It was nearly noon when we crossed the border at Tecate, our destination for the day was San Felipe which was about 200 miles away so we knew we had to make some time to get there before dark. Here is the route we took, from Tecate we rode east on the toll road towards Mexicali and then south. 

Highway 94 in California is one of my favorite rides, nice twisty roads, a good warm up for Baja.

Deby following behind.

Even the terrain is starting to look like Mexico. You can tell we are in the US because of the generous shoulders on the side of the road. Nothing like that further south.

The border crossing was almost vacant and went without incident. We did have to stop to get our tourist visas because we would be in the country for more than a week and travelling into Baja Sur. I went into the room to complete my tourist card and had a great talk with the bored guard in my broken Spanish. He spoke very little English so it was a good test of my daily Spanish lessons. We both laughed about how poor my Spanish was and how mal his English was. The cool thing for me is that I could communicate enough to even have that conversation. Something I couldn’t have done even a year ago.

We rode east of town on the toll road which I have never been on. Any true adventure rider would have skipped the freeway like road and took the parallel two lane road but  were in a hurry. Not far from Tecate I noticed this section on the GPS map.

I always wondered what was going on there. The solid line towards the top is the US border in California. The road is a great winding road through the mountains. 

A fun road to ride. In a number of places there were vans pulled over and at one point I saw a row of people out for a hike across the desert towards the north. There seemed to be a lot of activity, I thought it wouldn’t be a good idea to stop and take pictures and ask questions. I’m sure they were just out for a New Year’s day hike.

Picture of Deby, big smile on her face. 

We arrived in San Felipe around 4:00 and found a casita at the El Cortez Hotel. 

Nice place, right on the beach. You can see Deby out collecting shells already. 

The tide was out so we walked out on the mud flats looking for treasures. 

The Pelicans were everywhere and they especially liked hanging around the fishing boats that had just come in. 

We spend the rest of the evening walking around town along the Malecon and hiking up to a local shrine up on a hill. It was dark when we returned to the hotel for dinner before calling it a night in our first day in Mexico.

Next – the rough and tumble road to Coco’s.

Donn and Deby