Plan 'B' for thrills

“Got dirt?'' That's the bumper sticker for the fast-paced, freewheeling lifestyle of all-terrain vehicles, or ATVs — the most popular off-road vehicle around in the United States.

The sticker is usually found on the windshield of a Ford or a Chevy or a Dodge that's packed with toys and headed out to nowhere.

Apart from the ATV (which can easily cost up to $8,000 or Dh29,384), you would also need the safety gear to ride it (which sets you back by additional $500 or Dh1,837) and a four-wheel drive or some other vehicle (for tens of thousands of dollars more) to haul it, which makes it a real commitment when you measure it in terms of infrastructure.

Adventure for cheap

But what if, like me, you don't own a pickup truck or an ATV?

What if you're a casual off-roader, interested in only occasional trips to the desert, dunes or forest?

That's possible — and for a fraction of the cost — through tour companies that don't just provide the ATV and the riding gear but also a seasoned guide who won't get lost in the wild.

That's what I was looking for — and easily found — online. A quick search yielded a handful of companies offering ATV tours.

I chose California Motorsport Adventures, based in San Diego, the US, because it offered day trips, in addition to adventures of longer duration.

And if that were not enough, the company did them in legendary off-road terrain — Baja, Mexico.

Formalities first

After signing up by phone and paying a 10 per cent deposit, I was instructed to meet at the border car park on a Saturday morning.

Because I live in Los Angeles and the border is at least three hours away, I chose to drive down the night before and stay in a cheap hotel in San Ysidro — the last US town before Tijuana.

At 8 the next morning, I got a call from the tour guide offering to pick me up at the motel in his van.

This good deed saved me the $9 (Dh33) in border parking.

I was the first of two pickups, the other being a pair of twentysomethings from the San Francisco Bay Area.

Novice-friendly tour

Only one of my fellow tourists had any ATV experience, and it consisted of one day riding an ATV in Greece.

I was the most seasoned of our bunch, with three entire days of ATV-ing under my belt.

California Motorsport Adventures caters to all experience levels but I found it novice-friendly and conscientious in its matching of riders with similar skill sets.

(Riders as young as 8 have taken the trips but acceptance depends on skill and strength levels.) An hour later, we landed at the Cantamar sand dunes, where three guys were popping wheelies on the ATVs my fellow tourists and I would be riding soon.

It wasn't a pristine beach — there was quite a bit of trash. But the riding area was fairly large and, even better, almost no one was there.

Our guide, Blake, instructed us to put on our gear and saddle our manual-transmission Honda EX250s.

Then he walked us through the controls, issued a few riding tips and sent us wheeling through the grit.

The next 90 minutes were free form, as we climbed hills, carved tracks, even rode into the water at the edge of the Pacific, kicking up plumes of saltwater with our low-pressure tires.

I must confess that I felt guilty riding at water's edge, but this sort of thing is legal in Mexico — as is riding ATVs on the street, which is how we got to the taco shack we visited for lunch and the inland trails we would be checking out later in the day.

The terrain we rode in the afternoon was completely different from the sand we had ridden that morning.

For a one-day tour, that was more variety than I had expected — and I appreciated the difference.

Unlike the dunes, the trails covered a lot of ground — about 35 miles — and most of them were remote and hilly paths consisting of rock and dirt or, more accurately, mud, since it had rained the night before.

In California, the off-highway vehicle areas are usually packed on a Saturday, but the trails of west Baja were vacant.

Pit stop for refreshment

We didn't encounter a single other rider until we reached Pancho's Place — a shack that offered sodas and an outhouse.

And even then, the chickens and rattlesnakes outnumbered the patrons five to one.

Ordinarily, I would have been wary of an 18-year-old guide leading me into the middle of a nowhere with non-potable water, but Blake has been dirt biking in this part of Baja for a decade with his family.

He also races the Baja 1000, so he knows this area as if it were his neighbourhood.

He never consulted a map, relying entirely on his internal GPS and natural landmarks to lead us around various paths, stopping every so often to shoot pictures of us using our own cameras.

At every stop, he would ask with a cockeyed smile: Are you ready for rocky road?

I really couldn't imagine anything bumpier. Then we reached a road so rocky it should have been called Boulder Boulevard.

It really did push us tourists to the edge of our abilities, but Blake was careful to make sure he never lost us as we bounced along.

Caked in mud

After three hours of trails, it wasn't just my ATV that was caked in mud.

My entire body was covered, to the point that I almost wasn't able to see through my sunglasses.

Then, just as I was getting used to looking through the last peephole of my plastic eye protection, we were back in the gravel-and-dirt flatlands, meeting the guys who would haul us and our ATVs away.

For me, the one-day tour offered the right level and length of riding for my skill set and physical abilities.

It ended just as I was feeling like a crash waiting to happen and landed me back in the US by 6pm and in my own bed by 10.

For someone who isn't yet ready to buy into the off-road lifestyle with thousands of dollars worth of goodies, it was a great day.

I spent $350 (Dh1,286) to do only what I wanted to do — ride.

Go there ... From the UAE ... From Dubai

The closest international airport to Cantamar is San Jose Del Cabo International Airport

Delta flies six days a week via Atlanta.
Fare from Dh5,840

Emirates and American Airlines fly daily via New York and Los Angeles.
Fare from Dh8,620

— Information courtesy: The Holiday Lounge by Dnata.
Ph: 04-3166160