Dia 7: San Ignacio, BCS, Mexico

We finished off our stay in Guerrero Negro by doing chores.  The first on the list was lining up a tax advisor to help clean up the mess that I made with our 2014 taxes.  There are some details to be worked out, but it sounds as though any of a few different outcomes would mean that we owe little, if any, additional taxes.

We also needed to find somewhere to get a PDF printed, as we will need to sign a response letter to the IRS.  We found a farmacia that made copies, so we asked there first.  We were told that most papelerias (stationers) could help us.  So we drove circles around Guerrero Negro and eventually found one, where we also picked up a Spanish-English dictionary.  The total for all that was about $3.50 US.

Having the dictionary will help us immensely, enabling us to figure out what signs say and to have a bit more clarity about what we are ordering for dinner.

Next on the agenda, we made the decision to skip superchlorinating the local water, and instead simply put purified water in our camper's freshwater tank.  Refillable 18.9 liter jugs are common, as are local refilling stations (two jugs are a bit more than our freshwater tank can hold).  Our first jug with water cost us a bit more than $4.50 US, and I suspect the cost for refilling will be pretty reasonable.  The full jugs are heavy, but the best technique for using the water seems to be to first add a couple of gallons of water to our water cooler.  That reduces the weight of the container and allows the water to flow out more smoothly once the first gallon or so is emptied out of it.  Then we just use a funnel to get the remainder into the camper's tank.

Date palms.

We'll buy some drops for disinfecting the campground water and will use that for soaking vegetables and cleaning dishes.  We've been avoiding ice thus far (based upon our guidebook's recommendations), but it's made with the same purified water we're drinking, so we will go back to buying ice for our 3 gallon cooler.

We did laundry again today, and a big load cost us less than $2 to wash and dry.  Since we aren't cycling, we are not going through cycling kits every day, so we have less laundry to do.  We've also decided to hand wash our nylon shorts, as it is usually when we run out of those that prompts the need to find a laundromat.  Once we're back in Boise we'll buy some REI travel shirts and pare down the number of cotton t-shirts that we wear.  We can hand wash those and air dry them inside the van.  That way we'll have less need to do laundry on the road, mainly only needing it for washing sheets and towels.

We took a look at our expenses for the first five days in Mexico, partly because we started the trip with a $10 per day overhead of insurance and visa costs.  We have generally tried to maintain a level of $75 per day for expenses, though I suspect it is normally more like $80-$85, especially on the East Coast and parts the Midwest and Texas.  So far in Mexico we are spending a bit more than $50 per day, but that includes our Mex cellphone and the one month unlimited calling plan that we are on, and it includes two campgrounds that were pretty expensive by Mexican standards.  We only ate one meal out, but it was a meal that easily would have set us back more than $50 in the States.

We have seen some bicycle tourists on the road.  One guy on a very heavily loaded bike was towing a trailer for a fairly large dog.  He rolled into El Rosario after dark and wasn't stirring when we left there, so we didn't have a chance to meet him.  We saw a solo woman tourist riding through El Valle del Cirios.  We stopped and shouted to see if she needing anything, but she said she was good and kept on cranking.  When we pulled into San Ignacio we saw a couple that were touring and thought we might be camping together tonight, but they had pushed on before we finished registering at the campground.

We got a late start leaving Guerrero Negro, and there was no sightseeing on the agenda.  Our destination was San Ignacio, and the route was mostly flat and sandy, often with low groundcover, but occasionally punctuated by areas of cacti.

We are camped at Rice and Beans Oasis (300$, power, water, hot showers and free wi-fi), a small hotel, restaurant and campground situated on terraces above a date palm forest.  We got here shortly before the Baja Amigos tour group showed up, so we got to see them choreograph the parking of their big rigs.  We managed to choose a campsite that made it tough for the caboose of their convoy to get squeezed into his site, but after about a 40 point turn he finally touched down.  There are also plenty of Baja 1000 support crews staying here, taking a little vacation before race day.

The Baja Amigos caravan tour group.