| We were driving down the Bahia San Luis Gonzaga
road, in Rob Stark's "new" used Jeep. We had never been on a Baja dirt
road with a four-wheel drive vehicle before, so we naturally expected this
trip to be an easy one. We had been on this very road before in passenger
cars, but we had never gone much farther than Nacho's Camp. This would
be a true adventure, since we planned on camping both nights in new places
- places we could now see, thanks to Rob's Jeep.
We were somewhere near Nacho's Camp, driving along, when Rob spotted one of the many turnouts leading towards the beach. Since this was a sturdy, high-clearance, four-wheel drive vehicle, no road would seem to present a challenge. The beach was not sand, but seemingly hard-packed little- to-medium sized rocks. Therefore, it was safely assumed by all three of us, that this beach would be safe to travel on. We got to the point where the road that leads to the beach actually stopped, and the rocky beach began. Rob drove onto the beach, and for the first 100 feet or so, everything seemed to go fine. The rocks were indeed stable enough to drive on, and the beautiful water made for wonderful scenery. However, after a few more feet of driving, Rob began to feel the Jeep's traction slipping a bit, and sure enough, he realized pretty soon that the rocks were deeper than we had thought, and getting stuck seemed a strong possibility. It was at a point probably 100 yards or so from the turnoff road, where Rob decided enough was enough, and it was time to turn around. As he slowed down, however, the tires dug deeper into the rocks below, and before he could even get the wheels turned, we were stopped. The three of us got out to inspect the problem. Both driver-side tires were at least 1/2 rim deep in rocks, and the rear passenger tire had also dug in fairly deep. We needed something under all the tires to get us out, so the three of us combed the beach, looking for the biggest, flattest rocks we could find to wedge under the four tires. After we found what we needed, Robert and I proceeded to begin digging out the sunken tire. See picture Once this was accomplished, we wedged the bigger rocks under the fronts of all tires, and got back in the Jeep. Robert stayed out to "guide" us. Once Rob felt some traction, he was able to turn around and get higher up the beach to "stiffer" ground. At this point, Robert got back into the Jeep. We got only a few yards before we could all feel the tires losing traction again. Instead of slowing this time, though, Rob decided that it was best to speed up. After all, the road off the beach was only a mere hundred feet away, and the momentum would surely get us there. Once we got our speed up, however, Rob lost control of the Jeep. We were going about 20 mph, and heading straight for a decent sized rock. Braking did nothing to slow our momentum. Before any of us could really react, what we think may have been the front axle of the Jeep rammed into the rock head-on. The hit was so hard, the Jeep rocked up and the front/bottom landed on top of the culprit rock. I was in the back, without a seat belt (the Jeep had none in the back), and hit my head on the upper roll bar. Thank goodness it was padded. The initial damage we saw to the Jeep was that two of the shock absorbers were punctured. Florescent green liquid from these shocks was everywhere. Our main problem now, it seemed, was how to get the Jeep off the rock and back onto semi-solid ground. We hadn't exactly planned for this situation, but we decided we could either dig out the big rock, or jack up the Jeep and "push" it to the side. Neither sounded any fun at all. While contemplating our fate, we heard a faint voice. We glanced up to the Gonzaga road, and noticed a woman and man waving to us and yelling something. The couple happened to be on this road, basically in the middle of nowhere, with a flat-bed truck, which had a mechanical pulley and rope! I ran up to greet them, and explain our situation. The woman was white, and probably in her mid-30's. The man was her husband, a Mexican probably the same age. She told me they would be happy to help, and her husband began to back the truck down the side road. As he got closer to the beach, he stopped, hooked up the rope to the Jeep's underside, and turned on the pulley. In no time, our Jeep was free and on solid ground. Our price for this extraction? A heart-felt thank you, two small bottles of drinking water for the woman, and two beers for her husband (as the woman said, "have you ever met a Mexican who didn't like beer?"). Free from our mess, we continued on with our trip. We were way too tired to bother with San Luis Gonzaga, so we drove on to Bahia de Los Angeles to spend the night. When we woke the next morning, we surveyed the damage. The radiator pipe was leaking. The pipe had been knocked into the fan belt, and the friction dug a hole into the pipe. Also, a few nuts and bolts were loose. Rob did some quick maintenance on the Jeep (for about 1 1/2 hours), and we were back on our way. We visited Mision San Borja, but did not camp. We spent the night in Catavina, and left for home the next day. The morning of our last day, we left the hotel and went to the gas station across the street. While there, Rob noticed one more thing wrong with the Jeep, unrelated to the accident - the clutch was going out. |