Day 7 - Hotel Hacienda, Mulege

We needed to get to La Paz, well actually the port to the north of La Paz called Pichilingue, which is about 20 minutes ride further north. However, google maps was suggesting that the ride time from Mulege to the port was around 6 hours, and as we have a little bit of time in hand from the original planning, probably because we are smashing it in terms of distance covered each day, we found a little place called San Carlos back on the western coast, which the map suggested was about 4 and half hours from Mulege and a little but further south, closer to the port. So, we were aiming for a reasonable day in the saddle to get to the little fishing village of San Carlos. As such, we were able to take our time packing up and we only left the hotel at 10:00 to stop in the town for breakfast, which was absolutely awesome. We hit the road at about 10:30 and were heading south along the east coast for our first stop in a town called Loreto. The coast road was absolutely fantastic with beautiful coves and beaches dotted along the way. Great twisty roads and the colours of the sea were spectacular. Unfortunately, the insta360 camera wasn’t playing ball so we missed an opportunity to get some footage of the ride, which has by far been the highlight of the trip so far. We did stop and take a couple of pictures, so it wasn’t a total bust.

We pulled into Loreto around midday’ish and stopped in a beachfront bar for a break. The bikers that we saw the day before that are riding 2-up were having lunch in the same spot and whilst they acknowledged us and said hello, they were not very forthcoming, and we ended up speaking with a Canadian couple who were very interested in the trip. A nice little town and a shame that we don’t have more time to spend chilling out, but the journey requires that we press on for San Carlos.

From Loreto, the ride to San Carlos took us back across the width of Baja to the western coast. We have criss-crossed the peninsula a number of times now. The ride through the interior was not very eventful, other than plenty of hours sitting on very straight roads passing through great scenery, but pretty much the same for hours on end. We came close to running out of fuel along the route, albeit we did still have a slight safety net in the jerry cans. I think we have about 30 miles range in the reserve tank, and I ran to about 28 miles, so pretty close to running out, but we found a fuel station in time to avoid it.

The road to San Carlos was a long, relatively straight stretch from the main road, Highway 1. We were aiming for a place called Hotel Isabela, which we had found on trip advisor for $50 for a room with 2 king size beds and a fold out sleeper coach. That is a pretty good deal for the places we have seen to date. We appreciated that we might not be getting a 5-star location in San Carlos as it is really off the beaten track. There is 1 road from the main highway that is about 40 miles long, which took us about 45 minutes to navigate [Jorik hated that road!]. Riding into the town, it quickly become clear that San Carlos is not the most affluent part of Baja. In fact, much of the town reminded me of a township in Cape Town called Khayelitsha, with shacks made out of scrap metal and bits of left over wood, stray dogs running around, and nipping at our heals, and just a general sense of decay and neglect. We both started to feel a little uncomfortable about where we were headed and that maybe Hotel Isabela would not be such a good choice for us ‘Gringos’. When we pulled up, we were relatively surprised by the hotel. It was clean, the rooms were very spacious, and they allowed us to park the bikes within the gated compound. There were 2 very lovely ladies running the place. They were very welcoming and cooked us up a great meal of chicken and salad as well as ensuring that we remained supplied with Pacifico’s for the evening. After dinner, we took a walk along the beachfront, which is not great, but we did witness a spectacular sun set. Back at the hotel, we did a little more research into where we will be heading as tomorrow, we plan to be in Cabo San Lucas followed by a welcomed day off the bikes. Jorik has kindly fronted the cost of the accommodation in Cabo San Lucas as our efforts to the try blag a room in a swanky hotel failed. As such, we will be staying in the Mayan Monkey, we just have to get there now.