Well, four times for today. We left El Datíl and continued on the Coast for several more miles before turning inland. Even though I was carrying and extra 12 pounds of water, it wasn't bad on the hard pack. Then we began climbing away from the Coast.
We rode a pretty decent road until a ranch called Ballena. As we came down to the Raymundo River (I think this is the first good size river we have seen), Harry rode across, and I followed. Then we noticed we were off the route, so we rode back across to where a road went north. It was not the best track at first, very sandy, then it improved...for a short bit. Then, it sort of disappeared. We knew there were washouts that we had to deal with, so we assumed this was one of them. We walked the bikes down a steep section to the riverbed.
We continued walking through deep sand to the edge of the river. Since it was just sandy mud, we walked through barefoot. After we got our shoes back on, Harry walked up a steep, bouldery, bit to see where the road was. He thought it was about 100 yards away. We helped each other get the bikes up (well, Harry and Brent helped each other, and Brent helped me). Then we had to continue dragging the bikes over the boulders to get to the road. When we got there, we noticed the road came from the other direction too. But, how would we have gotten to it? We think maybe it was on the other side of the river where Harry and I first crossed. So, that was some gratuitous boulder hike-a-bike. We went a little further before stopping for some lunch.
The second time we had to cross the river, we were following the route exactly. We came to yet another washout. This one was worse because the road just dropped off. Harry went kind of sideways down to the edge. Brent, who had already taken his shoes and socks off, just walked across the river.
I, had my own stupid plan. It looked like the bank got a little less steep further up the river. So, I stayed up on the bank dragging MC over big boulders and woody debris up to where Harry said I could get down. Except, there was a big pile of debris in the way. Harry came up, and helped me get MC over the debris. Then Brent came over so Harry could hand MC down to him. Once down to the river's edge, we took the water and panniers off. Brent carried the water, and I carried the panniers. Harry took MC. We got back over to the road only to look back and see there was a road to the left of where we had come down!!! More gratuitous boulder hike-a-bike!
The third crossing we got smart, and looked for the road first. Yeah, it went through the river. Harry tried to ride it, but couldn't do it. Brent tried to ride it, also didn't make it. I walked across from the beginning.
The last crossing wasn't too bad, and we all rode it. Once we got across, we saw a nice sandy spot, and decided to call it a day. About 45 minutes later, Joe, Leah, Sarah, and Tom caught up. They made the same mistake we did on the second crossing. Joe tried to ride down off the bank. He went over the handlebars (he's okay though).
We made 40 miles of the 90 miles to Mulége. Apparently, we have more of the same tomorrow...yay...
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