5 (of 7): From San Ignacio to Bahia Asuncion to San Francisquito:

Itinerary Description:

• Day 9 I rode in to Mulege from the whale camp then into a strong sidewind all the way west to Bahia Asuncion.
• The first picture is the hill above San Ignacio as I was leaving. You see nothing but volcanic rock and cactus until suddenly this little green valley and oasis of palm trees show up where San Ignacio is located.
• Bahia Asuncion is all the way on the west (Pacific) coast, always a bit cooler and sometimes windier. Pics are from the porch of the amazing whale lady Shari's main house on the shore and the little place I rented from her overnight (BajaBnB.com). She is the best, a transplanted Canadian who has lived there and raised a family while pursuing her love of whales. She has many contacts, handy for emergencies and anything you can think of.
• Day 10, Bahia Asuncion to San Francisquito. At this point I split from the group in order to get in more dirt riding by going to San Francisquito.
• The road back into Vizcaino from BA is often drifted with sand and has a few potholes. Back in Vizcaino gassing up I knew that heading to San Francisquito then Bahia de Los Angeles I would not see any Pemex stations for almost 200 miles and who knows how easy it would be to get gas otherwise, so since I was solo at this point I stapped on my 6 liter MSR Dromedary bag full of gas. It worked fine.
• Figure about 80-90 miles from Vizcaino to San Francisquito. I took the most direct 2-track route, the first dirt road north of Vizcaino which had a very sandy section south of El Arco that was narrow but 2 track pretty well packed IF you stay in the tracks, so turned out to be fine (I was a bit paranoid being solo and trying to go fast), could be tricky on street tires though. You can see this stretch starting at the 2:00 minute mark on this YouTube video I found.
• The majority of the road from El Arco to San Francisquito on the east coast was very wide and graded but was washboard hell. Had to go pretty fast to float on top. Somehow missed a turn right near the end and ended up at El Barril on the coast too far south and had to take some very narrow sandy tracks to get back north. Overshot it and ended up at a small Federali military camp on a dead end road, just around the corner from the main San Francisquito area.
• San Fran is basically a small beach resort hotel that apparently was a booming place a few decades ago. Now there are just some bombed out concrete palapas, no lights, a generator at night and a 3 generation family of about 8 that live there. But because one of them is a teenager with a laptop, they turned on their WiFi every night for awhile!
• They did have cold drinks and the grandma fed me some fresh fish for dinner and eggs for breakfast, and they had gas to sell me. It was awesome being the only person camping on the totally dark beach with the stars so bright in the dark sky.
• Apparently they still get a crowd during the top to tip years of the Baja 1000, and they have their own landing strip.

7149.jpg	7155.jpg	7158.jpg	7163.jpg	7167.jpg	7170.jpg	7173.jpg	7175.jpg
7176.jpg	7178.jpg	7179.jpg	7185.jpg	7188.jpg	7189.jpg	7196.jpg	7205.jpg