Don't lose your dreams to protect your days

I am writing this from the ferry that currently takes us from La Paz to Mazatlan, which is Mainland Mexico. We had to change plans a bit.

Saying Good bye to Baja

Sunday morning we left our lovely hosts Terry and Gary in San Ignacio, where we already stayed one more day due to my, well I’ll call it Montezumas revenge! By then I was feeling not too bad, but had not eaten in 2 days! We only wanted to make it half way to La Paz, which was Loreto, a cute little town at the sea of Cortez.

Walkway to the Church in Loreto

We had no relief from the heat all day, so had to stop several times for water replenishment. The last thing we needed was dehydration. Heinz was really on the edge and by the time we reached Loreto, he was feeling really crappy. We had the name of an inexpensive, simple hotel, the challenge was to find it. I left Heinz with some water at the marina in the shade and went out to find this hotel. Finally when I asked someone, it was easy to find. So, I arranged for a room and quickly went and got Heinz who was by then looking pretty pale and was really exhausted.

Church Loreto

Of course he ended up with basically the same symptoms as me. Thank God for air condition, ‘cause we really needed that. Our room had a window only to the court yard, I called it our little dark hole. We decided to abandon our plans to go past La Paz to Todos Santos and visit Oscar and Tori, a couple we met at our previous stay. We stayed for 2 nights in our “hole”, so we both felt strong enough to make it to La Paz for the ferry.

Too bad we couldn’t see the tip of the Baja Peninsula, which supposedly is very beautiful, but touristy.

Loreto though is a cute town with an old downtown and plaza from the 1600’s, has cozy restaurants and offers a lot of scuba diving, snorkelling and kayak trips to various Islands off the coast. Main season for them is more winter, so right now it was fairly quiet.

Nice Gazebo on town plaza

First day I ventured out a bit by myself, while Heinz was recovering, but after half an hour I was dripping with sweat (37C and 65% humidity) so I came rushing back to our a/c

Second day, I went for a swim at the public beach, but didn’t stay too long because I was pestered by a middle aged Mexican. (Where is Heinz when I need him?) The water has a pretty high salt content, so you have to work a bit to get your head under water, but you would certainly not drown.

Loreto former capitol of Baja

We went for our first bite to eat and it all stayed down. In between our little walking trips into town, we always rushed back into our hotel room to cool off.

Not too far from our hotel I noticed there was a big overlander M-A-N truck from Switzerland parked and someone was sitting with his lawn chair on the sidewalk, so at night I went back and started talking to them, while Heinz wanted to rest. Nice couple, our age with 2 children doing the same trip as we are, so we exchanged tips and ideas. Their air condition was overheating so they were in desperate need of repair. Poor guys were sweating buckets at night!

Sun rise over the sea of Cortez

Today we left Loreto bright and early at 7:00 am in fair condition and with reasonable energy. By around noon time we arrived at the ferry terminal, of course again in blistering heat. We still had tons of time, ferry was supposed to leave at 5:00pm. We manoeuvered through the paperwork and finally parked our bikes in front of the ferry and were told to be back 2 hours prior to leaving. We were able to take a shuttle bus back to the terminal that was just leaving with all the passengers that had arrived from Mazatlan.

Deck of Baja Ferry

Upon arrival we were ushered through security together with the incoming passengers, even though we tried to explain that we really didn’t have anything for security to check, but the officer wouldn’t even listen (Why argue with a Mexican official??). Then we both had to chuckle, because we were separated into male/female isle and only the males had to go through security. Mhm where is the sense?

Anyway when we made our way back to the ferry to board our bikes we finally met some fellow bikers, who were just tying down their bikes. Two guys, Jorge and Marco from Ecuador, who bought 2 bikes (800BMW Gs’s) in Alaska and are also going to the South tip of South America. They will also be with us on our “Stahlratte” to sail to Colombia. Two nice guys that were so excited about Canada, had never seen a bear or a “ bouffalo “let alone a moose, just couldn’t get over it.

Sea of Cortez

Our trip on this ferry will take about 18 hours, hopefully we will get some sleep in our seats.

Feli