Author: martin

My day in San Ignacio was pretty relaxing. I started the day with a couple cappuccinos and a cheesecake. I visited the touring company that I was planning to do whale watching with. I walked around a little bit, relaxed mid day and then went for a happy hour beer on the main square. I had a very nice sea bass dinner and I was excited about the upcoming 2 night trip to the whale watching camp.
San Ignacio is a very nice little town. It was quite sleepy and peaceful. I think this may change during the main whale watching season. My visit was right at the beginning of the season.

The next day just before my departure to the camp I found out that whale watching is canceled for the next two days because of high winds. They also recommended not to go to the camp at all, that tents may not do well in the wind. I was sad and disappointed.

I changed my plans and decided to continue riding up north towards Guerrero Negros. There are also some whale watching opportunities in Guerrero Negro.

This ride is the beginning of my crossing from the Sea of Cortez to the Pacific. It started off with a short section on the coast of the Sea of Cortez and then I started climbing up the hills. I think the highest elevation I reached was above 1600 feet. There were some steep sections of up to 12%.
After I made it up the climb, it was mainly slightly downhill on the plateau and I had impressive views of the inactive volcano Tres Virgenes. Besides the slight downhill, I also had a little bit of tail wind coming from the back of my right shoulder. Riding was very comfortable on the plateau.
I reached San Ignacio relatively early and I found a room at Hotel La Huerta.

I spent one day in Santa Rosalía. It is not a touristy town at all. It’s an old mining town, and it looks like mining has been tied together with sailing here. Sailing was the way to transport ore out of the area.
I stayed in a nice old hotel which was a little rundown. It definitely remembered some better days. It was not crowded at all. I think I was the only guest the first night and there were a few more guests the second night.
I had two Mexican dinners in town. For breakfast I was able to find a coffee shop with cappuccino and a cheesecake. The cheesecake was not sweet at all. I also found a bakery where I purchased some good cookies for my bike ride. I got some money from an ATM, I knew I would be biking towards an area where ATMs may not be available.
I visited a small museum close to my hotel, picture is below.
Overall it was a good day but I was ready to continue towards San Ignacio.

I left Mulegé after a good pancake breakfast at my hotel. The ride started off with a climb. After the climb I went a little down and then it was mostly flat straight roads all the way to Santa Rosalía. I stopped at San Bruno to look at the Sea of Cortez, there was not much else to see in the little village. In Santa Rosalia, I looked at two hotels, and decided to stay at the old stylish Hotel Frances on the hill with a view of the sea of Cortez.

As I mentioned in my previous blog, I was planning to rest in Playa Buenaventura. Because the restaurant in Playa Buenaventura is closed over the weekends, I decided to move on and ride to Mulege.

The ride was not long, there was no wind to write about 😀 and the sceneries were fantastic, as nice as the best segments of Croatia! Wow. Life was great.

I stopped at a roadside restaurant for brunch, I had an excellent Mexican omelette.
At the restaurant I ran into a snowbird couple from Bend, OR. They did a bike tour in jeans together in 1989 from Vancouver, BC to Tijuana, BCN. It went well for them, they got along well and they got married after the tour. Here they are a few decades later still together and smiling. Amazing!

I arrived in Mulege relatively early. I checked out a room in one hotel, I didn’t like it so much. I moved on. With the help of Google I found a small rustic hotel which I liked. I checked in, took a shower, had a beer, etc.

It was a good day.

This blog includes images from Loreto. I already provided some information about Loreto in the introduction section.

This was a long hard day on the bike. The total distance was 58 miles. However, the difficulty was not the distance but the headwind. I think I averaged just 9.3 mph. I stopped at a nice roadside restaurant to have a great lunch and refill water. This really helped me a lot. I went over some hills and rode on flats also. The nicest part was towards the end when I could see Bahia Concepcion and enjoy the views.

I reached Playa Buenaventura just a little bit after 4 to find out that the restaurant closed at 4. However, I was still able to secure lodging and one of the nice local residents gave me a bowl of soup with some bread and water. I was also able to get some beer from the restaurant, even though it was after hours. Since the restaurant was closed over the weekend, my plans for a rest day at Playa Buenaventura had to change. I decided to continue the next day to Mulege.

After I decided to stay another day in Loreto I thought it would be a good idea to get on the bike and do a day trip. I picked mission San Javier because of its proximity and popularity in Loreto. The proximity part didn’t exactly work out with the bike. It was quite a difficult climb. I saw 14% and once even a 15% gradient on my Garmin. But the views were spectacular and the mission was also very nice. I had a great lunch in the restaurant by the mission. I refilled my water and I headed back down. The ride down was fun and once again, the views really paid me back for all the hard work going up the hill.

Our ferry arrived to Venice at 7AM. I dressed warm but I was still freezing on the early morning ride from the ferry terminal to Venice Mestre train/bus station.

Train reservation to the Czech Republic was difficult to make with the bike. All the local trains are bike friendly, however only a few long distance trains allow bikes. I had a ticket for a bus from Venice Mestre to Ostrava in the Czech Republic with a bike transport reservation for 9PM with RegioJet – Student Agency. RegioJet required the bike to be packed and for that purpose I was carrying a light big bike bag the whole tour. There was only one bus change for the whole trip to Ostrava with RegioJet.

From Venice Mestre I did some sightseeing in the Venice area.  I returned around 5PM and spent about an hour packing my bike and getting ready for the bus. The train/bus station area in Mestre is quite busy and I was a little worried about my safety. I packed everything in a side street in front of a 4 star hotel and then I spent couple hours in a nice bar attached to a restaurant.

The bus ride was on time and I arrived in Ostrava at 10:15AM the next day. My friend Iveta picked me up and took me back to my brother’s house where I started the tour. Thank you Iveta!

I will add a summary of the tour in couple days. I already started it on the long ferry ride. Thanks for reading my blog. 🙂

The ferry leaves at 11:59 PM on Mon, Thu an Fri. It takes 2 nights and one day so my Monday night ferry is expected to arrive at 7 AM on Wednesday. I booked and paid for the ticket by phone on Friday with the central Superfast Ferry office while I was still in Astakos after an e-mail inquiry. I received 20% discount with my Czech rail discount card InKarta, but the online system or the ticketing office in Igoumenitza were not able to apply the discount. Bike is free on this ferry. There are 10 different categories of travel on the ferry. I choose the 4th best – 3 person outside cabin. I was lucky and it turned out I had the cabin all for myself with the window on the front side of the boat. We had one intermediate stop in Igoumenitza. I woke up and there was a bad storm with lightning. Lot of people camping on the deck had trouble. There was one bar, one self service restaurant and one gift shop on the ferry. I was also expecting a gourmet style restaurant but it was not there.
The weather was not nice but I still looked around, I saw Southern Albania, Corfu and it reminded me of my bike rides in these areas. The ferry was going about 40 kph. It was a very comfortable but not a speedy way to travel. My main motivation for the ferry was the ease of bike transport. The next section is Venice – Ostrava by bus and I will need to take the bike apart a put it in a travel bag.

This was my last ride in Greece. I am planning to take the ferry to Venice tomorrow night.
This ride brought my total Strava recorded kilometers for this tour to 2500. ?

I was ready to leave Astakos after spending three nights there. First half of the ride was pretty nice but nothing spectacular. The second half was on busy roads and I managed to bypass some of it by getting on back roads.
Of course the first sighting of the Peloponnese and the Gulf of Corinth was exciting. Crossing the Rio-Antirrio bridge was also quite interesting. It is one of the biggest bridges and the view is great.
After I checked into a hotel in Patras I went out for a fish dinner. I was surprised how many young people are out and about in the Patras town. Probably because there are 3 Universities here.

Hotel Olympic Star, B+B 38EUR

After 13 days of biking I took a rest day on Thursday the 6th. I am in a small town and not much is going on here. The ferry comes twice a day and few trucks get on/off. There are 2 restaurants here and a lot of coffee shops. Couple cruising sailboats docked here, looks like mostly with sailors from Germany. There are only about half dozen guests in the hotel where I am staying.
Because of stormy forecast I decided to stay another day. There was some rain on and off but not much till about 5PM, the storm came knocked out power and it was really scary for a while.
After reviewing the weather forecast I decided to book the ferry from Patras to Venice for Monday night. I have about 100km to the ferry. It was my goal to get to it so let’s hope it really happens.

This was a very nice ride around the coast, most of it was close to sea level.

I stopped at Mitikas for cappuccino and pastry. I ran into a bike touring couple from Switzerland and we had a nice half hour chat.

Hotel Stratos, B – 30EUR