SOUTH AWAY

TIJUANA TO EL ROSARIO, BAJA CALIFORNIA

GRANITE-FACED MEN IN ARMY FATIGUES PACE FOR the length of the pedestrian bridge at the San Ysidro border crossing. Automatic weapons clasped and ready. Everyone on the bridge is travelling south, into Mexico—women carrying shopping bags and parcels, men in white-collared work shirts. San Ysidro is the busiest land crossing in the world. We’d waited out the rain for another day at Karen and Sam’s place, so we roll into Mexico on the first of December.

“Isn’t someone supposed to stamp our passports?” Alisha asks.

I nudge my chin toward the armed guards. “We could ask them.”

“Let’s just see where this takes us.”

I agree. At the moment, we remain unnoticed, incognito, even in our bright shirts and cycle shorts. Better to avoid attention. Keep moving. Alisha and I continue until the throng pours onto a downtown street.

“Is this Tijuana?” I say.

Could entering Mexico really be this straightforward—no hassle, no questions? The ease of our border crossing stands in stark contrast to the earlier portion of our day spent navigating San Diego’s seemingly endless suburbs, more anxious with every wrong turn that we wouldn’t make it before sundown. Not wanting to waste time procuring food, we’ve eaten our entire bunch of bananas and all of the snickerdoodle cookies that Karen had sent us off with that morning. Now, I’m famished.

A block down the street, McDonald’s golden arches mark the spot where we’d arranged to meet Octavio, Victor’s friend, at five p.m.

“I have a yellow truck,” he’d said over the phone the night before.

“We’ll be the hippies with bicycles.”

We haven’t exchanged any of our currency yet and Alisha has been boycotting McDonald’s for nearly a decade, so we wait outside, the cool escape of air conditioning from the opening of the doors a tiny relief in the heat.

What if Octavio doesn’t show? We’d left Alisha’s phone with the rest of our extra gear in San Diego—we hadn’t used it since Victoria—and I have no idea how payphones work here. I’m still coming to grips with actually being in Tijuana—wasn’t something supposed to happen? After all the warnings, the rhetoric of fear, I’m waiting for a disaster to strike, or at the very least some sign of our impending doom. Instead, there are taxi drivers reclining against the hoods of their cabs, eyes shielded from the sun. On approach, the drivers make a half-hearted effort to offer their services—“Taxi, taxi?”—but then ignore us.

Octavio arrives a half hour later. He’s about twenty, a university student. His youth and quiet optimism are a refreshing change of pace from the middle-aged caution of Sam and Karen.

“Where are your things?” he asks, opening the rear hatch of his truck so that Alisha and I can load our bikes. “Is this it?”

“We left a lot of our gear in San Diego,” I say.

For the first time on this trip, I can lift Blue Steel with one arm. I think back to the morning three months ago when I’d packed up and left Terrace—only to discover I had so much gear I could barely manoeuvre my bike out of the driveway. Now, I’ve finally managed to pare down to essentials.

Octavio drives us back to his family home. From the multiple tiers of security—fences topped with barbed wire and broken glass, barred windows, alarms on the garage and the main home, and a teacup Maltese (only jokingly referred to as a guard dog)—I assume that they’re moderately well off. The fortifications cause me to recall warnings about rampant crime I’d heard north of the border: “Thieves in Mexico will steal anything that’s not tied down.” Is it true? I risk insulting Octavio if I ask him, but he must sense my concern.

“It’s just the way houses are here,” he explains.

“Is Tijuana dangerous?” asks Alisha.

“No more dangerous than any other city. Why, what have you heard?”

We regurgitate the tales of bandits, highway kidnapping, and gunfire: “Just this morning, the San Diego paper ran a story about a woman and her toddler killed in the crossfire at a fast food place in Tijuana,” I say.

“That’s unfortunate,” says Octavio. “But you really don’t need to be worried.”

Inside, Octavio’s home is cozy. Smells of sugar cookies and wood polish. Red, green, and silver Christmas decorations are strung along the staircase; miniature trees decorate the kitchen and dining room. Octavio’s father greets us in the entranceway, tipping his fedora as he extends a brawny hand in welcoming. His British accent catches me off-guard.

Octavio’s mother is equally friendly, a petite woman trailed by a small white dog, her dark curls bouncing enthusiastically with her nods of encouragement as Alisha and I practice our conversational Spanish.

Later, we enjoy wreath-shaped sugar cookies, baked by Octavio’s mother, with our before-bed milk. Sitting at the table with Octavio and Alisha, I am six again, waiting for Santa to come down the chimney. Anything still possible. I tuck into the guestroom bed beside Alisha feeling blessed by the kindness we’ve received, wanting more than anything to make an imprint of my experience and hold it in front of those who had warned us against coming here. Then, hopefully, they could understand that for every word of negative press, there was a family like Octavio’s, maybe ten or a hundred. Folks who treat strangers to cookies and milk before bed.

TWELVE HOURS LATER, FEAR FINDS ME. Heart hammering, I push off, feet striking pedals and my chain hitching into gear as a tollbooth attendant chases Alisha and me down the Transpeninsular Highway, just south of Tijuana.

“Oy! You can’t ride here!”

The attendant’s blue uniform presses tight against his midsection as he barrels down the pavement toward us. I hear something catch in my back wheel but ignore it. The single objective of putting distance between him and us is the only thought on my mind.

Alisha’s voice rasps just behind my back. “Your shirt,” she says. “It’s rubbing against the back wheel.”

I glance back to see my only long-sleeved shirt tangled up in the cassette. No idea how it got there.

“Hold my bike.”

I dismount mid-stride and reach into the cogs of my back wheel. Strips of black merino wool feather to the asphalt.

“Hurry,” Alisha says. The toll attendant is less than a bus length away.

I stuff the tattered shirt down my sports bra and shove off. A hundred metres along, I sneak a look in my side mirror and see that he has given up, arms now loose at his sides. Baja morning sun reflects off black waves of hair. I just hope he doesn’t radio for backup. Already, I’m scoping out side-of-the-road hideouts, but cover doesn’t look promising. The landscape is unremarkable in its plainness, stark and empty compared to the teeming streets of Tijuana. A wire fence behind a dry ditch on the side of the highway separates us from slapdash tin-roof houses. Apart from a weather-blasted man in rags, inhabitants are conspicuously absent. Better to keep going and play dumb gringo tourists if highway patrol catches up. I gulp back another breath. Pray neither of us gets a flat.

“I hope Octavio isn’t late for class,” Alisha says, a few kilometres along.

Hard to believe that less than an hour ago, we were polishing off plates of his mother’s cheesy breakfast eggs and filling our water bottles with ice cubes. It was Octavio who had suggested we take the toll road out of town.

“It’s safer than the old highway,” he had said. “Wide shoulders. But bikes aren’t allowed.”

“So how can we ride there?” I’d asked.

Octavio offered to smuggle Blue Steel and Mrs. Bicycle through the toll. “There’s a turnaround point just past the gate where I can drop you,” he had said. “You should be fine from there.”

Breaking the law our first morning in Mexico wasn’t what we’d had in mind, but I decided I was okay with it. Part of our adventure. As Octavio drove past the impossible-to-miss No Cycling sign at the tollbooth, I became giddy. But my excitement shifted to alarm when the attendant gave chase, an action hastening Octavio’s departure—double tap on the horn his goodbye. Now, we’re off and rolling, shot full of adrenaline from our foolhardy escape.

Not for long. A pair of white SUVs approach in my side mirror—highway patrol. By the time I realize they are there, we can’t do anything but keep our heads down. I wonder if they’ll stop, but with a blast of wind, they whisk past. Still, I’m afraid to pull over and check if my torn long sleeve, still in my bra, is salvageable; I have a premonition that something terrible will happen if we cease pedalling. It’s as though Octavio had dropped us on the surface of a different world this morning.

Our flight from the tollbooth also recalls a passage in The Hobbit where Bilbo frees the dwarves from imprisonment by the Elvenking, sneaking them out of the dungeon in empty wine barrels. The Elves, unaware, roll them through a trapdoor into the stream. “South away!” they sing. Without Octavio, our one Mexican friend, I feel as though Alisha and I have been launched into the current, the highway our river snaking south. There’s an air of adventure, the metallic taste of fear. But also, faith: in ourselves, in the road. Faith in the current propelling us onward.

One road, the Transpeninsular Highway, runs from Tijuana to Cabo. From the border, we’ll stick close to the Pacific, passing in and out of a handful of highway towns. At El Rosario, we’ll angle inland through nearly 600 kilometres of desert—pausing briefly at the coastal salt-mining town of Guerrero Negro—before tumbling out at the Sea of Cortez 220 kilometres later. Then we’ll skirt close to the water, angling south as the highway veers back into desert until Cabo at the knobby tip of the peninsula, 1,711 kilometres from Tijuana.

Today, we’re headed for La Misión, a village forty kilometres to the south where a friend of Octavio has agreed to host us. The toll highway would be one of finest we’ve ridden on, if it weren’t for the sprinkling of broken glass like post-New Year’s Eve confetti. Before long, views of tossed surf replace slums. The ride continues like this, sparkling ocean on our right, red earth sprouting dead grass on the left, until we reach the outskirts of Rosarito. From nowhere, a Walmart appears. Suddenly this could be Anytown, USA. We come to a stop in front of a corner store where I yank the shirt from my bra to assess the damage. One arm severed, just above the elbow. I decide it’s worth hanging onto.

Inside the convenience store, or tienda, we wander aisles of cookies and chips, discerning flavours from printed images on the sides of packages. In the end, we arrive at the till with only water and some tamarind candies.

Back on the bike, I breathe easier, no longer concerned about highway patrol now that we’re in Rosarito—a once-popular vacation destination now nearly devoid of tourists. Evidently, others have heeded the warnings of danger. We pedal past condos for sale, closed-up motels, and empty bars advertising $1.00 fish tacos and all-day happy hour specials. It’s only ten in the morning.

Highway traffic comes to a standstill before we leave town. Road work, construction? Then I spot the military personnel. More than twenty soldiers are spread across the southbound lanes.

Vincent had mentioned the military checkpoints. Part of a government effort to combat cartel-related smuggling and drug activity, checkpoints exist every couple hundred kilometres, the length of the Transpeninsular.

“They’ll just ask you some questions,” Vincent had said. “You don’t need to worry.”

Still, I find it impossible to pedal toward the blockade without fear ratcheting my chest. A cluster of soldiers loaf in the shade of an army green off-road vehicle, every one of them slung with Commando-esque automatic weapons. Not one over twenty.

I’ve pulled our passports for inspection, my head a muddle of Spanish fragments as I recite the answers to probable questions about our place of residence, final destination. The sun scorches hot now that we’re at a standstill. Pairs of officers to our right use flashlights to inspect the trunks of vans. The car ahead is waved over for further questioning. An officer turns to us.

“¿Dónde van?” he asks.

“Cabo San Lucas,” I say.

The officer nods. Face eclipsed by his combat helmet, impossible to read. “You are American?” he asks, in English.

“Canadian,” we say, thrusting passports forward. “Nos montamos en nuestras bicicletas en Canadá,” Alisha adds. We are riding our bicycles from Canada.

He waves us through. Calls of “Have a nice day” and “Buenos días” from the other officers, the young-looking ones, bashful and grinning behind their rifles in a little circle in the shade. It’s so incongruous, these barely-men with comically oversized guns, silly smiles.

We pedal only a few hundred metres before we reach a second holdup.

“Another checkpoint?”

“Maybe it’s for traffic going the other direction,” Alisha says.

Turns out to be a tollbooth, not a checkpoint. Unfortunately this time, we’re not so lucky. No matter how we plead, they won’t permit us to pass.

“No bicycles, see?” says the attendant, a woman with rouged lips and ghost-white concealer, pointing to the sign of a bicycle with a red slash.

It crosses my mind to make a run for it. Blitz the toll, see if they chase—we got away with it once, didn’t we?

But already I’m beginning to regret our earlier arrogance, how entitled we feel now about going where we are clearly prohibited. Sure, it started as Octavio’s idea, but I’m startled by how easily we accepted the premise that flouting the rules in a strange country is entirely acceptable. The idea that Mexico is a lawless, wild place—as well the notion that we, as tourists and foreigners, are somehow above the law—seem like dangerous preconceptions to travel with. I think back to my time backpacking in Thailand, in beach communities like Phuket and Koh Phangan, where, as a foreigner (a farang), I could get away with just about anything. Even then, I’d felt uncomfortable, could sense the quiet disproval of local Thai people at the tourists’ drunken debauchery, demand for drugs, and later regurgitation of ingested substances on the pavement outside some twenty-four-hour shop. Now I wonder about the role I played in all that. What kind of interactions do I want to have in Mexico?

Unable to keep on rolling forward, our only option is to backtrack to Rosarito and look for the old highway, which of course isn’t signed. Passing the checkpoint a second time, we pause to ask for directions. But no one knows where we need to go. I suppose nowadays people take the toll road. One officer suggests we ask at the gas station, but they don’t know what we’re talking about either. Perhaps we’re saying it wrong. Alisha and I refer back to our map, but unfortunately, there’s little detail. We try another gas station. Finally, we’re told that if we stick to the main thoroughfare paralleling the beach, the road will become the old highway. At least this is what we’ve understood.

Half an hour later, the road still clings to the coast. A good sign—we’re headed in the right direction—the traffic less hectic, though the spring-loaded fear at the root of my stomach still leaps every time a top-heavy vehicle accelerates toward us. But Baja’s high-stakes roads are just another condition I’ll need to get used to. No shoulders; no margin for error. A sheer drop into the sea.

Every dozen kilometres or so, we pass a sort of town—a concentration of buildings, a few places to eat and fill up on gas. In between these outposts, there’s next to nothing. Perhaps that’s why I’m drawn to the ramshackle hotels bordering the highway. Some clearly had been operational—like a two-storey building with balcony views and a peeling mural of dolphins—while others seem to have been abandoned shortly after the foundations were laid.

I think back to the empty bars and restaurants in Rosarito, the bored-looking cab drivers in Tijuana, and all of the negative media attention Mexico has been receiving north of the border. From what I understand, the majority of tourists in Baja’s northern towns come from Southern California. It seems likely that the developers had started construction when visitors were flooding in to enjoy sunshine, fish tacos, and cheap booze, without anticipating that the tide would change. Now, I wonder about the fate of these derelict eyesores—will the tourism industry somehow turn around, or will they be left to deteriorate into rubble and dust? I wonder about the unforeseen costs of being America’s playground—the negative environmental, as well as economic, impact when foreign investors pack up and leave, businesses close their doors, and people are left without work.

OVER THE NEXT SEVERAL DAYS, we continue south, experiencing far too many close calls. Every few hours, it seems, we skitter to the very edge of the curb to leave room for a passing semitrailer truck. Cars approach in our lane, only to veer away seconds before impact. But despite these terror-inducing moments, we are enamoured with the people of Baja, bewildered by the openness of the landscape. In La Misión, a seaside community of less than a thousand, we wait in what could be a sketchy bar until Rob—a friend of Octavio’s who cleared out of America after Bush was re-elected—gets off work from his shift at the day spa. Rob introduces us to the panaderia, Mexican bakery, where we first encounter its sweet, high-calorie treats—a budget cyclist’s dream come true. Rob invites us to call home and talk to our mother. After I tell her where we are, I pause, waiting for the requisite warnings, the reminders to be careful. Surprisingly, she receives the news with enthusiasm.

“You’ve made it this far,” she says. “You two must have some idea what you’re doing.”

The only thing she questions is our decision to leave the cellphone in San Diego.

“What about an emergency—if you or Alisha get hurt and need to call for help?”

“We’ll flag someone down,” I respond.

“And how am I supposed to get in touch to find out if you’re safe?”

“We’ll call when we can.”

This is not a satisfactory answer—I can hear her exhale, go quiet for a moment—but she lets it go. She shifts gears and tells us to check out the Hotel California in Todos Santos: “If you make it that far.”

“Of course we will.” Guitar chords to the Eagles’ song by the same name begin to strum in my ear.

Our father comes on the line to ask if I’m still looking for a job when I get home. A couple of guys he plays hockey with—a pair of brothers who gave me my first job at their video store when I was fifteen—are looking for someone to work the night shift at their recently-opened roller hockey rink.

“Tell them I’ll do it,” I say. After the daily action of the road, the last thing I want is to sit around at home, doing nothing. It may not be the creative work that I’m looking for, and I’m overqualified—most of the teens working there don’t even have a high-school diploma yet—but it’s guaranteed to be a new experience. And cash—money I can put toward renting my own place in the city, or, more likely, another bike tour.

Later, on the balcony of Rob’s one-room studio, the three of us sip tequila from teacups and devour pink-glazed donuts until my head spins in sugary, intoxicated delight.

BEFORE WE HIT THE ROAD, Rob has set us up to stay with his friend Alberto in Ensenada, a day’s ride to the south. Even more exciting: He’s arranged for us to meet Hannah, fabled Swedish photojournalist riding solo to South America. We’d been hearing about her since Oregon, tracking progress on her blog. Even Octavio knew Hannah, having met her at a house party two nights prior to our arrival in Tijuana. After trailing her for months, there’s a sense of satisfaction in having finally caught up. The competitive side of me wants to demonstrate that Alisha and I are also competent cyclists, just as we had shown the couple on the sporty tandem in Malibu that we could ride at their pace. Our journey may not be as epic as Hannah’s, but we’re speedy and efficient.

We meet at La Fonda, the resort restaurant at the spa where Rob works. While the others order stacks of macadamia nut pancakes and plates of decadent-smelling breakfast meats, Alisha and I drink only coffee, too afraid for our meagre budget to pay tourist prices. Hannah is blonde-haired, blue-eyed. Trim and toned. Her face is tanned except for two lines where her helmet straps sit and the outline of her sunglasses. She’s cycling with a guy named Mike whom she met in Central California. Dark sunglasses and dark hair, veined calves and thighs. Both of their bikes are heavy with gear, Hannah’s with photography equipment, Mike’s with water and camp supplies. After breakfast, the four of us ride out together for Ensenada, Rob’s dog-eared copy of Easy Spanish Phrase Book tucked in my pannier.

The road is incredible, alarming as it corkscrews through canyons before soaring above windswept ranches. Rob had told us that, in the springtime, the valley around La Misión erupts with desert flowers, though it’s hard to comprehend at the moment, every stalk of grass as withered as scarecrow stuffing.

Alisha and I welcome the company of Hannah and Mike. We commiserate over our shared lack of Spanish and the pained beauty of an inhospitable landscape. Wonder about the kind of lives the ranchers live, so far from the city centres. Soon, though, I grow tired of their stop-and-start rhythm, impatient as Hannah lugs her tripod out. With all their gear, they can’t keep pace with us on the hill climbs. I grow anxious that we won’t make it into Ensenada before sundown. When we finally do arrive, it’s amid the rush of evening traffic, glaring streetlights. The four of us part ways abruptly at the downtown waterfront—we’ll probably run into each other again somewhere down the line.

WE STAY WITH ALBERTO, a business student and amateur soccer player who spent his early twenties working his way through Europe while learning English. Alberto’s apartment is tiny, barely wider than a hallway and crowded with friends playing Xbox. Every surface strewn with pop-can ashtrays, cigarette rolling papers. But it’s a roof over our heads. I can’t complain about this wave of hospitality fuelled by other people’s connections that we’ve been riding since we crossed the border. Alberto’s girlfriend cooks up spicy mole, the sauce thick and chocolatey like nothing I’ve ever tasted.

“In Mexico, we make everything into a taco!” Alberto says, spooning first rice then mole onto a corn tortilla.

We take the advice to heart, and begin wrapping whatever we come across in tortillas. A new dietary staple is quickly born: the plátano taco—banana, peanut butter, and honey folded into a tortilla.

Alisha and I spend an extra day in Ensenada exploring. Still finding our bearings and becoming familiar with the rhythm of the language. I enjoy wandering between brightly painted buildings, percussion-heavy music blasting from storefronts. We learn to avoid the tourist districts, where men holler lunch specials from street corners, try to sell us bus tours.

Alberto has a job interview and needs dress shoes, so we tag along on his shopping excursion for zapatos. Until this point, everything about Mexico, from the ceramic tripod bowls of cilantro and lime on taco carts to the tienda candy selection, has been wrapped up in a sense of wondrous novelty. But as we tromp from store to store with Alberto, none of the shoes quite what he’s looking for, I find myself bored. The experience is entirely mundane, like shopping in Scottsdale Mall in Delta with our mother as kids—but without an Orange Julius smoothie to reward good behaviour. After checking out half a dozen shoe stores, we walk back empty-handed, Alisha and I shivery in our T-shirts in the evening breeze. Baja is cooler than I’d anticipated.

“It’s winter,” Alberto says. “What did you expect?”

“I didn’t realize Mexico had a winter,” I say.

“It might not be as cold and snowy as Canada,” he says, “but it’s winter.”

“Will it get warmer further south?”

“Sure,” he says. “But the desert can still freeze.”

I regret leaving our cooler-weather clothes and one of our two sleeping bags in San Diego. Back at the apartment, Alisha and I bed down on Alberto’s laminate living room floor, with stacks of soccer magazines on one side and our bicycles on the other, so close that our hair touches the spokes. We’re not even outside and the cold bites. I wear the black merino with the one half-sleeve under my rain coat, thankful I didn’t toss it. Alberto has no spare blankets, so we cocoon in beach towels, the single sleeping bag spread over top.

WE LEAVE ENSENADA IN DEWY LIGHT surrounded by the havoc of early morning commuters, our first ten kilometres a dusty gridlock of pickups and delivery trucks buzzing along the seemingly endless strip of supermarkets and appliance shops. Eventually the shops thin out, and by late morning it’s just us and the highway.

We huff up a hillside into views of vineyards and tracts of irrigated land as brilliantly green as West Coast salal. Softball-sized coyote melons creep along the road bank, their leaves and vines gritty with dust. I try to forget the warnings about trucks full of bandits lurking around every bluff—besides, what kind of crazy bandits would be out in this incendiary midday heat?

Determined to cover some ground today, my mind clicks into cycle-mode: push, pull, breathe, repeat. After our rest in Ensenada, pedalling is exactly what my body craves, the deep muscles at the back of my calves flexing like pistons in an engine fuelled by blood and oxygen. We’re on our own now, and have to average over a hundred kilometres a day if we want to make it to Cabo.

SUNSET, SAN VICENTE. Ten kilometres short of where we’d aimed for. I blame it on the season. Twilight comes too soon this near winter solstice, the red rock of the sun plunging beyond retreating ridges shortly after five p.m. At least the road signs are back in familiar kilometres again.

San Vicente is a highway town, the kind of place where tourists don’t stop unless they suffer a breakdown. We coast along the main drag of taquerias and mercados, taco shops and supermarkets, the skyline burning like lava flow. A single black pickup trails us, a dark presence foregrounding the fantastic sky. After we pass the last shop, we stop, mid-way up a hill, uncertain whether to continue cycling or return to town and look around for a place to camp. The pickup pulls alongside. Two men in the cab.

I panic. We don’t know where we’re going, and I can only understand clips of Spanish. Ranchers, judging by the grit on the tire flaps and their plaid shirts.

It’s the usual questions: Where are you going and where are you coming from. When we tell them we cycled from Canada, they toss their heads back in cartoonish disbelief.

“¿Cuánto tiempo?” asks the one on the passenger side. How long?

“Tres meses,” we say. Three months.

They congratulate us and mention how they’ve heard that Canada has a lot of trees. We confirm that yes, there are many trees in Canada. But we think this landscape is nice too. Then we ask about camping and they point out a park, but caution that it’s not the kind of place where people camp. Instead, the driver suggests a hotel, just a few blocks down the hill toward town. The bar menu is in English, he says. A sure sign their recommendation is out of our budget.

We say adios and turn back to check out the hotel and the park. The former is lovely, snug blue and yellow cottages serviced with hot water and Wi-Fi, but as suspected, out of price range. A few minutes later, we confirm that the park is a no-go as well: too crowded with ball-playing children and men drinking after-work beer on park benches. So we pull up outside Ruben’s Place, a motel on the far side of town that ranks more rundown than the others. At ten dollars a night, the room comes with a thick comforter, extra blanket, two pillows, and one towel. The manager, a stubble-bearded man in a cowboy hat whose laconic attitude could rival Jughead’s, cracks a smile when Alisha reaches under the insole of her shoe and extracts cash to pay him.

“En caso de bandidos,” she explains. In case of bandits.

“Ustedes son chicas muy inteligentes,” he says. You are very intelligent girls.

And strong, we add, pointing to our flexed thighs.

We roll our bikes indoors. Take turns rinsing dust-caked sweat from our legs under the cold shower, pleased with our first motel room of the trip. By the time we leave to find dinner it’s dark, after six o’clock. Streets brisk with sage-scented night air. We buy refried beans from a restaurant, two tall cans of Tecate from a tienda, and make tacos on the plastic deck chairs outside our room. Two doors down, the hotel manager also drinks a Tecate, accompanied by the only other hotel guest, a salesman in his mid-forties. Both of them wear blue jeans and cowboy hats, brows dark under the shadow of the brims. Aside from acknowledging nods, not a word is exchanged between our two parties, but that’s enough. We’re outside together, drinking the same brand of beer. Overhead, stars glimmer like distant boats on dark water.

The following morning, we check out at sunrise—leave our key on the bedside table. I had no idea the nights would be as chilly as the days were warm: hours of piercing cold even under the thickness of covers. We manage, though I’m nervous about how we’ll fare when we have to camp. Rolling out of San Vicente, I bask in the early sun’s warmth, watching as it blankets the waking world.

THE FARTHER WE TRAVEL SOUTH, the more otherworldly the landscape becomes: an old Western of cactus and lonesome saloons against a moonscape of piled rock. We pedal past acres of nopal cactus, a culinary staple in Mexican cuisine. The earth is sandy or red-tinted, dry and gritty like the back of my throat in noonday heat. Our map shows few towns, but we have water to last us the day; enough taco fixings to last for two. On our way out of San Vicente, we’d stopped for fresh tortillas at a roadside tortilleria, tortilla shop, eating a few hot with sweetened condensed milk for breakfast. We’ll finish the kilogram bag before tomorrow.

I feel preposterously small, nothing but our neon T-shirts to warn approaching drivers to keep a wide berth. The open road stretches out ahead of us, our course charted onto vacant desert, clear as the bolded line on our map. On either side of the pavement, gravel cants toward dry ditches strewn with tinfoil candy wrappers and Orange Fanta bottles.

Alisha and I speak less as the day wears on, breaking our contemplations to count off kilometre signposts in Spanish and point to out-of-country licence plates as they whiz past. We notice the expressions of oncoming drivers, particularly truckers, as they approach our southbound bicycles: initial disbelief followed by confusion.

“What…why are those girls cycling in the desert?” we imagine them saying. “Silly girls.”

But in the final moment before we cross paths, their demean-our changes once again, our final glimpse one of encouragement: a laughing smile, a couple of honks, and an erratic wave through the driver-side window. We grin and throw up peace signs. Our lips are pulled wide in grins long after they’ve motored out of sight.

At the top of a slope, Alisha and I pull over thinking we’ll enjoy our plátano tacos with a view. With no cellphone, iPod, or watch—my cycle computer even jammed out somewhere between Tijuana and Ensenada—it’s impossible to keep track of what hour it is, though our stomachs never fail to tell us when it’s time to eat. A pearl-coloured minivan seems to have the same idea. On approach, I notice the hood propped open and a frustrated-looking man leaning in, while trying not to get his pale pink golf shirt dirty. In Spanish, he tells us his car has overheated—he’s waiting for the engine to cool.

I don’t catch his name in the jumble of accented syllables, but he hands us bottles of water and fruit yogurt from the cooler in the trunk, and looks pleased as we sip them down. For our part, we are delighted to have a chilled drink and something other than tacos to eat. The man works for a resort somewhere south of here. Has business in Tijuana. He asks us why we’re biking, and we try to explain in our Spanglish how we wanted to see the desert with our own eyes. Unfortunately, our desire to communicate is stronger than our ability to do so. The man looks confused. We settle on exclaiming our love for Mexico as we motion toward the open space surrounding us.

“Es hermoso,” we say. It’s beautiful.

The man laughs. Tells us that we are the beautiful ones. He steps closer. I hold out my empty water bottle and yogurt container thinking that he’s offering to collect my trash, but instead he walks through my arms for a hug.

“Gracias, gracias,” I say. Surprised he felt so moved by our adoration of his homeland.

Then, he pinches my bum.

My hands are full and he grabs my bum again. Fingers sharp and quick like insect pinchers, lobster hands. Then he turns to Alisha.

“Oh, no you don’t,” she says, discarding her trash on the ground as she kicks her bike into gear.

He races after her, laughing maniacally, one-two-three paces. Makes a grab but comes up short by a few centimetres. While he’s distracted, I hop on my bike and catch up to her before Lobster Hands has an opportunity to strike again.

Pedalling on, we discuss the incident. Was that his plot all along: lure us with yogurt and pinch our bums? It seems unlikely. The whole interaction was ridiculous. Our second time being chased down the highway in Mexico.

“At least we got free yogurt,” I say.

“I suppose it’s a fair trade,” Alisha shrugs.

But the more I dwell on it, the more I realize how unfair it actually is. What gives these people, men like Lobster Hands, Montreal Creep, and even the pushy army officer near Cannon Beach, the right to impose on us? We have just as much right to the road as anyone else.

“I doubt the RV people get their bums pinched when they pull over to photograph the scenery,” I say.

“You may be right,” she says. “But sometimes, you just have to let things go.”

“You’re not the one who got your ass grabbed,” I remind her.

“No, but I was groped in India, even though I covered up. Followed, too. But I didn’t let those incidents detract from my experience.”

She has a point: Not all travel interactions can be good. Rolling with the bad, the less-than-ideal, is part of the game. Still, we wait until the next town to stop for lunch, not wanting Lobster Hands to catch us by surprise while we’re snacking in the middle of nowhere. I also begin slipping into baggy board shorts prior to our arrival in towns; Alisha puts on her long skirt. Perhaps we can deter further bouts of unwanted attention.

WE FIND ANOTHER CHEAP MOTEL in Lázaro Cárdenas before returning to the desertscape the following morning. The family who runs the motel is sweet, waves us off in their pyjamas. They provide a nice counterbalance to our experience with Lobster Hands the day before, but also force me to realize an uncomfortable truth about our own mobility. We are leaving—can leave. Not just to the next town, but we can pack up our bags and depart our home country with absurdly little money and a couple of credit cards. According to Maria, this wasn’t the reality for her as a traveller hoping to enter a foreign country. And while many people we’ve met do have the means to travel—Octavio’s family and Alberto, for instance—and others leave the country to find work in America—I wonder about the rest, like the family who owns the motel, who seem fixed in place. My decision to live freely now seems less like a choice, more like a lucky lottery ticket issued at birth.

WE HIT OUR SECOND CHECKPOINT at the top of a hill climb just before El Rosario, the last dustbowl town before we come to true desert, the Valle de los Cirios. Tanks and low buildings—some kind of military base. I try not to laugh as we pass plywood cut-outs of soldiers dressed in army fatigues that point us toward the guard post. I’ve never taken directions from a mannequin before. But my apprehension returns once I look ahead to the military personnel interrogating drivers, inspecting cargo. Luckily, we pass without questioning, ushered forward by the swinging butt of a rifle, the silent grins of teenage gunmen.

El Rosario sits at the base of the hill, a picturesque town with an easygoing vibe. We drop by Mama Espinoza’s, a restaurant famous for its lobster tacos, and status as the first checkpoint for the inaugural Baja 1000 off-road race in 1967. Since then, it’s attained legendary status as a stopover for fans, the walls plastered floor to ceiling with race paraphernalia. I hope to spot Mama Espinoza, the founder, who at 104 apparently still drops by for the occasional glass of wine. She doesn’t appear, though the sight of all these plates of steaming fish and rice send my salivary glands into overdrive. I remind myself that finding a place to sleep is our first priority.

We pedal further into town. Bright houses, side-of-the-road diners, a baseball field; dust in the air and children racing along sidewalks on their way home from school. A pair of cyclists stands in the shade of the supermercado awning. At first, I assume that it’s Hannah and Mike, but a beaming yellow tandem bicycle means that these must be different folks. They introduce themselves as Belinda and Roland, a married couple pedalling from Alaska to Argentina. Belinda is a nurse from New Zealand with white-blonde dreadlocks and eyes the exact shade of her periwinkle blue windbreaker; Roland, a kindergarten teacher from Burnaby, the same neighbourhood my Grandma Hackinen used to live in.

“Know where you’re staying tonight?” asks Roland. Built like a Viking, his beard and mess of hair the texture of the surrounding tumbleweeds. Both he and Belinda wear Santa hats, zip-tied to their helmets. Gifts from Belinda’s family for Christmas.

“We’re probably going to camp,” I say. We can’t afford to keep running up our expenses with hotels, even if they’re the cheapest in town.

Roland invites us to throw up our tent in their site at the RV park. Alisha and I pedal over after we pick up dinner fixings. It’s no more than a gravel lot with showers—I wish we’d chosen to continue on and camp in the desert. But we’re here now. Belinda hunches over the stove to cook pasta, while Roland and I set up the tents. Alisha chops tomatoes, onions, and garlic for the sauce.

This eighteen-month journey from tip to tail of the Americas is Belinda and Roland’s unconventional honeymoon. The Alaska to Patagonia route I’ve heard of before, but haven’t met a cyclist doing it until now. With trailer, their tandem bicycle is longer than a Volkswagen bus.

“We started in Anchorage,” says Belinda. “We’ll finish in Ushuaia, Argentina.”

Without pressing, I try to find out how much they banked for this year-and-a-half adventure.

“We worked full-time while living in Belinda’s parents’ basement for two years,” says Roland. “Other people would use that for a down payment on a house, but we wanted to do something different.”

“Before we have kids,” adds Belinda.

The conversation shifts to the days ahead.

“We heard that the road is washed with sand in sections,” Belinda says, “but I’m not sure I believe it.”

We’d been told the same. Before we separate to our tents, we decide to head out into the Valle de los Cirios together. The next waypoint on our map is Cataviña, a town 125 kilometres inland. Since it’s cool again tonight, Alisha and I huddle our feet together in the shared sleeping bag, her shawl and my sarong cocooning our shoulders. The generator of a nearby RV slices through the darkness, and I wake to night visions of big rigs barrelling down on us. We are still nearly 1,300 kilometres from Cabo.