Obviously all came good in the end! The intrepid PieRats decided after much deliberation to ride back up Baja, sampling fish tacos in Guerrero Negro and dodgy quesadillas at Mana Espinosa's in El Rosario, some mega stop off for the Baja 1000, on the way back to the border.

Ridiculously, it took only a short while in Tecate (home of the beer) to sort all our documents, no questions asked! We celebrated our non illegal alien status by finding one of the many auto/love hotels in Mexicali, before an epic ride down the notorious route 15 through Sonora and Sinaloa.

Spent one night in Navojoa with the nation's bikers for "Motofest 2017", fun times on two wheels, despite the large number of (dead) crickets in our room.

Some long, hard days riding through the desert followed, with miles of Trumps wall and endless scrubby desert. We say if you make it over the wall and through weeks of desert nothingness, then kudos to you! 

We passed the Tropic of Cancer and the weather changed almost immediately to hot and humid, with a complete change of flora and fauna. We kept mostly to the tolls to cover the miles so we could meet James's cousin in Puerto Vallarta - Imogen's guide book said avoid the tolls on route 15 due to banditos, the FCO site said only use the tolls, due to banditos targeting the tolls. As it happened, there was no trouble whatsoever (of course) and it was plain, but sticky, sailing to PV.

A fun week with Heather, relaxing, scuba diving  (James), Spanish School (Imogen) and taking just a few days to enjoy Mexico, including a night dancing to Vincente Fernandez after a few too many home brewed tequilas.

Imogen was writing this sitting on the spit at the end of Mismolaya beach in the shadowy ruins of the "Night of the Iguana" film set, watching a myriad of brightly coloured fish eat the remains of a breakfast pastry whilst doing her best Liz Taylor impression (needs more work!) and James and Heather go scuba diving in 29 degree water. We know those sitting in an autumnal Blighty or US/Canada probably don't want to read that, but we're very aware of how lucky we are that we are able to take time out, to see the world and experience different cultures and ways of life. Whatever is thrown our way, it's all part of life's rich pattern, as John Mitchell would say, and we humans are most definitely the richer for it.