Slow Baja - Mike Younghusband On His Epic 1147-Mile Baja Trek

Episode Date: August 17, 2021

"Life's an adventure; go out and enjoy it."-Mike Younghusband After reading Graham Mackintosh's Into a Desert Place, Mike Younghusband decided to get a burro and walk the length of Baja himself. "I've done my duty to my family, god, and my country. It was time for some 'me'-time -so I set out to get that, and I got it!" Younghusband gave himself one year to plan the epic adventure. He plotted the route, pre-positioned supplies, including whiskey, purchased a donkey, and trained for every scenario possible. While he freely admits that his first mile was horrible, he eventually walked 1147 miles down the length of Baja with his beautiful burro Don-Kay and an assortment of dogs. His 202-page e-book Tres Amigos Blancos chronicles the adventure and includes 200 photos. It's available via Amazon for Kindle. Follow Mike Younghusband on Facebook 

Hey, this is Michael Emery. Thanks for tuning into the slow Baja. This podcast is powered by Tequila Fortaleza, handmade in small batches, and hands down, my favorite tequila. Hey, I want to tell you about your new must-have accessory for your next Baja trip. Benchmark Maps has released a beautiful, beautiful Baja California Road and Recreation Atlas. It's a 72-page large format book of detailed maps and recreation guides that makes the perfect planning tool for exploring Baja. Pick yours up at Benchmarkmaps.com. All right. Just introduce yourself and let's let me take a look at the levels.

All right. My name is Mike Younghusband. I live in Loretto. I'm from San Diego. And I guess we're doing this podcast because I walk down Baja with a burrow. That's why I'm here. You walked down Borough. You walked down Borough, yeah, I did.

You walked down Baja with the borough, I'll get to you eventually. Hey, it's Michael Emery on Slow Baja, and I'm delighted to be sitting in Loretta with Mike Young Husband, and we're going to talk about your walk. All right, let's do this. We're going to walk the walk, talk to talk. Yeah. What the heck?

How, you know, I mean, other people have walked Baja. Why did you have to do it, too? Well, I don't know. I, you know, I've never thought about walking Baja before. before, but it just came to a point in my life where I'd read Graham's books, and I got a little excited about that. I've been going to Baja all my life, and, you know, as I've quoted before, I've done my duty to my family, God, and my country, and it was time for some me time, and so I set out to get that, and I got it. Yeah. Was 1147 miles? Something like that. Now,

yours is GPS proven. That 3,000 that Graham did, he's, we're just estimating. Yeah. Mine's proven. Your is proven. David K. He took care of that for me. Shout out to David Kier, friend of Slow Baja. So walk me through. You found the book. You read the book. But you're a guy who's just not going to buy a donkey and start walking. You did some planning.

Oh, yeah. I made my decision and my commitment on October 1st. of 2009, and I told myself that I would leave on October 1st, 2010. And I had to start preparing because I knew nothing about nothing. And I had the research. Stated for the record. Right. I had to research how to, you know, what route to take, how to supply my myself. Then I was going to get a borough. Where do you get a borough where you can't get a borough in the United States?

You have to get a borough in Mexico because you can't transport back and forth across the border. So I had to go. Does Baja Baja Bows? No, I don't think so. No, they're not licensed. So I found a borough at a ranch in Takati. I purchased it. And then I went for the next year. I made two or three trips a week down there to be friends with my borough, learn how to handle a borough, walk with the borough. Then I had, of course, I had to locate and purchase all the borough gear, the panners, and pack saddles, and all the things needed necessary for the borough. I found all that, ordered it, got it.

Take me through that. Where does one go to find mule packing, burrow packing gear? The internet. Is that Amazon, Prime Delivery? I just went on and started research, and I found a place called Somo Mule, Southern Missouri Mule. All right. And they had it all. And so I contacted the owner and told him what I wanted to do. And, of course, he became excited. And I got the latest, greatest, state-of-the-art equipment.

And went out and fitted my burrow the best I could. Of course, I didn't know what I was doing. And I had no one to teach me. And I learned through my trip that I was doing it wrong. And, you know, the gear fell off my donkey constantly. And it was a lot of work, but I didn't want to tighten it because I didn't want to chafe my burrow. You know? So I, anyway, I spent a year doing that.

and I spent a year on Google Earth trying to find dirt roads, ranches, fish camps, anything I could to make this trip because I knew that the number one problem was going to be water. I could only carry 100 ounces in my bladder on my pack and five gallons on the donkey. And I knew that there's not going to be much available water, especially drinking water. If you found groundwater, you can't drink it. So you have to find purified water. Well, so I, through Google Earth and my own initiative of driving most of the areas where there was very little water and checking firsthand to see, I buried supplies at key locations down Baja. In those supplies, I was able to put water, flavored things to drink because once you get started and all you have is warm water to drink, that gets real boring and real quick. And I put an occasional half a gallon of whiskey underground and some canned stews and things like that, big treats that you can't really carry on the donkey.

And so I had those all buried about eight months in advance. And so October 1st, 2010, finally arrived, and off I went. Well, let's talk about, obviously, you had a relationship with Graham at this point. Yes. So Graham McIntosh, who I hope you all out there on Slow Baja, listen to my podcast with Graham. He's a magnificent human being. So you had reached out to him, I'm assuming. How did that work out?

Well, I read his books and found out that he lived in San Diego. So then it was just a matter of researching and finding him. You were a police officer, so you had some of those skills. I have a little background in that. And I found Graham, and we did a lot of talking, and we got to know each other. And I was doing a lot of shakedown hiking, all different places. In Mexico and in the United States, a lot of desert hiking.

And Graham and I started hiking together, we had quite a few adventures. We had some really, really interesting times. And he, I asked for advice. And, you know, when people ask for advice on an epic adventure like this, it's hard to give because every day is a brand new adventure. And so Graham was only able to tell me, I don't think that you should do this part or that part.

So we did a lot of preparation together like that. And when I did leave on my trip, Graham made a point to come down and meet me twice and brought me pizza and cold beer. Yeah, that's a good friend. Yeah, it's a good friend. He's a good guy. A real good time. So I've got a quote here for you from your writings. I was looking for fulfillment, and boy, did I get it.

Oh, boy, did I get it. You know, I learned a lot of important lessons, life lessons on that journey. And, you know, when you're forced to make decisions that affect immediately life and death situations, you have to learn to trust yourself, draw on the experiences of life that you've already lived, and you make your decisions and you carry them out, and then you get to look back and see if you did the right thing. And most of the time I did. And it means a lot to you.

You really grow up. You also learn to like yourself, because I spent a lot of that time alone. I actually searched out the time to be alone, to not be around people to stay in the wilderness by myself, As long as possible, you have to go to the store and you have to get water, especially for my animals. So you could only stay gone so long, but that was premium time to me.

And I got into situations where I ran out of water and got stuck. And then you've got to make decisions that have to be made now. You don't get to draw on anybody else's opinions. You make your decision and you go for it. Well, we're going to get into those things, but let's get into your hiking boots here. You started from Rancho, Ohio, in Takate. And that's where your borough lived, and that's where you purchased your borough from. That's correct.

Anybody there just look at you like, what the? Dude, you're doing what? You don't have to. You have a car. You have three cars. What are you thinking? Well, they kind of look at you like, yeah, sure. Sure you are.

Yeah, that's okay. You know, I met, I knew everybody at Rancho Ohio by the time I left there. And there was a large group of people amassed when I walked out that back gate on that day, October 1st. And I think most of them thought that he'll be right back. You know, he won't be gone long. And I went about two and a half miles that day and it started raining. And I had to stop and set up camp. and I was using a spot device and I set it off when I made camp.

Everybody on my spot list got that signal. I went, oh, good. He went two and a half miles today. So how long is it going to take you to get to Cabo? Ten years. Poco a poco. Yeah. Hey, tell me about that first mile.

It was horrible. I had, number one, my borough did not, he never liked to leave the ranch. The ranch was his home. It was his safety. He had two or three girlfriends there. He had children there. He loved the ranch. He did not want to leave.

And I had two little dogs with me, Max and Rusty, my boys. And we left out the back of the ranch. And the borough, Don Quay, he was not happy to be leaving the ranch. And so I had to encourage him to keep moving, keep moving. and keep moving because I had to get as far away from the ranch as possible because he just, he wanted to run back. So at one point, I kind of forgot what I was doing and I smacked him on the ass with my lead to keep him moving.

And that panicked my dog who said, oh my God, the beatings are beginning. So he took off out into the bushes, spook the donkey. The donkey started bucking all over the place. The gear fell off. I had to tie the burrow to the bushes, take off after Max. He found somebody, a Mexican's house. He went inside the house, wouldn't come out. The people went screaming out because there's this strange dog in their house.

Finally, I got him out, got him secured. This is all in Mile 1. Yeah, this is Mile 1. Yeah, I only have 1,100 more to go. And then we got going, and it started raining, and I had to set up camp. And you set up camp, you didn't walk back to the ranch. No, no, no, I couldn't go back to the ranch. No, no, no, I'm not starting over.

Nope, not looking back. I'm forward. What was the second day like? Oh, gee. Well, you know, the first week was, I call it hell week. You know, the Navy Seals have a hell week? I had a hell week. It was awful.

The next day we took off, and we got to a certain place where there was a real beautiful stream that went across the road. Well, the donkey, he thought anytime his feet got wet that he was going to drown, so he wouldn't go near the water. So we got to the water's edge, trying to coax him across. He will not step into that water. And once again, you know, stupid me, I smacked him on the butt with my lead, and Max took off towards the ranch, back to the ranch. So I tied donkey real quick to a post near the street. and I took off running, yelling Max, Max, Max, Max.

I finally got Max by promising all kinds of things. And I got Max and I brought him back and the donkey's gone. He got loose. And I'm all, no. So I tracked him. I could see his hook marks in the dirt. So I tracked him down. And there he was, down at somebody's ranch.

So I got him, got back. and with the help of a couple kids and an old man that had been sitting in a chair on his porch watching this whole thing, we got Don Quay across the stream and we went a little further. We got about another eight or ten miles that day and spent the night at a nice green park area, which was a big relief. But that was my first two days. So at some point did you think like, I need to have that. this dog on a leash to my belt or my pack or, I mean, you were complicated. You got a couple of

dogs. You got a donkey that doesn't want to go. Max didn't want to go either. Yeah. Well, you see, you only have two hands. Exactly. One hand has a donkey lead in it. Now, if you take the other hand and you put a leash in it, which I did. I did a lot because at one point we got stuck on the highway for five days and couldn't get off the highway because of fences. And I had to have the dog on a leash. And by that time, I had three dogs. And I only had one leash. Your collector.

Yeah. And so, you know, Max, Max did, as we went further, Max did much, much, much better. And I started learning, don't smack the donkey's ass. That way, Max won't panic thinking I'm going to smack his ass. and so we pretty much got over that. Well, I'm going to read another quote from you. During this trip, I lost all fears. I came to trust myself and found that being alone can be a rewarding experience.

I'm going to say that again. During this trip, I lost all fear. I came to trust myself and found that being alone can be a rewarding experience. Absolutely. You don't have time for fear. I think there's a defining line between fear and worry. It's okay to worry as long as you're constructive in thinking about how am I going to get through this. How am I going to do this?

How shall I handle this situation? If you fear it, you're only one step away from panic. And if you panic, it's over. Because there's no way to get out of panic. Once panic sets in and you're by yourself, your goose is cooked. You're stuck in panic mode because how do you get out? There's nobody there to calm you down. There's nobody there to give you advice. There's nobody there to help. So you cannot enter that zone. So fear has to be put to the wayside. You've got to give up fear to figure things out on your own.

And once you listen to yourself and trust yourself, fear doesn't enter into the situation anymore. When something happens that would normally cause fear, it causes you to go into a thinking mode of how do I handle this situation. Fear puts you into a place where you're not going to handle the situation. Then you're into a fight or flight. But you avoid that by thinking and figuring it out. And once you get to that place, things become much easier. So getting on to the much easier part. you're an animal lover.

I am. You're an animal lover. You know, you and I already bonded over. You had dachshunds earlier in your life. I have an old dachshund now. You had chihuahua mixes on your trip. They have little legs. Yeah.

But there are springs. So those dogs were walking a lot. And at some point, you had to say, you know what, these guys aren't. You'd already picked up a third dog, as you mentioned. Tell me a little bit. We're going to get on to your third dog here. Tell me a little bit about that dog. The third?

Yeah, the third dog. Well, on my fourth day, I think it was my fourth day in my trip, I had gone into the mountains. And I was my first water stop. I knew there was a real beautiful ranch that I was going to pass, and they have a pond there. and so they have plenty of water, and I just needed drinking water. It had been raining, as I mentioned, and so the burrow and the dogs were able to drink out of mud puddles. And so they were fine, but I needed drinking water after four days. So I stopped at this ranch, and one of the ranch hands was out there, and so we talked,

and he started getting me water, drinking water from the house. And they had ranch dogs out there in the field, and I didn't pay much attention to them, and they didn't bother my dogs. Everything was fine. So I bid the rancho do, and I'm all watered up, and everything's great. And I started down the road, and one of these dogs, this white, shaggy dog, started following me. And I shoot it away, kept shoving it away, throwing rocks, go away. I don't need another dog.

I already got two. I don't need you. But the dog would. leave. So we're heading down this one-lane dirt road through the mountains and this dog still following and this old jalopy car rattledat thing with three drunk guys in it drove up and they offered me a beer. And I declined, no thank you. I just can't be drinking beer with all this going on, especially with the way that my days were going at that time. And so they went about their business.

An hour later or so, here they come back southbound again, stopped and offered me a beer again. No thank you. So I kept on my travels, and here they come northbound. Obviously, to go back into town to get more beer, really drunk now. And they stopped, and this time they asked me if I had any money. and that kind of set some alarm bells off in my brain. I told them, I said, I don't have any money.

I don't even have a car. All I have is a borough. I don't have any money. I don't have nothing. Okay, so they went about their business. Well, it was late in the day now, 4 o'clock. Time for set of camp. So I went up off the road a little ways up on the high side of the road

and made camp, made a fire, ate dinner. Everything was great. It's just getting dark. And I decided, I'd hit it. the hay and I heard that car coming and I'm thinking oh god no and I've got a campfire going and they saw the fire from the from the road they stopped I heard the doors open now that dog is still hanging around and here they come up the path up to my campsite and I'm thinking okay get ready I don't know what you're going to do to protect yourself from these guys so I backed off into the trees so that I was away from

the fire I could see them but they couldn't see me just to see the situation as it developed, to see what I could do. And as they walked up to my camp, that dog jumped at them, growling, snarling, barking, and chased them back to their car. They left. And I said, okay, you can stay. You can stay. You've heard it.

Yep, you're part of my group. And she stayed with me until last year when she passed away. Amazing. Yeah. Amazing. Wow. Great dog. Great dog.

Solomino. Well, tell me a little bit about, what we're going to pivot here, tell me a little bit about your life prior to doing this. Southern California guy grew up in San Diego, you told me. You spent some time in the desert. Your dad liked, your dad liked Baja. I love Baja, yeah. Did you have some hiking, weekend hiking experiences?

Was the walking and by yourself and the hiking and all that just, you're going to do this trip and, you know. No, you know, I grew up in the Boy Scouts. I did a lot of hiking. You know, I did... So you'd camped and pooped in the woods before. Absolutely. You know, I did Sierra tricks for 10 days up in the Sierra's.

And I knew all the tricks of the trade. I knew how to hike. I knew how to pack a backpack and how to set up camp. And I, you know, I'm a veteran. I've been through jungle environmental survival training when I was in the Navy. So I know that I know how to how to... to survive pretty much. So I, you know, I've done all that and camping just came second nature to me. I owned a place out in the desert in San Diego, Imperial County for over 20 years and I camped constantly,

you know, from that, that was like my home base, you know. And so none of that was new to me. That was part of my life. I loved it. In Mexico, my dad, had a place in Mexico almost all my life. He maintained his mom and dad, not just dad, maintained a place down in Mexico. And so we were down there a lot. And the last 20-something years of my dad's life, he had a place in Bejia de Los Angeles.

And I spent a lot of time down there with him. and so I knew Mexico pretty well. My Spanish wasn't very good, but it was good enough if you could get them to speak a little English and you speak a little Spanish, you know, you spanglish. You can communicate pretty well, and I did all right, you know. And so, yeah, camping to me was, I love it. I love camping, you know. I did it for six months on that trip, and it was home to me.

Every day I set up camp at a different place. Some of them weren't too nice. Sometimes I slept right next to the highway. And sometimes I had beautiful cliffside ocean view places. So you never know what you got. You might be sleeping next to a dead cow or you might be sleeping next to a liquor store. You never know where you're going to end up. Well, Mike, were you walking away from something?

Absolutely not. I just locked my house. I had my neighbor watch it. And when I got home, I unlocked the door and walked back in. So life was good. Yeah, life was fine. This was an adventure that you needed for your soul, but you weren't walking away from life, problems, relationships, money, whatever.

No, the key word is adventure. Adventure. It was a, you know, and I learned after that life is an adventure. It's a whole bunch of little adventures, one after the other. Everything's an adventure. Some aren't as good as others, but some of them are epic, epic adventures. You know, you just, you look back and you go, wow, I did that. Yeah, life's an adventure, you know.

If you don't go out and enjoy it, you miss it. I don't know if you get a second chance at it or not, but look at life as an adventure and you'll enjoy it. You know, we can't wait to drive our old Land Cruiser down to Baja, and when we go, we go with Baja bound insurance. Their website's fast and easy to use, Baja Baja Bound Insurance, serving Mexico Travelers since 1994. Hey, do you have a 4x4? You love off-road racing. You've got to join Slow Baja in the Nora 500. It's Ensenada to Ensenada three great days. October 7th through 10th. Kurt LaDuke, Offroad Hall of Famer, leads the class. If we can do it in our old truck, you can do it. Get your street legal 4x4, get into the safari class, and I'll see you in Ensenada. More info at nora.com.

That's www.com or on slowbaha. Let's put it in high gear. Hey, we're back with Mike Younghusband, and we're talking about his epic five months, 18 days, 1147 mile walk from Takate to Cabo San Lucas. So, Mike, the positives, you never got sick. You fished on beaches without a single footprint. You caught fish every cast.

You slept out under the stars. Describe the Baja night sky for me. Well, it's quiet, it's clear, and it's serene. But for me, I followed the sun. When the sun went down, I went to bed. normally I'd say 85 to 90% of the time there was no wood to have a fire so there was no reason to sit outside so when that sun went down I was in the tent asleep I didn't get to see much night sky when as soon as that sun cracked in the morning I was up I had a lot to do you know loading a burrow

takes quite a while and when you have to do it every morning and I wanted to be on the trail by 9 o'clock because I'm off the trail at 4 o'clock you got to leave a night enough time to set up camp, cook and eat dinner, prepare for the next day. You know, you have things that you have to repair all the time, the gear on the donkey and the donkey itself, you know. So your daylight time is extremely valuable. And so you have enough time. I think God gives you night time to sleep. So as soon as the sun went down, I was in bed and I went right to sleep. I was always ready for that sun to come up in the morning. Yeah.

So if you're out there for folks who haven't spent much time in Baja, if you're out there and I drive this old truck around, as it starts to get dark, you better have a flashlight in your hand or a headlamp or something because it comes down like a hard curtain, boom. It gets dark. Now the stars are wonderful and all of that, but it is dark.

That's right. It's dark. You can't see your hand in front of you dark. And the particular time that I went 2010-11 had been a bad drought in Baja, a real bad time. And the coyotes were as thick as flies. It was every night of the trip. The coyotes were everywhere.

And they could sense that we had food and water. And by this time, I had sent my two little dogs home with Graham, and I had I just had Solovino and Donque, the donkey. And Solovino she spent every night

of the trip that we were out on the trail chasing away coyotes from the camp. All night, every night. She slept right in front of the front door of my tent and I'd hear her all night long chasing coyotes.

I'd hear them come in. They tried every trick in the book to lure her out there, but she knew every trick in the book, and she never fell for it. They'd do puppy sounds and playful, giddy sounds, and everything, screaming, yelling, trying to tempt her out because they wanted her as their next meal. She was a tough little gal. She didn't fall for it. She knew what she was doing, so, yeah, you didn't want to spend too much time out there with all those coyotes. And we had a couple of close calls with them, where they, at one time they, tried to take her down and she didn't know it they were coming up behind her but i saw them first

and warned her and and she got away and then another time she saved my bacon when they were coming up behind me seven of them were right behind me and i didn't know it so she warned me there she saw him and and charged them but yeah so nighttime nighttime belongs to the coyotes i just left them a little bit into your tent yeah i stayed in the safety of my tent With my guard dog. Tell me about that night camped out by the old Indian ring. That was in the mountains down on the coast. And I had set up camp in an old Indian ring where they pile rocks about,

two to three feet high, I guess, as a windbreak. So I set my tent up in one of these circles and went to slow. sleep and I woke up in the wee hours of the morning to voices of a group of people, children, adults, you name it. And I thought, oh my God, somebody's here and I was days into the mountains with no road, no path, no nothing. And I thought, where are these people coming from? So I got up and I put my pants on and I looked out, I unzipped the tent and I looked out in the dog and the donkey, got their ears up and they're looking for these people too. And there was nobody there.

I mean, there was nobody. It was nothing and nobody. So I listened for a while, didn't hear it again, and went back to bed. I was visited that night, but I don't know by who. I couldn't understand what they were saying. They weren't speaking English. But I don't know who it was. I don't know what it was.

But it didn't scare me. Left no footprints. No, they didn't leave any footprints either. But, you know, I expect things like that. To me, it's like I don't understand everything that goes on. Just it's all part of the adventure. Well, you just said there it didn't scare you. And I've got this quote here as fear as the destroyer of dreams.

That's right. It is absolutely, if you fear, where are you going to go? You know, what does that do to your thinking? Fear takes over the number one spot in all you're thinking if you let fear in. Don't let it in. don't let it in. Licent Adventure. Go out and enjoy it. Fear will destroy it. It'll destroy your dreams. So we covered some of the positives. I've got a short list of negatives here. You might want to add on to it. So negatives, you fractured your right elbow.

Actually, it was my left arm. Sorry. You fractured your left arm. Yeah. You know, you told me those reporters write anything. I'm just writing down what I read. Well, I've read a lot of what they said. And, you know, they get confused. and it's easy to do. I don't, you know, it's no big deal. I got stuck along, I think it was Highway 3, which is up in northern Baja,

and I got stuck on the highway. I had a plan to go down a dirt path so that I could cut off a big chunk of backtracking and the highway walk. I didn't want to walk on the highway. But the military had some kind of operation going, the Mexican military, and they wouldn't let me go down that road. And so I decided, well, I'll wait until you're done. No, they weren't going to allow that either.

Just keep going. So I had to, it forced me north on this other dirt road for several miles before I could get out of the mountains. And then I was stuck on the highway. And now I had, I think, five days of highway walking I had to do. And my borough, you got to remember, it's at least, I'd say, four to five feet wide with the panners on each side. And when you're walking down that narrow highway

and semi-loaded, we're going 55, 60 miles an hour past you, that's really, really scary stuff, especially when you got three dogs with you. And so at any time I could, I got off the highway and got down in the little ditch alongside. And I got down there, and the grass was, I don't know, about a foot tall.

And I tripped on a rock. And I started to fall forward and once my pack was about 45 pounds. And once that pack and you go forward to a certain angle, it's like a giant shoves you down on the ground as hard as he possibly can. There's nothing you can do to avoid it. And I went down and I landed on my left arm and I fractured it. Not bad, no compound fracture anything like that, but it was cracked.

I've done it before in my life. You don't have constant pain, but you try to pick up. a cup of coffee and it'll put you on your knees. So now I had to do with that, you know, there's no, there's no doctor's offices, there's no, no hospitals, there's no nothing, there's nothing, there's nobody to call. And if I did call, what am I going to do with all my gear and my donkey, my dogs, you know, so you've got to handle the situation. So I just put my thumb in my shirt, my button-down shirt, and that was my sling. Off I went.

It was several weeks now. I had to make do on, when I loaded and unloaded the donkey, I had to unload the panners, then take the panners off. When I put it, when I loaded, I had to put the panners on empty and then loaded item by item. So it took a lot of time until my arm finally stopped hurting so bad, and then I was healed up and fine again. Well, let's get on to the next Malady.

Earthquake. Yeah, I was heading up the mountains and it started raining. So I set up camp in the mud. That's all I could do. If you don't set up camp right away and your gear gets soaked, you have a real big problem. So it started raining. I set up camp, got everything out of the rain.

got in the tent and just laid there for a couple days. And at that point, she started shaking and rattling and rolling. And I knew I had an earthquake. And when I got to, I think it was Graham. I can't remember for sure. It was only a day or two later that I met Graham on the trail for the first time I met him. and I was evidently, when I set off my spot device, the spot device was set off at the epicenter of the earthquake.

So I guess I was at the epicenter. That was kind of interesting. It wasn't a huge earthquake, but it was kind of fun. Well, before we talk about running out of water, which was a pretty big deal, you also got robbed. Want to talk about that? Yeah, I had a... a chance, my, my borough went lame.

His hoofs wore out. Oh, we didn't mention that one, but let's put those two together because they're Yeah, they are together. They're related. Yes. One thing did lead to the other. Yeah, all that walking on the highway wore my burrows, hooves down. And by the time we got to Guero Negro, he had, he was pretty lame.

His feet were hurting. So I went to a ranch there in Guero, Negro called the Cowboys Ranch and the owner there we healed up my donkey and he was able to locate some small shoes and we shot him and while I was there one of the guys he had working at the ranch was an American Hispanic who had done time in he was an illegal alien in the United States had done time in prison and when he got out they kicked him out the country and he ended up down there. And at one point, I was out dove hunting with my BB gun, and I had, you know, I trusted everybody, and evidently he got into my pack and stole my money. And I didn't know it

until I'd left there, got down on the road several days later, and found out that I was broke. and so that was a really bad feeling because I certainly had a long way to go but when I got to Viscayano I was able to use the ATM machine and get back up

but he got everything I had well I did have another stash but I guess I wasn't thinking well and I kept it in my shoe and so when I checked that and pulled it out of my boot the pesos had melted several thousand pesos and they had holes in them when they were mushy and squishy.

So that was unspendable. The bank did take care of it eventually. But yeah, that wasn't a good idea. Don't hide pesos in your shoe. They don't last long. Not when you're walking in them. No, not when you're walking in them. Well, let's get on to running out of water. Yeah. That was the big one, life or death right there. Yeah. I entered the mountain. on the coast south of El Rosario. I knew that was a big deal. Graham had in his book, he had walked through those mountains and had a real hard time of it, and it was just him hiking through. I think he did it northbound, and he had talked about him. So it was a big decision in the year that I practiced and prepared.

I thought about it all the time. If I went around the mountains, it was going to take me four to five days extra to get around them. And I decided, and I studied with Google Earth, and I went crazy trying to figure out how to get through the mountains. And I figured I found a way. And so I buried a stash at the fish camp before you enter the mountains. There's no road once you get past this.

fish camp, it's, you're just on your own. And so I buried a stash there a year earlier, but when I got there, the stash was gone, as were almost all my stashes. The coyotes had found the stashes. You know, they're starving, and they can smell anything, and they dug up everything I had. And they, I had made several pounds of jerky, and that's, that was my demise as the jerky. It was in vacuum-packed inside of tin cans and really well, but you can't fool the nose of a coyote. And they, so they dug up most of my stashes. I got what was in cans and bottles and things like that. Coyotes don't drink whiskey?

No. They leave the whiskey for me. That was nice. But this stash, one of the guys at the fish camp had seen the coyotes digging. So he went over there and he found my stash. And he took all my stuff home. So when I got there, I went to look for my stash. It was gone.

I told the guys at the fish camp that the coyotes got my stash. And they all started laughing and they pointed to that one guy and said, there's your coyote. And he felt really bad because I had my supplies there to get through the mountains. So he went in and he got me some tinfoil packages of refried beans. and rice and some prepared meals that I didn't even know they sold in Mexico. And I was able to take those. And I didn't need that much.

You know, I figured I'd be through those mountains in about three days. And I got into the mountains. The path is gone. Now you're on your own. You just stay on the coast, not near the water, but near the cliff's edge. And you just keep on going south. That's all you have to do. Keep the ocean on your right.

and you're going south. Well, pretty soon you're at a point of no return because you enter into a very deep arroyo. And I mean the cliff face on the inward side is a thousand feet tall. And you look straight up a thousand feet. And in order to get down there, I had to slide down a granite slope

where you have no control. You're sliding not out of control, but you can't stop until you get to the bottom. And so me and Don Quay, we slid all the way down to the bottom, bounced off a couple cordones, a couple Palo Blancos, got down to the bottom. And now we're at a point of no return. You're not going to get back up that, not with a donkey. You can't turn around. You can't turn around.

So you got to keep going south. You got to keep going. So we got down to the bottom, and I'm out of water. I've got maybe two or three pints of water left. And I knew I was in trouble. This arroyo that I'm in now goes all the way down to the ocean. And I don't mean it's just a walk. I had eight foot tall dead bushes that I had to tromp down to get through.

And I had to shovel down small areas so the donkey could get up and down them. And, but I, that night when I set up camp, I made the decision to set off my spot and device saying that I needed help. Not an emergency, just needed help. And so I set it off and went to bed, waited for dawn. As soon as the sun came up, I hit the trail and started down towards the water. And I put on my bright orange hunter's cat. and lo and behold, when I got down there, there was a panga doing circles off the coast waiting for me. They'd got my GPS signal, and that ponga captain, he backed down through the surf and unloaded about five gallons of water for me.

And I watered everybody up, and they took off. thank God for them but now I'm stuck and I couldn't find a way out of that arroyo southbound or northbound so I don't know what I'm going to do but then Ron Hoff in San Catene the owner of Talk Baja

he came to the decision that my signal wasn't moving I was stuck so he eventually got a hold of the mayor of Catavina which is a town up in the mountains that mayor's in charge of the co-op fish camps down on the coast. He got a shortwave radio.

He got a hold of the owner of Catavina Fish Camp where they used to take the marble and loaded onto boats from El Marmol. And he got a hold of him. He got in Aponga. He went to my GPS coordinates, found me. and make a long story short, we walked through those mountains throughout the night in the dark

and through the rocks and hills and everything else, and we made it down to the fish camp, thank goodness. I spent about, I guess, four days at the fish camp and recuperating and getting my stuff together and then learning how to trap lobsters. That was a lot of fun. And then carried on from there. But that's a pretty helpless feeling when you run out of water.

You can't drink salt water. You know, I was prepared. I could have survived. I did bring the gear with me to desalinate water, you know, through steam. I was prepared to do that. But that's not going to satisfy you. And I had a pretty rough time keeping the donkey away from the ocean because he wanted to get down there.

drink because he was really thirsty. But along with my spot device and a lot of really wonderful people, I got through it. Yeah, so the folks, you became a project, a collective project of Baja Nomad.

Correct. The forum, the message board. Yep. And for you young kids at home who've never looked at a message board, early days of the internet, there were forums and message boards where people posted questions and people with answers answered them. Sometimes they were good answers, sometimes they were bad answers, but it was a really interactive place.

And David K, our friend David Kier, is very active on Baja Nomad, Tim Means, and you had some other folks watching your every step, honestly. Honestly, all over the world. Yeah, through Talk Baja, people were able to find my location. I set the spot device off every day, so they knew where I was camping. And with this device, when I set it off, when you got the signal, you could go right to Google Earth and zoom right into the exact spot that I was camping in every day. And so people were able to watch. David Kay, he would make a map of my journey every day and post it, showing where I want.

walked and where I was and how fast I was going. And so there was people from all over the world that contacted me later, telling me that they were watching the journey. And that's what saved my bacon in those mountains was people watching. And the GPS coordinates and just good thinking that they contacted Graham going, what do you think is going on? Graham says, he's out of water right here. he's been in those mountains too long and there's no water there's nothing and so it all worked out well

you know the the the bahawk community is a tight one you know they really are um so i was i was pretty happy with all the way that all turned out yeah you referenced you know that ron was looking after you and uh uh graham had figured things out and all that but you know like somebody had to hire a a boat and go 20 kilometers to find you. Right. Neil, somebody on, you know, on, Neal, on Bahra nomads. That's right.

Somebody had to take the initiative to say, Well, I had met Neil. I'm going to go help this guy out. I had met Neil before I left the fish camp. He, he worked at the, what do they call it, with the kites and the surfboards? Yeah, yeah. Wind surfing.

Wind surfing, yeah. There's a wind surfing camp, and I can. I can't remember the name of it, just north of the fish camp. And he was up there, and he came into the fish camp to buy some fish to feed everybody up there. And I met him, and we talked. And so he got, his boss evidently contacted him via sat phone when I set off my emergency signal and gave him the coordinates. He went back to the fish camp, hired a panga captain, and they went in and brought me water. because Graham said he's probably out of water.

So you can see that everybody came together and made some really good, valuable decisions for me. You know, you're a pretty self-sufficient guy. So how do you feel when somebody's like moved mountains to save your ass? Well, you know, the next morning after I got the water, I walked, I left the donkey in my camp and my gear and I walked up that arroyo trying to find a way out, any way out. And I couldn't find anything.

And I was probably half a mile to a mile up the Royal. And now I'm thinking, oh, boy, I've got to set this device off again and get help. You know? And I looked down and I saw this bright orange thing down at my camp. And what in the world is that? And lo and behold, I took off running down through the rocks and everything trying to get down there. And it was Rigoberto, the owner of the fish camp. who had been contacted by the mayor of Catavina,

who had been contacted by Ron Hoff, who had been contacted by, you know, and people complain about all those worry warts on Talk Baja. Yeah. I'll tell you what, they came together, and they got my ass out of trouble. They really did. So Rigoberto walked you out.

Yeah, and, you know, we got out of there. We walked for hours in the dark, in the night, and it was just, you know, you'd finally crest. These hills are made out of igneous stone, sharp volcanic rock. It's not like there's no trail, there's nothing, and it's very, very dark at night. But we were lucky we had a moon. And when we got through all that, Rigoberto lifted his shirt, and he had fresh scars down his whole chest.

He just had open heart surgery with a quadruple bypass. And he did, I couldn't believe it. And he did that. He walked out of there. Amazing. He's an amazing guy. Yeah, he was, I couldn't believe it. So, Mike, we're going to put it in high gear here.

And take me into Toto Santos. You're waiting for your family to get down to Cabo so you can walk in. Yeah, my girls. My daughters. A loving hug that you're still alive. Yeah, my daughters, they arranged to go on a cruise down to Cabo. And they arrived at the same time I did. and we all met down in Kabul when I walked in.

And as a matter of fact, they came up behind me in a taxi when I was walking up to the police station. I told them I meet him at the police station. It's a good safe place, and everybody knows where that is. And they came up in a cab behind me, got out and walked the last bit with me. That was pretty fun. Now, you lost 43 pounds on this. I was so skinny. Yeah, I was so skinny.

I had to put new holes in my belts. every day. Almost. Almost. Well, wrap it up. You did it. You said you would have walked back. I would have walked back, but I had to get back to work.

You know, income's a big deal, and you're gone six months, and your bills don't stop, so my savings was dwindling, and I had to get back and get to work. And it was going to be summer, you know, it was March. Practicalities. There's no way you're doing it in the summer. So you went fall to spring. Yeah. It's fall, winter, spring. I designed the October 1st date to get behind the hurricane weather.

Okay. Because I didn't want to be on that. I knew I was going down the coast and I didn't want to, a hurricane would have been devastating in a tent. So I tried to get past hurricane weather just enough to where I could still have good weather. And I had beautiful, except for the rain when at first, when I first took off, I had absolute gorgeous weather the whole trip.

It was wonderful. It really was. I mean, it was like being in the Wizard of Oz. It was great. It was wonderful. I had just, I couldn't believe it. I was really lucky. I'm sorry that all you listeners can't see the twinkle in Mike's eye right now.

He's really, he's got a, he's smiling with his eyes. So you kept a journal. He wrote it all down. I did. You had a digital camera with you. You made photographs. You had 2,300 photographs. And you've put together an e-book with Graham's help.

He came down here and knocked it out, whipped it out. Trace Amigos Blanco, it's on Kindle. Trace Amigos Blanco, so that's wherever you find your Kindle downloads. But you can find it. I found it yesterday. Yeah, it's not hard to find. Not hard to find. You got any way to explain this to folks who just say you did what?

I mean, what do you say? You know, what do you say when you're sitting there at the VA? Yeah. Life's an adventure. Go out and enjoy it. you know, if you pass it up, it's gone. You didn't do it. You know, it was a big decision when I made the decision to do it,

and I had a good friend say that's the most inconceivable, ridiculous idea I've ever heard in my life. And he said it right to me, and I said, okay, fine, I'm sorry you feel that way. And when I got done, I worked with him. And when we went back to work, he had read his quote in the same, And I go union because I told a reporter that what he had said. And he said, I said that, didn't I?

Yeah, he did. And he said, oh, my God. He said, I'm so sorry and embarrassed. I said, well, you know what? Maybe you were right, but it ended up, I did it, you know. So it wasn't inconceivable and ridiculous. And it was a wonderful, wonderful experience. I'm so glad I did it.

I really am. It's now I've met so many wonderful people. you know, from this experience. And it's now a real corner post of my life. You know, it sets it off. It gave me some definition that I really enjoy. And people love to hear the stories, and I love to tell them. Well, I'm glad you made some time to tell them here on Slow Baja.

It's really kind of you. We had nice dinner last night and lots of coffee this morning. I'm going to get on the road. But one more time, name of the book, where people can find it, and how can people get in touch with you if you want to converse with folks? Trace Amigos Blancos is the name of my book. It's an e-book. Graham and I put it together.

It took us about five straight days, full days. But it was a lot of fun, and I think it's a lot of fun to read. I've got a lot of positive feedback from it, no negative. And you can find it on Kindle, Amazon. and if you don't have Kindle, you can download the Kindle app onto your laptop or computer or even phone. And I think it's free, but I think I've also seen it for $4.99, so it's not a big investment. And most people don't know that now you've got Kindle on your computer. And now you can do all the Kindle books, anything you want.

I started it, and I do recipes, recipe books, and a lot of them are free. So my computer's now a recipe book with Kindle. But yeah, you download it. You can also view it without downloading it if it's too big for your device because it's pretty big. It's 202 pages. But you can also view it on Amazon Kindle without downloading it. So there's many ways to do it.

And I think if you look at it, you'll really enjoy it, you know. And I found you via Facebook. So you're on Facebook. I'm on Facebook. I message you and you got right back to me. So you're there. I don't have any problem talking to people. I have a lot of friends on Facebook and a lot of people that reach out because they are interested in an adventure in Baja.

And they have a lot of questions. And I don't mind at all answering them. Not at all. Well, I just want to say thanks again, Mike. You've been a great host. Really fun to hear your story firsthand. And I look forward to having our paths cross again sometime. All right.

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