5 July, 2000

Finally! The trip has begun. Ok, we feel like we've been traveling for for about eight months, but now we are doing it somewhere besides the USA.

We met up with Cris in San Ysidro (last US exit before entering Mexico) at a little bit after 1pm, bought gas and propane, and headed across the border at about 2pm. Paid for our tourist cards just across the border, no problems at all. The first snag came when we started looking for the office to get our temporary importation permit for Sandy and the Gimp. We had stopped ahead of time to get the paperwork at AAA, so we thought the whole process would be a 15 minute no-brainer. After walking around for about half of an hour, we finally found the right window. It isn't marked. Of course. Turns out that the paperwork we got at AAA had just about nothing to do with the paperwork we needed. Fortunately, Beebee had read up on the whole process and had a multitude of photocopies of just about every document we own, so once we found the right window and the right paperwork, we were ready to go. The guy behind the window even seemed impressed that we were as prepared as we were. Whew!

With that behind us, we found Cris again (who had sat watching the vehicles) and went off down the road, hoping to make Cataviña by nightfall. Between stopping for the occasional view, stopping for gas once (over $2/gallon. Ouch!) and stopping or cows in the road we didn't make it that far. We did make it to San Quintín, a small coastal town South of Ensenada. We passed through San Quintín as dusk began to fall and, minding the admonition to never drive in Mexico at night, we felt pressed to find a place to stay. After turning off onto what was clearly a residential area, we were feeling a little bit anxious as we really had no idea where we were. Fortunately we met a nice guy from Arizona who knew the area and recommended Cielito Lindo, just south of San Quintín, and not far north of where we were. So back we went.

Driving down the incredibly bumpy little road to Cielito Lindo we had our first real "oops". "The ride is feeling rougher than it should", thought Steve. Just then Cris got on the CB and told us we looked like we were dragging something. So we stopped, and sure enough, the spare tire had fallen off of the tongue of the trailer! The tire was barely scathed so we threw it up on the roof rack and continued on. It was about then, due to the diminishing daylight, that Cris also pointed out that the Gimpy had no running lights. That'll need to be fixed.

The only good thing to come of this was that Steve got to play with the driving and fog lights a little bit on the very dark road to Cielito Lindo. Wow!! Nothing like an extra 300 watts of light up front to brighten your way.

Cielito Lindo was great. Ok, the camping was decent, at least. We had the option of dunes camping, palapas near the restaurant camping, or a hotel room. The camping was $5/site, the hotels were about $50. We camped. We also enjoyed a great meal in a really cozy and very nice restaurant. The owner, Kim, came out and chatted with us about what we were doing and all of that, and even threw a few free beers our way and gave us some firewood. She was great.

All in all, it was a good day. Not nearly as many miles as we hoped to cover, but it is nice to finally be on our way and we are really enjoying Cris's company.

Brrr! Last night was cold! This isn't really what we expected in Mexico in July. The temps were down in the 50's, but felt cooler still for the dampness of the ocean air. But the sun came out, and things warmed up pretty quickly.

While we were waiting for the sun, Cris and Steve enjoyed a great breakfast burrito while Beebee went running. After finishing up our morning rituals and packing the trucks, we were ready to go. Steve tried to take advantage of the hot showers offered at the motel, but got nothing but cold water. Cold and brackish. Still, it was a shower and that felt great.

We pulled out of Cielito Lindo a little before noon and headed back out to Hwy 1. Stopped briefly in El Rosario for some gas and to check the oil, just in case. Then off to Cataviña. Unfortunately, due to bad CB antenna placement and a slight lack of attention on Jocelyn's part, we managed to crack the windshield. The funny thing is that we've had the antenna there many times in the past and if we opened the hood the antenna just fell off (it is magnetic). This time, however, it wedged between the hood and the glass and dented the former while cracking the latter. What a bummer. We started out hoping that the cracks wouldn't spread (there are 5 in all), but they did. We are still hoping that the two horizontally inclined ones will turn downward… so we don't have to replace the windshield yet.

Cataviña turned out to be quite the interesting little place. Rocks. Rocks and cactus. Monstrous rocks and monstrous cactus… and hot. That was about it, though it was beautiful in its own barren sort of way. There was one hotel and two little stores and not much else. No gas at the moment either. We found ourselves feeling glad that we hadn't pushed on the night before to arrive. Especially since the road from San Quintín to Cataviña was really very sinuous and would have been a nightmare to drive at night. We ate a good lunch at a nice little restaurant, then stopped to play on some rocks for a bit and take a few pictures, then off to find a gravel road that headed north to San Felipe.

Ahhh… the gravel road to San Felipe. So on the AAA map of Baja California there is a gravel road that is marked from just south of Cataviña up along the gulf coast to San Felipe, stopping in Puertocitos along the way. Wanting the off-road experience, we decided that this would be a fun was to spend a day and still let us get to San Felipe early on Friday. Keep in mind that we are driving along in two very well set-up 4wd vehicles.

Our first clue should have been the trucker who said "El camino es malo, malo. Muy mal." Translated roughly (including his expression) "Why the heck are taking that road?". Our second clue should have come from the description that Cris had downloaded "Do not travel this road without another vehicle, and only in vehicles which are well prepared. Carry extra water". Ok… no problem. Off we go!

The first hour or so was bad, but the 6-inch washboards could mostly be avoided by diving (and yes, we mean diving -- the side road exits come up fast and hard)off of the gravel road, onto the sandy side-roads that have formed on either side of the main. When we did have to hit the washboards, it was a no-win situation. Five mph wasn't slow enough to make them smooth, 40 mph wasn't fast enough. Faster than 40 wasn't sane because of the not-to-seldom bathtub-sized holes in the road.

After almost two hours of driving on this lousy road, Cris said what were to become classic words for the day. Upon asking him how he was doing, over the CB, he replied, "Oh, I'm just lolly-gagging along, feeling sorry for poor Gimpy" [who was jumping all over the darn place]. Not five minutes later things got ugly.

"Pull over, NOW!" Shouted Cris, just as Steve noticed that something was not right. Gimpy had had enough and just plain let go. Ok, it wasn't really Gimpy's fault- the ¾" bolt that hold the trailer ball on had wiggled it's way out of the ball and the ball had fallen off. Gimpy was hanging by just his safety chain and dragging along in the dirt and gravel. Thank Goodness it didn't let go completely!

Needless to say, we were feeling despondent. Here we were, several hours from nowhere, with the ocean (our goal for the day) in sight, and no ball with which to haul Gimpy. At least the temp had dropped from about 105 down to about 95. Feeling very hopeful, we started looking… and sure enough, we found the ball and the bolt! Whoo-hooo! It just so happened that Steve had and extra ¾" lock-washer in the truck as well (we have no idea why). So we put it all together as best we could (the bolt was pretty stripped) cleaned up what mess we could (several bottles of various chemicals had exploded in the trailer) and limped onward to Bahía San Luis Gonzaga to spend the night, with Cris driving alongside of us when possible to see if Gimpy was about to let loose again.

Bahía San Luis Gonzaga is beautiful. Simply beautiful. While Steve and Jocelyn had a much needed beer and set up camp under a huge palapa, Cris drove off to play in the sand a little. After he had been gone for about half an hour, and we could faintly see his lights in the distance, not moving, Steve jumped in Sandy (without the Gimp) and drove down to see what was going on. It was night, now, by the way. Half way to the Cris's truck, Steve found Cris coming up the beach, looking very unhappy and not a little bit scared. "I'm stuck, at the waterline, tide's coming in." Was all he had to say. When we got to his truck there was no doubt that we had about 15 more minutes before the water got up to his tires (some waves were inches away) and made it impossible to get him out. The Superwinch up front was about to get its first real test.

We both jumped out, grabbed shovels, and got to work digging Cris's tires out of the muck. He had managed to get himself stuck right by the edge of a little creek that drained into the water. The sand there was so soupy that walking was very difficult- each step would sink you to your thigh. After airing down to just about nothing and digging out as best we could, we hooked up the winch and got to work.

After a few tense moments we finally got some movement. Cris got some traction and started to come out. The resultant movement put slack into the winch line, and his tires sank right back down. We were feeling pretty desperate, so on the next attempt, as soon as there was any movement Cris gunned it and…. Came out!!! Whoo-hooo! Now we just had to do a very very quick cleanup of the winch cable and get our butts back away from the water.

Whew! Long day. We slept well. And needless to say, thought nothing about taking any pictures for you all. Sorry.

We found another bolt for our ball for $5 in San Luis. Beebee drove, thinking she would be more gentle on poor Gimpy. She was, but we hit a couple of small (but big enough) bumps in a row and Gimpy flew off to the side of the road. This time the chain didn't even hold. We were pretty despondent, thinking the damage must be worse this time. Not so, it appears that all of the breakables had been destroyed in yesterday's crash.

Steve found the bolt while Beebee pounded a beer and Cris danced for us. It was so good to have him around, not just because we needed another vehicle on the road with us, but because he kept our spirits much higher than they otherwise would have been.

The bolt is stripped. Gone. Useless. The ball is in bad shape, too. We are an hour from San Luis Gonzaga, which is barely a town, and heaven only knows how far from the next place… the map showed little for quite a while. It is about 110 degrees, and we are feeling pretty unhappy right now. We could see a trailer, or something, off in the distance so Cris drove off to investigate. Luck, it seems, has not abandoned us completely.

Sitting in the middle of nowhere there was an abandoned truck with a two-inch ball on its bumper. We wasted no time removing the ball and putting it on Sandy.

That hurdle behind us, we kept on down what was soon to be known to us as The Road From Hell. Hot, washboards like you wouldn't believe, hot, no breeze, hot, bumpy and rutted, hot, loose gravel and extremely dusty. The views were occasionally great, but otherwise there was nothing good about this drive except for finishing it.

In addition to our hitch falling off, the carnage for the day consisted of: several bottles of fuel additive and two bottles of antifreeze breaking open in the trailer, our heater-blower fan dying (no air! arrgh!), one foglight rattling its way off, one driving light dangerously close to falling off, several bolts (bumpers, spring mounts) loosening, and Cris shearing off one of the bolts on his tire carrier. Bad day.

After six hours of averaging about seven-something miles per hour, we finally made Puertocitos. All we could think of was getting a cold drink and some food. Puertocitos was closed. The whole town. No gas, no food, no beer, no hotel, nada. What a disappointment.

Onward! Onward to San Felipe! Finally there was pavement in front of us and we were dying to make some time.

The pavement was almost worse than the gravel road. The big difference was that the huge potholes in the pavement were harder to miss because we were going 55 instead of 7 mph.

But we did finally make Felipe and find Sonja and Todd. The five of us went to town and had huge, strong margaritas and a good dinner at Rice and Beans on the Malecón in San Felipe before heading back out to the beach to camp. Steve and Beebee stayed awake for about 15 minutes.

While we were at the welding shop, we had a fun time watching a local jeweler come by to borrow the torch to melt down some gray putty-looking stuff. Turns out that we was smelting gold. After burning the stuff for about 5-10 minutes he pulled out a lumpy yellow disk of what he claims is just about pure gold. Pretty cool.

We bought some groceries and headed back out to "our beach" a favorite spot we found a year ago, when Sandy was still brand new to us,to meet our pals. Upon arrival we met a local guard and his dogs. Nice guy. Steve was left in the uncomfortable position, at the end of the day, of asking the guard to leave- we wanted to spend some quality time with our close pals before heading off into the wilds of Central America, and while nice, the guard was making the girls a little uncomfortable and he was drinking all of our beer.

We had a great time with Cris, Sonja and Todd. As usual when you are with good friends, the time was too short. We'll miss them very much.

After finishing up some errands (needed to buy coffee in a big way) and eating some lunch we strolled the shops of Felipe for a little while before we hit the road. Also called home to Steve's parents to find out that someone is again making our financial lives difficult. It appears that we will be dealing with fraudulent credit card issues for a while yet.

After that bad news, we decided to get on the road and drive back across the top of Baja before continuing down Hwy 1. We had planned to go back down the bad road… but the last two days convinced us that there was no way we were going to head back down that road. Nor any other road that the locals describe as "Bad, very bad". What they call good roads around here are bad enough for us to feel like we want a 4x4.

We headed out of Felipe, westward on Hwy 3. Along the way we stopped to help a broken down car. Gave the occupants water as they had none. Another car stopped as well, and after offering no real help, asked Steve for gas and oil as they were nearly out of each. Steve gave them a gallon and a quart, respectively. Despite promises to pay us back later, we are writing this one off as points towards positive Karma.

When we got to Valle de la Trinidad we decided to take a dirt road across to the coast. Much more direct than the 3, and not much worse to drive on. In fact, it turned out to be a great road with wonderful views. We enjoyed it very much… except that Gimpy was jumpin around on his too-stiff springs more than we would have liked.

Our long day ended with us back in Cielito Lindo- right where we had spent the first night. A glass of wine and a good meal helped ease the day's troubles and we went to bed, exhausted.

Instead of drive more today, we decided to spend a few hours relaxing on the patio, catching up on journal-work. As night fell, a young couple rolled into the campground in their VW bus. We invited them to dinner and were pleased to meet Tony and Ginny. He's from Australia, she from England. They met in Greece and are now traveling through Central America in an 82 VW that they bought in LA and subsequently rebuilt the engine on. We had a lot of good tales to swap and decided to travel together tomorrow.

Made it to Cataviña by about noon, where we saw another white cruiser in the parking lot. The owners were French, living in Tijuana, and headed north. Fun to meet them. They didn't seem as excited about meeting another cruiser as we were, however. Oh-well.

Southward we followed Peewee through some very barren desert until we finally made it to San Ignacio, where we had planned to spend the night. San Ignacio, according to guidebooks, is a quaint colonial town with a church that is "the best representation of colonial architecture in Baja". We figured it would be a great place to spend a full day, relaxing and sightseeing. The church was ok. Overall, we weren't too impressed. It was wonderful to drive through the date palms into and out of town, and the lake was lovely. Especially after miles and miles of desert, but we decided to move on towards Punta Chivato, at the recommendation of an American we met in San Ignacio.

Out into the desert we went again. The terrain from San Ignacio southward was some of the most barren we'd yet seen. Towards the end of the day we negotiated some awful mountains with about six inches of room to spare on the side of the road. Scary!

We ended the day with what is becoming an unpleasant ritual of looking for a campsite while the sun sets, then setting up camp in the dark. We know we are near Punta Chivato, but maybe not quite on the point.

Today we only drove for about an hour, then spent a few hours in downtown Mulegé at a lovely Bougenvilla-covered patio drinking huge (cold!) piña coladas. When we emerged, the town was shut down for siesta so we headed out to look for a campground. We pulled up to the most amazing place. Looks like the Riviera. There are many palapas along this beautiful cove and the water is the perfect color greenish blue. They only want 60 pesos to camp here. We've found heaven! The bar was even playing Jimmy Buffett's "Cheeseburger in Paradise".

We broke out the snorkel gear and the polespears and in no time flat Tony caught us a skate for dinner! Campfire, wine, fresh fish. Life is good.

Beebee is pulling for a hotel. She slept about an hour and Steve maybe got three, so Steve's not to against the idea. We are beginning to question the wisdom of doing this trip in the summer (not that that was our original plan anyway …). What will August be like??

We parted from The Kids (Ginny and Tony. They're not really kids, but the nickname seems to fit somehow) early as Beebee had decided we were headed all the way to La Paz. There's nothing in between and she couldn't bear the idea of spending another night like last night. Leaving Playa Santispac turned out to be a lot easier than we thought it would be. We passed an interesting painted hillside art/landslide thingy on our way back out into the scorching desert.

We pulled into La Paz around 5:30 p.m. and looked for an inexpensive place in town, but no one had any safe parking for Sandy. So we decided to head out of town about 5Km to La Concha Beach Resort, where we thought we'd see if they were interested in exchanging accommodation for web-exposure and a fair review of their facilities.

We met with Liliana, the guest services manager who was very pleasant and eager to have us stay. We were so excited at the prospect of a shower and a fan in our room!

After a fabulous sunset over the water, we ate dinner on the patio and just… relaxed. After a week of camping in the desert, La Concha is like a dream come true- tropical breezes, white sand beach, clear water, cool tile floors….. Luxury.

While eating dinner with Crisonja on the main drag in La Paz we ran into the Kids and Amanda, Julian and Nick- a threesome of British travelers that the Kids had found. They were staying in a little RV park just down the road so we decided to head out that direction the next day.

Steve was also very glad to find that the park had electricity hookups as he was eager to cool the fridge off after Beebee had attacked it in a cleaning frenzy. Note to the wise- if you turn your refrigerator off for 2 days in 100+ degree heat- don't accidentally leave some cheese sitting in it. Uck.

After leaving the RV park, we headed towards the Pacific coast, cooler weather and Todos Santos, hoping to find a quaint little town and possibly the famed Hotel California (from the Eagle's song, ya know?)

We did find a fairly quaint little town, and the Hotel California. Much to our initial curiosity and eventual mild sadness, the Hotel has closed down for a few months and some remodeling. Probably they charge outrageous amounts to stay here (it didn't look like much to us …). They did have a gift shop and restaurant set up across the street -- where we found out that the hotel wasn't defunct, just in repair -- where we bought another sticker for Gimpy. (We've decided that so he doesn't feel too left out we're covering him with fun stickers of the notable places through which we pass.)

Since we couldn't stay at the Hotel, we decided to see if we could find some free beach camping and boy did we! Tony led us down a dirt road that led to an amazing stretch of beach. Several surfers enjoy this spot, and not too many campers -- perfect!

We set up camp with the tent facing the full panorama of the Pacific. Ahhhh, cool water (that'd be 78 degrees) lots of breeze, a little cloud cover and temps topping out in the low 90's in the sun. We made our own shade with a tarp between the two vehicles and underneath that, the temps were perfect for sitting, napping, just getting out of the sun.

We think we'll be here for a few days. Finally.

After a quick breakfast Tony and Ginny let us know that they had decided to push on further south in search of wind for Tony's windsurfer. We opted to laze at the beach instead and bop into town to update the site.

We found a great little Internet cafe in town, connected to Todos Santos Real Estate and Ken MacFarlane helped us improve a few things on the site and let us upload. Ken also runs a Todos Santos Directory so if you are interested in what is going on down here, he is the guy to whom you'll want to talk.

We tried to brainstorm and see if there was any way to take care of things from the mainland, but came up empty and at the same time realized that our setup needs some serious revamping. Gimpy simply is not appropriate and we have too much stuff. After spending several days with The Kids and their minimalist approach to getting through Central America, we realized we are jealous of their lack of material baggage.

So, we head back to California, take care of business and then scamper down straight to mainland Mexico and off to the Copper Canyon.

While we're in California, we don't plan to update the journal daily as really, you and we both are tired of the getting ready part. We will try to put up some more pictures and to revamp some of the pages, so check in for changes!

And we promise that we'll be back when we have some pretty pics of Mexico and more stories to tell!!

Day 1 began like so many beautiful mornings at Playa Cerritos. Fabulous sunrise over the mountains, a dip in the water, hot coffee… and we were on our way. The drive to Mulegé was sheer misery. Top temp for the day inside the car was 118ºF. The humidity was palpable throughout most of the coastal sections of the trip. Beebee insisted on, and Steve quickly agreed to an air-conditioned room for the night. Keep in mind that the last night we spent near Mulegé is the one to which we still refer as "the night from hell". After checking in at Hotel Mulege (with air, but no ice available) we enjoyed a nice meal at the Las Equipales restaurant just down the street, despite an abundance of flies, and returned to the hotel. Back at the hotel we met Nate, from California, who was on his way south. Both Beebee and Steve got the impression that perhaps we had been too long without chatting with anyone else as we just about talked Nate's ear off in the hall before we retired to our room with the A/C blasting.

Day 2 started out hot. No big surprise. By 8 am when we left our hotel, the temp had already risen to nearly 90ºF. We decided to skip finding breakfast in town because one of the guidebooks promised an excellent panaderia in Santa Rosalia, just an hour north. In addition to the truly exceptional goodies at El Boleo (the aforementioned panaderia), Santa Rosalia also has a really interesting prefab church that was designed by Gustave Eiffel (of tower fame) in 1884, built of steel in France in 1887, then shipped to what was then a copper smelting town in Mexico where it was assembled from 1895 to 1897 in the center of town. For all that work they didn't get a very pretty church (you can only do so much with steel and rivets) but the stained glass windows were nice and the whole thing makes for an interesting story.

In Santa Rosalia we also had the displeasure of our first encounter with a gas station attendant who tried to cheat us out of 50 pesos by not resetting the gas pump. Steve quickly caught on (it takes longer than five seconds to pump 10 liters of gas) and when he refused to pay the extra money the attendant quickly let the issue slide. No harm done, but Steve resolved to continue to keep a careful eye on gas station workers.

As we pulled out of Santa Rosalia, the temperature had climbed to nearly 100°. Soon after leaving we ascended into some higher desert where we were relieved that it grew so cool that we actually closed up the car windows. We got a real kick out seeing that the actual temperature was still about 92ºF. Apparently the lower humidity made quite a pleasant difference.

As we traveled north we skipped on past a gas station at Guerrero Negro, figuring we would refuel in Cataviña, where we planned to spend the night. As we approached Cataviña, we stopped to pour a jerry can of gas into the tank, just to be on the safe side. It was here that Steve discovered that the gas can nozzle doesn't quite fit the gas cans. Much fiddling and cursing later he managed to get about 19 of the 20 liters into the gas tank and only a cup or two onto himself.

Cataviña was out of gas, of course. Figuring that we still had plenty of daylight and "almost definitely enough" gas to make it to El Rosario, we continued north. About half way there we got nervous enough for Steve to brave the evil gas can nozzle again. He did better this time, but it was still messy and far more of a hassle than it really should have been. We pulled into El Rosario with at least four gallons of gas to spare and filled up the tank. We did vow, however, to keep all of the Jerry cans full in the future (we only had two this day) and to never again pass a gas station if our tank was below 1/2 a tank. Lesson learned. Steve also had plenty of choice vows and promises concerning the nozzle.

Sunset found us as we found El Pabellon RV park, just south of San Quintín. For 50 pesos (less than $6) we got warm showers, very clean bathrooms, plenty of space to camp and a beautiful windswept sandy beach. There was also a cool whale-skeleton to look at. Beebee went for a run while Steve pitched camp and started dinner. Nearly 12 hours of travel time took its toll and we fell into our tent shortly after finishing dinner. It was wonderful to be cool enough to actually use blankets again.

We woke early to finish up the drive and were surprised to see a familiar face outside our tent. Ok, it wasn't so much a face, but we immediately recognized the truck and tent of the three Brits with whom we had passed the time in La Paz over a week before. It appeared that by sheer coincidence they had pulled into the same campground and chosen a campsite that was a mere stone's throw from our own. Steve decided to wake them up to say hello, despite the fact that it was early, and we had a fun 10 minute chat before we wished them well and hit the road to San Diego.

On the way up we saw a beautiful winery with what we thought was a sign inviting us to tour and wine taste. We suspected that something wasn't right when we had to struggle down a very muddy road with deep ruts - 4wd engaged and rear end locked was barely enough to keep us going. Our suspicions were confirmed when we found a worker who informed us that the tours were many miles up the highway yet and that the road we were on was too muddy to drive on right now- yeah, we noticed. We gave up on wine tasting and continued north to Puerto Nuevo where we bought some wine to taste at home and ate our fruit and dumped our trash to avoid difficulty at the border.

Despite our preparation, we were somewhat surprised that we caught the attention of one of the drug-dogs at the US border. After a few tense minutes of polite but firm instruction from the dog's handler, we stopped a half mile of cars to open up the trailer so the dog could sniff around. It turns out that the citronella candles we carry to ward off mosquitoes are of the same wax that drug smugglers used to use to mask the smell of bags of cocaine as it was brought into the US. Once the officer discovered that it was candles and nothing more he was very friendly and explained everything to us. Welcome back to the USA, we thought.

Even with the hour-long line at the border and the brief delay with the dog, we still managed to get into San Diego proper by about 3pm. Stomachs growling we made a beeline to In N Out for some yummy So Cal fast food. Funny how you miss strange things when you travel. We were both surprised, however, at how little we missed the endless stream of SUV's and expensive new cars clogging up the freeways. Amazing how little so many Americans do with so much.

We finished off the day by surprising the heck out of Crisonja (Hi! We're back!). As we drifted off to sleep that night, Steve couldn't help but feel a pang of depression at the fact that despite over a year of planning and prep, thousands of dollars, and nearly 20 thousand miles on the odometer, we were going to sleep about 50 feet from the apartment where we had lived about two years ago. Funny how things work out sometimes. Not hilarious, and not particularly amusing, but there is definitely something funny about it.