Heading North

We returned to La Paz for a few days in order to get ready for our return northward, where we took advantage of excellent wi-fi coverage to make some progress on our income tax issue.  We are still waiting for some documentation from USAA, but our tax advisor had enough information to request more time to gather the remaining documentation and to allow us time to undo the over funding of our HSAs by rolling them back to whence they came.  Our tax advisor said that the likely range for our taxes owed would end up being between a few hundred to as much as two thousand dollars, depending upon how the IRS characterizes the details of our situation.  At least that is a lot better than the $7,000 that the IRS originally was asking for.  Hopefully we will be able to wrap things up once we are back in Boise in January.

The week that we spent at Rancho Verde was without power, and with limited availability of groceries and laundry, which were twenty miles away in Los Barriles.  So our first full day in La Paz was purely to restock and to get caught up on laundry.

Our final full day there was a chance to explore the waterfront promenade, the Malecon.  It seems to be a carbon copy of others that we have seen elsewhere - beach and boat access, some public art, restaurants and shopping opportunities, and the colorful city sign as a 'selfie' backdrop.

Lana playing at the beach along La Paz's Malecon.

When we left La Paz, the only option was to head north on Mex 1 through the miles and miles of road construction that we had endured on our way south.  As before, the construction detours were very rough and each passing vehicle would send up clouds of dust that hung in the air for a mile or more before it would finally settle again.  Of course there was rarely a mile without oncoming traffic, so I can only imagine what our air filter looks like...

We camped again in Ciudad Constitucion at Campestre La Pila.  Once again, we were the only campers.  But this time through, the water was working, and yet again the pool was not in use.  But it had turned overcast early in the afternoon, so the temps were in the low 70s and high 60s with no sun.  That's not exactly good weather for swimming in an unheated pool, but we enjoyed our stay all the same.  .

It is worth commenting on the main street of Ciudad Constitucion, in as much as there are others like it.  There are two central through lanes, with two one way lanes on either side of it.  You can't make a left turn from the central lanes: you need to move over to the one way lanes on your right and drive along them until there is a left turn lane.  So when you can finally make a left hand turn, you have eight lanes of traffic to keep an eye on, to make sure you don't get clobbered.  I've seen similar configurations in Spain in 1986, but they didn't make much sense to me back then, either.

The main street in Ciudad Constitucion.

It rained the night we camped at Ciudad Constitucion, which was the first rain we had seen since September, so we took advantage of the fact that the van and camper were already wet when we got up in the morning.  With a few additional gallons of pool water I managed to wash both vehicles before we set off down the road.

Some of the coastal mountains along Baja's east coast.