I like it when life presents in wonder ways the underlying connections between distinct at first glance events. Sometimes they are quite obvious, sometimes just hard to see.
Baja’s Highway 1 between Ensenada and San Quintin is not the best bike ride. The terrain is not particularly difficult, but the traffic is terrible. Mainly big lorries on the narrow road winding in the hills. In the afternoon of the first day we had a chat with the so called “green angel”. A guy in a new truck patrolling the stretch of 300 kms scouting for tourists in trouble and providing assistance if necessary. He advised us to stay as much on the right side of the road as possible. Not that we had much room to move – the road had no shoulder for the most part. He explained that the big part of the traffic is caused by a company in San Quintin called Los Pinos. They have 80 big lorries which go every morning to Tijuana and drive back in the afternoon. I started paying more attention to the branding of the lorries after that and noticed that most of them were “Los Pinos” indeed.

We got somehow to San Quintin – a dusty coastal town. Thanks to Sophia we had an arrangement to stay with a Warmshowers host. His name was Gabino. We were to be his first guest from the website. He was away on a business trip but apparently we could stay in his house with his family. It was not easy to find the house which was in a new neighborhood in the outskirts of the town. No paved roads, no street names, no street numbers. Even the locals were a bit confused with the street names. After nearly an hour wondering we somehow managed to find the house and were welcomed by Gabinos wife and daughter. Communication was a bit hard since they did not speak English and our Spanish was not better either. Enough for shower, laundry and food though:) Later when Gabino’s stepson Luis got back from work things got easier – he spoke good enough English. These people were extremely hospitable. Apart from all the food and everything else, Luis provided his own room for us to sleep in. He was not working early next morning so after breakfast suggested to take us to show us some nice places in town and the beach. So we took couple of hours to pay respect to his nice offer. We drove some 20 k to the biggest tomato farm I have seen in my life. Luis took us up a small hill in the middle of a huge field of greenhouses. The hill was apparently the home of the owners of the Los Pinos (the company with the 80 trucks flooding the road to Tijuana everyday). There was a checkpoint on the road to the hill but Luis just waved to the guards and they let us in. What was my surprise when we got up on the hill and Luis declared that Los Pinos, probably the biggest tomato growing operation in the country, belongs to “the family of my father”. Haha! All the traffic we suffered for days, and now we are staying here with the son of the Los Pinos guy. Wherever I looked, in all directions, all I could see were fields of greenhouses….