Goodbye USA. Hello Mexico.

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
America’s first National Park, a glacial carved valley containing sheer granite cliffs and massive waterfalls, draining melting springtime snowcaps. We spent 2 nights in Yosemite Valley (well, 1 actually, as we were kicked out on the second night for camping in the carpark), managing to keep our food and toiletries safe from the car-jacking resident black bears. After conquering the Grand Canyon, our next challenge was to be the infamous Half Dome (a 2,500 metre granite monolith with one face a sheer vertical drop to the Valley below). Unaware of the steepness of the final ascent, we found ourselves clinging to a rusty wire cable with garden gloves (kindly provided by the National Park), on a near vertical rockface - this was the easy way up! Thoughts of our impressive achievements were shattered when two rock climbers popped their heads over the ‘front’ face of the Half Dome – it had been a 2-3 day journey for them up the exposed vertical face.

BACK IN LA
From Yosemite we headed south through Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks toward LA. It was a 4 day stop back in the big smoke to finalise preparation of the van before heading on to Mexico. We managed to sneak in a day at the renowned Six Flags Rollercoaster Park with Justin and Amity our LA friends (Justin came begrudgingly – not a fan of rollercoasters, see photo!). We chose a seemingly tame ride to ease Justin into it which didn’t go upside down (Justin’s criteria #1). Not so tame, we all turned white. Justin and Am sat the next one out. We later found out it was the biggest rollercoaster in the park.

MEXICO - BORDER CROSSING
Mexico – we were in. We breezed through the boarder, picked up our first Mexican tacos and headed south. Everything seemed pretty normal traveling down the highway until we encountered a sandbag bunker containing a soldier, accompanied by a large automatic weapon. We later found out that these military checkpoints are periodically located along the highway – the soldiers check for drugs and weapons but generally leave you alone, thank goodness!

MEXICO – BAJA NORTE
A few tollbooths and military checkpoints down Highway 1, we stopped in San Miguel for the night. There we met Reno Abrillo (1978 surfing world champion) over a beer. He let us camp in front of his place down the beach and after breakfast together the next morning we headed on (despite his talent for storytelling – I think he really appreciated the fresh set of ears we provided). The highway follows the coast in northern Baja but then veers inland to cactus country, the dry and hot desert. We got our first surf about 600km down the peninsular at a place called The Wall. Surprisingly the water temp was not much over 20 deg C, a lot fresher than we had anticipated.

MEXICO – BAJA SUR
Frightened off my the cold water we headed south in search of warmer water, stopping on the east coast of Baja Peninsula, where we had an eventful night getting bogged on the beach, and then on to Cabo San Lucas. Cabo is the quintiscential Mexican Americanised town, containing all the large American chain stores, takeouts, marinas, golf courses and hotels. Definitely not what we came to see. However, the water was warm and the surf was good. Here we met Joe, Amy and Chris, fellow Australian travelers/surfers, who are on a similar adventure to us.

MAINLAND MEXICO
Our time in Baja was over. A 6 hr ferry ride later we arrived on the mainland, at a town called Topolombampo (Was a challenge just to pronounce it, let alone get there). We had been informed of a secret surf location to the south. The capabilities of our van were tested getting to the remote location (see picture), however the waves were definitely worth it.