On our way out of town we stopped at a water purification plant, being somewhat surprised that we could find one open on a Sunday. But it was, and we were even more surprised to find that 5 gallons of water costs 12 pesos, or about 60 cents - the same price as 1 liter of bottled water. So it won’t take us long to recoup the cost of our 5 gallon jug.
We ventured south today, planning to stay in El Pescadero. But the campground we were looking for had closed down. We had also hoped that there would be a sign somewhere along Mex 16 that showed that we had crossed the Tropic of Cancer. Despite driving in both directions on both the main road into town and the bypass, we had no such luck. This invisible line is located near Todos Santos, a little town known for its arts and crafts vibe. So at some point yesterday we entered the Tropics, but exactly where will forever remain a minor mystery to us.
There was a another campground located in Todos Santos, so we went there, only to be greeted by a pack of dogs (most likely the owner’s). It was pretty dusty and funky, and we figured that Lana would be freaked out by the dogs, so we quickly turned around, then went and gassed up while we pondered our options.
Having already struck out on three counts, we made the decision to reroute and go to Los Barriles on the east coast to camp for the evening. But since we were in town, we took the opportunity to see the Mission of Todos Santos, the Hotel California (the one made famous by The Eagles) and to browse the arts and crafts shops.
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| Hotel California. |
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| Mission Todos Santos. |
On the way south, we had seen a large number of Mexican cyclists strung out along the highway, and had wondered if there was some big event in progress. It turns out that we were seeing the stragglers of a Gran Fondo that ended in the square across from the Todos Santos Mission. There was a big banner strung up on one corner, bicycles where piled into or on about half the vehicles in town and there was an awards ceremony in progress around noon. Everyone packed up and left for home shortly thereafter.
Meanwhile, Alea had gone shopping (I dropped her off while I found a place to park), and anytime she would show any interest in something, a man would move in close to her and start the high pressure sales pitch. The marked prices were fairly absurd, so everything had to be bargained, and even after an extended round of bargaining they weren’t coming close to anything that she was willing to pay. After a few of those experiences she was ready to bug out of town, so we did.
About 4 kilometers out of town I happened to look out my side view mirror and saw the camper’s driver’s side hub cab veering across the opposing travel lane and into the sandy shoulder. I pulled over as quick as I could, and went back to look for the hubcap. En route, I also looked at the wheel that it had come from, seeing that the bearing had disintegrated and was looking pretty gnarly.
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| The damaged bearing. |
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| What the bearing should look like (minus the dust cap). |
I didn’t have much luck finding a large shiny thing in the midst of all the sand, trash and weeds, but I did manage to find the dust cap from the hub, sitting at the edge of the road. When the bearing gave out, the dust cap shot off the hub, forcing the hub cap off the wheel. So it is very likely that if I had found the hub cap it probably wasn’t in all that great of shape: between it rolling across the pavement for some distance, and that dust cap hitting hard enough to send it flying from the wheel, it was probably pretty lumpy and scratched up. Besides, every time we have the camper in to have the wheels or hubs worked on, the mechanics almost invariably put one or more dents in the baby moons. We figure it is their form of saying “Kilroy was here.”
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| Our stranding point... |
Knowing the camper was in no shape to go any farther, we quickly searched for some options. I had thought of removing the wheel to get a better look at the hub, but the van’s lug wrench didn’t have a deep enough socket for the camper’s lugs, and I couldn’t find a specific lug wrench for the camper, though I suspect we had one at some point (and perhaps we still do and hadn’t dug deep enough to find it). We thought about leaving the camper and going into town to find a mechanic, but first checked to see if our Mexican auto insurance included travel assistance (I seemed to recall that it did). I figured they could get us towed to a local mechanic, and we’d have to wait until they had time to make the repair. It turned out that travel assistance was part of the package that we purchased, so we gave them a call. A very helpful young man named Cesar was trying to figure out if we wanted the camper towed to La Paz or Cabo San Lucas, while we were thinking someone local could likely handle the job. After more than an hour of phone tag, we finally decided to let them tow us back to Campestre Maranatha in La Paz, where we had stayed on Saturday. Otherwise, we figured we would be paying for a hotel and meals out until we could get back in our camper. With all that settled, we waited even longer for an estimate on the tow truck’s ETA.
While were were waiting, a man and his wife drove up in a red Volkswagen and wanted to talk to us about our camper (we later found out his name was Hector). The language barrier prevented us from answering their questions, but we told them it had a cama (bed) and cocina (kitchen), and opened it up for them to have a look (they were impressed). We also pointed out that we had a ‘problema’ by pointing at the mangled bearing race. There was a protracted conversation where they tried to help, by my 500 words of Spanish was no match for their far greater vocabulary. They finally called their daughter to act as translator, and she offered us some advice on how to proceed. We told her that we had contacted the insurance company, that we appreciated their help, but the tow truck should be here shortly. So instead they offered us a beer (no, gracias, but Hector had one) before they headed off down the road.
When the insurance guy finally called back, it was more bad news. It was Sunday on a holiday weekend (Monday is a national holiday, Revolution Day), and nobody wanted to tow our whimpy little camper. We suspect if we had a big diesel pusher that the folks that tow the commercial semis would have been licking their chops at the prospect of a big payday. But putting a family fiesta on hold for what little they would get for towing us had no appeal to them.
So we were stuck. Bear in mind that we had been parked in front of someone’s business (it was closed at the time) and residence on the poor side of town for a few hours now. We recently had a few locals give us menacing looks as they drove by, suggesting that we were wearing out our welcome in their barrio. And while I was on the phone with the insurance guy, the owner came out and was peering at me from around a corner, but he left before I could get out and talk to him. But I did see that he had his rifle with him, and he was making sure that I couldn’t miss noticing that fact.
We were already unhitched, so we decided to drive a half kilometer down the road to the Pemex station, where I was fortunate to find the manager in his office. He was acting like he would rather not talk to me, but I asked “Hable Ingles?” He shook his head. I mustered what Spanish I could and said, “Tengo una problema con my caravanita” (I have a problem with my camper), and then showed him a picture of the blown bearing and proceeded in pantomime to ask if we could park the camper at the station for the next two nights. He said yes! And he instructed a worker to show us where we should park. The worker took us to the southwest corner of the lot, pointing out that we would have some shade from the sun, that we could use the palapa nearby and there was “agua limpio” (clean water) at a nearby faucet. The station is open 24 hours, so we had access to the bathrooms, but this is one time we wouldn’t have minded using our Luggable Loo.
Finally, our luck had changed! We had a place to camp for free for two nights with access to a restroom and a convenience store, and we would be parked in a well lit, walled compound. Provided the camper could limp that far...
So we returned to hitch up the camper, and just as we got there two men in an old Mustang pull up. We exchange niceties and one of them tells me his name is Antonio. He pulls out his cell phone and takes a picture of our hub and then calls someone. I tell him we are going to the Pemex. He says he is a mechanic and he can help us in the morning. He leaves his number, and we finish hitching up.
We towed the camper down the road at about 3 miles per hour, nervously watching the occasional death rattle coming from the wobbly rear wheel. Would it fall off before we get there? Once there was a wide enough shoulder, I stopped and gave the wheel a good tug, and it seemed unlikely that it would, at any moment, depart us like the dust cap and hub cab had done. So we ventured on. Just as we came to the edge of the Pemex property, two sedans pulled off onto the shoulder in a hurry behind us with their flashers on, slowing down abruptly behind us and riding inches from our bumper. They sat back there a moment, then honked, passed as close to us as possible and then pulled into the Pemex to get gassed up. It would seem they were also out to reinforce the message that we weren’t welcome in the barrio.
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| Pemex 8887, during the day and in the evening... |
As we pulled into the Pemex these guys were standing with their backs to us while talking to the attendants. I looked over, but I suspect the attendants could tell I was more concerned with our wobbly wheel than the intimidation we had just experienced. My theory is that they had hoped that I’d flip them off or yell something at them, so that they would have an excuse to escalate the situation into a test of machismo. It took them quite a while to get gassed up, but finally they left.
We are hoping that someone explained to them what had happened, so that they could tell the folks in the barrio that we only stopped there because we had no other real choice.
So we ended up at Pemex 8887 for the night, listening to the drone of the generators and the occasional jake brake, and keeping an eye on the stray dogs that roam the area.
When we were up north and had run into Helmut in his green VW camper van, he had mentioned that he camped quite a bit at Pemex stations, and at the time we thought that sort of odd. But it is no different that boondocking at a Walmart in the US, other than there don’t seem to be any gringos down here that want to join us for the evening.
We tried calling Antonio at 8 am, as had been prearranged the day before. We called once, with no answer. We sent a text message, with no reply. When we called again, the phone was answered, but not by Antonio. The language barrier meant the conversation went nowhere, so I said 'gracias y adios' and hung up.
We figured it was time to go into town and look for a mechanico. But first I talked with some of the gas station attendants to see if they could tell me how to say wheel, hub and bearing in Spanish, thinking I would need some means of communicating my dilemma if we were successful in finding such a person.
We drove into town, politely waving at the man with the rifle as we drove by. Just as we got to the center of town, there was Antonio in his Mustang, flashing his headlights behind me. We pulled over and agreed to meet at the Pemex. We lost sight of him, but then he drives fast, so that was no surprise.
We got back to the Pemex station, but no Antonio. We thought to ourselves, he must have gone to the other Pemex, and he’ll figure out that the camper isn’t there and then he’ll come here. We waited. Still no Antonio. So I decided to drive to the other Pemex to look for him. When I was almost there, I saw him driving toward me. I waved and turned around. He had stopped to pick up Adrian, who I suspect was a cousin.
They jacked the camper up, took the wheel off and had a look at things. I didn’t like the fact that part of the hub had cracked, with a small chunk apparently holding on only by sheer willpower. But he loaded up all the bits and pieces and said we needed to go to the auto parts store.
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| Antonio and Adrian, hard at work at repairing our camper. |
On the way he called someone who spoke English. He had him tell me he would charge $100 for his labor, plus parts. No problema. We got to the auto parts store, and that was cheap enough - $12 for some bearings and grease. With those in hand, we returned to the Pemex and Antonio and Adrian set to work.
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| The remains of the damaged bearing, and the chipped hub. |
They had been at it for a while when they came over with the spindle in hand, gesturing that they needed to get someone to heat up the bearing race in order to get it off the spindle. They returned a half hour later, with everything reassembled. It wasn’t long before everything was back together, but the dust cap had seen better days. It didn’t fit snuggly, as it is supposed to. Antonio put some sort of gray adhesive goo on it, which looked like perhaps some gasket sealer. I dug into the drawer pedestal in the van and handed him a roll of duct tape. He agreed that was a good idea, especially since we no longer had our baby moon hubcap for that side.
So it was time to settle up. I asked if he preferred pesos or dollars, and either worked for him. So I asked him, “Dos mil pesos?” He replied by typing 2,500 into his phone’s calculator app, explaining that he also had to pay for the help to get the bearing race off. That seemed excessive, but I was feeling charitable since we were soon to be back on our way. I asked whether that included Adrian’s help, and he quickly added another 500 pesos to the total. At this point I gave him a look like “you’re pushing your luck here,” but Adrian was pretty excited by that news. Besides they were working on a holiday and we didn’t have the expense of getting towed somewhere, so it wasn’t the most expensive possible outcome from our predicament.
I had called the Camp Inn factory just prior to having everything wrapped up, mainly to make sure someone is there, just in case we needed some parts to be shipped to us. I told Cary (one of the owners) that it was indeed the bearing that was causing the squeak, not the torsion bar. He said there had been a rash of such failures, and the cause was overtightening the bearings. He said there was a video on etrailer.com that explains the process. The critical part is how the splined nut on the spindle is backed off once the bearing and bearing race are fully seated. So I’ll review that video, then take off the dust caps and make certain that both sides are properly tightened. With that reassurance, we can continue roaming around the countryside.
Before leaving the Pemex station we drove circles around the parking lot at low speed, listening for any sign of a problem in either hub. It seemed to pass inspection, so we returned to La Paz and Campestre Maranatha. We recounted our experience to the American owner, and she said the guy with the rifle had probably moved here from one of the more troubled states in Mexico. She asserted that the natives of BCS would have been more likely to have offered us some agua fria or some coffee.
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