Baja Divide Cape Loop bikepacking, February 2020
Although I’ve been a bike commuter and casual cyclist forever, I’ve only recently gotten into bikepacking. I’ve historically spent more running and hiking in the mountains, but persistent complications with hip impingement have largely kept me off my feet the past year, and bikepacking has become my new endurance sport. Exactly a year ago was my first bikepacking experience: a somewhat ambitious 200-mile, pretty technical ride through the mountains of Andalucía, Spain that I loved nonetheless. For this year’s international adventure, Rich and I chose to ride a section of Cape Loop on the Baja Divide, a route created by fellow Anchorage native and total crusher Lael Wilcox. My good friends Katie and Kellene rode a large portion of the entire route in 2017, so we called them up for beta, packed the sunscreen (more on this later), stuffed the bikes in boxes, and flew to Mexico. Here’s a report of our trip (skip to the bolded headlines for an overview of each day).
Day 0: Seattle to San Jose del Cabo
Rich and I left the house at 4am for our usual airport transportation debacle: load my bike box into the car, we drive to his house and load his bike, drive to the light rail station and drop me and the bikes off, Rich drives the car to his house and parks it, he runs back to the lightrail, we lug our bike boxes on, and take the train to the airport! This mostly went smoothly, except when we were too tired to realize that due to construction we needed to transfer trains a few stops in, and woke up as our train hit the end of the line in the wrong direction. We figured out our mistake and made it to the airport in time to board the rowdiest flight I’ve ever flown.
At least a third of the passengers on our 8am flight to San Jose del Cabo (SJC) were a 25-person friend group traveling together from Seattle to Cabo San Lucas for a wedding. These fifty-somethings were exactly the people you’d expect to see flying to Cabo-tans, cork wedges, and blonde highlights on the women; tans, white socks, and slight beer bellies on the men-and damn were they having a good time. These party people literally drank the plane out of booze, the party members within my view having sunk two Jose Cuervos by 10 am. They were stoked out of their minds and couldn’t stay seated and spend the whole flight standing talking to their friends a few seats away, blocking the very cart that delivered their morning elixirs. I even heard one man insist that they needed to stop at a bar before boarding their bus to the all-inclusive resort.
Cheers Lisa and JC-I honestly hope your crew survived the week, because they went hard on day one.
Rich and I, wearing Smartwool and dangling bike helmets and Chacos from our bags, didn’t quite fit in with the hordes of tourists going through customs. We made it to Baja Divide rider staple, Cactus Inn, via their free shuttle and began to unpack the bikes. Let me just saw now: Cactus Inn is clean, affordable, friendly, and perfect for the first and last days on a bike trip. They even stored our bike boxes for us during the week we were out riding. Definitely stay here if you’re going through SJC!
After the Chamelon and Karate Monkey were assembled, we caught a ride to the center of San Jose del Cabo in search of mariscos and beer, which we found at a bustling, casual restaurant with an endless menu called El Toro Güero. As a pescatarian who normally eats mostly vegan, I made a seafood exception for the trip and went big the first night with incredible fish tacos, shrimp ceviche, and a Pacífico. As we still had to pack our bike bags for an early start the next day, I eyed the goblets of margaritas and knew I’d need to have one once we finished our route.
Day 1: San Jose del Cabo to La Paz (via bus) and La Paz to Los Divisideros (32 miles, 3258 feet of elevation gain)
Since we only had a week in Mexico, and wanted to fly both in and out of SJC, we needed to start our route in La Paz so that we could bike back to San Jose del Cabo. To do this, we took a 3.5-hour bus (~30 dollars each, Águila bus company) from Cabo to La Paz, and to get there, we biked 6 miles from our hotel to the station. We only had to remove our front wheels to throw the bikes under the bus and slept our way to La Paz. Once there, we grabbed some groceries: bagged refried beans, hot sauce, crackers, alcohol for our alcohol stove (it’s difficult to find stove gas in Baja, so we opted for a small alcohol stove for boiling water only), tortillas, and cookies. We lathered on the sunscreen (again, more on this later), hopped on the bikes, and headed out of town.
That is, until Rich ran into a parked car’s mirror and broke it clean off, about 6 minutes into our ride. At first, the owners weren’t around, but the sound of impact brought them out of a nearby shop. This was an instance where speaking fluent Spanish made our lives much easier, and the car owners were kind and calm. Once they understood that we were traveling only via bike and weren’t coming back through La Paz, they asked for a reasonable amount of cash, and 1000 pesos lighter, we began our route for real. To be fair to Rich, the car was completely trashed and already lacking the right-side rear-view mirror, but to be fair to the car owner, he really needed that left mirror.
Unfortunately, the ride out of La Paz is a good 20 miles of straight, uphill pavement. We were prepared for this, but it still wasn’t the most inspiring way to kick of a week-long adventure. Around 15 miles in, we heard some sultry tunes wafting into the highway and a handmade “Café La Lomita” sign that pointed towards the sound. Although I had just binged a roll of dry crackers in a roadside fit of low blood sugar and we still had at least 10 miles to cover that day, we decided that not stopping at a cool, local place defeated the purpose of traveling by bike, so we pulled over. Im glad we did: the café is a beautiful little garden oasis run by a sweet couple who made us fish burritos. We also got to chat with a lovely woman named Lupita.
It was at this point we started to have some serious doubts about, of all things, our sunscreen. We both noticed that our arms looked pretty red, but assumed that we had just missed a spot or sweated it off. Rich then noticed that the tops of his hands, which had been covered in meshed biking globes, were burned in a netted pattern. It looked alarmingly similar to a fresh skin graft, which later, we basically needed. This made us think that our Whole Foods 365 Everyday “waterproof,” sport, reef-safe mineral “sunscreen”, was not working. I’ll jump ahead and say it does not work at all-never use this sunscreen. It was a brand new bottle, and went on as a thick, white, deceptively effective-looking layer, but it did nothing, and we ended up getting horribly burned this first day. This stuff is honestly dangerous, don’t buy it. I know there are reef-safe sunscreens that do work, but this was total trash.
After our break, the late afternoon heat, budding sunburn, and mindnumbing road climb were beginning to sap my motivation to make it another 10 to 15 miles, which was what we needed to cover to stay on track for the route. However, we soon turned off onto the dirt roads that led us to some small but rolling mountains, and I perked up in the shade and change of view. At around 27 miles we were running out of light, and found a pull-off on the dark road that didn’t appear to be anyone’s private ranching land. An omen appeared in the shape of a giant black pig casually crossing the campsite. Simultaneously, a herd of neck-belled goats ran down to inspect us as we passed their ranch, and began making insane goat noises, which riled up the entire farm into a cacophony of animal sounds like I’ve never heard. Every single animal on this farm-including animals I didn’t knew made sounds-went nuts for about 15 minutes. Risking disturbance by the vocal animals, we decided to stay as the light was already gone and much of the land was fenced with barbed wire. As I was unpacking and Rich was setting up our “tent” (a bug net propped up by trekking poles), two small pigs showed up. I was excited because I love pigs. But then they started sniffing around camp mischievously, and the brash leader pig grabbed our precious bag of tortillas and sprinted off, chased by Rich. The pig then tripped on the bag in his mouth and dropped the tortillas, leaving a pig mouth-shaped hole through every tortilla. We let them eat the rest. We quickly hung the food (I’ve done a lot of bear hangs, but this was my first pig-hang) and got in bed.
What proceeded was not sleeping for 6 hours while groups of pigs sniffed, rooted, and snorted around us near constantly until we gave up and started biking at 4 am. I didn’t think pigs were nocturnal, but this crew certainly was. Although they appeared to be loose, grazing farm pigs, and not more dangerous wild boars (I’m still scarred from the boar attack scene in Old Yeller, a horrific movie that combines several of my triggers: infectious disease, and a boy shooting his own dog), it’s still a little disconcerting to have 8 to 10 pigs circling you while you sleep on the ground with a mesh screen between you. I also learned that a pig, when not snorting, sounds like a human sneaking up on you, which is way scarier than a pig sneaking up on you. At one point, even the goat crew returned, clanging their way through camp. By this point, the sunburn-basically spanning our entire right legs, arms, and my shoulder-was getting really crispy, so we decided to cut our sleep losses and start biking to the next town before sunrise to find sunscreen and coffee.
Day 3: Los Divisideros to Los Planes and Los Planes to the coat ( 37 miles, 3493 feet of elevation gain)
We started our ride in the dark, passing many ranchos and sleepy animals among the giant saguaros. We had to find sunscreen, and we were hoping to make it to Los Planes, the nearest town, before it got too hot. The road was a little bumpy to navigate by headlamp, but after only one minor crash (Rich), we got an amazing sunrise from our vantage in the mountains. We then descended into flatter, ranching land and passed probably 100 adorable cows frolicking in the desert. Everyone knows how I feel about eating animals, but I have to say: all the farm animals we saw looked very happy and were free to roam and graze. In the case of the pigs, I would say maybe too free!
By 9 am, we had covered 20 miles and reached Los Planes. We stopped at a roadside stand with empanadas, desayunos, and café and I chugged a coffee, the lack of sleep finally hitting me. Next we had to find sunscreen, and stopped at the only market in town. The couple running the store had no idea if they carried sunscreen-I assume most Mexicans who live in the campo, with their nicely tanned skin, don’t use it-but she dug up a bottle of some ancient-looking Tropicana. I spent the best 198 pesos I’ve ever spent, and the fake-smelling Tropicana Ozono worked perfectly for the rest of the week. At this point it was only 10 am, so we grabbed breakfast (a lump of melted cheese wrapped in a tortilla) from a grandma selling them out of her window and headed out of town. We had to climb over a small mountain range before descending to the coast, and when we crested the ridge we assumed we would be zipping down the coast in no time. In reality, although the descent did spit us out, as the bird flies, very coast to the beach, we still had to ascend and descend on chunky, unbikeable roads parallel to the coast for several hours. By 4 pm, a solid 9 hours into our ride, I was feeling pretty wrecked but was hellbent on making it to what appeared to be a very small town on our map. I was desperate for a cold beer, the visualization of a cold Corona con limón fueling me to bike longer than I should have with a recovering injury. We did make it, but the “town” was just a cluster of RVs and private beachside properties, so we gave up and camped in the sand near the beach.
Day 3: Boca del Alamo to Los Barilles and Los Barilles to La Ribera (36 miles, 2269 feet of elevation gain)
Our alcohol stove had proved to be very inefficient the night before, so instead of making tea and Alpine Start coffee like we usually do, I was determined to find a place to sit and have a coffee in the next town, Cardonal. We rolled out around 6:30 am and cruised down some fun, flat dirt roads, reaching Cardonal in just an hour. I spotted a beautiful hotel that advertised a restaurant and outdoor patio that I was not about to pass up, so I made Rich wait with me until 8 am when they opened. Here we had a tasty veggie breakfast tostada and some great coffee, got to use a real bathroom, and checked in on Javi with their wifi. We also replaced our pig-eaten tortillas at the tortilleria down the street and refilled our water supplies. Logistical note: on this section of the route, we never used more than about 50 percent of the 6 to 7 liters we each carried.
Our next destination was Los Barilles, about which we had mixed feelings. Although after three days of riding and camping we were ready for some tacos and a margarita, we’d heard that Los Barilles was full of retired Americans riding golf carts to and from their expensive, private beachfront homes. We definitely tend to travel a bit off the grid and avoid touristy spots, but since we had to pass through anyway, I was stoked to refuel with some fancy drinks. Hopped up on coffee, we cruised another 10 miles along the beautiful coastline (with a swim for Rich along the way) passing incredibly opulent beach homes. One mini village of mansions even had its own airstrip! We knew we were approaching Barilles when we began to pass clusters of insanely beautiful adobe houses. These homes were stunning: painted bright white or in complimentary, bright colors, their outlines making striking geometic lines against the teal water, some decorated with tiled murals and rooftop balconies. Manmade scenery is not usually what intrigues me, but I could have stared at this architecture endlessly. The rumors were true: almost everyone we saw were older Americans ripping down the streets on ATVs and golf carts. I don’t blame anyone for vacationing, or buying property in a place like Baja, but it was a strange juxtaposition to encounter a mini civilization of American retirees next to a small town of normal Mexicans living in much less opulent homes. I wonder what the locals think of the American takeover of Barilles? I don’t know how the locals feel, but It was strange to emerge from rural, traditional Mexican farm towns and pop out into a Los Angeles golf club scene.
Once in town, the first bar we found reeked of country club, which is not our vibe, but we were desperate for a marg. Tres Palapas, while the food amazing and the drinks strong, is also a pickleball club, which apparently the retired American expats take very seriously: while we sat in our biking clothes, covered in dirt and sunburn, sipping tequila, the olds were running drills on the court and trash talking each other for their next matches. They did look pretty fit, so I guess pickleball is legit. Tres Palapas wasn’t necessarily our ideal ambiance, but we’d been warned, and still enjoyed some incredible fish tacos and a margarita. The server also gave us complimentary double tequila shots, and Rich and I, who generally don’t drink much, got pretty crunk. I wasn’t planning to get drunk for the second half of our ride, but the sunburn, three days of biking, and the tequila caught up to us. We didn’t really notice our buzz until we got up to resume biking, but let’s just say the next two hours of biking are a blur. At one point I pulled off my bike on the side of the highway, convinced I saw a humpback whale breaching, but it was only a windsurfer. I’ve never felt so good biking uphill.
By the time we reached La Ribera, a small beachside town that is tucked away off the main road (we biked past it the first time), we had sobered up and were ready for more food. This town, also less glamorous, also appeared to be full of Americans. We pulled off for some ceviche, nachos, and beer, grabbed a few groceries as the sun went down, and headed down to the beach to find camping. Unfortunately, it was horrendously windy, and because we were still in La Ribera proper, the only camping was on the beach itself, where sand was blowing everywhere at high speeds. Knowing that enduring a night of sandstorm in our mesh bug net would be another night without sleep, we backtracked to a hotel, Hacienda de Palmas, that Rich had spotted earlier. An American man answered our electronic doorbell ring and explained that he was out of the country, but that we could let ourselves into a room and pay him later. Confused but relieved, we rolled our bikes through a beautiful courtyard and up to our rooms and enjoyed a night in a bed with a hot shower, finally rinsing the god-awful sunscreen residue off our burned skin.
Day 4: La Ribera to Cabo Pulmo (22 miles, 1344 feet of elevation gain)
This ride from La Ribera to Cabo Pulmo National Park shouldn’t have been too strenuous, as it was gradually uphill and relatively short, but I was not feeling great. Due to deep, unbikeable sand, we had to unmount our bikes frequently and push them. This combined with my pretty serious sunburn, the heat, and my impatience to get to our beach rest day made for a pretty miserable ride. We reached Baja Bungalows, an incredibly comfortable and affordable hideaway on the beach, around 11 am, but I didn’t feel much better once I was off the bike. I thought some tacos and a piña colada would cheer me up, but after lunch I felt feverish and ill, and spend the entire rest of the day alternatively shivering and sweating under the blankets in a beach town. Rich snuck out for a swim, but like La Ribera, Cabo Pulmo was extremely windy and the waves were crashing pretty vigorously. Although I prefer active, sometimes borderline-unfun vacations and am generally not a beach person (I can’t swim, I hate heat, and I get bored sitting around), I had been excited for one day of what I called “basic vacation” where I could drinks some fancy drinks in a bikini and read, and I was pissed that I was wasting the day in bed. Thankfully, I was able to sleep off this sunburn-induced fever and by the next day felt recovered enough to enjoy Cabo Pulmo.
Day 5: Rest day at Cabo pulmo (3 miles of walking for me, 10 miles of running and mountain biking for Rich)
Unlike on our Spain trip, this time around we had built in a full rest day at Cabo Pulmo so that we could relax, swim, read, and drink. Sadly, Rich’s dreams of snorkeling in this beautiful coral reef zone were crushed by the persisting wind, so we took an exploratory hike down the coast line and then had more tacos and margaritas on the beach. Not feeling 100 percent and needing to rest my extremely sore booty bones, I stayed at Baja Bungalows to read my favorite Carlos Fuentes book while Rich went for a run and a quick ride on the single track in the small mountain range behind us. We had a chill night repacking our bike bags, and woke at 4 the next morning to get an early start on our penultimate ride.
Day 6: Cabo Pulmo to San Jose del Cabo ( 42 miles, 4742 feet of elevation gain)
We had planned for this section of the ride to last two days, but we accidentally biked for 11 hours and made it all the way back to our beloved Cactus Inn in SJC. Oops. The problem with starting your rides at 5 or 6 am is that by the time you complete a solid day’s worth of biking, it’s only 2pm. And at 2pm in Mexico, it’s very hot, so sitting around at camp isn’t very appealing, so we just kept riding until we were too close to town to camp, and then just finished the route.
The route started on gradually uphill dirt roads and devolved into a two-hour bike pushing fest through deep sand. My mental game started to slip here as I envisioned 20 subsequent miles of pushing instead of biking. Three miles later, we eventually could get back on our bikes, but the sun became extremely hot on the exposed mountain ridges and the climbs became extremely steep. I actually enjoy the challenge of climbing uphill, but this part of the route was pretty defeating as every hilltop crest was immediately followed by a descent that would negate all of our elevation gain. This repeated for several hours, and still feeling a little off from my Cabo Pulmo fever dream, we had to take a few breaks in whatever shade we could find. Rich said he knew I was over it when I started ranting, for the second time this trip, about Old Yeller, a telltale sign that I’ve gone off the rails. As rough as I felt, I didn’t want to stop for too long, because I can’t stand not making progress, so we slowly continued until our net uphill transitioned into a net downhill around 3 pm. At this point, I was getting my motivation up, so we continued to the “town” (three houses, a donkey, and a bunch of cows) of Palo Escopeta. I didn’t want to camp in a town called “shotgun,” so we pushed on for camping somewhere between this town and San Jose del Cabo. Around mile 35 of 42, we decided to just go for it. After what felt like forever on a hot, dusty road just outside of town, followed by the finishing stretch of highway riding in San Jose, we rolled into Cactus Inn at 5pm. We bought a few beers, made some tacos with the (delicious) bagged refried beans we’d been eating all trip, and passed out.
Day 6: Rest day in San Jose del Cabo
Since we had a whole extra day to relax, we spent a few hours in the morning breaking down the dusty bikes and packing them back into their boxes, and then navigated the public buses to the centro of San Jose del Cabo. While Cactus Inn resides in a normal, non-touristy neighborhood of the city, we learned that SJC, while not as popular as Cabo San Lucas, also hosts a ton of fancy, beachfront hotels down by the water. In conjunction, a trendy plaza that appeared straight out of Portland, contained a chic coffee spot called the Breakdown that I’d read about online. We stopped here for our first rest day treat: a nitro cold brew for me and a horchata coffee for Rich, on a rare occasion that he trades mate for coffee.
We next stopped at a bougie grocery store to resupply our beloved bag beans for snacking, and then walked back to SJC centro proper for a return to El Toro Guero. Rich opted for an exact repeat of his original meal, while I splurged on some camarones al coco, and we both got the head-sized goblets of margarita I’d been fantasizing about since our arrival, and they lived up to expectations. If you go to San Jose del Cabo, this place is a must.
We then leisurely strolled through the center, which has the dual charm of a slightly upscale feel combined with low-key authenticity. Windowshopping, we were admiring art in the form of tequila bottles in a shop called Tequila Town. Yohana, their employee, offered us a tequila tasting, and we assumed we’d sip two or three types and move on. Yohana proceeded to give us the most in-depth tutorial of the tequila and mezcal process and kept pulling interesting varieties for us to try. We finally had to cut her off, and headed back to Cactus Inn for the night.
Day 7: Cabo Pulmo to Seattle
We passed the morning a little restless without our bikes, and reluctantly returned to the airport for our flight back. With 500 pesos to burn we slammed a Pacífico and a tequila shot in the airport to gird us for our complicated commute in reverse. Sadly, the wedding crew was not on our flight home. I hope they survived.
Final thoughts
My second international bikepacking trip was very different from my first in Spain, but equally fun and adventurous. I’m fully convinced that bikepacking is the single best way to travel: you’re moving slowly enough to be able to interact with the landscapes and people, but quickly enough to cover a lot of ground and see a lot of places. Also, Rich and I just love our vacations with a side of suffering: we only have type II fun! Although I understand not everyone want to spend their entire vacation on a bike, I really recommend at least renting a bike for one day of a trip and going for a cruise.
Although I’ve traveled a fair amount, I never fail to be struck by just how similar all people are. Mexico gets a lot of bad press in the United States, and the Trump administration and the media do a good job of portraying Mexico as a dirty, dangerous place; several friends asked me if I was sure a bike trip to Mexico was a good idea. While I’m not naïve-I know there are places in Mexico that are dangerous, just as there are rough places in the US, and everywhere-I’ve spent a lot of time in Central and South America (a lot of this time alone), and have had almost no sketchy or bad experiences. This trip was no exception. Almost every single person we passed, be it surly looking rancheros in the mountains or random people on the street, waved hello to us, and many stopped and asked us if we were okay or needed a ride. In fact, our closest call was almost getting run over by American retirees in a speeding Jeep! While I don’t subscribe to the generalization that most people are bad, I also don’t believe that most are good, either. Most people are just neutral, living their lives and not concerned one way or the other with two crazy bikers.
All this to say that Baja is a lovely place with lovely coastline, mountains, cacti, food, and people. I definitely recommend a trip there, especially on bike.
Originally published at https://meanwhileinak.com on March 9, 2020.
