Unexpectedly, our planned flight on 1 September was cancelled because of bad weather, which meant we could only take the second connecting flight to San Francisco three hours later. We were a little surprised when we had to open our bags at the check-in desk. They checked the two empty MSR fuel bottles. One bottle was fine; the second still gave off a few fumes and was confiscated.
At London Heathrow, British Airways boarding staff at first would not let us onto the plane, saying: "No flight to San Francisco without a valid return ticket and without a US visa." Some explaining, and calling in someone who knew what they were doing, finally got us through.
The plane left Heathrow another hour late, so we only landed in SF at 18:00 instead of 14:00. At baggage reclaim we heard: "Mrs. Naegeli and Mr. Keller, please present at the information desk". We were greeted with a friendly "hello". Our assumption that, as "Zentralbiker VIPs", we would be whisked through customs faster soon turned out to be wrong. Three pieces of luggage had stayed behind in London, including, of course, our bikes and a bag with four panniers. The report was quickly filled in, and we were compensated with a 100-dollar Visa card. A shuttle bus took us to the "Bay Landing" hotel in Burlingame, San Francisco.
We used the next day as a "sightseeing day" to explore SF on foot. Downtown, Fisherman's Wharf, the Cable Car Museum, Pier 39, the "crooked street" and Chinatown were on the programme.
Back at the hotel, what a surprise! Two completely shredded bike boxes, soaked with water and standing upside down, were waiting for us. The cardboard was so wet that taking them back to the airport to report the damage became a balancing act. 1½ hours at the airport, from "desk to desk" and "floor to floor", and not a single person responsible from British Airways to be found. With no report, and totally exhausted by the ordeal, we went back to the hotel.
Day 3 was all about: a second attempt at reporting the damage, finding the missing parts and getting the bikes back into working order. No problem, we thought, it'll all be done by lunchtime. How wrong we were! Despite BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), which always got us around quickly, our search for spare parts in SF and the surrounding area was unsuccessful. One shop ordered a part we needed from Ventura, 650 km away. A cheap temporary solution will have to last until mid-September. Totally discouraged and fed up, we went back to the hotel. The result was one more night in a hotel.
Now we can finally get going! With "BART" and our bikes straight into downtown San Francisco, a test ride along SF Bay over the Golden Gate Bridge, on to Sausalito and Tiburon, and a trip on the high-speed catamaran give us back our confidence.
At midday, at 35 degrees, we leave Burlingame heading for Half Moon Bay. In the evening, with the thermometer showing only 15 degrees, which is normal for this region, we reach Half Moon Bay. The place is described as "beautiful", but apart from souvenir shops, honeymoon suites and weddings it doesn't offer very much. In the village, a wedding party has taken almost all the hotel rooms, so we pay USD 150 for a room and a place at the wedding buffet. We were then allowed to spend two more nights with a local, camping in their garden and enjoying a BBQ. Here we also got rid of 20 kg of excess luggage, which was sent back to Lucerne by UPS.
Greetings to our friends at Half Moon Bay: Thank you for your help, Bike storage, the Campground and the beautiful BBQ-Dinner. See you soon in Switzerland.
On the recommendation of Jack and Vicky, a "tandem cycling couple", and for a better overview, we have two bike maps sent to Carmel. The road maps we had "stuck together" from a road atlas turned out to be completely useless! Without the Bicycle and Touring Map of the Pacific Coast, sections 4 and 5, you get absolutely nowhere.
The following example gives a first impression of distances in the USA: shopping at the nearby centre takes "only 20 minutes", or it might be: "after 2 miles take a right, then 4 blocks down the street, at the left". That is roughly how Americans give directions and distances. And so, in the evening, after 35 miles (56 km) and two new lightweight outdoor backpacks, we reached our campsite. Another rest day gone!
Fog and drizzle without any sun, everything grey on grey, accompany us on the way to "Pigeon Point", where we want to spend the night in a "dorm" (a 6-bed room). Standing on a cliff 50 km south of San Francisco, the 16-metre-high "Pigeon Point Lighthouse" is one of the tallest lighthouses in America. Its first lens, weighing 8,000 kilograms, with a diameter of 6 metres, a 1,008-prism Fresnel lens and a five-wick lard oil lamp, was lit for the first time in 1872. Today the modernised lighthouse is still an active part of the US Coast Guard.
In Monterey we visit the aquarium, ride the 17-Mile Drive, photograph the world-famous cypress and scan the Pacific for whales with our binoculars. Apart from seals and pelicans we haven't spotted anything exciting yet. The weather is cool and foggy. Sleeping bags, tent and clothes stay wet and damp. Further south it is supposed to get better. That is encouraging, and our search for the sun has already taken us 200 miles.
From Monterey onwards, California shows us a completely different face. Sunny, pleasant temperatures, and changing vegetation, from well-kept greenery to sparse grazing land. Pismo Beach, Lompoc and the coastal towns that follow are all about surfing. After football and basketball, surfing is probably the third most popular sport. Wherever there are Pacific waves, there are plenty of surfers in their black wetsuits. The "Californians" always have time for a chat and are interested in our plans. They are helpful and happy to tell us about the USA, the coming elections, and to give us travel tips. Coffee breaks, swapping email addresses, meeting kindred spirits and collecting travel advice have often left us short of time. Like at El Capitán State Beach, where we arrived at 18:00 without any food - no shop - no dinner. Hoping to get something warm in our stomachs after all, we ask our camping neighbour for some pasta and salsa. He spontaneously invites us to his family reunion with a BBQ. All perfect, and as a result, dinner at a birthday party the next day is already taken care of too.
Many thanks to all SCIARONIS for this wonderful evening and BBQ at the Campground. We liked your Beans and Birthday Cake.
Carmel is very expensive! A night in a 2- or 3-star hotel without a sea view costs between USD 250 and 300. We prefer to track down the "cheap" 40-dollar campsite, 7 miles off Highway 1. Because of roaming mountain lions, we were advised not to go hiking away from the camp! By now we have pedalled 270 miles and reached the Pfeiffer Big Sur Campground. The sun is back, and so are the ever-present souvenir shops of the tourist centres. Just 35 miles from Carmel, the price of a campsite has already dropped to 6 dollars. We are curious to see how these "hard ground prices" develop all the way to San Diego.
Big Sur, with its rugged rocky coastline, is a landscape full of variety, curvy and hilly. These miles are really worth it. On this stretch we also spotted our first whales. By now we only need 2 hours for breakfast, showering, taking down the tent and loading the bikes. Every move is now in tune, and the spare tyres have finally found a secure place to be strapped on. Equipped with the bike maps, planning the daily stages is "a piece of cake"; only the question of "what's where" in our panniers still hasn't been fully settled. Even so, we have got used to our new everyday life, and we have successfully finished adjusting the position of the grips, the gear shifter, the saddle height and the saddle angle.
Cambria, a small town in "Wild West style", lies roughly halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. In the pretty "Bridge Street Inn" hostel we take two rest days and treat ourselves to a fine meal in a restaurant. What stands out is that Cambria has one main street lined with lots of little shops and restaurants. Not overrun by tourists, this little town invites you to stroll and linger in its street cafés. The climate has changed too, and the sun shines at 25 to 30 degrees from 10:00 until 19:00. But there is a steady wind, and at night the temperature drops below 15 degrees.
Already 21 September? Already 20 days in California?
We leave Carpinteria, heading for Los Angeles. On the way to Point Mugu we spend the night at a Pacific campground close to the beach. Dusk has already fallen, and while we are putting up the tent we are attacked by an invasion of mosquitoes. Too late, we notice the wetland just a few steps away. Cooking outside the tent was out of the question, so dinner had to be made inside the tent. In the morning it was the same scene all over again, so we left this unpleasant campsite without breakfast. We have never packed up so fast!
One last hill before Santa Monica, Purisima Hill (900 feet high), still had to be conquered. Now the skyline of LA came into view. From Malibu, a well-kept bike path takes us along "Pacific Beach" to "Venice Beach". We skip a Los Angeles sightseeing tour and devote ourselves all the more to the bizarre goings-on at Venice Beach, with its many free spirits selling anything that brings in dollars, and the Muscle Beach cage, "forever young and fit", kickboards, skateboards, rollerblades and everything that rolls, hops or jumps on muscle power.
After 2 nights in an extremely unsatisfactory hostel, we leave LA to tackle our longest daily stage so far: 130 kilometres. Somewhat exhausted, we reach the Capistrano Beach campground at 20:00. Even with our well-practised routine, putting up the tent and cooking dinner by headlamp takes at least an hour.
The stretch from Los Angeles to San Diego is described as not very attractive. We were pleasantly surprised by the bike paths and the varied beaches, with the islands and towns off the coast. We quickly found "Campland on the Beach" on a peninsula in San Diego. With 2 pools, 2 jacuzzis, the best facilities and none of the Pacific Coast roar, this is the most expensive, but also the most beautiful, campsite so far (44 dollars a day).
We wanted to spend a few restful days in San Diego before continuing to Mexico. The trip to Tijuana (the Mexican border town next to the USA) became a real test. Despite plenty of advice and all our caution, we did not escape a theft. The idea of taking the bus from Tijuana via Mexico City (changing buses) to Tapachula was quickly dropped. Tapachula lies on the Pacific coast, 18 kilometres from the border with Guatemala. The vague prices, the complicated transport of the bikes and the 4-day, 4,000-kilometre bus journey to the Guatemalan border were too risky for us.
We decide to rent a pickup, drive back to LA with our luggage and then fly to Guatemala City with "Continental Airlines". The 5 days in San Diego were anything but restful. During that time we rode 150 miles by bike to replace the stolen sunglasses, organised bike boxes, repaired a flat rear tyre twice, packed the bikes, and replaced our lost coffee mugs at the "REI" outdoor shop!
The 3-hour drive to LA went smoothly despite the rush hour, and we quickly reached the motel for the night. The preparations for the next day's flight to Guatemala were done. We had plenty of time left for a relaxed dinner to round off Alexandre's birthday.
Our flight to Guatemala was pure stress!
The 4 hours we had allowed before departure turned out not to be enough. Up at 7:30, return the rental car, queue at check-in, and problems checking in the bike boxes, which counted as excess weight. As a result, we missed our feeder flight to Houston. Luckily there was a second way to catch the connecting flight from Houston to Guatemala City. Queuing, special screenings, passport control, and again and again "stand in the queue". 10 minutes before departure we reach the gate, which is already closed. Boarding had to be reopened especially for us. After a 3-hour flight we reach Houston at 17:00 (time difference +2 h).
The onward flight to Guatemala at 19:10 left us only a little time for a coffee break.
After 1,390 kilometres we leave California with these memories:
Riding our bikes over the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito
A BBQ party with friends in Half Moon Bay
Raccoons in the rubbish bin and in our tent
Cycling on the freeway
US drivers and motorhome drivers who treated us with consideration
The Pacific Coast Highway, almost 90% of it with a bike lane, in places up to 3 metres wide
The mosquito invasion at the campground after Point Mugu
Venice Beach with its bizarre houses, many free spirits and the Muscle Beach cage
Camp Pendleton, the US military base with 14 kilometres of coastline
The invitation to the "Sciaroni" family party at El Capitán State Beach
In Monterey: the aquarium, the seals and the 17-Mile Drive
The border town of Tijuana in Mexico, and the decision to fly over Baja California
Biker info California
Test ride: |
At home, with all your gear. 300 metres of climbing! |
Food: |
Carry enough for 2 days |
Water: |
Not always safe to drink in state parks |
Stages: |
Elevation profile, distances and time needed: don't underestimate them. |
Bike path: |
Use the bike lane. Highways can turn into freeways, which bikes are usually not allowed on. There are exceptions, though. |
Transport: |
Bicycles are carried free of charge on public buses (max. 2) and on the rail network (metro). |
Climate: |
Temperature differences of 10-25 degrees are possible, damp and foggy, headwinds. Important: sun protection |
Hotels: |
Hotel rooms are usually twice as expensive on Fridays and Saturdays. (Weekend = campground) |
Internet: |
Without your own laptop: in public libraries. |
