Where do we start? Well, it all started with James when we were sitting around a camp fire in Anza Borrego for a weekend camping trip and he started asking me about Baja. He hadn’t been down in ten years or so and wanted to know which roads to take. I happened to have a Baja map in my FJ, so we started to look over it. It quickly became apparent that no paper map could show all the hidden roads of Baja.
Fast forward a couple of months and we (James, Oscar, Josh, Dan, and Bobby) are crossing the border into Tecate on a three day adventure. Together with Oscar we hand picked a route that combined our favorite roads from previous Baja 1000 race courses. We started our journey on the soaked Compadre trail. After a few small mechanical problems we stopped in Valley T for lunch. As our chase crew went ahead and checked into out home in San Felipe along the Sea of Cortez, light was quickly becoming scarce. So, we jumped into a wash that ran parallel with the highway. We found this wash was the home to some of the biggest whoops within Baja. After that, we jumped back on the highway to our rented house for the evening, Casa Cuervo.
Our route for the second day would take us through the whooped out roads of San Felipe into the Huatomote wash. From there, together we would climb up to Mike’s Sky Ranch in the rain! Of coarse from the rain emerged obstacles such as sliding in the mud and limited vision, but everyone made it safe to the top with no complaints. At Mike’s we would have a cold beer awaiting our arrival from our chase crew, and a hot, juicy steak! You may notice that our friend Josh ended up making money off of some other Southern Californian guests at the hotel who bet him to jump into the ice cold pool!
At daybreak we fueled up with a breakfast consisting of delicious ham and eggs, chorizo, and the best tortillas we’ve had in our life! Although the group was extremely dissapointed to, from here we started our trek back to the U.S. It had rained through the night, so the conditions of the road had only gotten worse. Staying closely together we navigated ourselves down safely, back onto the highway, and back to the Compadre Trail. The border crossing was easy, with just about an hour and a half wait. Although, time passed quickly between buying goods such as tortillas and churros from vendors and inching our FJ’s back to the border.
I had a really good time sharing my knowledge with everybody, and being able to show them the beauty of Baja. Aside from the bad weather we were faced with, everyone was positive and rose to the challenge. I hope that everyone had just as great of experience as I did! Hasta Luego!
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