Baja day 9

Kind of hard to leave my chilly hotel box after two nights. All my stuff had somehow exploded all over the room. Also I was out of alcohol for my stove, so no coffee. I stopped at a breakfast diner for some eggs and beans. The route out of town left the highway to cross a sandy river bed. I pedaled to another little settlement of houses called Malibu South. The beach was a little closer, not at the bottom of a cliff. Maybe people surf here but I didn’t see any surfers. At one house I saw a herd of sticker covered touring motorcycles inside the gate. A white guy on a dune buggy stopped to watch me struggle up a bumpy little hill. Then he told me, “Hey, there’s a fence across the road up there. You’ll have to flip your bike around the end of it, but I’m sure you can handle that.”

I’ve seen that fence on social media. Right across the road. Getting the bike around the end of the fence is doable but it is on the edge of cliff. My mom would not like it.

After that I came to the prettiest coastline. So wonderful. There was a little gravesite, just the one.

In the distance I could see the mist hanging high in the air from two blowholes.

Then the route turned away from the coast and the mud started. That thick sort of mud. So of course I had to fall down into it. Not my whole body. Mostly the mud got on my pants, the one pair I just washed. Also my handlebar stuck straight into the mud and came out a giant blob.

I was a little grumpy about that and then I saw a herd of wild donkeys. There was a fuzzy baby donkey!

The dirt road was a roller coaster of dips and mud traps. I had to squish through a couple big smears. My bike got a little filthy.

I got into Colonet around four. I went to a grocery store and asked about denatured alcohol. The ladies at the store found something that might be right. The hotel options weren’t great, but neither was camping. I ended up at the expensive hotel. Still less than half what I paid for hotels on PCT. And there was a puppy at the front desk.

Pretty much the best day ever. But I am concerned about the mud. According to social media, it only gets worse from here.