I’ve been chatting with @BrotherPicnic and @ChrisMunro about a potential Baja trip this winter (likely February), and there are two types of trip we could take.
The first type: fly-n-ride.
A buddy of mine is an owner of Aventuras Hotel in Loreto, MX. They have a fleet of KTM dirt bikes, eMTBs, and Texas Wheelchairs that you can rent as part of a package. There’s also a ton of other Sea of Cortez stuff to do in the area like snorkeling, kayaking, island boat trips, etc. The rooms at Aventuras that time of year are reasonable (e.g. $1000 for a very nice king size room, for 7 nights), and if we were to book a small block of rooms I can likely get a discount. And, Loreto the town is beautiful, great food, safe, etc.
The second type: Ride from AZ
@BrotherPicnic lives near Scottsdale, so we could leave from there, ride a day on back roads to a low-traffic border crossing, and make our way into Baja for a 7-8 day total tour. Jake and I are chill riders, especially on trips like this, and we’d prioritize safety, back roads, and better known dirt roads on this trip. The goal would be bigger-bike friendly route, but in Baja sand is always lurking around every corner.
If you think you could make it, let us know which trip type sounds more fun (hard choice, tbh). We’d only take a tiny group on this because as we learned on our 8-country Ukraine trip this summer, group logistics get super complicated quickly on tour in foreign countries.
Interested. I could probably only swing 7 days, so would vote option #1 and bring the wife for part/all. Option #2 but would have to drive to AZ with moto and that would eat up 3 days total
I’m interested. I no longer have big bike (only the 501) so option 1 with the rental would probably be better for me. A friend and I were looking at 7 or 13-day guided trips out of Guatemala but we have not booked anything yet. Thanks Gino and keep me posted.
@BrotherPicnic’s workload and Starla’s race schedule isn’t going to allow for a fly-n-ride for this one, but we’ll definitely do that trip in the future (late 2026) when wifeys can come.
That means we’re going to do a 7-ish day travel trip starting Feb 19 or 20. Rough route idea is that we will leave from the Scottsdale area (Jake lives in Fountain Hills), and:
Option 1: We’ll head east and then south on the AZBDR route and pick off sections that aren’t snowed in or rained out, and make our way to Nogales. From Nogales, we’ll ride back roads to Hotel Los Arcos de Sonora in Banamichi, MX, and maybe wing it a few days based on local conversations and info. There are endless places to ride in Sonora… including the Sonora Rally, which is the pathway to Dakar. And then head back north.
Option 2: A Mexico-focused tour. This is all flexible at this point, and if there’s a desire to spend more time in Mexico, we can do that. As an example, from Jake’s house we can be on the Gulf of California in Puerto Peñasco in 4 hours. We can also be in San Felipe on the East Cape of Baja BCS in 6 hours, then ride south on the cape, take a ferry to the mainland, and ride home. Spoiled for choice - check out this video if you want to see the riding on the Sea of Cortez side of Baja.
To be clear, Jake and I like to travel loosely, meaning we’re in no rush, and usually have no hard goals of mileage, place, etc. If there’s a good octupus taco, you bet your ass we’re stopping. If we find a weird/cool place to walk around, we’ll walk around - the real kind of adventure touring. We always have some destination in mind, and we usually get there.
I have a hard Feb 27 be back date for Star’s first MTB race of the season.
You can get a sense of the riding from Tucson to Banamichi and onward through Sonora, MX in Sterling’s video, and some photos below of another Baja trip Jake and I did.
I did Kevin’s Continental Divide Ride in July 2017.
18-20 riders, 13 days, 3k miles of dirt.
Great format and the model for how I run my tours: small groups self serving vs trying ti keep xx riders together all day.
In addition, he mixed up the lodging arrangements every day so you met everyone even though you were riding with your own small group of same skilled riders.
