Day 27 & 28 - Those Bloody Alberta Drivers

We spend the next day in and around San Felipe.  It's primarily a fishing town.  Second on the list was tourism, but again the US economy has all but crushed those businesses.  Apparently the spring and fall are still busy, but I'd be surprised.

We took in the sights (didn't take long), and had a picnic & shell finding on a beach a few miles south of town.  Also toured some of the back streets of San Felipe.  The people here are extremely poor, but appear to be moderately rich in real estate.  Many had decent sized properties.  Most consisted entirely of dirt with a modest shack for a house and a small junk yard of miscellaneous tatter.

Despite obvious wealth disparities, I didn't feel the least bit threatened.  In fact, I felt more threatened in California then Mexico.  Not that Cali was hostile, it's just a bit more intense.  Hard to explain.

Ended the day with a nice dinner at our favourite restaurant - they spoke perfect English, and were very accommodating to Vicky and I.  Being vegetarian is not easy in Mexico.

Day 28
We say goodbye to the Sea of Cortez, and head across the peninsula.  Today's destination is Ensenada, home to the start of the Baja 1000.  Better fill up with gas, as the road crosses 245km of nothing.  The drive is a lonely one.  Nothing but desert and Llantera shops.

Let me digress a bit here.  Not certain why, but there was a tire shop about every 30 feet in the towns and about every 20km in the middle of the desert.  Do they make poor quality tires?  Do people drive like teenagers and literally burn through rubber?  The roads were good to excellent, so I don't think that was the reason.  We made a joke of it, and kept saying "hey, I haven't seen a llantera shop in a few seconds, I wonder if...there's one!!!"

Back to the drive.  It was uneventful.  Until....  We started up one of the mountain passes just East of Ensenada.  The traffic was starting to build a bit as we neared the city, but still wasn't too bad.  As we climbed at a bit better than a snail's pace, a couple of vehicles began to catch up.  The first one, a cube van with a fish store logo on the side, caught us and settled in for a long wait.  The road was only single lane in each direction, a steep drop-off to the left, and very tight & twisty.  No room to pass.  Or so we thought.

As we went towards an S curve (with a double solid yellow), there was no traffic in front of us for the short distance I could see ahead.  I took a quick look in my side mirror and then cut the corner a bit to maintain my speed and mitigate some of the sway of the trailer.  Looked again in a couple of seconds, and the cube van was right beside us, nearly being pushed off the side of the cliff.  I quickly started to ease the truck to the right and give him some more room.  As he drove on through, he clipped my side mirror.  No damage, but lesson learned.  Don't underestimate the "boldness" of a Mexican driver.

The remainder of the drive was uneventful.  Stopped off for some groceries and beers in town, then headed out to the south west coast to our camping spot.  It's near Cabo Punta Banda on the map below.

Great place on the beach, but again nobody there.  Only two other RVs.  The others also being from Canada.

Tough times indeed.

Technical Difficulties

No updates for a while.  Had a problem with the generator (still not fixed), and was off the grid for a couple of days.  I'm now back to a campsite with power, but no phone reception.  Should have another post or two in a couple of days.

Day 26 - Coco

Story below.  First, pictures of where we were staying.

High tide.  This was about as far in as the water came.

Note the boat trailer attached to the truck.

This is where the fisherman stored their boats for the night,

and how they got them into the water the next morning.

More pelicans.  Matt gets a close-up view.

As stated in the Day 25 post, we were right on the beach :)

Vicky takes in the scenery in a comfy camp chair.

Vultures picking away at remnants from a old fishing net

Picture looking back to the trailer at low tide

The vultures are multiplying

The plan for the day was a drive about 90km South along the coast to Peurtecitos.  We were looking for snorkeling opportunities and this town was promising.  Not a great deal of recent information was available on the web, so we were flying near blind here.  We took the motorcycle too, as I would be taking that further south in search of Coco's Corner.  Coco is a retired crop duster, who has a small track of land in the middle of nowhere.  He sells beer & food, and has no legs.  Known as one of the great characters of Baja, I had to check it out.  Matt gave me the info last minute, and I didn't bother researching distances (hint, foreshadowing).

Along the drive  to Peurtecitos were plenty of dips in the road.  Some were not worth putting up a sign for, a few others were to be taken at a near crawl.  The latter showed evidence of hundreds of vehicles driving too fast and removing divots with trailer hitches or mufflers, or ......  Not something I was interested in leaving behind.

Peurtecitos proved a bust, so we drove a bit further, and found a place to unload the bike.  Matt and Vicky would give me until 3:00 (it was now about noon), then come looking for me in the truck.  They'd spend the next few hours on the sea shore and in the town.  Coco was supposed to be about 50km or so away.  The XR would go almost 200 on a tank, so I figured I'd only do 70km one way just to be safe.  Down side was I didn't have my GPS with me, so I'd rely on the bike computer - which reset every time I shut the bike off.  I'd either have to keep it running for the entire ride (not possible), or remember the distance of each leg and do the math.

The paved road finished in about 10km, and I was on the road to Coco.  This road is used during many of the Baja 1000 races, and San Felipe is one of the connecting cities used for support teams.  When the Baja isn't on, this road doesn't get much traffic at all.

Last bit of pavement.  No more 80mph

Time for some high speed dirt road, 40-60mph

Views were....

Can't see Coco's place yet

I come across a small town

What's that sign on the right?

List of odd things you see in Mexico.

Didn't see another sign like this anywhere.

Along the road is another military checkpoint.  Just four guys at this one - all with assault rifles.  Again, none spoke very good English.  I said I was looking for Coco.  Nobody knew who he was.  Odd, he should be within 20 kms of here.  After a few minutes of not getting any responses to their Spanish language questions, the finally waive me on.

These were outside the military checkpoint.

Wasn't allowed to take pictures of the soldiers.

Note the XRs Only sticker top centre.

This is where I get some hard to find parts for the 250.

There were plenty of failed developments along the coast.

This sign doesn't look that old, wonder if it's still for rent.

Maybe not.  Great view though.

I drove approximately 70km, then turned around.  No Coco :(  Turns out he was another 100kms further down the road.  Serves me right not looking into it for myself.  Oh well, time to turn around, and open the throttle.  Got just onto the pavement, and bike stops.   Crap, running out of gas.  Must have gone much further than I thought.  I flip the petcock to reserve, and start up the bike again.  It only gets about 10 km or so on reserve, so I eased back on the throttle.  Matt & Vicky dropped me off about 9km from where I was.  This likely puts me out of gas before reaching them - if they went back North a bit.  I got 12 km before the bike died.  They were nowhere to be seen.

I pulled the bike off the road, and settled in for what could be a long wait.  Didn't have a watch, but my camera said 2:45.  If that was correct, I'd only have about 30 or so minutes to wait.  Not a problem.  The scenery was easy on the eyes.

Well, 3:00 went by, then 3:15, then 3:30.  Figured my camera was on DST, not standard, and it was really just 2:30.  That meant another 30-45 minutes.  Odd, because the sun is very low in the sky.  3:20 comes along, and so do Matt & Vicky, right on time.  Only they're not.  My camera was correct after all, it was now 4:20.  They figured I just lost track of time, so gave me an extra hour :(  After deciding I was likely in trouble, they gassed up the truck and came looking for me.  We put a little gas in the bike, fire it up, and load it onto the truck.  Time to head back to the trailer.