Continued from The Seagull's First Trip to Baja

The Drive South

The ride down is easily summarized, at least as far as the border.  Interstate 5 is long and wide, has a stretch of a couple of hundred miles through Southern Oregon and Northern California with a lot of steep climbs that put the truck into second gear and held her to 45 miles an hour for a bit. . .but mostly it’s 60 or 65 mph driving.  I made the return to Grants Pass (sort of a fun symmetry there) the first night (451 miles), Buttonwillow, California the second night (another 610 miles. . .longish day).  I spent both these nights in motels. . .it was too cold to want to sleep in the boat.  It even snowed a little in Grants Pass, though it seemed just to be for visual effect, nothing stuck to the road.  From Buttonwillow it was up the Grapevine (in 2^nd), and down, thence toward the border through the morning LA freeway traffic.  Unfortunately, I damaged a trailer tire near San Diego.  Fortunately, it didn’t blow clear out!  I’d stopped in Chula Vista for gas and spotted the bulge (the size of my foot) on the side of the very oddly shaped right trailer tire.  Spent a couple of hours finding a tire shop and getting it replaced, but still managed to get to the border in the early afternoon. 

I’d been expecting to have to do boat-import paperwork at the border, but after buying my Tourist Card for $22.00, I showed the Customs people my registrations for truck, trailer and boat, they waved me through and said I was good for 6 months without further paperwork.  Dandy!  The whole operation was handled very nicely by a patient gentleman of the Mexican Immigration Service, the bank clerk next door and a pair of Mexican Customs agents who were willing to work around my Spanish but were perfectly fluent in English when I ran out of vocabulary.

The entrance to Mexico Highway 1-D , the high speed toll road South toward Ensenada is very close to the border crossing Southbound. . .a couple of easy turns, up an entrance ramp and off you go.  There are three toll booths (“Caseta de cubra”) along the way, each of which costs you $33 pesos for the truck and trailer, which is about $3.66 so figure it as $10 each way to use the tollroad.  Seemed to me it was worth it.  There is a free road alongside much of the way, but it looked like a lot slower way to go and I had a long ways to travel. . .so I paid and smiled.  The lanes feel narrow after I-5 and generally there’s no shoulder, but don’t let that spoil you.  After Ensenada the toll road (“Autopista”) ends and you’re on 2 lane, but still pretty wide road for a good long ways South.  Later the “real” Hwy 1 begins and you will remember those roads with great affection. 

I was concerned to make sure I had pesos on hand when I crossed the border rather than trying to make the Mexicans deal with my US currency.  Don’t let it worry you.  If you can get a few hundred pesos early on in small denominations ($50 or $100 at the most) it’ll make eating at taco stands easier. . .but gasoline, tolls, motels and the like are all easily handled with US currency.  Not to worry.  All the exchange rates in the States seem to be quite a bit worse than what you’ll get in Mexico anyway, so I’d think you’ll be pretty happy waiting to change money until you’re comfortably inside Mexico. 

I admit I was pretty anxious about driving in Mexico with the boat on behind. . .my first trip to Mexico, my first trip pulling the P-19 a long ways, only my second time anywhere Spanish was the spoken language, and I’d heard an awful lot of bad things about Mexican roads and drivers.  I wonder where all that comes from.  The road surfaces are by and large very well kept up. . .with some interesting exceptions. . .but on average the surfaces are at least as smooth as I-5 had been (I broke the tire on the US side of the border!!!).  The drivers were uniformly cautious and polite, if not downright patient with my dithering at intersections.  The road width. . .now that’s another matter.  There are parts of Hwy 1 that are plumb narrow.  No shoulders, steep grades, no pullouts for miles and miles. . .and lots of curves.  However, if you think your P-19 on her trailer is a wide load, think of all the RV-s that make it down to Cabo every year.  You do learn to be very alert and the short version (of a very long haul) is that I made it all the way just fine. 

Ensenada is the other big city on this route and you get there pretty quickly on the toll road.  There is no convenient by-pass.  I remember in the 50’s most US highways simply ran to the edge of town and turned into the surface streets. . .and that’s what happens here.  The toll road ends, turns into 4 lane then 2 lane streets.  The turns are marked, but be really alert.  Some of the signs aren’t really obvious over on the right hand side, maybe behind a truck or a tree. . .but really, better than a lot of Seattle’s signage at that.  It must have been good enough, I drove right through the middle of the City and out the far side without a mis-step.  It would be easy to spend some time in Ensenada and look around, but not with a trailer on behind and the launch ramp still 600 miles ahead, so on we went to the town of San Vicente by dusk, for a day’s run of 396 miles, even with the tire and the border. 

San Vicente gives you your first taste of a Baja rural town.  The highway (“Carretera”) is two lanes of good asphalt running through town on an embankment quite a ways above the surrounding level.  Alongside the carretera on both sides is a dirt shoulder and roadway with the businesses and some homes fronting onto the dirt “frontage road”.  Cross streets generally only enter onto the dirt “frontage roads”, though the main cross street has a stop light (“semaforo”) where it crosses the carretera.  Local traffic generally doesn’t use the highway, it passes IN EITHER DIRECTION up and down the dirt frontage roads.  As I said, people are careful and polite, but what with exiting the highway on a long slope down the shoulder, driving along the frontage road and entering or leaving the cross streets, you’ll find the traffic a little startling at first.  There’s a Pemex station in San Vicente, generally with two and sometimes three grades of fuel available. . .diesel, Magna sin (regular unleaded) and occasionally high test as well.  I didn’t see anywhere convenient to park for the night without blocking somebody’s access to something, and had already noted that there aren’t many pull outs available out in the countryside, so asked at the Pemex station if there was anywhere to spend the night.  The owner of the local motel was visiting with his friend the station attendant, so that quickly resolved itself and I spent my first night in Mexico in a sparkling clean if tiny and Spartan little motel room close by. 

There are signs to be aware of. . .all through the countryside, but especially in town. . .”Cruce de peatones” (pedestrian crossing) and “Cruce de Escolares” (school kid crossing) and maybe most important, “Topes a 300m” (topes in 300 meters, or 150 meters, or worse yet, right there!).  A tope is a speed bump.  Some of them are pretty reasonable.  Others even the semis and busses stop for. . .If you miss one of the worst sort it would probably be the end of the trip, so pay attention.  Often the roadway is painted with white stripes across the lane when you are approaching one of these areas, but you can’t count on it.  Other signs of interest. . .”Disminuye su velocidad”  (slow down), “Vado a 300m”  (ford 300 meters ahead. . .in this dry country these water courses are almost always dry, but may be rough in the bottom, though many are very smooth and pose no problem).  “Peligro” (danger), “Curva peligrosa” (dangerous curve), “Cuesta peligrosa” (dangerous slope. . .no kidding!). 

If you should happen to stop in San Vicente, be sure to eat birria for breakfast at one of the Birrierias along the way. . .roadside stands, they begin to open about daylight and you’ll have 3 or 4 to choose from by 0800.  The goat meat is stewed the night before til very tender and you have your choice of wet or dry. . .dry is really a taco on a corn tortilla (with various condiments to add on top) and wet is a rich soup. . .served in a Styrofoam cup, and needing chopped onions and cilantro at least. . .and some lime.  Expect to pay $20 (pesos) for enough to tide you over til lunchtime easily.  There’s also a panderia (bakery) at the South end of town (it doesn’t open as early, so buy your sticky buns the night before) as well as a number of little markets (Abarrotes or Ultramarinos) where you’ll find toilet paper, fruit, instant coffee. . .beer and liquor.  There must be 3 or 4 tire shops (llanteras) in town and a mechanic (taller mecanico). 

It’s a long haul through narrow winding roads and wide open spaces to Guerrero Negro where you pass from Baja California into Baja California Sur. . .and for the last time show your passport and Tourist Card to an agent of the Migracion (both times I passed through this check point the agent was a strikingly pretty young woman. . .wish you luck).  Two men from the de-insectivization service of the state spray your tires for bugs (???) and collect a ten peso fee and you pass through yet another military checkpoint.  At the intersection (the road into town separates from the road South) is a large army station and a grand Mexican flag sometimes flies over the plain here.  The town lies off the freeway a few hundred yards, but is clean, modern and provides all services. . .Southbound we passed it by and continued into the desert beyond.

Along the way I’d picked up a number of Mexican hitch hikers, but mostly they’d just jump in the back of the rig, smile and then bang on the roof of the cab when they wanted down.  Somewhere in the middle of nowhere I picked up my first non-Mexican hitch-hiker, a chef-cum-bum from New Zealand who has made the civilized world his home one way or another for the past 20 odd years without working over much.  He threw his pack in the back, stepped brightly into the cab and introduced himself with a flair as “Hello, I’m Skully”.  He’s pretty good conversation and kept me awake through many long miles of pretty barren country.  Hills and mountain ranges in the distance threaten to interrupt the relatively rapid progress but the road seems to sidestep them most of the afternoon.  Toward evening we arrived at San Ygnacio, a veritable oasis in the desert. . .the road dips down into a grove of palms and the quiet lights of a small town try to tempt us from the road.  However, with at least a half hour of sun left in the sky and only what seemed like 60 or 70 minutes of running to the coast at Santa Rosalia, I locked my eyes on the road and continued the march.  For perhaps a half hour as the sun sank lower in the sky the road ran straight and level and the speedometer crept up. . .til suddenly we entered a zone of hills and curves and I had to slow down. . .gradually the curves grew tighter and suddenly the truck pitched headlong down a steep grade. . .”cuesta peligrosa” said the sign and that was an understatement.  The curves became tight hairpins and the road was steeper than anything I’d ever seen before.  At 35 or 40 miles an hour on the straighter parts and much less in the hairpins we threw away thousands of feet of elevation in just a few miles and came at last to the Sea!  The last of the sun had hidden behind the magnificent mountain slopes as soon as we started down the grade, lingering on the peaks whenever I chanced to see them around the curves. . .but it was quite dark as we drove into the town of Santa Rosalia, through the port district and past the old copper works.  In the back of my mind loomed the question. . .could the little truck ever pull the boat over such a hill on the way North?  The thought would haunt me for the next month.  To fail in the attempt would be spectacular. . .there was not a single turnout in the entire descent and all the traffic of the peninsula must pass that way.  I can’t even imagine trying to back down.  Goodness.

Into town, slowing for the “topes” and thence to the Pemex station for a much needed tank of gas and hopefully a clue as to the lay of the land. .Other problems waited in the bouncy ramp into the station though. . .the ancient tailpipe finally declared independence from the long rotten muffler (I’d replaced belts, plugs, distributor parts, thermostat and so forth but ignored the sound system before leaving. . .) and having cast itself free from the old alignment, wrapped itself firmly round the rear axle with a grand rasping crash.  I arrived in Santa Rosalia in style.  The Pemex station staff, singularly industrious young men in fine uniforms sprang into action. . .a large hammer (“martillo”) was produced and a strapping youngster climbed under the rig with me to survey the damage.  The muffler (with holes clearly visible) still clung to the underside of the truck but the tailpipe, aside from its stranglehold on the axle had completely severed ties.  The hammer produced sparks but no motion.  Finally, I grasped the poor bent pipe in both hands and strained fiercely. . .it came free and a considerable cheer arose from the crowd (they were lined up behind me trying to get to the gas pumps. . .).  Sixty dollars of gasoline later (amazing she can hold such an amount) I extracted a very firm recommendation for a muffler (“mofle”) shop, with the assurance he could fix the whole exhaust (“escape” say it es-KAW-pay) system for me. . .the name, “Taller Cisneros” and address and a note to the effect it was just in front of the school were neatly written in the back of my journal and I finally slipped away into the night.  Some time after it became apparent I’d be hung up for a bit my New Zealander had disappeared in search of a burger or sandwich (“hamburgesa” o “torta”), usually the cheapest substantial meal at the roadside stands.  The truck seemed a good bit quieter without him, notwithstanding the slightly throatier sound of the engine. 

I drove slowly down the waterfront of town looking for somewhere to park for the night and maybe to camp.  A long open parking spot on the Northbound side of the street, right on the sea wall beckoned. . .I pulled into a wide intersection just beyond, looked all around and hung a U turn right there. . .the whole rig fit tidily into the available space.  I shut off the engine and waited a bit.  No one commented.  A young couple walked by obviously much in love.  Nothing else.  I got out of the truck, climbed up, slid back the hatch of the boat, stepped in and looked around.  The sky was full of stars.  The air was soft and warm.  Only a little breeze stirred.  Offshore somebody was fishing from a panga on the edge of the light from town.  Cars and taxis passed now and again and more people walked by with soft “Buena noche’s”.  Finally a police van drove by and didn’t have a thing to say.  I was home for the night.  A short walk turned up a good torta stand. . .had a good supper, found the public toilets (3 pesos and worth it, but not always open), and finally to bed and sleep.  There was traffic all night (this is the main highway after all) and dogs barking and cocks crowing before dawn. . .as well as a gusty northerly wind after midnight. . .still I slept pretty well and was up hunting for the muffler shop by 0730.  After asking several different places I finally closed in on the shop, back out of town to the North a ways and up the hill to the left. . .a small but businesslike sort of shop with the house visible behind.  A well armed policeman stood guard over the school crossing in front of the shop and confirmed that it was the best muffler shop in town and worth waiting for.  By 0800 I’d met Gaspar, the owner, cut the trailer loose in front of the school (where kids hung Christmas tinsel on the boarding ladder) and parked over the open pit that was his operating theater.  He examined the muffler (it was shot, no question about that), the upstream piping and manifolds (still sound) and the bent tailpipe in the back of the truck.  For 700 pesos he’d replace both muffler and tailpipe. . .just less than $80 US.  I didn’t even hesitate though I figured he’d be half the day.  Forty minutes later the job was done and I’d barely had time to walk down to the corner and have a fine breakfast of birria de cabrito and walk back.  My policeman friend had watched me with my insulin injection and advised me that Gaspar also was diabetic but never shot himself through his T-shirt. . .the things you find out in a small town. . .In any event, with the police to stop traffic so I could back off the operating pit into the street and thence directing traffic so I could re-hitch to the trailer, life was looking fine until I realized we were now headed up hill into the busy neighborhoods of narrow streets above the waterfront.  I had walked that way before and knew I didn’t want to drive through it with the trailer on behind.  Counsel with the policeman.  Not a problem he instructed. . .pull into that driveway (pointing across the street beyond the school) and then back out into the street.  He didn’t know I have a hard time getting down a straight launch ramp.  Oh well, while he held traffic from both sides I nosed in, cramped over the wheel the right way first time, backed out into the street and drove off into the sunrise with a flourish on the horn.  If you need a muffler in Santa Rosalia, by all means go to “Taller Cisneros”.  Say hi to Gaspar for me.

As I started to gather speed on the road out of town a familiar thin figure stood up from the roadside, shouldered his pack and waved me down. . .Skully was waiting.  Oh well.  As I said, his conversation kept me awake the night before, so I guess I owed him the ride the rest of the way to Loreto. 

Running down the Gulf coast now, with the sea on the left instead of the right, passing numerous beaches (“playas”) mostly with wall to wall RV’s and some yachts anchored off if the beach was protected. . .stopped to pick up a young German lady and her six year old daughter. . .they climbed straight in the back though Skully gallantly offered them the front seat.  I dug out a cockpit cushion for them and we drove off down the road.  The two of them had a high old time in the back, taking turns taking pictures of each other, making faces at the countryside and generally carrying on.  The sun was warm enough they didn’t even seem cold (though they’d put on several layers of sweaters as they climbed aboard).  It’s a beautiful ride South from Santa Rosalia through Mulege (another palm tree oasis, though again I didn’t stop) along the coast then overland toward and around and over several ranges of hills and mountains to Loreto.  Not knowing there was an easy entrance at the South end of town I turned off into the side streets of Loreto at the first opportunity and wound my way through the outskirts headed for the bay. . .figured I’d never yet been unable to find a boat harbor if there was one available and knew the Port Captain (“Capitania de Puerto”) had his office close by the panga harbor.  It wasn’t pretty as a maneuver but it did work.  On the waterfront avenue I discharged all three passengers and went alone to meet the Port Captain.