Baja Divide 2018: San Diego to Santo Tomas, 3-6Jan.

Made it to San Diego on the 2nd of January but my bike was still at Pearson in Toronto. Bummer. So much for The Grande Depart. The next flight out was tomorrow at noon, hopefully my bike would be on it. Oh well, nothing to do but see a little of San Diego so took a long walk and ended up at Super8 Seaworld. I would be well rested to start my ride.

My bike arrived the next day around noon. I had it togethor in about half an hour and headed for Tecate. I made good time without incident but since I hadn't started until around 1pm I had only a few hours of daylight. Met Jesse at the campground at the foot of Mt. Otay and then continued onto the climb in the dark. Legs started cramping and was reduced to walking but the view of the city lights and the stars at the summit was magnificent. I rode on for awhile more or less descending in the mountains and when sufficiently spent crawled up onto water tank 3-5 and slept.
January 4th there was a fair bit of climbing before making it to the border crossing at Tecate. Paid my $28 visa, resupplied in the Plaza, had a large meal at Subway then carried on towards Ojos Negros. More big climbs and some sandy sections. Rode until dark and camped.

This was my first experience in Baja California backcountry. Rugged terrain, beautiful weather, no water. Coming into Ojos Negros I was passed by several groups of offroad motorcycles and dessert buggies. Some kind of organized event, I think I was on the Baja 1000 route at that point. Not much more than a restaurant at Ojos Negros. Looks like whatever industry was here is now gone so I kept riding out to the highway where I had to pass a military security checkpoint to get over to the Hacienda by the PeMex. I had to ride off pavement for a bit to avoid traffic and when I pulled into the Hacienda I noticed dozens of little burr like thorns in both tires, yikes! I pulled a couple out and the sealant started coming out so I left the rest in and rode on. The tires sealed and I didn't even have to air up. Yay!
Crazy long decent on jeep road and then passing vineyards coming into Uruapan. Another long decent on pavement into Santo Tomas as the sun was going down. Took a motel room at El Palomar.