From my experience of working on the farms in California I knew one thing - every farmer had told me that this year they needed a winter with rain.

A lot of it.

From what I'd been told the Southern California/Baja area can expect the El Nino storms, which bring ample rain, once every three years.

Just our luck - 'our' for I was still travelling with Kat - we happened to arrive in San Diego just prior to what would be 5 days of constant storm weather. We managed to sit out a couple of days but with itchy feet and time ticking (Kat had a flight home to Sweden booked for the middle of February) by the 4th day with the rain still hammering down we left Julanne, our wonderful host and set out on the 15 miles to the border. With a 30 mph headwind this really wasn't easy and after a ridiculously difficult ride we finally made it to the Mexican border - which is easier than it sounds especially when the cycle paths to the border lead you to a locked gate and a dead end.

Lovely weather upon entering Mexico

One question people have often asked is 'Where was the biggest culture shock you've had?'.

I've always ended up disapointing people with my answers, as apart from the crossing from Kyrgyzstan into China where in exchange for basic human rights I could find paved roads and an ATM that works, there really haven't been many culture shocks.

The beauty of the bicycle is that the change in surroundings is gradual, the cultures differ slowly, often melting together and even crossing international borders is no big deal, as both sides of the border are usually inhabited by people of both nationalities.

Well now I have a proper answer - the transition from California to Baja is one of the biggest culture shocks in the shortest distance you will ever experience.

San Diego,one of the more aesthetically beautiful cities I've visited in the US, is also representative of Southern California on the whole. Large buildings, business everywhere, wide streets, a pleasing calm about the place but at the same time, masses and masses of people.

The trip to the border was along the coast and if you were to look at in on the map compared to the rest of the area, it would look uninhabited but still, there were houses, noise and people everywhere.

So how does Baja differ?

Well for a start my 5th experience on this trip of US Customs officials was as pleasant as I expected it to be.

When I arrived in Washington I'd been 'strongly advised' that if I ever wanted to return to the US on the Visa Waiver Program I should surrender my current tourist card when leaving to Mexico. For those without any experience of the US Border Guards, a necessary qualification to get the job in the first place is to have suffered an unfortunate attack from a personality dementor  - no smiling, no jokes, no talk, no nothing - for these people life is not supposed to be fun.

Given that all I was trying to do was let the US Officials know that I was leaving their country as I'd been asked, you think they'd do their best to help. Unfortunately not - but I got there in the end and then it was on to the Mexican side.

We'd had 10 inches of rain in the last 3 days, with 2 more days solid downpour expected and as such the Mexican border guards weren't quite as bothered about who they let into the country as their US counterparts - with the focus much more on keeping themselves dry. So much so in fact, that as opposed to give us a visa, or checking our bicycles through Customs, or even doing something as obvious as checking our passports, we were instead told to 'just go, just go', by the border guards and told to keep on cycling. We got about 500 metres down the road before it was me who stopped and said 'This can't be right, can it?'.

Kat argued that it was just like Europe, where you can travel freely from country to country. I, on the other hand, thinking that I could potentially be spending upward of three months in Mexico, didn't really like the idea of going any further without someone from the Mexican Authorities at least looking at my passport. We turned round, rode back through the deepening puddles and went back to a small room we'd been waved passed on our original entry which had a sign on the window labeled something like 'passport control'.

Door locked, no-one inside.

A couple of knocks on the door and the clerk appeared from outside, where he'd been enjoying a cigarette with a (fully armed) member of the Mexican military. He looked pretty frustrated to have been interrupted but was kind enough to give us the forms we needed to enter the country and without a second look at our papers, any questions about who we were or even asking what our plans were for our time in Mexico, he gave us a stamp letting us stay in the country for 180 days - then shuffled back off outside to light up another cigarette.

My kind of border guard and a big difference to how you're made to feel when entering the US.

We had no plans to hang around in Tijuana.

It really didn't seem like my kind of place; in comparison to the cleanliness and organisation of San Diego the flooded streets, litter on the ground, half built buildings, numerous sleazy establishments and large military presence meant that your first introduction to Mexico is of a not particularly pleasant city.

Where were we headed? Pancho, a man we had met in Encinitas on our way to San Diego, had kindly arranged for us to stay with his cousin and her husband in Ensenada, a day and a half's ride from Tijuana so safely into the country we were on our way.

Despite it's size Tijuana proved a surprisingly easy city to leave and after a quick 60km that afternoon we were left to find somewhere to sleep as the rain and more specifically, wind, really set in.

The first night in a new country is always the worst as there's always the nerves that something could go wrong in the 'unknown' - I'm used to it by now but with Kat still settling into the routine of sleeping where we liked I felt it my responsibility to find us a good place to stay.

I failed pretty miserably and as pitch black approached the best we could do was under a bridge below the freeway.

This wasn't ideal, particularly as after 5 minutes stood where I proposed we camp and us still arguing over whether to stay here or not, 5 members of Mexican Policia showed up, all with rifles. They ignored us at first and whilst it was obvious that whoever they were looking for wasn't us, after a half hour search which yielded nothing it did lead to a first nights camping in Mexico in gale force winds and the knowledge that in the area that we were camping was someone who the Police felt the need to go after with 5 fully loaded Officers.

Of course, the next day nothing had happened and we rode on down to Ensenada to meet with Isaac and his wife Roxanne. They were wonderful hosts, taking us out for a fantastic meal, introducing us to new kinds of food and a new drink that we would also be enjoying over the next couple of weeks - Horchata - a cinammon rice drink. The evening ended as it always seemed to in the company of Mexicans - with Tequila.

Isaac, Roxanne and daughter Regina. As you can tell from his pyjamas, Isaac is an NFL fan and his team is the San Diego Chargers. He owned an X-Box and also Madden , an American Football game for it so I thought I'd give him a match. I have to admit I thought he'd go easy on the guest - a final score of San Diego 56 Seattle 7 proved me very much wrong!

The main news which we weren't aware of that we'd picked up from Isaac was that due to the 14 inches of rain over the past 5 days - doesn't sound a lot to the English, does it? But apparently this was the worst they'd had in 20 years - not one, not two, but three bridges on the only road to La Paz, our final destination on Baja, had been washed away and that right now there was no way to cross.

This didn't sound good - especially as after a few phone calls to his friends no-one seemed any the wiser as to how bad the washed away bridges were and when we would be able to cross. Waking up to a blue sky however, we decided the only way to find out whether we could cross was to go there ourselves.

The ride was beautiful; giant cacti overlooking the road, the scorching sun redenning our faces and with the road out ahead and cars unable to cross the broken bridges, for the first time in a long while - peace and quiet.

Heaven.

We camped on top of a hill that night, wondering how far the broken bridges would begin in front of us. The next morning, and according to the odometer exactly 0.87km from where we'd camped, we found out as we arrived at the first broken bridge.

Yep, definetely a problem here.....

Contrary to the reports of how nothing was crossing, we were pleased to find a local farmer had spotted a good business opportunity and was towing peoples cars across the river - which at the deepest point was about 3 - 4 foot with a strong current. Local truck owners were finding it easy to get through.

This was good news as it meant that all we had to do was sit there and wait for a truck that would be willing to put us in the back, and in the meantime we were free to watch the entertainment. Entertainment being the correct word, as whilst the farmer had no problem crossing in his tractor and the truck owners finding it a little more difficult but still relatively easy, there is always one idiot who thinks their vehicle can get across. Or in this case, two.

The first was a White Ford Transit van - I don't know what was inside but given that luggage was piled on top of the roof as well I dread to think how much weight he was carrying - and despite people telling him not to he went for it, tried to cross and to absolutely no-ones surprise at all, got stuck in the deepest part of the river. With water leaking into the van, the people on our side of the river at least offered little sympathy and after it became clear he was going nowhere, he was eventually pulled out by a somewhat angry looking farmer and his tractor.

So it was obvious which vehicles could make it over and which couldn't - but this is Mexico and that doesn't stop some people. Remember the Mystery Machine from Scooby Doo? Well picture that, made in the 70's and then load down the inside with what looked like carpets and rugs. The driver wasn't going to wait for anyone (or common sense) and was the next to try the gauntlet.

Above: How it should be done. Below: Oh deary me.

Unsurprisingly, his failure was even worse than that of the Transit and he was in genuine danger of being washed away. With black smoke pillowing out of his engine and the water loading up his vehicle, he owes one hell of a lot to the farmer who pulled him out.

We crossed about 30 minutes later in the back of the truck of two Canadian Fisherman - by the time we reached the otherside the Mystery Machine was still sat there smoking, as the owner set about drying out the inside of his vehicle.

It felt hard to have sympathy.

Woops - the Mystery Machine dries out.

On the road again - a car passing every hour or so - and then at about 3 in the afternoon more fun and games as we came to the next bridge.

This wasn't such a deep crossing, but the river was a lot wider and the towns people had all seemed to gather round the rubble of the broken bridge. With a road block in place we couldn't go any further so we were sat on our bikes next to a guy in his truck - time to test out the little Spanish we knew.

'No puente?'

He told us quickly but excitedly that there was no bridge but to follow him. He drove us about a kilometre along the river and before we could even stop to take in the congregation of people sat waiting to be dragged across by a JCB digger, we were ushered to the front of the que. How were we to cross? In the scoop of the JCB!

Crossing in style

10 minutes after arriving, and feeling both pretty humbled by the kindness of the people to take us across and pretty glad that neither we nor our bikes had fallen out of the scoop, we were back on the road, with 2 of the 3 bridges crossed.

The 3rd would come a day and and half later, just past the small town of El Rosario.

If the idea of crossing a 4 ft deep river with a strong current in the Mystery Machine didn't seem like a good idea, what we came across next took stupidity and danger to new levels.

The bridge over the river, had been in part washed away, however not entirely. The solution of the Mexican truckers to this was to drive up to the edge of the broken part and then down a hastily made ramp which consisted of compacted earth. It may not sound too stupid but in the pictures below I've done my best to demonstrate the idiocy.

The trucks were driving right next to the broken part of the bridge - god knows how much they each weighed - but the picture of crack - which was widening with every lorry that drove past, was at most 6 foot from the passing traffic.

It was merely a matter of time before this part of the bridge would fall apart too and whilst I've not read the Mexican news since I'd pretty amazed if a) the bridge has not fallen completely apart and b) nobody was hurt when it did.

With a suspicion that my questions about the safety of driving 10 tonne lorries over crumbling bridges were falling on deaf ears we simply went back to the road. More desert. More quiet. More heaven for me.

2 days later we would arrive in Guerrero Negro. From my time in Yukon, Canada, followers of the blog will know who Koko is - we had met in Whitehorse and had ridden the Canadian section of the Alaska Highway together. We'd e-mailed a bit over Christmas as we'd known we were both headed the same direction but correspondence was not our strong point - so arriving in this town to find an e-mail saying he was sat about 400 metres away from where I was sat was a pleasant surprise and after a happy reunion, we decided to wait around a day so we could all ride south together. During this time we also met Josh and Greg two cyclists who had left their homes in Washington a week after I'd ridden through and we're headed south as well, so in the blink of an eye our peloton was up to 5.

Above: The Peloton grows. Below: In a small town we came across these kids playing arcade games - one of the machines had a football (soccer) game on it. Remembering the drubbing I'd taken at NFL from Isaac I felt it my duty to restore some pride on behalf of British video gamers. Showing no mercy and with a final score of Blake 4 - Mexican seven year old 0 I felt I'd done just that.

Riding as a group is always more fun, and the couple of days ride down to Loreto, which involved sleeping on beaches, a few beers and a lot of exchanging stories made for a relaxing few days.

In Loreto, with a couple of the bikes we'd been riding beginning to shown signs of fatigue, we stopped to get them fixed. Koko, who writes for a few magazines in Japan, decided to stop here for the night as he had to work, but the rest of us decided to carry on.

Pancho, the lovely guy who had given us the contact with Isaac in Encinitas, also had a cousin who lived in Loreto - he had told us that she currently lived in a hotel so we wouldn't be able to stay, but to give her a call and be sure to say hi as we passed through. Our plan, thinking it would be rude to not at least say hi, was to pop by, say hello, fill up our water bottles, and then head off and camp just out of town.

At around 3 we managed to come by, say hello to Anie and her husband Jorge and were once again truly humbled by the kindness of people who had only just met us.

Jorge was a manager at the hotel, which was brand new (and had it's own swimming pool and jacuzzi!) and was beyond kind when he offered the 4 of us a room for the night. His generosity was already too much, before he took it upon himself to show us the true meaning of Mexican hospitality, which involved, after a quick tour of Loreto, taking us to a local bar where he proceeded to give us tequila. And tequila. And tequila.

I was impressed not just by his hospitality, but by just how much this guy could drink and as we all faded into drunkenness we were left to observe the man who had not only worked a full day, but could out drink us all by quite someway.

The next morning we all awoke groggily and trying to sober up only to find Jorge, who it turned out had been up another couple of hours after us, already up, looking much to healthy for a man with a hangover and the spring in his step as he went off to work.

We expressed our gratitude, gave him and his wife a bottle of wine and headed on our way to La Paz.

Above: For someone who'd drank as much as he had, Jorge looks far to happy the following morning. Below: Just the sort of climb you need to sort out a hangover....

We arrived three days later to La Paz, with Koko joining us a day later and from here we head to Mazatlan on the boat tomorrow.

So there we have it - another section of the trip - my Spanish is improving everyday and I have loved every minute of the ride in the peace and quiet of Baja. The Mexican people have been something else so far, with a friendly face never far away and people quick to offer us a meal or water and a couple of times a place to stay for the night.

It's been a culture shock coming to Baja, but definetely a good one.