I have done the Baja trip to Cabo a couple of times, a few pointers: Buy your insurance in San Diego, do not try to buy in Mexico. It is very easy to find, a 10 year old GL1500 was US$80.
Buy gas at EVERY gas station whether you need it or not. Gas stations south of Ensenada tend to be about 110 miles apart and some of them are out of gas or closed for days at a time with cars lined up for quite a ways. If you need gas and cannot find an open station, ride down any road to any town or cluster of houses, every local has a piece of water hose in his pickup, is an expert at siphoning gas and will fill all your bikes for a few dollars while the "cage drivers" sit by the closed gas stations for a day or two living in their cars waiting for gas. The gas is Irish green, but runs in the bikes just fine, we had 7 bikes and all ran on it fine. Take lots of pepto-bismol tablets and eat one, four times a day, every day. Those of us that did never got sick, those that laughed at us and did not, all got sick at some point during the two weeks in Mexico. Mexicans can fix anything with nothing, we had an old Gold Wing that lost a drive shaft in the middle of nowhere, got a used one with swingarm out of junkyard in La Paz and had it modified to fit a different year and we put in back on the bike under a thatched roof behind a house. Take plenty of tools and tire plugging kit. Never, Never, ride at night...you will hit livestock... Learn to swerve around the holes in the road in places, you can see them pretty well though, but not a place to ride too fast, things walk out onto the road, there are no fences to speak of. Make sure you have no guns or even one bullet in your bike, you will spend a long time in prison. When you see a rope across the rode tied to a board with nails and a teenager with a rifle behind rocks on the other side, you are coming up on a "checkpoint". Don't have a laptop, expensive cameras or such, the "banditos" and "soldiers" are pretty much the same people, they may take whatever they want at times, you can't argue with 10 young men with rifles....they are mainly looking for guns and drugs though. A painted tire or half a tire on the side of the road or in the road means stalled car or dangerous road conditions ahead. Have a beer at the "Hotel California" in Todos Santos If you are down before the whales migrate north, go the the bays around Constitution de la Ciudad I believe it is and rent a fishing boat for 20 bucks and go out, the whales and their young are so thick you wil think you can walk across the bay on the whale backs, a spectacular sight. Sometimes locals close the Highway One for few days to protest something, we came across this, Car people are stuck for few days until the army decides to break it up. They stack burned cars across the roadway, look for the "tunnel" through the cars for the locals to walk through, you can tuck your mirrors in and squeeze through, I did on a 1500 Wing..leave the car people behind.... It is damn hot in the summer, try to go in April or so or plan to ride from dawn to 2 p.m. and call it a day and hit the beach or pool. None of the hotels are very nice except in Cabo area. But the State-Owned hotels are generally the best ones on the way down between Ensenada and Cabo. Other than above, the ride is great, the roads are pretty good in most places, the food is good and the people are very nice. The prettiest girls are at "Mermaids" in Cabo... Hope this helps.. David Gilbert Senior Vice President/National Operations Manager GIC Real Estate Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] San Francisco, Calif.
