San Diego – Rosarito – Ensenada – San Vicente – San Quintin – El Sacrifico:  470 km

Riding into Mexico feels like a new beginning. Marijn and I have been in The States for such a long time that this new, for me completely foreign country, feels like a new chapter in our journey. Marijn feels the same. I must say I’m a little nervous. Mexico doesn’t have that great of a reputation when it comes to safety. All the narco shows on Netflix have not set me at rest, nor have the Americans that told us we’d probably die cycling trough Mexico. Then again, Americans are scared of anything that isn’t American, and enough of them have also told us we’d love their southern neighbours. And then there’s the travel advice issued by the Dutch government, warning for gang violence and kidnappings. I hope Mexico proves all of them wrong. Funnily, I’m also very excited for Mexico. I have loved cycling in America, but I’m definitely ready for something new, a new culture, a new cuisine, a new people, a new language. Maybe some more history here and there.

Without any problems we cross the border in Tijuana, the world’s murder capitol. Great start. We decide not to stay but push towards Rosarito, a medium sized town on the coast. The ride is intense, even scary at times. The road is complete chaos; high volumes of cars and trucks pass us by a hair, debris everywhere and at some point the side of the road is even on fire. We don’t have time to put our guards down and have to be concentrated at all times. Marijn almost gets hit on one of the exits. More or less safely we make it to Rosarito. It’s a bit of a quest but we find our Warm Showers host. Ix Chel is more than welcoming, but she needs to go to Chai Chi the moment we get there. We obviously change instantaneously and join. In the mirrors of the studio, we’re a funny sight. Two big white guys between these fragile small Mexican ladies. With some of the moves I’m afraid I’ll push one over. We have incredible tacos after. This all seems pretty nice, I could get used to this.

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The ride to Ensenada provides us with more heavy traffic. But it also provides with great and cheap food. After America, it is liberating to actually be able to eat out. We carry less groceries here because the restaurants and the supermarkets are petty competitive price-wise. The ingredients are fresh, and we order endless taco’s. We stay at another warm showers, where we have our own little house in the back of the garden.

After Ensenada nearly all of the cars seem to disappear into thin air. The road gets quiet and beautiful. Also hillier. We nearly die on a seriously intense climb. As we descent the landscape gets drier, more desert like. The landscape opens up to reveal cacti as far as the eye can see. Also rubbish as far as the eye can see. The side of the road is lined by never ending plastic. Today is Mexican Independence Day. We were advised to celebrate it in San Vincente. It seems awfully quiet for the parade we were expecting and we soon find out there’s nothing planned. Bummer. But when we walk around the little town, we do hear some music coming from a nearby parking lot. We follow our ears and stumble upon a church organized Mexican feast. And feast we do. It’s wonderful spending the evening between the old ladies that we can’t communicate with because of the language barrier, but they smile at us nonetheless.

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The road to San Quitin is much the same. There’s one main road on the peninsula and it’s pretty much the only one we’re taking. Even though it sometimes lacks a shoulder for us to cycle on, the asphalt is smooth and forgiving. Everything else here is made out of sand and dust. The cheerfully painted homes all have a gradient of brown near where the sand hits the house. The cowboys, and there are serious cowboys here, compete with Wranglers, sombreros and moustaches, wear torn jeans, the blue fabric mixed with the dust of their environment, their leather boots even dustier still. Every day we arrive the crevices in our skin are black, having collected all that grime and salt residue from our sweat. We stay at a campsite, the pool is more than welcome.

We use Komoot to plan our trip. It’s a navigation and route planning app. Here in Mexico it has problems predicting the ferocity of our rides. Today is the first day we notice. Expecting a reasonably doable day, we find ourselves climbing for ages. Strava disagrees with Komoot and explains we doubled our predicted elevation gain today. But it was worth it. We’ve left the coast for the mountains, the road has gotten quitter still, and the sand has made way for a rockier surface. The sun hangs low over the mountains, our shadows are long, and golden hour never seizes to amaze me. We stay in the garden of a truck stop. We watch a boxing match, Mexico wins. My night is broken up by the stopping cars and the footsteps that seem way too close to our campsite. They’re probably just there to rest, yet they have me on the edge of my inflatable mattress for a while. False alarm it turns out, because when the sun rises over the desert, we wake up comfortably and ready for more Mexico.