Day 9 Mulege to San Fransquito

Day 9

Mulege to San Fransquito

175ish Miles

Once again, I am up before dawn. Bombearo is wrong, it can be Christmas every day, I'm up and excited wanting to drink it all in. I watch some more pelicans bomb the water and make a cup of coffee on the old Jetboil. J finds an odd looking "beetle" crawling on his pillow. Turns out this Montana kid has never seen a cockroach. I was surprised that this was the first one we had seen. We had a pretty long dirt end of the day planned so we headed out pretty early, stopping at the Pemex just south of town for fuel. We followed the highway north into Santa Rosalita and the continued on to San Ignacio. We knew that Effrain's place would deliver the goods, so we pulled for some Pacificos and tacos dorados.

We continued north onto El Marasal/Vizcaino and got some more fuel at the Pemex. We also made a stop at a store and picked up some provisions before diving off the grid to San Fransquito.

Fast forward.........A little nice bottle of tequila would go well with the beach.

Some more jerky and water, and we headed up the black trail for a bit, before breaking off for the dirt heading east. This section was one of the smoothest riding roads we had been on. Nice sand, not too deep, good scenery. We made good time and pulled into SF around 4pm. Juan was there, no Rosa. Man, we really wanted to meet her after reading a few other trip reports. Juan told us we could camp for 150 pesos/pp at the far cabana. Like others have mentioned, the place is in disrepair and the weather has beat it up pretty good ripping roofs off a few of the structures. But with that said, the shitters were as clean as we had seen and there was even a plunger. He asked us if we wanted to eat dinner, fish tacos at 6! We all soaked in the beauty and solitude of the place. I took a quick dip in el mar....it was chilly. J headed off for the rocks and did some fishing.

The fish tacos were some of the best on the trip and the Pacificos muy frio. We slapped up a few stickers and headed back for a nice fire on the beach. I slept like a log and probably sounded like I was sawing some. The stars were epic. I can't say enough about how much we enjoyed this spot. I had heard so much and it lived up to it. It's simple, rustic if you will, off the grid, all that shit. It's great

Believe it or not, this rig actually runs, even with 2 flat tires. Juan fired it up in the evening and drove it over to maybe where he kept his generator. KIR

Thank you to all who recommended it!

Another one minute highlight - watch in 1080p

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Day 8 Rest day

Day 8

Rest day

Nada miles 1

So much for rest that morning, I could hear pelicans bombing the water right outside our hotel room. Every couple minutes they were taking a fish from the river next to Hotel Serinidad. The sunrise was worth the wake up. A quick jet boil and we strolled out to the inlet, passing the military outpost near the airstrip. Interesting. J threw the flyline out and wasn't able to connect with anything. We all headed down to downtown Mulege to grab some pesos from the ATM, some breakfast (chiliequiles) and some more oil for oil change.

We headed down to Santispac, the colors ....wow.

Made a hammock buddy

The water was beautiful and perfect for swimming. The bar/restaurant there had beer, we took advantage of it. And then we proceeded to get burned as hell laying around in the sun all day. Everyone except for the ginger, Bombearo, who apparently thinks sunscreen is important? We talked to 3 people from Utah that had dingied in from a moored sailboat. They had flown down to Matzalan and bought boat, were sailing back north where they would take the boat out and trailer back to Utah.

J didn't bring the flyrod all this way for nuthin!  Look at this monster......a finespotted jawfish

We ripped the black trail back to Hotel Serinidad and had a marg and swim. Bill the local drinker informed us of a good place to eat that was running a chile rellano night. In! One of my only painful get offs would occur on the night ride back to the hotel, a sandy corner, darkness, shorts/sandles and too many rellanos = one gash to the shin.

Highlight 60 second video---use 1080p

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Day 7 San Ignacio to Mulege

Day 7

San Ignacio to Mulege

220-ish miles

We got a decent start on the day and went down to eat with Effrain, his parents were working the place this morning. His madre cooked up some mean huevos rancheros.....yep again.  They paired well with Pacifico, amazing how well it goes food. 

The road out of town was paved for a while then turned to improved dirt closer to Laguna Ignacio. The ride after reaching the water was awesome. Pulsing through perfectly smooth flats and small depressions. Again, some of my favorite riding of the trip.

THere were nice pockets of sand in here too and some really slick ass skimmed mud, better watch that at 70mph! Looks like it would be some epic mangrove exploring along here.

We rolled through a couple sleepy fishing villages and got to hand out some more stickers to some great kids.

There was dodging dogs as well, almost dumped it on the sandy corner as I tried to outrun this pit bull.

We stopped in Scorpion bay for a lunch of dorados tacos and beers. There's a good little gas shack out towards the point. Some weird red tide on the water. Nice clean town. The day just kept getting better. We dropped off the pavement and then started a series of bisecting a few valleys that had small river crossings in the bottom. And then hit the pavement for a bit into La Purisma.

The "pass" heading east out of La Purisma was one of my favorite vantages of the trip.

That was followed up by some beautiful country, passing small and very remote ranches. These folks out here are tough. I wish we could have pulled in and talked to a few. There were lots of burros and horses out here. I was pleasantly surprised to not be flatting. The rocks were relentlless and varied. I was runnning HD tubes and about 23lbs of pressure. That's what I rocked most of the trip. I had considered lowering the PSI, but I wasn't pinch flatting, so I dealt with the rockhard pressure. 

When we connected to the hwy and headed north, we were ready for Hotel Serinidad. Unfortunately, we hauled ass up north and didn't take as much time as I would have liked to take in the bonita vistas. Next time.  at 5pm. .

We pulled in around dusk and for some reason decided to do some bike maintenance. It's a great thing to do after riding over 200 miles.[emoji12]  But some Tecates seemed to help the job. The food at the hotel was pretty decent and were the margs.

Day 7 highlights - turn on high quality

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