So it has been over a week since I last posted. There has not been much to report as we have been holed up most of the time while I have been working on the thesis. We have also both had some job interviews by Skype with schools in Brazil, Singapore and Switzerland.

We spent a couple of days in La Paz and celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary there.

We also visited the customs office in order to get the documents we need to import the bike to the mainland. We do not need a carnet de passage for Mexico in order to import but we did need to leave a deposit of about US$400 which we get back when we leave the country. This is to guarantee that we do not sell the bike illegally while we are here.

We then moved to Cabo San Lucas at the tip of Baja.  There was some nice scenery on the way.

And a bit of dodgy road.

Cabo is famous for spring break among college students in the USA. We were expecting it to be debauched but after living in Thailand for 6 years, it seemed very tame. We stayed near the marina and enjoyed pottering about there. There were some decent shops and I managed to replace some of my clothes that have worn out. It is amazing how good quality stuff just wears out when you have been away for 15 weeks and using it a lot. The rubber on the souls of my sandals just split in half and something else developed a huge hole.

There is a posh department store called Liverpool. Which we thought was amusing.

We moved to San Jose del Cabo while we were waiting for the ferry crossing to Mazatlan.  We could have gone earlier but there were no cabins available for a week. We are just too old these days to sleep on deck or in an airline chair with video blaring out all night. We were lucky to find a gorgeous apartment to stay in cheaply, while we waited. We were the first to have stayed there.

Dave did some work on the bike. We cooked a lot of meals as Mexican food is truly terrible for vegans (like Spain).

The town was quite charming. A taste of what is to come on the mainland.

It was here that the dentist informed me I need root canal work. I am heading to the dentist in Mazatlan tomorrow to have it done. At least it is cheap here. Well US$300, if you call that cheap. In the USA it would cost about US$1000. In the UK, if you are lucky enough to have an NHS dentist, it costs 80 quid but who has an NHS dentist these days?

We were sad to leave Baja. We have loved it but we are very excited to get to central Mexico.

The ferry to Mazatlan was great fun. This is a pretty old ferry with few facilities, used mainly by truckers.

We met some others bikers while waiting to board.

We had to hunker down in the shade of the bike to avoid getting heat stroke.

We really enjoyed having a couple of beers on board, sitting in the slightly grotty bar with the truckers and then sitting up on deck watching the sunset.

We now head up into the central highlands and the beautiful colonial heartland of Mexico. We will be visiting Guadalajara, Guanajuato, San Miguel de Allende and many other places. There might be interviews coming up which will mean me flying out of Mexico for a few days but let’s wait and see what happens. We have tickets for Pearl Jam in Mexico City at the end of the month, so lots to look forward to.