Cabo San Lucas, being a tourist destination, has a great many activities available. At Jerry’s spur-of-the-moment suggestion, Andrew booked us on an all-terrain-vehicle tour. The price was about $80 a person, and lasted for about three hours.

Baja’s ATVs and Watersports was the company who we went through, and after experiencing the service, they seemed like a good choice. They sent a shuttle to pick everyone up. There were 14 people on our tour from four different hotels. After an hour’s travel in the shuttle, we arrived at their ranch. We were each given a helmet, goggles and a scarf to wear over our mouths and nose. The staff was friendly, and mostly spoke good english. Their outpost was powered by two solar panels, and they had clean bathrooms.

Each of us got our own Honda ATVs of recent manufacture. Most of them were the basic Rancher model. All of them were in decent mechanical condition, but – as expected – many were pretty ugly. They offered a $10 insurance policy against bodily harm and mechanical damage that the three of us made sure to purchase.

The initial portion of the tour was to help new riders get familiar with the equipment. The Rancher has Honda’s automatic-clutch transmission, so it’s pretty easy to operate. For the first hour, we followed our guide in a single-file line. Upon reaching a plateau, he handed out water and set us loose.

We estimated the ranch to be at least five miles long and two miles deep. The Pacific was on one side, and the desert on the other. Cactus and scrub, with ATV tracks running everywhere throughout, made it easy to get away from the pack. Jerry’s ATV had gauges on it, and he says many times we were getting upwards of 60 MPH on the straight-aways.

Andrew flipped his attempting to do a 180° turn, bloodying his elbow and giving himself a pretty good case of ass-burn. Jerry ditched his three times, but kept on it and was able to get out of his predicaments. I almost dumped once, but held on for dear life. I came out of the tour unscathed, but I was being more cautious than others because I was carrying my camera.

We saw some interesting detritus, including what appeared to be a wrecked-out Geo Metro, and a make-shift grave site about ten meters from the end of a path terminating at a steep gully.

An hour flew by, and we met back at the plateau. From there, it was single-file back to the outpost. The ride was incredibly dirty, and a whole lot of fun. We all headed for the shuttle, and ended up sitting in it for about half an hour. One of the couples didn’t buy the insurance and when they checked out one of their vehicles, they found damage. Always buy insurance!

Back at the hotel, we went back to our rooms. I scrubbed down twice, but when I dried off, the towel was still brown with Baja peninsula grime.