- Took my last shower
- Made hot cocoa
- Updated journals
- Packed up bikes and cleaned the airbnb
- Tried and failed again to find international stamps
- Biked to Cerritos beach
- Ate lunch at a super American place
- Got eggs Benedict
- Read and tried to surf
- Struggled a little to find dinner – got some burritos to go
- Camped on the beach – incredible sunset and moon so bright it had a crazy shadow
What Happened
Today was the last day at the Todos Santos AirBnb. Mahalie had left yesterday, so Lelia and I had a lot of space to sprawl out. I was still not feeling too good and we had a lot of extra food, so I made some hot-cocoa as a treat in the morning. The hot-cocoa down in Baja is different than what you can find in the states. I had Abuleta’s by Nestle which was pretty different – the mix was not a mix and instead a solid chunk of chocolate that you had to break or cut up and then grate into the warm milk to dissolve it. I found that most of the time the chocolate did not dissolve all the way – but I am not going to complain about having chocolate in my milk any day!
With so much time before we needed to check out – Leila and I had time to kill. I decided to update some of the other journals from earlier in the trip. It was pretty hard to find the time when I was with Mahalie and Leila to write the journals as I was focused on spending the time with them in-person. Before we knew it, it was time to start packing up the bikes and cleaning the AirBnb. It took a little over an hour to clean everything up and a little longer to pack the bikes. We didn’t have a lot to pack – most of our food was already accounted for and we still had one more resupply planned for tomorrow.
When we set off, I still wanted to make one last attempt to get international stamps to be able to send postcards to friends and family. I found a place on both google and apple maps that seemed to be reliable – when we got there, the lady said they didn’t exist and I was out of luck. Thus I was not able to send any postcards from Baja and everyone will get them from Bozeman. After the failed stamp attempt, we went back to the grocery store to grab some final snacks. I fell in love with the Nutella crunch bars and got some more of those, but otherwise was planning on eating the food I have carried since La Paz.
We were able to set off around nooon and didn’t have a long way to go today. The vast majority of the days riding was going to be on a highway (proper four lanes) and mostly flat. Even still, I was coughing up so much pleghm that my lungs were burning when I got the heart rate high. We pretty quickly rode the ~14 or so miles and made it to El Pescadero – our town for the day. Neither of us were hungry yet but we knew we needed to stop for lunch before going to the beach for the afternoon. We stopped to top off our electrolytes and then found a – very american – place to eat lunch. I was not expecting to have Eggs benedict in Baja, but it was quite tasty and I enjoyed having a more savory dish compared to an ascidic one. After the lunch we went to Cerritos beach. We had heard from Mahalie that this was the beach to surf at – and she was right. The waves here broke in a very different pattern than just up in Todos Santos – they were breaking far out from the beach and the ground here was much, much flatter.
With this in mind, Lelia really wanted to surf – so she went and rented a board for $10 for three hours. I had surfed a little before in the OBX, but there was no chance here. I helped Leila as much as I could – trying to push her over waves, helping to get her speed up, and the best either of us got was a big ole tumble. I didn’t get a rash guard shirt and started to get a rash pretty quickly. We both were worried about getting injured from surfing and both ended up hitting something or tweaking something. The water was still very fun to be in and quite warm. I hadn’t been in waves like that in a long time and it really reminded me of spending time in the ocean with my brothers when we would just goof off for hours on end.
We spent about three hours at the beach before deciding it was time to go and find camp for the night. The sand at Cerritos was blowing much more than any other beach we had been at and it got everywhere. Including all over our drivetrains which had lube on them since we had cleaned them the night before. When we went to pedal they made the most horrible noises. On the way in Lelia and I had passed an RV site which still had a hose attached and Leila had the amazing idea to stop there and give the bikes a quick clean – thank goodness for that hose. After the quick rinse, we were on the hunt for dinner. We wanted to get dinner to go so that we could eat at camp on the beach. Most of the resturants were behind us – the opposite direction that we wanted to go. After striking out a few times, we ended up backtracking a little to see if a hotel we had passed (with an open and food sign) would be able to make anything to go. After a little discussion we were able to get some chicken fajita burritos to go! We celebrated the win with a corona and lime which hit after a day in the sun. I didn’t drink a lot of alcohol on this trip, but the beer did really hit. After we got the food, we were back on bikes. We only had ~2 miles to go until the spot that I had picked out on the map.
We got in just before sunset and loved the spot. There was a nice dune to help protect the bikes and a large flat space to pitch my tent and Leila to pitch her bivy.
Dinner was nothing fancy, but the sunset and the moon stole the show. It was one of the more beautiful sunsets that I was able to see during my time out – the moon was also full tonight and was rising as the sun was setting. Leila and I were both running around taking photos of the moments as they were happening. After the sunset, we got camp set up. Its a little more obvious when your tent is up and people can see it during the day. After getting camp set up, we noticed that the moon was so bright it was casting shadows. I don’t think that I have ever experienced a moon quite so bright in my life. Leila and I, once again, took a ton of photos. It was so much fun to see that we could take hand-held photos on my camera without needing to do any of the typical night photography settings.
After the photo-op it was time for bed. The moon was quite bright, but the tent blocked the light pretty well.
Originally recorded on 2026-01-02.