrigued and it wasn't hard for the guys there to persuade us to buy the cactus fruit ice cream, along with another variety that was delicious but who's name escapes me... Wow what a game changer! After that we hid under a tree in the nearby town of Miraflores for the remaining hours of heat and cooked our new favourite roadside snack. Fresh coffee and popcorn made in the moment! Well there we stayed, calmly reading a book and saying hello to people as they passed before moving our gig onto the town square after lunch, an embarrassing foray down the road to a place we'd been recommended but long closed by the time we had got there... The plan was to sleep on the Tropic of Cancer in the tent, an area with bathrooms and a Virgin effigy lit up like a vulgar looking Christmas tree. It proved to be comfortable though and after dining more of Génesis's amazing tortillas we got a good rest. That is apart from a dog that came by late into the night to relentlessly bark at the tent for far too long, keeping us up and worried about the potential of it stealing away with our shoes later on.

We were on the road once more as the sun peaked its head out, entering the small town of Santiago to check out its charms. The town was nice but so early in the day had little going on so I decided to take a back road to the next town along, something Ruth let me know in no uncertain terms she didn't agree once we start sinking in deep sand. It was a slog of course, but once half way down there was no turning back. So we took the positives out of it by observing the country lifestyle as we passed houses and farms and I sang a song we'd heard a thousand times on the radio that translates as "I regret nothing!" (nothing at all to do with the famous French song...). We made it to the town of Los Barriles and, after a quick cool off in the fountain that marked the town from the main road, we chilled out in a little roadside restaurant to see out the heat. The only thing that got us up and moving again, many hours later, was a huge storm cloud in the distance that provided some afternoon shade so we could climb up into the mountains. It cooled off as we climbed and the light faded from the day. We rolled into a small town and talked to a lady, Tía Pupy, who was waiting for her bus. After offering us some tasty cake-like snack she told us to go and see her nephew who owned a little spot we could camp at. It turned out to be a natural swimming pool (the water for which came from up in the hills) with little palm thatched huts around. Hell yeah! This was the first time we had felt cool in so long since the water was chilly and the cool mountain air gave up its warmth far quicker than the thicker air down on the coast. With the bats keeping the mosquitos off we had the best rest we'd had in a while, only slightly interrupted by some strange cars pulling into next door's drive at all times of the night. Well it was a Saturday...

Punctures were beginning to get on our nerves and Ruth's recently fixed bike suffered a bizarre one which saw all the lovely 'healing' liquid within pour everywhere (we'd decided to try out the onces with a liquid in them that re-blocks the holes). Great... Anyway we made it to the town of San Antonio and set up our travelling roadside stand, getting the popcorn popping and the coffee brewing. Apparently we should have been on the sauce though, as along came the town drunks Remi, Santos and his son Leo. We spent a good while talking to them out on the street as they relentlessly tucked into their little cooler of beer that the townsfolk would intermittently refill for them. It was only a few hours into our meeting that we managed to start to piece together the rare fragments of intelligible speech into semi-cohesive stories, and that only thanks to them repeating themselves on a regular basis. It was great fun though and it was clear that most people in town held them close to their hearts, it seems Santos was a bit of a legend who had spiritual healing powers and a knowledge second to none about local herbal remedies. After a while however they reached a level of intoxication that required reciprocal levels of drunkenness that we were unable provide, so we headed to the town square to cook ourselves some lunch and enjoy a rather more tranquil beer. Here we people watched and read away the afternoon before heading to the football pitch we'd heard was a good place to put the tent. Our drunken friends, somehow still standing after all this time, confirmed this for us as we passed by them again. So we pitched our little home for the night in order to see out our first Mexican cycling week!