Friday, January 23, 2004

          Rob picked me up from my work at 11:30 am.  We immediately hit the 5 freeway south, and our trip was underway.  We made two quick stops – the first at Camino de Estrella exit to eat, and the second stop off of the 94 to buy ice for our cooler.

          Our last stop before crossing the border was made at the small convenience store on the US side of Tecate.  We filled the truck up with gas, purchased our insurance ($61.80 for 4 full days), and then we were on our way again.

          The road from Tecate east to the highway 2 toll road had been worked on since our last trip – it is now a 4-lane road up to the toll road, much wider and much safer.

          The toll road was in excellent shape, as always.  The toll was $45 pesos, $4.15 US.  We arrived at the La Rumerosa toll and paid the $1.25 there.  That road was also in great shape.

          While driving the twists and turns of the road through Cantu Grade, we kept hearing a small banging noise towards the back of the truck.  I pulled over once and we checked all the items in the back – even twisting one of the containers sideways.  But as we continued to drive, the noise continued.  Rob listened intently and determined that the noise was coming closer to the back seat than the bed of the truck.  I finally realized that the sound was coming from under my back seat.  There is a compartment under the passenger back seat, and I had placed two bottles of motor oil there, along with two bottles of fix-a-flat.  The sound we were hearing was the bottles banging against the sides of the compartment as we turned.  Finding other places to put these items solved the noisy mystery.

          Just after passing the junction to the road to Cañon de Guadalupe, we came across a newer junction.  The big green sign pointed south towards “Laguna Salada”.  Not really a road, but a track across the usually dry lakebed.  We talked about taking the road, and decided that, why not?  We were in no hurry, so why not try a new road?  Besides, it could cut minutes off of our drive through Mexicali.

          We drove a mile or so on Hwy. 2 before we found a spot to turn around.  As we got back to the Laguna Salada turnoff, we noticed another truck driving ahead of us towards the lakebed.  We followed for a short while, then decided to let the truck “go” and get away from us.

          While stopping briefly to take pictures, we noticed a large amount of mud on the tires and across the bottom of the truck.  It seemed that the dry lakebed was a lot muddier than we had thought it would be.  We knew it had rained a couple of days before in the area, but we didn’t think the mud would be too much of a problem.

          Still, we decided to drive on.  We got about 10 miles from Hwy. 2 when the road took a sharp turn to the left.  I turned the wheel, but the truck didn’t go with the turn.  Instead, it kept going straight, off the road and onto a portion of the now very muddy lakebed.  I tried to keep the truck going so we wouldn’t stop and get stuck.  I still had the wheel turned almost full to the left.  I began to get traction back, and was soon back on the ‘road’.  At our first safe opportunity, we stopped and decided it was time to turn around.  We didn’t know how much further the road went, but we weren’t about to take any chances on getting stuck out here.  The problem was, there was no safe area to turn around.

          I switched the truck out of 4WD high and into 4WD low, and very slowly backed up into what looked like a drier portion of the lakebed.  Doing a 3-point turn (which took about 10 points), we were completely turned around.  I kept the truck in 4-wheel low until we got around our treacherous turn, and then switched into 4-wheel high for the drive across the rest of the lakebed, until we got safely back onto Hwy. 2.  We had basically wasted about an hour of our trip, but at least we knew to NEVER take that road after any recent rains!

          We continued to Mexicali, finding the detour road just west of the big city.  We had found this road on our previous trip.  Normally, Hwy. 2 heads directly into the city and then you turn right to begin driving on Hwy. 5.  This road is about 5 miles west of town and doesn’t head through the main part of the city, like the other road.  There was still traffic on this route, but not nearly the amount that we would find in town.

          Heading south on Hwy. 5, we kept our speed down to the limit – 50 mph in the non-populated regions.  This seemed to upset many of the locals, who tailgated and passed us at some very high speeds.  But we were intent to keep the law and not create any problems for ourselves.

          As always, once we passed the junction to San Luis Rio Colorado, the traffic died down considerably.  We did notice a lot of vehicles heading south, and we figured that San Felipe would be pretty busy.

          We stopped a few miles south of La Ventana to hunt for our first geocache of the trip.  For those who don’t know, ‘geocaching’ is a sort of treasure hunt game that used a GPS and the website, www.geocaching.com.  This geocache is called “Baja Geode Geocache”.  Because it was nighttime now, this was a rather difficult cache to find, even with our GPS and the coordinates.  Finally, after some treacherous climbs and slips along the hills, we got to the correct spot and found the cache.  It took a while, but it was fun hunting!  I think the most enjoyable part was looking up and seeing the tons of stars – the night was cloudless, moonless, and perfect for stargazing!

          After another 1/2 hour of driving, we pulled over to begin the search for the next geocache on our trip.  This one is called “Go For the Gold In Baja”.  This cache was much easier, and we found it rather quickly.

          After some quick pictures it was back on the road.  About 15 minutes later we came across the Hwy. 3/Hwy. 5 junction and the military checkpoint.  Now, normally, we find that the young men who man these checkpoints are very friendly and respectful to us as we drive by.  Well, this time, I think we got “el jefe”, because this guy was not in a very good mood.

          Of course I pulled up slowly and had my window already down.  The man shined his flashlight at me and said, in a loud tone, “LIGHT!”

          Now some of you out there may know immediately what this guy wanted, but I had no clue.  I asked, in Spanish, “Como?”  Again, he responded loudly, “LIGHT!”  Then he started pointing to the bed of my truck.  I then thought that he wanted the rear light on in the bed of the truck, so I said “OK” and turned it on.  Well, that wasn’t what he wanted.  So he proceeded to reach his hand into my truck and point at the light fixture above my head.  What he wanted were the lights inside the truck to be turned on.

          Once that was straightened out, there was the cursory look through the backside window and then a wave to go on.  Before leaving, I asked if there were a lot of tourists in San Felipe.  “Sí, hay mucho” was the response I received.

          As we drove we began to realize that we had really been goofing off a lot so far.  It was already 8:30 pm, and we weren’t even in San Felipe, yet.  We still had to eat dinner (mmm….fish tacos…), and then continue for another couple of hours to our nighttime camping spot.  But we were in no hurry, and we took our time before reaching the Pemex in San Felipe at 9:00 pm sharp.  On the way, I kept noticing small flashes out of the side of my window.  At first we figured it must be coming from a lighthouse, but how could it be so bright this far out in the desert?  We finally realized that it must be a lightening storm somewhere over the Sea of Cortes or on the Mexican mainland.  Even though there were no clouds out overhead, it had rained in the days before our trip, so it was very possible that the clouds were on the horizon.

          We filled the gas tank and were back on the road by 9:10 pm.  As we drove to the malecón area of San Felipe, we couldn’t help but notice how absolutely dead the city was.  This was Friday night, and it seemed like we were the only ones out and about.  Most businesses had their lights off and were gone for the day.  It’s amazing how businesses have really suffered in this part of Baja.

We got to our favorite fish taco stand, and saw the lights on and the doors open.  We were very happy until we walked in the door and were about to sit down.  An elderly lady addressed us, “estamos cerrados”, or something like that.  Believe me, I knew what that meant.

          Oh man, what to do.  Our favorite taco stand had just closed, and where would we find fish tacos at this time of night in such a slow town?  We drove on until we came across ‘Rice and Beans’ restaurant.  I know that others have mentioned that this is NOT the place to eat in San Felipe, but we were very hungry and we didn’t seem to have a lot of options.

          We walked in the door to the big patio seating area, and of course we were the only patrons there.  We sat down and ordered our tacos and Coronas.  Our plates came with 3 tacos each, rice and beans (of course).  The price was more than other places (about $5 for the plate), but we found the food to be OK quality-wise.  Maybe it was because we were so hungry.

          During dinner we discussed our options.  We really didn’t have to be at our campsite at any particular time, so we decided that after dinner, we would head to ‘Club Miramar’ and play a few games of pool.  After finished our dinner and 2nd Corona each, we drove the one block north to the pool hall and enjoyed 4 games of billiards and 2 more Coronas each.

          We didn’t leave the pool hall until near midnight (I didn’t check my watch).  We drove north along the one-way malecón and turned left at the end, so we could head south again and continue our drive.  As we drove the long blocks, we noticed a lot of police ahead.  Just what we needed – a sobriety checkpoint!  Of course, we had each had 4 beers, but it was in a span of almost 3 hours and neither one of us were even close to being tipsy at all.  We just had been so careful on this trip and we didn’t want to have to go through any problems at all.

          As we approached the officer, I slowed and rolled down my window.  I flashed a big smile and tried to be as cool and calm as I could.  “Buenas noches” the officer asked.  “Buenas noches” I replied.  “Did you drink tonight?” he asked in Spanish.  “Ahorita no, pero más tarde, sí!” was my reply.  The officer laughed at my very crude Spanish, and waved us on our way.

          We kept driving south out of San Felipe, and headed towards Puertecitos.  As has been the case since 1997, the road was great for the first few miles, but then the good pavement abruptly ends and the ‘pothole shuffle’ begins.  We drove slowly this night, reminding ourselves that we were in absolutely no hurry to get to our destination that night.

          We passed Puertecitos and got onto the gravel road heading to Bahia San Luis Gonzaga and beyond.  We immediately noticed that the road was greatly improved from any of our previous visits – thank you, Baja 1000!  Usually the surface is terrible for the first 1/4 mile or so as you leave Puertecitos heading south.  This time, the road was in fine, fine shape.

          We eventually made it to our campsite, 16 miles south of Puertecitos and about 1 mile north of Nacho’s Camp.  “The House” as we call it, was still in very good shape, and actually showed a lot of signs of use over the past year, with a couple of old fire pits sitting on the cliff.

          We unpacked our belongings and got to work on Rob’s tent.  He had purchased a new tent just a year before, but we didn’t have a chance to use it until this night.  We thought it would be a snap, and it was fairly easy.  It just took a while longer than we thought it would.  Eventually, though, we got the tent up, laid out our sleeping bags inside, and pulled out our lawn chairs to gaze at the stars.  We saw a few shooting stars, and received a great show from the lightening storm that was off on the horizon – definitely somewhere on the mainland.

          After an hour or so of stargazing we packed up our chairs and headed to the tent to go to sleep.  It was 2:30 am before we got to bed – way, way past my bedtime.  It had been a long day, but a fun day, and there were still 4 days of vacation and exploring ahead!