Whale sharks and fast trucks!

We have made it into Baja Mexico and have just finished a glorious week at the beach at Gonzaga Bay.

But to be complete I must include our time in Yuma, Arizona – we headed there Nov. 9, and set up camp in the dusty parking lot of the Quechan casino, free but no services. One of our first stops was the Golden Corral buffet! – we really must be old and cheap – there was a guy just sitting & waiting so we asked him why. He told us that if waited 15 minutes until 1:00 then we could save money and get a beverage included, so of course we did!

 

camping at the Quechan casino

 Off to the Arizona Market, a huge tented area of shopping, for LED lights. Our coach has over 60 lights, yes, 60! All halogen, mainly small ceiling lights that take a fair amount of power and let off heat so we needed to switch them out. We cut a deal for a volume purchase and bought enough for the lights used most often. I had to do the Aqua massage - $10 for 15 minutes, quite pleasant.

Arizona market shopping

Stocked up on booze and groceries, ran into Keith & Yvonne, folks we met 5 years ago, who got us onto the solar power lifestyle.

Did our annual day trip walking across into Algodones, Mexico to get our tourist cards, put in our Mexican Sim card & added money to the phone (at the town liquor store, no less) & had tacos and beer! Too bad we can’t use the same phone plan in Canada - $14 for 30 days of talk, text & data!

We thought that we had missed our French Canadian friends, Serge & Suzanne but in they drove to the free “camping” at the casino so we had a good visit.

Early on Nov. 12 (Sunday) we headed for the border and crossed at Mexicali – we chose Sunday as there is less traffic and it is a big city. All the border guys wanted was to see both vehicle registrations, open a few cupboards, check out the boxes in the car (assorted balls & backpacks full of stuff for Mexican kids) and we were on our way. I even did a shift of driving as the first section of hiway was very good! We stopped in the town of San Felipe (lots of gringos spend the winter here) for pesos at an ATM and more tacos. We continued on to our destination of Gonzaga Bay, lots of rough, broken hiway and dips, on one particularly bad dip someone had written in large white letters –“Oh shit dip”, unfortunately not soon enough to avoid it! No damage done, thankfully.

Gonzaga Bay

The camping area there is on the beach with huge palapas for each site, concrete floor, about 20 ft across with a roof. No service, no cell phone but a great location, $17/nite. We signed up for a week. We spent our days lounging in the hammock, kayaking with the whale sharks, watching birds, picking up shells, relaxing and playing Skip-bo with Serge & Suzanne.

garbage pick-up, complete with dog riding on the hood!

our palapa

We couldn’t believe our good luck to have whale sharks coming in to the bay most days to feed. These things were 15-30+ feet long, with huge mouths, plankton & fish eaters only and didn’t seem to mind being closely observed. We saw at least 4 different ones and kayaked right beside and even over top of them (that was rather scary)! That was definitely the highlight of our stay there!

a very large mouth!

right beside our yellow kayak

Somehow we always manage to end up in the path of the Baja 1000 offroad race every year. This year was the 50^th anniversary and the route took it within 2 km of our camp. The day started at 6:00 with helicopters zooming overhead, we spent the day watching first the motorcycles then later drove 20 km away to watch from an overpass/bridge still under construction to see the fancy trucks. We had an excellent vantage point, could see them coming from a ways off and then they sped along just below our spot (this kept us out of some, not all, of the dust). Very exciting! We found out that the fellow (Malcolm Smith) who won the 1^st race in 1967 was sitting just down from us.

just a little dust!

We left the beach camp yesterday, me in the car, Robin driving the RV, both of us with walkie-talkies. The road, Hiway 5, is still original dirt/gravel with areas of construction, and several one lane sections so about 40 km. of rough, rocky, very slow going, average 15-20 km/hr. Took us 2.5 hrs but we made it through with no broken dishes! A quick rehook- up of the car and on to Hiway 1 and pavement but oh, my, very narrow! Slow going again till Robin got used to it and you still slow right down to meet big trucks. And of course all day we were meeting the Baja 1000 racers heading back to the US, driving with big trailers hauling the race vehicles, hogging part of our lane!

a hole in the centre of the road that fir a car tire!

a one lane section

note the edge of the road missing

just a few potholes

We are now in Guerrero Negro, just off the Pacific coast, a town where people come to watch gray whales later in the winter and where they flood huge areas with sea water and then harvest the salt once the water evaporates. Time to do laundry, wash off all the road dust from the vehicles and catch up with internet and phone. Back in Gonzaga Bay we paid 15 pesos ($1) for 30 minutes of “fair” WiFi, here we can get WiFi in the restaurant. Last night we ate there, we each had a marvelous Seafood combination – 2 lobster tails, 3 shrimp, scallops & fish, for the sum of $19 Can. Excellent! Tonight we will return for another good meal and will post this story.

 

a marvelous meal!

 Unfortunately we have had a “small” problem with the RV – when plugging in to power here we “fried” a very important piece of equipment that moniters & controls all the power coming in, so we will need repairs (not till we get back to the US) so we can’t plug in until that is done. So only solar and generator power for us, which will work just fine, but a bit inconvenient. We can plug our fridge in to an extension cord when we trust the power (in Cabo).

Tomorrow we continue south to another beach at Punta Abreojos, isolated, but sounds like good kayaking in the estuary. Life is good!