Compromises Pt. 2

In the last post I talked about two of the compromises I made when preparing for the trip that ended up causing me problems, and how I resolved them as I was leaving Guadalajara. You might think, having fixed two things that I'd previously screwed up, the rest of the day would go smoothly.
Yeah, of course not.

Compromises, Pt. 1

When preparing for a trip like this, or taking a trip like this, there's a lot of decisions to be made. How much should I bring, what things, should I buy good stuff so it'll last or cheap stuff I can replace, etc. On some occasions, I've made compromises - instead of buying the best, or exactly what I wanted, I kept an old one I already had, or tried something new, or tried for a "best of both worlds" sort of situation.

And it seems like every single compromise I made has come back to haunt me.

City Living

Every time I've pulled into a big city, I've found myself... overwhelmed, perhaps? I definitely don't enjoy the "feel" nearly as much as when I pull into some small beach town, or a little village on some back highway. Big cities grow on me over time, but that first arrival is rough. Guadalajara was no different.

Hostel-ity

For the first time on the trip I stayed in a hostel instead of a cheap (or expensive) hotel or camping. And it was 100% worth it.

I pulled into Sayulita in the afternoon after a pretty long day of riding, and made my way to one of the two hostels I'd heard about in town. "The Amazing Hostel" was a block or two farther from city center, but looked like a cool place. And man was it ever.

Splurge

Okay - been a little behind on blog posts. Each of the last two nights I've sat down at the laptop, opened up a new post... and then not written anything. So I'm gonna catch up, because it's actually been a pretty busy couple of days.

In Mazatlan, I ended up staying in a hotel for $43 for one night - by far the most expensive night I've had so far, especially when you add on the $13 dinner I had too. While I won't be spending that much often, in Mazatlan it worked out pretty well.

I'm on a Boat

Finally made my way down to La Paz to catch the ferry across. I realized as I was arriving in town that, had I planned a little better, I could have made it to the Tuesday ferry and been moving on two days earlier. But I'm actually pretty glad I didn't.

Buddies

I'm constantly amazed how many people I run into who are doing something similar to me.

Granted, Baja is a section of the trip that, if you're doing the trip, everyone pretty much goes through. It makes for an interesting funnel. And for those who aren't doing the entire trip but are selecting some smaller portion of it, Baja is almost always part of it.

But still - a guy at the border, three guys in Bahia, three guys in San Ignacio, a guy in Loreto... I keep running into other motorcyclists. And that's not counting the ones I'm not even seeing, or see but don't talk to. We're all over the place.