Entering the desert!

I wake up at 5.30am, and when I see the water and the direction of the road I realize that I made a wrong turn yesterday just after I met the farmer. I see on my map that I just slept at a place called "Los Muertos" -- "The Dead". So I backtrack 8 miles and take the correct road south along the coast. Fantastic driving! The road is pretty bad in parts, with big loose rocks and plenty of hills. After 3.5 hours I reach Erendira where I have breakfast. Then I get back to highway 1 and drive north back to Ensenada. I have a mechanic fix the tail part of the bike which came loose after all the shaking. I then head east on highway 3 crossing the whole Baja. There's lots of motocross riders here. At a broken gas station I meet a group of Mexican riders who tell me that there's an off-road race called Baja 500 coming up, and all the riders I see are pre-runners who practice for the race. They give me some gas and I tell them about my idea to cross the Juarez desert. They strongly advice against it unless I have a GPS since they say it's easy to make a wrong turn. "Go to Mexicali instead. Miau Miau, best whorehouse in Mexico" one guy says. "The girls there will love you" another says. "Long time" the first one clarifies. I look at my map and don't see how one possibly can make a wrong turn, there's basically just one road that I have to follow through the desert, then make a right turn after 27 miles. Amateurs.

When highway 3 meets highway 5 there's a security checkpoint looking for guns and ammunition. I need to fill up with gas before the desert and since the guards look so serious I try to lighten up their day a bit by asking "hay una bomba por aqui" which in Colombian spanish means "is there a gas station around here?". In Mexican spanish it means "there is a bomb here". Both guards jump and ask where the bomb is. I think it's hilarious. Further north I find a mechanic at the side of the road who sells gas of questionable quality in plastic bottles and I fill up the tank. The bike has a range of around 180 freeway miles on one tank.

I enter the desert at around 5pm. The first 8 miles are on a salt lake and offer great driving. As I come off the lake, I happen to end up on the wrong road but find out after only ~3 miles when a fence covers the road. I go back, find the correct road, and start driving north. The road is OK, but very sandy in parts, and I can keep around 10-15 mph. I drive until dusk and camp behind a little bank at the side of the road. This is the moment where I find out that I only have ~0.7 liters of water left and half a bag of chips. I do a little bedtime reading in my guidebook before I fall asleep and come across the following: "dangerous creatures like rattlesnakes and scorpions thrive in most of Baja's backcountry". Excellent! The night is amazing, so quiet and clear, and not cold at all.

What I learned today:

Don't tell a Mexican security guard that you have a bomb.