Baja solo touring: advice needed

In article said:

The best ways to carry large quantities of water.

Get a desalinator. There is always water, but it is salty.

They cost 500-2000 dollars, but sometimes there are cheaper units on Ebay.

Unfortunately it is hard work to manually press the water through a reverse osmosis filter. I myself
have solved this problem: kolumbus.fipurpur.jpgOpen ↗ This is for PUR-06, which
produces only one liter/hour. With a bicycle one might use pedal power instead of wind.

Another solution is to get the 4 liter/hour PUR-35 and modify it so that it folds up nicely:
kolumbus.fipur35.jpgOpen ↗

Quoted message said:

Some of my concerns are tire choices (punture resistance, using slime), the best ways to carry
large quantities of water, good places to explore, etc.

I haven't been to Baja, but here is the method I used to carry water in Outback Australia: -- Start
with three bottles on my bicycle, ~2.5liter -- Add Camelback, ~3 liter -- Add two water bottles in
outside pannier pockets, ~2.5 liter -- Add a second reservoir to camelback, ~3 liter -- Add water in
panniers (low if possible), using water bag, purchased bottles, juices, etc.

I just went down this list as far as I needed, depending on the distance, terrain, weather, etc. A
base guideline that seemed to work for me was 1 liter per 20km plus 2 liters for an overnight. I
would adjust from there.

--mev, Mike Vermeulen

In article said:

A base guideline that seemed to work for me was 1 liter per 20km plus 2 liters for an overnight. I
would adjust from there.

Nuts. 10 liters per day. Mike is fat or otherwise uneconomically constructed.

I say that one can survive with 3 liters per day, if you avoid sweating. In fact I have done just
that, for more than 12 months, in Baja. 3 liters means 3 hours pumping the PUR-06 desalinator.

[email hidden] (Eric Webster) wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Hi all, I am planning to cycle tour in Baja this winter. I will do it on a mountain bike, camping
most nights. I want to take my time, spending maybe two months exploring.

I have bike toured before (solo in Vietnam), I speak decent spanish and I have been to baja twice
(via car and via the Green Tortoise).

I am looking for advice from anyone who has done something similar. Most of the stuff on Google is
fairly old. Some of my concerns are tire choices (punture resistance, using slime), the best ways
to carry large quantities of water, good places to explore, etc.

again, where are you going? ...X-C or Hwy 1, oceanside or seaside? if Hwy 1, it's a piece of
cake, enough food stores, cafes & stuff to get you thru w/ the minimum of planning ahead, never
more than half day of food. bike parts are a little different but you could probable scores some
spares off a RVer. goatheads could be a problem. most of the water is well so i considered it
pretty safe. 1 gal bottle water is availible thanx to tourist demand. winter is the raining
season and it can come down in buckets, washing out roads and local flooding. one year we got
there a few weeks after a rain (hurricane?) did major damage to Cabo. but the catii were fat,
full of water and blooming along with just about everything else in the desert. awesome. the AAA
Baja Guide & map was the best, updated every year or two. it's desert so expect freezing in the
morning & +80-deg the afternoon, esp in the north. in Rosario, this guy would setup a pushcart
near the bus station and sell roast pork to die for.

Quoted message said:

Thanks, I will post on "rides."

Why has NAFTA changed things in Baja? More vehicle traffic?

yeah, before the trucks were Dina(?) short haul, 2 axle delivery like the ones you see in US
cities. on my last trip they were a bunch of semis on a road that most Americans would consider
residential.