What a Beauty

Heres a handsome photo of my face, battle damaged after the 7 days of desert riding from El Rosario down to where we are now, in Guerrero Negro, which we think has been about 330 km. Click it for a full size glamour shot. Whee! Since then Ive had a shower, eaten junk food, pop, tequila, enjoyed a bed, lots of tacos and tortas, and just now have a belly full of fresh Clams we and our Australian-motel-neighbours bought from a fisherman today. And i look a bit more like myself again.

Ive just arrived at the motel in this picture, and we are all looking forward to a bed, some running water, wahsing some clothes, and a hot shower (my turn is next). Safe to say i smell worse than ever, its been a pretty rough week.

But then i feel absolutely fantastic too.

Theres a LOT of dogs in mexico... wild ones nice ones noisy ones and ones that look like theyll bite your knees off while you sleep. Theres a lot of dead ones too. I gave a patient poor alsatian two slices of bread for being nice, then an hour later he went and stole all my bread and sardines from my tent. OO! A Cyote got me on another night, and crunched my can of highly prized mango juice.

We´ve camped in all sorts of places - behind desert scrub, at a truck stop, in a storm drain under the highway (which was the best i thought - flat ground, good shade, and a real and old cowboy stopped by to say hello on a horse), in a small canyon, on a beach by a big shipwreck and some other places too.

Seeing two children ride a big dark horse inside a swirl of sand and dust nearby your tent makes any morning pretty special.

The heat has been incredible, weve had to work around it. Our "Beat The Heat" strategy has worked and it hasnt. weve been trying to start early, around 6am, but some mornings its just been so cold its impossible to get out of the sleeping bag - it feels like mid winter back in sweden at 5am. then by 11am its been too hot to ride... so pretty confusing weather. We had to each carry 8 litres of water on our longest stretch without supply stops, which made things hard work, but it was pretty obvious after out first sun stroked day we werent going to race through. A helpful man told kept telling us "Drink or Die!" which i never thought id hear, but i think he was talking about water.

I had a cup of tea with Domingo Cruz Martinez here at breakfast in San Quintin, while he grinned and ate whole jalepeno peppers at 8 in the morning. Oh heres a picture of him- we got on like house on fire.



Part of the desert felt like i was in a looney tunes cartoon, road runner wasnt about but im pretty sure there were a lot of cyotes. The birds ive been seeing since southern california, ive since learned are Vultures... probably chasing our stink. Here i am as a Hero On a Rock.

Here is some of the cartoon desert... it felt like a huge soft play area.. only it was very hard rock and it would have hurt. But the feeling of fun and excitement coming off the warm rocks and cacti was overwhelming for everyone and just made me want to run and climb like spiderman.

Theres a lot more pictures you can see my going to http://www.afilmcalleddads.com/photos/set11/ and also some better ones here http://www.afilmcalleddads.com/photos/set11/more/

My Camera has resurected itself, probably after being baked/frozen/baked7frozen repeatedly in the desert. Curtis has taken some great footage over the last week, and the documentary theyre making should have some great bits in it. Plus me trying to not look stupid and dumbfounded at every occasion.

We have two more nights here in Guerrero Negra, then we set off again into the frying pan, but this time we´re heading south east, and will re-appear in Santa Rosalia on the east coast, and be by the Sea of Cortez, which is all whiote sands and tropical things, where we plan to fish and swim a lot.

Ive just reached 1500 miles on the clock. we just went through a timezone yesterday, so we are one hour closer to england now. Once we are into southern Baja, we´ll cross the Tropic of Cancer, and "towards the bit at the middle of the magnifying glass where you can set ants on fire" as hostel keeper Kyle explained 300 miles ago. I know its November, but hooooeeee it doesnt feel like it at all.

This hill crest made everyone stop at 8am, probably the highlight of the scenery so far for me. Obviously it was much better in life, but you get the impression of it here. You can see the road ahead winding where we were going that day (this was 2 or 3 days ago)