A Series of Snacks along Baja's Cape Loop

If a retelling of the day exists, I imagine it sounds like this: The Women Who Ate, Las Mujeres Hambrientas, descended in groups. “¡Eran de ojos salvajes!” They were sweaty and smelled bad, ¡muy mal! They came into the small store. “¡Querían tanta comida!” They bought so many cookies, crackers, and chips. “Y mucha agua, y cerveza también.” “¡Tenían tanta hambre!” Then they sat together on the front stoop and devoured their goods, wiping crumbs on their clothes, not caring. “¿Puedes creerlo?” they said to one another, watching out the window as the strange women dusted themselves off, picked up their bicycles, con muchas cosas, and rode away.

To say that our journey was a series of miles ticked away, interspersed with snacking, might be a misnomer. Closer to the truth: it was a series of snacks, interspersed with bike riding. That our favorite meals became the ones consumed on the front steps of the ubiquitous mini supers along our route speaks to the psychic real estate these stores occupied. That our entrances resembled a plague of locusts in some dust bowl era, Steinbeckian wasteland was, I suppose, something. Bikes were ridden, calories were consumed, shopkeepers eyed us with a kind of baffled fascination.

I’ve always been intimidated by bikepacking, maybe because it looks so weird. Backpacking makes sense: there’s a logically designed bag that you put your stuff in, heavy things on the bottom, and you walk. I’ve done my fair share of it. Bikepacking is a different beast; here’s some strange-shaped wedge that you cram something into while your other things somehow fit into another strange-shaped thingy hanging off the back of your seat, oh and don’t forget your feed bag and some other contraption strapped to your handlebars, and now your bicycle, which might already be heavy, is even heavier and sort of unwieldy and you’re supposed to go from point A to point B and remember where you stuffed your underwear. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Still, I’ve been “bikepacking curious,” and “bikepacking adjacent,” for quite some time, but never quite bit the bullet on committing to a trip.

That changed this winter when one of my “Yes” friends, Paige, floated the idea of doing the Baja Cape Loop, a nearly 300-mile route on the southern tip of the Baja peninsula. “Yes” friends are also the type who see no problem whatsoever when I suggest that our entire team be made up of completely inexperienced bikepackers. “Should be good,” I think she said. Or maybe she kept her hesitations quiet and I made that part up because I needed the confidence boost.

Our objective was this: mostly follow the popularized Cape Loop as described, but build in a few days off to ride some of the notable singletrack in the region. It was going to be a human-powered adventure to explore exotic trails. That was my elevator pitch, at least, because it sounded romantic. Todos Santos! La Ventana! Los Barriles! We’d ride all of them! And then we’d pedal our legs off in between. 

The Cape Loop is a well traveled route starting and finishing in San Jose Del Cabo. Most people ride the loop clockwise, and roughly follow the itinerary outlined by Sarah Swallow. There were a few updates gleaned along the way (avoid the sandy wash with the dead cows!) but mostly we stayed the course. We planned 11 days to complete it, including our singletrack days. That felt like enough time to thoroughly enjoy the region, without being overkill or risk us getting bored of each other. We set our dates, bought tickets, and met at the airport where we promptly got signaled out as tourists (rightfully) and paid too much for an eight minute taxi ride to the hotel. 

Even Baby Turtles Get the Blues

There’s something immediately intoxicating about the Baja. A quality of light exists that feels washed-out, as if the constant sun has faded the entire state. The bright hues of the buildings become bleached, while the plant life resists the vibrancy found in wetter and cooler climates. The sand is white, the crushed grit on the roadbed is white, the dust floating in the air is white. The whole aura is one of desaturation, as if a collective agreement of “Let’s just subdue everything a bit” had been reached. It’s sleepy in a way; no one seems particularly hurried. Even the dogs watched with detached observation, neither barking nor being bothered to exert the effort to chase us. Instead they would quietly watch us ride by, pausing to lift their heads before flopping back down onto the dusty sidewalks.

There is no gentle entry in this itinerary. From the intersection leading us off the highway, the dirt road quickly starts climbing. The route crosses the Sierra de la Laguna range as it heads northwest toward Todos Santos. The road is the only inland option connecting San José del Cabo to the Pacific coast, “road” being a term used generously in parts. We were aware of the climbing, and our legs were fresh, all of us spinning in tandem as the lowland scrub gave way to denser vegetation at higher elevations. We felt good, enthusiastic even, as the late afternoon crept up and we crested our first big pass.

That night we camped at an unexpected small stream. A wide sandy apron led to a granite outcropping, worn smooth by years of water washing its surface clean of rough edges. There was just enough water pooled in the rocky streambed to submerge ourselves and wash away some of our own rough edges of salt and sweat and grime. We cooked our dehydrated meals over a fire, listening to the creek babble in the background and the distant clanking of cowbells echoing off the hills.

The bliss continued into day two. Refueled by a night spent at our hidden oasis we pedaled off still feeling vigorous. We were not the only group on the trail. There were, in fact, three groups, all women, riding the Cape Loop in tandem with us. We played leapfrog for the first few days. 

Our team hadn’t yet transformed enough for any of us to descend into superiority (“We are faster than them!”) but I myself had descended into comparison big time. When I first mentioned our journey to an experienced bikepacker friend, she ran me through her informal short quiz to determine my packing style. By her estimate, I fell solidly into ‘Comfort’ as opposed to minimalist. This tracked. I already had a pile growing in my living room of every possible thing I could want with me on our journey. This wasn't without merit. When I needed to shave my legs or trim my fingernails I was set. But also, when no one in our group, including myself, needed bags of tea, powdered magnesium, a pocket size travel mirror, deodorant, a bike lock, etc, I was also set. 

Looking at an empty bag triggered the very human rule that every available inch of space must be filled. I had a great deal of stuff with me. My bike turned into a top heavy contraption that swayed unpredictably once I got up to speed. We developed a delicate relationship, my bike and I, as I wobbled my way down descents in a manner suggestive of a precarious newborn deer. However! I wasn't the only overpacked fool out there, a fact I immediately pointed out as I eyeballed the other setups we passed. People existed who were also gloriously unable to part with things. My comparison made me feel better about myself.

In Todos Santos we watched baby sea turtles get released into the wild. Earnest children assigned buckets marched them down to the ocean. On cue, the buckets were tilted and the silver dollar sized creatures spilled out, beginning their journey toward the sea, inexplicably pulled by an innate guidance system designed to ignore the odds stacked against them. As they crawled across the sand, the crashing waves would send them catapulting backwards, tumbling end over end, only to begin again, this time at a further deficit than before. 

We left when the last remaining turtle finally reached the ocean’s edge. The next day, buoyed by the thought of swimming in the Pacific, Paige attempted to make it through the shore break. The waves proved more powerful, and one particularly big one ragdolled her toward the beach. After that we started calling her Baby Turtle.

This Might Be Hell But At Least There’s Tecate! 

On day four, the bliss ended. We’d been warned about the sand between Todos Santos and El Triunfo, but that was it. “Sand starts here” was pinned on our GPX track, marked by a friend. “After that it gets better,” she said. It did indeed get better, but only after pushing our bikes through deep grit, hopping on to pedal for a few yards, getting spit back off, and alternating this way for a good number of miles. We helped free a truck bogged down in the insanely soft shoulder; a truck that had swerved to avoid us and buried itself in the bottomless sand, tires spinning aimlessly. We felt a little like heroes, or at least absolved ourselves of being the cause.

The bike-sand-pushing gave way to pedaling, and as we passed small rancheros we were now on harder packed roads. Then we hit a turn off. The Very Nice Thank You dirt road kept heading north. Our Very Seemingly Incorrect turnoff headed up an overgrown, rocky doubletrack. “Are you fucking kidding me?” someone muttered. 

We were on our bikes for almost nine hours that day, sometimes riding, sometimes pushing, before arriving, depleted, in El Triunfo. We missed the open hours of every restaurant in the small town but managed to find a woman in an open-air kitchen who offered to cook us dinner. I walked across the street to a mini mart where a 10 year-old sold me a six pack of beer. None of us could muster much for the evening, we were too spent to even feel hungry. Sleep came fast and hard in the glorious manner befitting the exhausted.

We were supposed to take a dirt road nearly forty miles to La Ventana the next day, but no one was in the mood. Instead we lingered over our instant coffee and oatmeal. We met a nice Canadian couple who were eager to talk about our gear setups. In another context the conversation might have been abbreviated in the name of efficiency, but I think we were all quietly grateful for the diversion. We were cooked, and Kayla had an ass blister to boot. We took a paved detour and made it to La Ventana in under three hours. No one felt bad about it.

In La Ventana we sat. We found good coffee and sat and drank it. Then we sat on the beach. We sat at the edge of a hotel pool. We sat in hot springs bubbling up at the shoreline. At one point, Paige suggested we ride the trails in town. “That’s a great idea,” someone said, not moving. We stayed in the hot springs, watching the tide come in and turn them lukewarm.

A Poorly Titled Country Song

If there is a defining theme to the landscape in Baja, beyond the subdued tones, it’s that much of it exists as fine particles. As we headed east from La Ventana along the Sea of Cortez, our camping shifted almost entirely to beach sites. Sand was everywhere. In your sleeping bag, in your cookware, your shoes, your snacks. Getting dressed raised a practical question: what do you do about all that grit? Sit in the sand and get it in your shorts that way, or stand and pull your shorts over dirty feet and get it that way?

Two ways, same result.

At one point I considered writing a song called “Sand in My Chamois.” I think it would be a hit.

The inscription on the shrine gave the name Sister Barbara, but I took to calling our glorious campsite Sister Mary Catherine Gallagher Beach. Sister MCG Beach was five miles south of El Cardonal, a quiet cove tucked into the shore with an intricate shrine carved into the rocks.

We passed through El Cardonal in the late afternoon and, as had become normal by that point, ransacked a small store before parking ourselves on the sidewalk to polish off our goods. It was close to dinner time, and the cookies and crackers we’d consumed weren’t quite enough. We found the one open restaurant in town. The menu featured sushi (not enough calories) and burgers. It felt slightly embarrassing to be the American tourists ordering burgers, I admit.

That night we ate the cold remnants of dinner as we scratched out sleeping spots on the sandy shore, rolling our bags out under the stars for the first time that trip. As we lay there watching the sky, Kayla asked a thoughtful question that evoked a group appreciation for how much we all loved traveling together. It was a moment of vulnerability, impressively left uninterrupted by any jokes or snarky detours back to safer, surface territory. We sat in our collective “I love you buddy” silence for a while, and it felt good.

In the morning we woke to whales closer to shore than I’ve ever seen, then the manta rays started jumping. Collectively, we decided that Sister MCG Beach was possibly the best campsite we’d ever been to. Over a fire, as we cooked breakfast, I forgot my tinfoil packet of french fries, burning them to crisp charcoal sticks. It was the first time I’d wasted valuable food, a fact I wasn’t thrilled about.

We Found Salvation, We Just Couldn’t Drink It

The day was relentlessly hot. The kind of searing heat that engulfed us from the minute the morning sun poked above the horizon, the air stifling and still with no respite from an ocean breeze. We were sweating by the time we packed up camp.

On this dust choked road heading south from the sleepy hamlet of Cabo Pulmo we made our way toward our final destination: the highway that would take us back to San José del Cabo, completing the loop. But first we had sand, miles of it. 

By that point, we had grown accustomed to the thin layer of soft sand that pervaded every dirt road. It was just enough to be obnoxious, but not quite enough to spit us off our bikes the way it had during Hell Day. The fact that it sat just under the threshold where we could legitimately bitch somehow made it worse.

Sweat poured down our faces, rivulets dripping through our shirts and drying into white stains. We resorted to pouring the remnants of a discarded roadside water bottle down the backs of our necks to cool off. Andi was one drink away from draining her hydration pack, and we weren’t certain where the next miraculous mini mart might appear.

Just then, a truck carrying a questionably safe load of rebar and an equally questionable number of men slowly passed us. As the truck drew alongside, the men raised their fists and began chanting “Sí, se puede! Sí, se puede!” over and over until our own raised fists brought a chorus of cheers. A few miles later we found salvation in the form of the La Fortuna store. The nice woman at the register was, as we were now accustomed to, perplexed by our purchasing habits. Maybe even more so when Andi attempted, with all her might, to buy a gallon of white vinegar. “Esto no es agua,” the woman said, prying the jug from Andi’s hands.

Our Mission to Mars Only Made it Past the Clouds

If there appears to be a portion of the narrative missing, the part about singletrack, you’d be correct, and it’s here that I’m tempted to bend the truth. What I’d like to report is that our mission was accomplished and we explored endless singletrack. What actually happened was not that. In Todos Santos, despite the kind man at the bike shop literally pointing to the map and saying, “This is where you should ride,” we took a different route and ended up riding doubletrack all day. It was cool, and we did see whales, but it was decidedly not singletrack. In La Ventana, a place with well developed trail networks, we rode exactly two miles of trail. We rode it twice though, so I think that counts for something.

And in Los Barriles and Cabo Pulmo, our third and fourth trail stops respectively, it was brutally hot and windy, and no one had the stomach to do much else but stay on route.

I admit this because travel has a way of upending the very best romantic visions in our heads. It’s true, we probably could have suffered through and held steadfast to our ambitions, but it’s likely something would have been lost in the process. What we gained instead, in our constant renegotiations, was an acceptance that travel works best when it is a game played by the minute, not by the quarter. By reassessing and updating our agenda constantly, we found a kind of cohesiveness that comes when no one force dominates and every voice is heard. We didn’t ride singletrack, or much of it at least, but we found magic in small things that would have been missed had we been bullish with our original plan. We watched kite surfers on the beach, took a day to snorkel, discovered secluded campsites, met fun strangers and played cards with them, sat on dusty sidewalks drinking beers in the middle of the day, ate ice cream, got tossed in the waves, and made all of these decisions spontaneously.

Someday, maybe I’ll go back and ride the trails. I’m sure they’re fantastic. But I’d be just as happy remembering what we actually did. Plus, there’s something to be said for occupying a dirty sidewalk in leisure, wiping crumbs from your clothes, unbothered by the need to be anywhere else. 

Photo Credit: Anne Keller