Day 216 – 233: 3 more Mexican states

December 21, 2024 – January 7, 2025

In this segment we spend Christmas in La Paz before ferrying over to mainland Mexico into the state of Sinaloa (currently a Level 4 “do not travel” warning from the US State Department). We make our way through the states of Sinaloa, Nayarit, and Jalisco and take a few days break in Guadalajara. We have only seen a handful of caucasians and find fewer people who speak any English – out of necessity now our Spanish is rapidly improving!     

• Day 216 – Todos Santos to San Pedro – 59 k/395 m climbing
• Day 217 – San Pedro to La Paz – 30 k/45 m 
• Day 218 – 220 – Christmas layover @ La Paz
• Day 221 – La Paz to Ferry – 20 k/166 m
• Day 222 – Ferry to Mazatlan – 17 k/42 m
• Day 223 – Layover @ Mazatlan – 
• Day 224 – Mazatlan to El Rosario – 75 k/324 m
• Day 225 – El Rosario to Acaponeta – 82 k/273 m
• Day 226 – Acaponeta to Ruiz – 69 k/371 m 
• Day 227 – Ruiz to Tepic – 65 k/1254 m 
• Day 228 – Tepic to Ixtlan de Rio – 82 k/1117 m
• Day 229 – Ixtlan de Rio to Tequila – 72 k/1090 m 
• Day 230 – Layover @ Tequila 
• Day 231 – Tequila to Guadalajara – 68 k/738 m
• Day 232 – 233 – Layover @ Guadalajara

Total trip distance: 6,300 miles (10,100 km)
Total trip climbing: 276,500 feet 
Countries: USA, Canada, Mexico
Mexican states: Sonora, Baja California, Baja Sur, Sinaloa, Nayarit, Jalisco 
Dustin’s hair length: tried the first pony and it still has room for improvement. As Leslie put it on Facebook: “More like a personal style choice and less aspirational.”

When we last left off the blog Patricia was sick in Todos Santos & Dustin had returned to the States for an appointment. We reunited in Todos Santos & enjoyed one more day in this delightful town.

We enjoyed spending Christmas with our friends from the UK/New Zealand in La Paz. We had a comfortable AirBnB with a pool and Suzy made an amazing seafood chowder for Christmas dinner – as is common in Mexican homes, we did not have an oven. 

The day after Christmas we pedaled to the Baja Ferries terminal to catch the overnight ferry from La Paz to Mazatlan, Sinaloa. We rode along the malecon and then over the hills and settled ourselves on the ferry by tying our bikes to a rail and going to our assigned seats in the passenger area. Our seats were in the passenger lounge *right* in front of a very loud TV. We attempted to sleep a little, Patricia stretched out on the floor and Dustin cramped onto the two seats. The ferry was quite bare bones but they did feed us traditional Mexican fare for dinner and breakfast and gave us each a blanket.

For the next two days we enjoyed Mazatlan, Sinaloa which is reported to have the largest malecon, seafront walk. We observed many Mexican tourists in the town of Mazatlan and also a very significant military presence. Riding down the Baja we’d seen military vehicles almost everyday but nothing compared to what we experienced in Sinaloa – along the malecon we didn’t go 5-10 minutes without seeing military personnel walking or in vehicles.

Although we felt perfectly safe in Mazatlan we were anxious to get cycling to get out of Sinaloa as soon as possible because Sinaloa has a Level 4 travel warning “Do Not Travel” from the US State Department for crime & violence. From what we read the issues are between two competing cartels and the risk to us is being caught in the crossfire or on disputed land. It appeared the more dangerous areas were in the north whereas in Mazatlan there is only one cartel, the Tijuana cartel. The Tijuana cartel is really interesting because it is essentially run by two sisters because all of their brothers have died or are incarcerated – the one sister, said to be the mastermind of money laundering, has a degree in accounting from a university in Guadalajara. Patricia found all this info on wikipedia and proceeded to enlighten the entire group of the Tijuana cartel information haha – you can read more here and here.

We were happy to have our cycling posse of 4 as we began to make our way toward the next big city of Tepic stopping at small towns along the way for food & lodging. Our first town along the way was El Rosario, in the state of Nayarit, a town of less than 2,000 residents.

Here are some images of the types of accommodation we get in these smaller towns – not the quality we had been born into, yet it works & we were thankful to have a place to rest our heads 🙂

The next night basically our only option was to stay at a roadside motel that rented the rooms in the back by the hour, if you get what we’re saying haha. No toilet seat and very questionable electrical wiring but HOT showers so we were thankful.

For New Year’s Eve we ended up in another working class town of Ruiz where motorbikes had taken over the streets it was almost like southeast Asia instead of Mexico. We visited the town church and observed the most graphic displays of Jesus death yet – almost all of the statues on display in the church were bleeding.

Our next two days we cycled toward Tepic in the state of Jalisco with a stopover in the town of Ixtlan del Rio. We climbed through the Sierra Madre mountains to get there on New Year’s Day and entered essentially a ghost town – almost everything was closed for the holiday. Our AirBnB was owned/managed by a local woman who spoke no English and we were proud of our Spanish abilities to understand (almost) everything she was telling us 🙂

Out of Tepic we made our way over to the tourist town of Tequila in the state of Jalisco. Tequila is a party town with tons of (Mexican) tourists walking the streets imbibing in tequila based beverages in clay cups. Everyone seems to take a tour of a local tequila factory and ride around town in interestingly shaped buses with loud mariachi music playing – we did too!

From Tequila we made our way into Guadalajara, a metropolitan area of 5.3 million – this was intimidating, Guadalajara was the most densely populated area we had cycled to date. There were a few nerve wracking segments of limited shoulder and some big trucks but otherwise the Komoot (our cycling app) route put into our Garmin led us through a very bicycle friendly track. We got a nice AirBnB (hot water, toilet seat and all!) right in the heart of the “Centro Zona”.

Happily settled into our AirBnB we decided to take a walking tour of Guadalajara – our tour guide was fantastic and highlighted many of the historical buildings & allowed us to sample local foods.

Mexican Muralism

Mexican Muralism was an art project initially funded by the Mexican government in the immediate wake of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) to depict visions of Mexico’s past, present, and future, transforming the walls of many public buildings.

We will be making our way toward Guanajuato and then onto “Cuidad” (Mexico City) in the next couple of weeks and we plan to take a few weeks off, more details to come soon. We’re flying solo now as we’ve said goodbye to our traveling companions who we’ve essentially been with since the middle of October. They’ve stored their bikes and will be flying back to New Zealand & the United Kingdom to visit family and take a break from the bicycle trip – they’ll return in May to continue their journey south. We’ve enjoyed traveling with Dino & Suzy and will miss their company for sure!

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