CAKE

PUNTA PRIETA, BAJA CALIFORNIA TO SAN IGNACIO, BAJA CALIFORNIA SUR

AFTER OUR ONE STORMY DAY THE WEATHER returns to normal. Midday heat so smothering, I’d do anything for a smattering of rain. We continue to cycle with Belinda and Roland, sometimes as a pack and other times spread out over ten kilometres of highway, their yellow tandem invariably in the lead. I’ve had America’s “Horse with No Name” drifting through my head since San Vicente. The lyrics loop and morph like this strange cactus-strewn landscape. I try to shake it by listening to Belinda’s iPod for a few hours, but the tune comes right back.

“I’m thinking about getting a tattoo,” I say to Alisha.

“Of what?”

“Not sure yet,” I say. “I just feel like we haven’t really purchased souvenirs or anything, and I’d like something permanent to take back home.”

The challenge, as I see it, will be in finding a way to keep the magic of the road alive when I return. I have a hunch that if I can hold the memories close at hand, I’ll be more likely to maintain the open-minded, up-for-anything attitude of a Life Experience Explorer when I return. My tattoo would function as an enduring reminder of the trip, a device to bring me back to the road state of mind when things begin to seem bleak.

“Sounds reasonable,” Alisha says. “I’m thinking of getting a pirate nose piercing—but don’t tell Mom.”

AFTER A LONG DAY ON THE ROAD, we emerge at the coast in Guerrero Negro, a salt-mining town and the largest community we’ve been to in a while. The desert around it is bleak, like the salt itself. The Seuss-like apparitions of the Valle de los Cirios have suddenly vanished. We spend the night in town to do laundry and enjoy a good meal; a hostel lets us camp in their courtyard.

It’s not until Alisha and I walk to the grocery store that I become aware of the absence of women. Over the past few days, I’ve become comfortable in the long stretches of highway and sand, unselfconsciously strutting my spandex since there was rarely anyone but the twisted cirios and my similarly spandex-clad companions around to see. But Guerrero Negro is all eyes. An annoying cluck-cluck follows Alisha and me in the streets. We return from the mercado at dusk to discover that Roland is missing.

“I don’t know where he went,” Belinda says. “We left to do laundry, but after that he just disappeared.”

“Maybe he decided to check his email,” I say. “Let’s check the Internet café.”

After being clucked at earlier, I have no desire to be out after dark, but Belinda can’t sit still. We walk to one Internet café but don’t see him, so we visit another. He’s not there either. Before looping back to the hostel, we make another round of the neighbourhood, Belinda even more on edge.

“Could he have gone to the bank?” I suggest, before it occurs to me that the banks must be closed. “Maybe he came back while we were out and went for supper?”

But he wouldn’t just leave, she says. “I have this sick feeling that something’s happened.”

My impressions of the town don’t bode well for Roland either. I can’t ignore the catcalls or the looks, the scary anonymity of being an outsider. A hostel employee has told us that the salt mines employ a majority of the town, which explains the gender imbalance. I long for the desert’s sage-scented serenity and ocean of sky.

A half hour later, Roland shows up. Belinda is relieved, then furious. He’d been uploading photos and updating their blog at another Internet café, one we hadn’t checked.

We eat dinner a few doors down, tired of walking the streets. I feel safer in Roland’s company, but as soon as we step off the premises, I sense the eyes again. With Belinda seething and Roland pretending that nothing is wrong, tempers are strained. I can’t wait to climb into our tent.

WE BREEZE OUT OF GUERRERO NEGRO AT DAWN. Eyes on the road ahead. Early on, I’d been worried by the thought of these long, lonely stretches of road through the desert, by our vulnerability. Now, I’m at home with cactus and boulders for companions, and in these blink-and-you-might-miss-it highway towns, despite their remoteness. I’m happy that the flora has returned to keep us company, the cardons and thickets of scrub brush re-emerging as we follow the slow swing of the road inland.

Belinda is still acting cool toward Roland. Alisha and I try for comedic relief by poking fun at one another, joking about my boy’s haircut back in Oregon and Alisha’s feverish upkeep of her spice kit. There are still two hundred overland kilometres between us and the Sea of Cortez.

Around noon, I hear Roland call over his shoulder, “Belinda, are you even pedalling?”

She sits behind him on the tandem. “I am!”

“Sure doesn’t feel like it.”

Then silence until we break for lunch in Díaz Ordaz. All of us are so drained from the heat that we hardly get our heads straight to order. Alisha and I share stuffed chiles rellenos instead of our usual plates of beans and rice. The dollop of salsa verde I toss on my pepper is spicier than I’d anticipated, and soon, I’m near delirious, in a sweaty, capsicum-induced daze.

My head doesn’t feel any clearer by the time we hit the highway, none of us speaking. We had planned to camp again somewhere near the next dot on the map, but my legs feel too spent to go on, sapped of all strength. Alisha and I haven’t had a day of rest since Ensenada. I know we’re headed for Cabo, but right now, I’d take any beach. That ten dollars—our margarita money—from the woman in Orange County is still in Alisha’s wallet, still waiting for a palm-thatched bar on a glistening stretch of sand.

I shut my eyes. Count three revolutions—open them. Nothing’s changed. I do it again and again, bringing the count up to ten, fifteen, twenty. The landscape fades to waxen yellow. In this half-present state, I can almost smell the sea.

I FIND SOME RESPITE THE FOLLOWING MORNING in San Ignacio. Over the span of just a few kilometres, we trade views of tabletop mesas for a palm-filled valley. Vincent and Maria had mentioned the oasis town of San Ignacio when we were in LA, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up. It seemed an impossible thing in the desert, this paradise of winding streets, cooled from a breeze licked off the lagoon, with the slapping leaves of date palms overhead. We pedal into the centre of town to find a plaza surrounded by shops. The Misión San Ignacio dominates the square, stark in its brick symmetry in contrast to the surrounding foliage. According to an info panel, the Jesuits built the mission in 1786—that’s where my Spanish comprehension maxes out.

Inside, the place is equally impressive. A collection of biblical paintings mounted against gold backdrops the pulpit. I look around, but am uncertain of proper church etiquette so I leave, feeling a phoney. A tourist. Guilt obligates me to leave a couple of pesos in the donation box.

At a nearby bakery-café I wait for the others, enjoying the open space far more than the staleness of the mission. I order a coffee and manage some rudimentary chitchat with the server without Alisha there to translate, a small act of belonging that raises my spirits. A few grandfatherly gentlemen in brown and grey suits converse on nearby park benches as chirpy birds wing between trees overhead.

Soon, the others join me, and I share a slice of pastel tres leches, three-milk cake, with Alisha, each morsel better than the last.

“I’ve biked over five thousand kilometres just to eat cake,” I say, sucking at the last gooey crumbs.

“Totally worth it,” says Alisha.

From the outset, I had wanted to travel with my eyes open. Miss nothing. Fully immersed not just in the highlights, but the places in between. I may have struggled on some of those hills on the coast, or more recently, pedalling through windstorms and exhaustion, but the payoff—sunset among the cacti and a hot plate of refried beans at a roadside stand; the frustrating joy of communicating with someone in a different language; and the astonishment at finding a palm-lined oasis in the heart of a desert—is definitely worth it.

We find ourselves in conversation with a nearby table full of retirees headed for mainland Mexico in a minivan.

“You’re going to Cabo?” says a woman in a light denim vest, gemstone rings on sun-freckled fingers. “What on earth for?”

Alisha explains that it’s the farthest point we can reach on the peninsula. I jump in to add that we’re in serious need of some beach time.

“Head to Bahía Concepción, just south of Mulegé,” she says. “Some of the best beaches in the world—none of the crowds.”

They point the area out on our map. Bay after bay, apparently, of white sand beach beginning just 150 kilometres south of here.

Alisha and I talk about it once we’re back on the road, San Ignacio’s palm valley retreating behind us.

“We have about a week left in Mexico,” I say. That doesn’t account for time on the beach or the day or two it will take us to hitch back to San Diego. “Do you think we’ll have enough time to relax once we reach Cabo?” I haven’t checked the distance for a while, but I’m certain there’s at least 500 kilometres still ahead of us.

“Not sure,” she says. “But Bahía Concepción might be more our style anyway. Besides, I don’t think I can deal with the number of people in Cabo.”

“Agreed.” If Guerrero Negro had felt like too much to handle, I can’t see us in a city with an international airport.

An hour later. Alisha and I nab a shade break in the boulder shadows lining the highway, letting Belinda and Roland go on ahead to scout a motel or camp spot for the night. We’ve miscalculated how much water we’ll need to reach the next town, and now it’s hotter than ever—San Ignacio more chimerical mirage than actual refuge. We have only a few ounces to share between the two of us. Alisha wraps her shawl over her forehead and neck Arabian-style to ward off further sunburn. Blood throbs through my head, hot and red. The colour of my skin. The sun. Thoughts, groggy, warped, like the heat-torqued air wafting up from the asphalt. Think: We need to get to the next town. Santa Rosalia.

Alisha and I return to the highway. Still sluggish. The slope goes up and up, scrub and sand deteriorating to rock. A horn—behind us. My head snaps back: A semi-trailer truck storms around the bend.

“Hit the dirt!” I yell.

We both skid from asphalt to the gravel bank. The semi-trailer charges past, laying on the horn one more time, just for good measure.

“You okay?” I ask.

Alisha doesn’t look up from her handlebars.

We dismount and shove our bikes back up the bank. My stomach a tight fist of fear. Legs quaking.

“That asshole nearly killed us,” I say.

“I broke a spoke,” says Alisha, dazed. She taps a foot against her front wheel.

This time, we have no choice but to deal with it.

We walk the bikes to the nearest shade, on the lookout for cactus thorns. Dump the gear off her bike and get to work. A front spoke is simpler to change out than a rear, thankfully. And I have the right parts this time.

“I don’t want to go to Cabo,” I say, making the final turns with the spoke wrench, half an hour later. I’m exhausted. Tired of always pushing on. We could do it—but for what? Besides, our money is almost gone. If Cabo turns out to be as much of a tourist trap as those retirees claimed, we’re going to have a hard time doing anything. While I’m disappointed that we won’t get to tell our mother that we visited Todos Santos, home of the legendary Hotel California, that’s a small thing. A reason to come back.

“I don’t care anymore either,” admits Alisha. “Let’s just find a beach and chill out under a palapa until Christmas.”

“And drink those margaritas,” I add.

“Oh God, yes.”