A Week in Vincente Guerrero

After leaving Guerrero Negro, we headed north through Valle de los Cirios and the Baja Gas Gap (around 200 miles with no gas stations).  It was cold, with highs ranging from the low to upper 50s, and in places the wind was easily doing 30 mph.  We saw a lot of touring cyclists, nearly all heading south.  Mostly it was couples, but we did see one solo cyclist (probably Japanese).  The only northbound cyclists that we passed were Didier and Robert.  They had stopped just beyond a summit, and when we came into view they immediately waved at us, so we decided to stop.

We treated them to cheese, crackers, cauliflower and ice water (we weren't as well stocked as usual, thinking that we would be dining out far more often than usual this week).  They had had an interesting time getting that far north.  On their second day after we had last seem them, they ran into dense fog.  When a policia estada found them on Mex 1 heading north, he put on his flashing lights and parked diagonally across both lanes to block traffic.  He then told them "You can't ride today.  Any other day is fine, but not in this fog."

They bucked headwinds on a couple of their other riding days, though on that day the wind was mostly a tail wind.  They had come to realize the difficulty of covering significant mileage at this time of year.  First, the riding on narrow roads was quite wearing.  Second, the lack of daylight meant that they needed to hit the road at the crack of dawn every day and ride in the cold.  So they were seriously considering taking a bus from San Quintin to San Diego, thus bypassing some of the more treacherous and heavily traveled sections of Mex 1.

We spent one night at Los Olivos, where we had stayed on our way south.  This time around we learned that there actually are hot showers available, in a building near the entrance.  We hadn't been there long before a family towing a 20+ foot trailer showed up.  The approach to the RV spaces is very tight, and the driver didn't swing wide enough, so he had to back up and try again.  In doing so, he hooked the passenger side bumper over the power and water pedestal in doing so, breaking the water line (which led to the water in the toilets closest to us being shut off for the remainder of our stay there).  I was on my way to see if I could offer assistance when the driver popped out and said in a none-too-friendly tone "I'll thank you not to offer any assistance!"  I was a bit taken back by that, thinking it rather rude.  I felt like telling him that I saw a 19 year old girl do the same thing last winter in Florida, but I somehow managed to restrain myself.

The fruits of our neighbor's misdeed...

The next day we drove a bit north of Vincente Guerrero, where we are camping once again at Posada Don Diego, which has an excellent restaurant (which is a little bit less expensive than similar restaurants that we've dined at elsewhere in Mexico).  It cost us around $93 for camping for the week. 

On our first night here, we returned from dinner to find that one of Alea's sandals was missing.  The next morning, while we were drinking coffee inside our cabin, we saw one of the night watchman's dogs making off with the other sandal.  We pursued and were able to retrieve it, but still were not able to find the other.  We figured it was lost forever, tucked into some dog's den, but on our way into town the next day we spotted it on the road (it was in good condition aside from some dog slobber).  We later came to find out that that particular dog is notorious for stealing shoes, as evidenced by the two shoes he was in possession of on the morning of Christmas Eve.

We've had a fair amount of rain, which has been heavy at times.  
And so some of the mud puddles have been huge, like the one below that was on our route to the local laundromat.

We've been dining out pretty much every night, which has made grocery shopping a lot simpler.  But Don Diego's was closed on Christmas Eve and Christmas, so we had to fend for ourselves once again.  Another cold and blustery rain storm came through on the morning of Christmas Eve, foiling our normal course of action, which is dining out when it rains.  Fortunately, we have the campground to ourselves, and were able to orient the awning on our van so that it covered the galley hatch, allowing us to cook dinner sheltered from both the wind and rain.

We will continue to head north tomorrow (the day after Christmas).  We will have our fingers crossed that the recent rains haven't washed out any of the vados, or it may take us longer to reach the States than we are planning.

We wish everyone Feliz Navidad, especially to those whose paths have crossed ours in the past year!

Leaving Baja California Sur

We left San Ignacio after getting a few groceries and some purified water.  On our way north we overtook Didier and his father, Robert, so we stopped and chatted with them for a while.  It seems that Didier was overly optimistic about the distances that they could cover.  While his father obviously trained for riding this final leg of Didier's journey, no amount training adequately prepares you for bicycle touring - you don't get that final bit of fitness until after at least a week on the road - especially in some of the more mountainous areas where they will be riding, and in the near constant headwinds.  But it was good to see them and to have a chance to wish them well on the remainder of their journey.  There is a small chance that we might overtake them again in several days time.

Our plan for our first day was to go out to the Pacific Ocean to camp at Bahia Asuncion.  But when we arrived at the campground we were greeted by five loose dogs, whose clamor invited a few other neighborhood dogs to come runing and investigate.  We quickly figured that it would be a difficult place to keep Lana out of trouble, so we moved on (barely avoiding getting stuck in the soft sand in doing so).  We stopped and had lunch overlooking the ocean, and decided to return to Vizcaino, from whence we had departed Mex 1.

Bahia Asuncion.

(Bahia Asuncion is primarily a fishing and whale watching destination, and we were too early for the latter and we aren't fisher-folk.  There was the prospect of doing some beachcombing, but the high bluffs would have made that a serious challenge for Alea's bad knee.)

The drive out to the ocean was worthwhile enough.  The Desierto Vizcaino had a different look than most of Baja, plus we skirted the southern edge of the Guerrero Negro Salt Flats.  And driving through the dune country had its challenges, as there were drifts halfway across the road in several places.  Fortunately the traffic was light, so having to avoid swerving oncoming traffic wasn't an issue.

Once back at Vizcaino, we camped at Hotel Kadekaman (300$: 100$ per person + 100$ for power], power, water, hot showers, free wi-fi), which is a quirky, artsy sort of place.  They seem to add new hotel rooms as the cash becomes available, and each group of rooms has a distinctive look to it.  It had easily the nicest restrooms that we have encountered, but they are located on the opposite end of the property.  But at least on every trip across the property we seemed to notice some other interesting detail that they have added to a planter, courtyard or other outdoor space.

We opted to stay two nights, as not staying at Bahia Asuncion has put us ahead of schedule again.  If there was a bit more to do here, we would have stayed longer.  But it was an enjoyable stay all the same.

When we first arrived, we met a couple from Vancouver, B.C. who had been bicycle touring down the coast, having left home two months ago.  We tried to engage them in conversation, but without much luck.  As they were packing up to leave in the morning their body language suggested that they were having some issues with each other.  My speculation is that she wasn't happy about the narrow roads and the resultant peril from passing vehicles.  I suspect he intended to make it to La Paz, regardless of the white-knuckle riding experience.

We opted to dine in the hotel restaurant, and were quite impressed by the Christmas decorations, particularly the red felt slip covers on the chairs...

Our next stop was a return to Malarrimo RV Park in Guerrero Negro, also opting to stay two nights.  This time around they charged us more ($10.75, power, water, hot showers, free wi-fi), the wi-fi wouldn't work (it continually said we were out of range no matter where we were on the property) and the door knob was missing from one of the men's toilets, whereas the other had no light and a broken flush handle.  But we made do.

Curious phrasing at Malarrimo...

We had driven through Guerrero Negro probably a dozen times, looking for cash, stationary stores, water purification stores, laundromats, etc.  On our first day back in town, after having already made a half dozen trips up the main drag, we were trying to find a place to make a U-turn, in order to reach a mini-mart and grab a few groceries.  As we are doing so, at the last minute I notice a power line right in front of me, hanging about five and a half feet off the ground.  I braked, but not quite a panic stop, since there were cars beside and behind me.  Too late.  The cable got snagged on our ARB awning, yanking the line off of a building on the north side of the street, and bringing half the ceramic insulator with it.  That got wedged under the awning, but not before put some small dents and scratches above the curbside cargo door.  When we stopped in traffic to inspect things, the wire was completely severed and laying in traffic on the south side of the street.  There was a chunk of frayed cable and the ceramic insulator wedged under the ARB.  When I removed that, you could see where the wire was shorting out on the aluminum bracket that I had made, and was starting to scorch and melt where the bare wires had made contact.  The good news was that my improvised awning mounts proved to be very robust.

Aside from the dents and scratches, there were vinyl marks all over the passenger side of the van.  I took some scratch remover to it, and almost everything came off, except for a few places where there are very faint brown burn marks from where the live wire arced against the paint.

Later that night a storm blew through, with high winds and rain.  Fortunately our fantastic fan shut itself, so we didn't end up with a wet comforter in the middle of the night.

The next day we did laundry, more grocery shopping, gassed up and got another garrafon of water.  It was a fairly cold and windy day, but it started to seem to clear up toward evening.

We awoke the final morning in Guerro Negro to calm winds and temperatures in the 40s.  But it stayed cold and the wind picked up considerably after leaving Baja California Sur.  It's time once again to get out the jeans and wool shirt, and to put the sandals away for a while...

Leaving the Sea of Cortez

Our plan was to spend three nights at Santispac Beach (100$, flush toilets, no power or water), but since we can no longer use our generator we can only go one night without shore power.  It turned out that was just as well.  The toilets were pretty rustic, but functional when we turned in for the night.  Overnight, both the mens and womens sides had been clogged (too clogged to be cleared with a plunger), leaving no available toilets until Ana's Restaurant reopened some time later in the day.  Rather than hang around, we hit the road.

Santispac Beach...

We stopped a short distance down the road, hoping to use the facilities at the nearest Pemex.  We found those toilets clogged as well, though not sufficiently so to prevent us from using them (we were getting desperate).

We thought we would camp at Mulege, hoping to find a hardware store open on Monday where we could get a means of emptying the gas from our generator, which was leaking much more noticeably.  It was clear after a visit through town that the chances of finding what we needed would be slim, and we also were not able to get any money from the only ATM in town.

So we continued north, hoping that perhaps a store in Santa Rosalia might be open on Sunday, or at the very least that we could get some cash.  It took a couple of attempts, but we were finally successful with the latter.

The Gustav Eifel Church.

Santa Rosalita is a very unique town for Baja.  It was the site of a copper mine that only recently reopened.  A lot of the copper ore from there was sent to San Francisco in the 1850s, where the ships were loaded with lumber from Brookings, OR for the return trips.  As a result, most of the historic downtown is constructed of wood, rather than stone, adobe or brick.  Since the mining company was founded by French investors, the town has more of a French Colonial feel to it.  If we hadn't spent so much time looking for necessities, we would have spent more time exploring the town.  But we did see the church built by Gustav Eifel, and managed to take a picture of one of the old, rusting steam engines used to transport copper ore.

There is no place to camp in Santa Rosalita, so we pressed on, opting to stay three nights in San Ignacio at the Rice and Beans Oasis (which had been a stop earlier, on our way south).  There we met a couple, Dale and Lisa, from Caldwell, ID, who had extended their stay in order to watch the Seahawks vs. Pacadores (Packers) on the satellite TV in the bar.  It was our first chance to see a football game this season, and it was possible to bring Lana into the bar, so we joined them for the first half.

Before going to watch the football game, I took a look around San Ignacio in hopes of finding some means of getting the gas out of our generator.  The owners manual recommends using a hand siphon, probably because draining the tank directly would allow engine oil to get places where it shouldn't ought to be.  I was hoping I could find a turkey baster in the mercado, but no luck.  So I went into the center of town and found a pharmacy that was open.  I drew a picture of what I was looking for, together with the word "jeringa," Spanish for syringe.  Luckily the entire store consisted of less than ten feet of shelving, and I eventually got a rubber ear syringe for $1.35.

We had saved an empty 1.5 liter glass wine jug, so when I returned to the campground I set about extracting as much gasoline from the generator as I could.  In the end, I got a bit more than three liters before the ear syringe started to soften and deform.  That would have to do.  At least now the gas is well below where the leak was occurring.  And after our first full day of driving, we are no longer noticing the gas fumes.

We've been pretty impressed by the many Mexican dogs that roam around the towns, because the vast majority are very well socialized.  When we were here last, there was a very sweet mama dog who had recently given birth, whom we've been calling Mamacita.  She was still here, making the rounds in the bar and around the hotel and campground, hoping to solicit a few scraps of food from friendly tourists.

I was walking Lana when Mamacita decided to join us, so I opted to let Lana off lead to see how they did together.  As usual, Lana put her bossy pants on, but Mamacita was OK with that - she was more than willing to put up with her anti-social behavior if it meant getting something to eat now and then.  We were hoping that Lana would learn a little etiquette from Mamacita, but it was clear that she was too busy being jealous.  But she at least tolerated having Mamacita around the camper, and learned that not all dogs are a threat to her.

On our second night at San Ignacio, Mamacita brought two of her puppies to meet us at 4 am.  We woke up to some whining, opened the door and didn't see anything, and then attempted to get back to sleep.  The whining continued, this time I could see Mamacita at the rear of the trailer.  She came right up when I opened the door, and not long after the puppies appeared from under the trailer.  She was wanting to come in, likely because it was cooler than she was used to, but of course Lana would never accept that, so we had to close the door and listen to the whines a bit longer before they eventually moved on.

Since grey whales give birth in some of the lagoons in this area, we sometimes will see whale bones along the side of the road and a few small towns have complete skeletons on display.  San Ignacio is one of the latter, with a simple display at the intersection leading into the main town square.

We decided to take the 35 mile trip out to Laguna San Ignacio, a favorite nursery for grey whales.  Of course we are a few weeks too early for that, but it was worth finding that the road is now almost completely paved, and the last stretches of new roadbed were being put in place and will likely soon be paved.

The beaches of the laguna were littered with all types and sizes of empty sea shells, but about the only sealife we found were some small snails and an oyster or two.  With no sea critters to watch and the fishermen all out in their boats, we didn't hang around long.  We will likely return on a future trip to see the grey whales.

I used some of our downtime to contemplate reorganizing the van's interior so that we can add a few items that would make life easier for us: a privy tent, so we can have some privacy when we use our Luggable Loo; a hatch cover for the galley, to keep it from getting so hot in the southern and western exposures; and a chair for Lana (so that she will stop stealing ours).  We think we can achieve that, plus give Lana a larger den area and make much of the rear third of the van much more accessible.  So we'll be ready to go, once we have access to some tools and a warm place to work...

A Week in Loreto

We returned to the Rivera Del Mar RV Park a week ago Saturday, and opted to spend a week there, in order to get in some cycling.  Staying a week also got us one night for free.  We enjoyed comfortable high temperatures in the low to upper 70s, though a few days were quite windy.

The road to San Javier, our training route.

Just south of town is the road to San Javier, which for the first ten kilometers is freshly paved.  Beyond that, the road turns to chip seal, but it is also in good shape.  At about 14 kilometers there is a section in a narrow canyon that had recently been washed out, and there were smaller areas of damage farther up the mountain.  We crossed at least a dozen vados (fords), several with water over them, and a couple of them with water that was close to a foot deep.  

We visited the Mission of San Javier, the oldest mission on the Baja Peninsula.  Last weekend was the annual pilgrimage there, so there were plenty of evidence of the big fiesta - lots of beer tents, temporary parking lots, and bags of trash that had since been corralled.

It seems that a leak has developed in our generator.  The result is a strong gasoline odor inside the van.  Of course with the issue that we had last spring with our van's gas tank, we were worried that perhaps somehow that might not have been fixed correctly and had come back to haunt us.  So it was a relief to know it was just the generator.  We ended up having to open up the side of the generator case to let everything air out as well as possible, and we got in there and made an attempt to clean the insides with an alcohol wipe.  After a few days of being aired out, there is still a strong gasoline odor, so we'll need to figure out how to get rid of the the gas in the tank, and then we'll put it away until we get back to Boise.  There is still one full year left on the three year warranty, so we should be able to get it repaired under warranty at a Yamaha dealer in Meridian, ID.

Life on the road is always fun.  This week we got a bill from Idaho Power for our rental property in west Boise.  We called to find out how that happened, and it turns out that during the first winter we were on the road, our property tax bill for that property had gotten rerouted by the post office to my sister-in-law's house.  I guess some automated system at Idaho Power got notice of the expired forwarding notice and took it upon itself to update the current mailing address for the property.  They folks at Idaho Power put the mailing address back to what it had been, so that problem was fixed easily enough.

Our last night at Rivera Del Mar we met Didier, a self supported touring cyclist from San Diego.  He has been traveling for the past two years and has covered about 20,000 miles throughout Europe, Asia and South America.  He was staying at the campground waiting for his father to fly in, so that they could ride the final miles back to San Diego together.

We have been traveling with a bag of pasta in our deep storage for quite a while now, thinking that it would come in handy some day when we happened to meet one or more touring cyclists along our route.  So, it's a somewhat sad comment that it had taken this long before finding someone that we could invite to dinner.  But Didier accepted, so we had spaghetti with chorizo sausage, plus some pineapple cake for desert, while swapping stories of our adventures and misadventures.

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.