Bahia de Los Angeles – The ExhaustNotes Blog

Bahia de Los Angeles 2006

Yours truly with my Triumph Tiger in Palomar, about 200 miles south of the border along Baja’s Transpeninsular Highway. I had a little bit of hair back in the day, and it was still brown. What’s left now is mostly gray.

Wow, here’s a find…a bunch of older print photos from a Baja trip my old Baja buddy John Welker and I did back in 2006. Man, times were different back then. We both rode big road bikes and we were both working for a living. What a difference 14 years can make. It was a quick 1100-mile weekend ride to Bahia de Los Angeles in the Baja peninsula. John has a house on the Sea of Cortez down there. He still owns it, and he spends several months each year in Mexico. I took my Triumph Tiger for its first long ride, John took his Yamaha Virago, and we had a great time. I guess that goes without saying. Any motorcycle trip to Baja is going to be great.

A Mexican truck driver on the Transpeninsular Highway, who was actually pretty friendly.

We stayed in San Vincente on the way down. It’s a cool little agricultural town along the Transpeninsular Highway, one of many in the agricultural district north of El Rosario. We saw a guy trying to buy beer in the restaurant in San Vincente that Friday night. There was a BMW GS in the hotel parking lot and I asked if it was his. Yep, it was, and Peter introduced himself to me. The restaurant didn’t serve beer, but I went across the street to pick up a couple of sixpacks of Tecate. I asked Peter to join us for dinner, and he did. He’s from Canada (eh?), and he was touring Mexico and the US for a month or two.

Our new GS-mounted good buddy Peter in San Vincente, along with good buddy Annie. Peter said he was looking for a Starbuck’s and got lost. I think there may be a Starbuck’s down there now.

That’s Deema, Annie, John, and Peter. It was a grand dinner. Deema and Annie drove down in Annie’s car on this trip.

On Saturday, the next morning, John and I ran into a fog bank about 250 miles south of the border. Visibility was so bad I couldn’t see the ground beneath me, so I pulled over to wait it out.

I grabbed this shot of my Triumph in the fog.

And another. There was nothing else to do until the fog lifted. The Tiger was a very photogenic motorcycle.

Mexico’s Highway 1 (the Transpeninsular Highway) follows the Pacific coast and then turns inland at El Rosario. Mama Espinoza’s is a classic Mexican restaurant known for their lobster burritos. I had a chicken burrito for lunch and, as always, it was the best one I ever had. I made it a point to stop there on the way back the next day and I had the same thing.

We always feel welcome at Mama Espinoza’s.

South of El Rosario, it gets real desolate real fast. That’s the Valle de los Cirios, and it’s one of the prettiest spots on the peninsula. The roads are spectacular. Fast sweepers, long straights, and no traffic. There’s just the odd cow or wild burro in the road.

A typical view in the Valle de los Cirios.

Another stop along the Transpeninsular Highway. The Triumph Tiger was a great machine for this kind of riding, especially with its comfortable riding position and a range exceeding 200 miles.

After the Valle de Los Cirios, it was desert down to Catavina and beyond. There are remote truck stops, lots of desert, and just great riding. I’ve got to get back down there again sometime soon.

A truck stop out in the middle of nowhere.

We stopped briefly in Catavina, where John couldn’t tear himself away from this rather talkative guy. John and I have put a lot of miles on our motorcycles in Mexico. The scenery is great. The people you might are even more fun.

At Punta Prieta, after traveling on Highway 1 for about 360 miles, we made a left turn and headed east across the Baja peninsula.

This was our destination…Bahia de Los Angeles.

Triumph called the Tiger’s color Caspian Blue, presumably named after the Caspian Sea. This wasn’t the Caspian Sea (it’s the Sea of Cortez), but I’d say the color match is pretty good.

John’s house on the Sea of Cortez. John picked a moonless weekend so that we could take in the stars, and the night sky was awesome.

Every motorcycle trip needs an obligatory artsy fartsy shot. This was mine from our 2006 Bahia de Los Angeles ride.

John’s house is literally right on the Sea of Cortez. It’s a pretty cool place.

Casa de Welker, on Bahia de Los Angeles.

John telling a fish story in his front yard.

Our dinner choice that Saturday night. The fish tacos were impressive, as was the Tecate. Life is good down there in Baja.

John keeps an old VW microbus in Bahia de Los Angeles that came with the house when he bought it. The lights on the VW didn’t work back in 2006 (I imagine John has them working now). We had dinner in town and realized the sun had set. No lights. No moon. Dirt roads through the Baja desert. We realized we were in a pickle. But, John had an idea. And a flashlight. Annie hung out the window with that flashlight and sort of lit the way. It was an old flashlight with a limp battery, and it didn’t really light up anything. But we didn’t care. It was a fun evening.

The original Baja bug. LIghts? We don’t need no stinkin’ lights!

Candy, the Chihuaha from Peru. In Mexico. That little pup ran the show.

There’s no light pollution down there in Bahia de Los Angeles. I slept on the roof and it was magnificent. I’ve never seen stars as vivid nor as plentiful as they were that night. And the next morning, I was up before sunrise, so I was able to set up my camera and get a cool photo of the sun rising over the Sea of Cortez.

A shot from John’s roof looking east over the Sea of Cortez.

I rode back the next morning by myself…John was staying at his place a couple of extra days, but I had to get back for work. Work. Man, those days seem so far in the past now.

The ride back was a good one. It’s nice to ride with friends; it’s also nice to ride on your own. I do some of my best thinking when I’m riding by myself. I need to do more of it.

I grabbed this shot in one of the agricultural towns along Highway 1 on the way back to the US.

I shot all of the photos on this page with my F5 Nikon, and the 24-120 Nikon and 17-35 Sigma lenses. Back in the day, as film cameras went the Nikon F5 was a good as it ever got, and I got a lot of great shots with that camera. The thing was a tank and I don’t think I would want to lug it around today, but back then it was really something.

So there you have it. I’ve got a standing invitation from Baja John to ride down to Bahia de Los Angeles, and as I put this blog together and looked at these photos again, I think that’s what I’m going to do.

Want more Baja? Check out our Baja page!

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Which Baja beach bike?

Baja John, somewhere in Baja’s Valle de los Cirios, making my old KLR look good.

I just got a call from good buddy Baja John, a guy with whom I’ve been exploring Baja for the last 30 years. Part of the call was about what we’d be riding and where we’ll be going on our next Baja foray in December (more on that in a future blog), and part of was about keeping a bike in Mexico. John has a home in Mexico right on the water in Bahia de Los Angeles. The Bay of Los Angeles is about 400 miles south of the border on the Sea of Cortez. It’s a cool place.

Bahia de Los Angeles, denoted by the red arrow.

My good buddy John wants to buy a bike and keep it at his Baja beach house. I think that’s a cool idea. The question is: Which bike? John saw a CSC RX3 for sale near his home here in the US. He already owns an RX3 and he loves it, but the idea of picking up a second one and keeping it in Mexico is appealing.

A second RX3 isn’t the only bike John is considering. He also has an older KLR 650, and he might just move it to Mexico. And, old John is intrigued by the CSC TT250 (he’s heard me talk about its light weight, super handling, and simple maintainability enough and he’s interested). And then there’s the Royal Enfield Himalayan (that bike is getting great reviews, too).

I told John I had my ideas on the perfect beach front bike, and then I thought hey, I’m not the brightest bulb in the room (the room being the ExhaustNotes blog). I asked John if it was okay to post the question here and solicit your inputs, and he thought that would be a grand idea. So, the question is: Which bike would you keep in a Bahia de Los Angeles beach house, and why?

Let’s hear your thoughts in the Comments area of this blog, folks!

See more on Baja here!

Shine on…

Here’s an interesting story that popped up on my news feed earlier today. It seems an errant scooter rider, a young one at that, was stopped by the Maine State Police riding his scooter on the Maine Turnpike late last night, using only his cell phone for a headlight. There must be more to the story, because after stopping him, the police gave the guy a lift to his destination some 70 miles away. I can’t make stuff up this good, and if you doubt my word, you can read the original story here.

So that story naturally pulled my attention to a somewhat similar experience with my good buddy Baja John and his girlfriend Annie. This goes back to 2006 again, shortly after John bought a place right on the Sea of Cortez in Bahia de Los Angeles. Literally, right on the sea. Oceanside housing. It’s awesome.

Casa Baja Juan, in Bahia de Los Angeles.

Baja Juan, probably telling a fish story, in his back yard.

I had just bought a new Triumph Tiger. John and Annie invited me to their new place. Who can say no to an offer like that?

My Triumph. On the ride down to Bahia de Los Angeles, we hit very dense fog. We stopped and waited for it to lift. At one point it was so thick I couldn’t see the ground.

Here’s where the story gets interesting. When John bought the Casa Baja Juan, it came with a VW bus. John worked on it for a week and got it running, and it became his get-around-town wheels. He never registered it, so it had no plates, but it was cool. I love old VWs, especially the buses.

The VW bus that came with Baja John’s oceanside estate. Lights? We don’t need no stinkin’ lights!

That night, we took the VW and went to dinner at the best taqueria in town, just a short distance away…

A typical Baja roadside restaurant. You can get some mighty good food in these places.

John, Annie, and I had a great dinner, a few Tecates, and then it was time to head back to his place. There was a problem, though. The sun had set, and the VW had no headlights. The three of us pondered this situation a while, and then John remembered he had a flashlight.

John handed the flashlight to Annie and she hung out the passenger window, lighting the way as we rolled down a dirt road to John’s house. We couldn’t see squat (the flashlight was pitifully weak), but we were laughing so hard we didn’t care.

Then we drove past another restaurant on that dirt road. Imagine that: Another restaurant on that same dirt road. Then I saw who was sitting under the veranda as we went by. Uh oh, I thought.

There were three Mexican police officers having dinner, sitting out front, just a few feet away as we passed. The police officers saw us, we saw them, and Annie waved, using the flashlight, which I thought would only accentuate the obvious: We had no lights and the VW wasn’t registered.

The police? They waved back, holding up their cervezas in a salute to our ability to adapt, improvise, and overcome.

Ah, Baja….