So we leave Deming and head across to Yuma where we were to make our boarder crossing into Mexico. The bike was having difficulty with some low down tuning and Grant deduced, after many discussions with various people, that maybe the KnN filter was leaning the mixture off at low speed and allowing the bike to run very poorly. Now to find a stock air filter!

After trying several places we ended up in San Diego where Hugo at South Bay Power Sports rang everyone in town and located a stock airfilter for the bike. After 2 hours in peak hour San Diego traffic we had our airfilter and were ready to go to Mexico.

Problem fixed!

We decided to go down the Baja, for old-times-sakes as we had been there on our previous 2 trips to Mexico, and wanted to see the changes.

We crossed in Tecate where we met Jorg from Germany (on a Honda Africa Twin) and travelled with him for a few days.

It felt very good to be back in Mexico after 5 years.

Half way down the Baja we stopped in Cateveña for the night. We negotiated a price for three people in a 'camp-ground' of sorts. Actually it was someones back yard! The man who owned the campground was Santiago and he kept hugging Jules and saying how beautiful she was. It lifted her spirits after a long hot ride especically as she was suffering a case of very bad helmet hair!

We travelled to some of our favorite haunts such as San Ignacio and Los Barrilles and our favorite Mulege where we enjoyed swimming in the beautiful waters of the Bahia de Conception.

The Cabo Corridor which, 10 years ago, was very touristy yet charming had lost its charm and is now filled with one luxury hotel after another. It was still nice to visit there though.

We arrived in La Paz in the middle of a huge rain storm. We had been heading towards it for some time and Jules, ever the optomist, kept saying how we would miss it..... not so!

The sky was black as spades and lightening abounded. When we hit the rain it was so heavy it caused a lot of flash flooding in the dessert town. Grant had to ride through creeks that had become rivers. Cars were stuck. A taxi that had been swept off the road into a ditch. There were rocks and barbed wire, branches and rubbish under the water and Grant negotiated these rivers three times. The water was so deep it came up to Julies foot pegs.

Once throught the torrents we stopped to survey where we had been and could not belive we did not get a flat tyre or bent rim or any damage what so ever.

We stayed in La Paz for a couple of days to service the bike, change spark plugs etc ready for the next stage in our journey on the main land of Mexico and especailly the Copper Canyon.