Hello all. In case you’ve been keeping track, you may have noticed that I have not posted an update for a couple days. A combination of being in totally isolated locations, and racing to find the next nights perfect beach camp makes it tough to dawdle too long in any of the convenient wifi spots along the way. You last heard from me in San Felipe where I had returned to get a tire repaired and to try once again to complete the tourista card transaction. You have to go to the Imagracion office (after you find it) and fill out the form, then go to the bank (after you find it) and pay for it, then return to the office to have it completed. Well, part 1 and part 2 went OK, but when I returned to the office – it was closed! That was Friday afternoon. So, when I returned on Monday and found it still closed, I decided to risk the wrath of the Mexican army and head south. After careful perusal of all the maps loaned to me by the nice Vernon guy I met in El Centro, CA, I decided that I could save about 600km by heading down some dubious roads south of San Felipe on the gulf coast. All the info was that the road was rough, but passable. Well, I could write an entire chapter on rough. Every variety of washboard imaginable, potholes that could hold small countries, volcanic rock that is very sharp, deep sand holes if you dare leave the road, dust following in a nice tailwind. There was about 120 kms of this, and only on rare and exuberant occasions did we manage to reach the pinnacle of speed excess – 20 km/hr! Driving in continuous washboard is kind of like going to the dentist without freezing. Harley’s belly was jiggling like Santa claws’. I couldn’t sing along to Corb Lund because I sounded like someone was thumping me on the chest all the time. We would play games to pass the time. One we liked to call ‘name that vehicle part’. Look, shock absorbers, steering parts, fenders, entire vehicle carcasses (burned, of course. We even saw one still burning just south of San Felipe), seats, axles, pins, hitches, hoods, engines. The astute among you are likely noticing that I have not mentioned wheels, tires, or mufflers and miscellaneous exhaust system parts? That is because they have a whole separate category and serve as important indicators! I would guess that I saw no less than 500 tires along this section. You could rate the roughness of the road by the number of tires/km strewn prettily across the landscape. A good section of road would typically have 3-5 tires/km, while a challenging section might be in the 7-9 range. If there were serious hazards to enjoy, then there would be entire wheels, not just tires. Then the mufflers could be used as an additional descriptor. A given section might be described as a T6-M2, to indicate six dead tires and 2 mufflers waiting for new owners.
Oh yes, and there were boulders on the road. Some small ones were only 2 feet across, and were tempting. But it is a good idea never to drive over a boulder, because they often are there for your protection! From the washouts, the BIG potholes, or the cliffs. It would usually be an hour or so between any other vehicles, some of which were surely lost from the Baja 1000. Know how to tell a drunk driver on this road? He (or she) is driving straight!
Anyone at least a little bit sober will be weaving all over into both ditches dodging the worst of the vehicle torture.
Want to buy or rent or sell some real estate? Lots of opportunities here. All you need to get in the business is a bit of paint and then you just find a hood or door off a wrecked car and make your sign. Speeling errors are OK, and it is usually not worthwhile adding any sort of clues as to who or how to contact the seller. Leave the sign up for 20-30 years and you just never know. Lots of ‘restaurants’ advertising cool’d beer, tacos and the like, but never saw one that had any signs of life. Even the clusters of houses and shacks along the beach seemed almost entirely deserted or abandoned? And the worst of it was – none of these places had wifi! So I spent the nite out there on a nice beach, watching a cluster of fish boats – I think they were hiding from the wind in the lee of an offshore island. Day two out there found me encountering an army checkpoint, and yes they actually built some SPEED BUMPS on the road. They were smoother than the road itself! I think I got 12km/hr on one of them. It reminded me of Lake Louise campground putting speed bumps on their only good pavement. I will admit though that LL campground comes in a close second to this road, T1-M1 maybe?
Okay, then there was a gas (Pemex) station out there. Big and beautiful, concrete pads, new pumps, less than 10 wrecked cars, and a sign worthy of an Interstate highway. On a road, well, see above!! For the next 50-60 kms it was usually smoother to drive OFF the road than on it. At least the washboard in the ditches wasn’t so well developed. But out here, no one had placed ‘safety boulders’ to mark the hazards, so I crawled over the top of one hill on a sand road (T3-M2) where the summit was so steep that I could not see the ‘road’ ahead, and dragged bottom to get over the top, only to find myself doing a four-wheel ooze downhill in deep soft sand, but it was at least 9.5 km/hr, so I was making up for lost time.
Then all of a sudden, it seemed like only a week, I came out on MEX 1! VERY narrow in places and drop a wheel off the pavement and you will be on the frame, and there would be NO coming back! And you know the nice white and black posts that mark the road edges both here and at home? At home they are plastic pipe – you could likely win a fight with one on a bike. Well, here they are concrete, reinforced with quality re-bar. But that’s no problem because if you hit one of these puppies and it takes out your rad, oil pan, diff, and gas tank; that’s the least of your problems because you are in for an ugly ride down a 45degree bank often ending in a boulder field. And then someone else gets to play ‘name that vehicle part’! Maybe that’s why the vehicles always burn? But actually Mex 1, unlike Mex 5 has no burnt cars at all, has excellent pavement (so far) that puts anything on the world famous Icefields Parkway to shame. The guardrails are painted, there are km markers, and unlike Parks Canada, the signs are upright. Not leaning, not laying flat on the ground. Now if only I knew what they were saying …
So on these good roads, I raced ahead sometimes at 120km/hr, trying to get OFF the road by dark, and so I did and found a camp on the Pacific coast at Laguna Ojo Des Leibres, just south of Guerrero Negro. This is after finding another imigracion office closed, the army checkpoint had shut down (union soldiers?), and having paid $2 to have the underside of the truck sprayed for ‘pests’?
Today, driving from there, through San Ignacio and Santa Rosalia, I managed enough time to check the old email and a few headlines, but blogging would have put me late for finding an open gas station that was not out of gas, then finding a suitable beach campsite.
So here I are; parked in the sand and sea shells 30 feet from the water, just hoping those darn waves don’t keep me awake. Got a kazillion new photos – will have to try to find some representative ones to post – depending of course on the connection speed du jour. I mean manana. I think.
Now get back to work. I am the one who is on vacation, not you!
May have a slow connection here, so will try to send this without photos, and add some later?
Note: actually found wifi in the AM without moving a wheel. There is not another camper within 100m, and the nearest electricity is at least 1/2 mile away. Who knows where it is coming from. There must be internet Gods out here?