Besides being back from Baja, we’ve had some other big news recently. We canceled our contract to buy the home in Victorville. We should get our entire deposit back within two weeks, and we may look for another home before the $8000 tax credit expires on April 30th, but we aren’t in too big of a hurry after this recent not-so-fun experience.
Baja was a lot of fun, but I think it would have been better if we’d come back one day earlier. I met my buddy Dave and his grandson at our plant around 3am last Saturday morning. I moved my stuff (cooler, backpack, plastic crate with supplies, etc) over to his truck and we hit the road. We stopped in Chula Vista, just north of the border and below San Diego, to top off the gas tank and grab a bite to eat, then we crossed over into Tijuana. We pulled to the side and went into the immigration office to fill out the FMT forms. If you’re traveling by road into Baja you don’t have to bother with the FMT as long as you stay north of Ensenada on the Pacific side and San Felipe on the Sea of Cortez side, but we were traveling all the way south to the southern state, BCS (Baja California Sur).
We signed the forms, went back to a little bank kiosk and paid the fee (something like $20), then went back to the immigration office for our stamps. While Dave was paying for his FMT I went two windows down where a little bank kiosk had posted exchange rates (like $12.35 pesos per dollar) and noticed a guy asleep on the floor under a blanket. I knocked on the window and pointed at the exchange rate sign and said “cambio” (change) and he looked at me, but then he flipped over and pulled his blanket over his head! Lovely… Welcome to Mexico.
We got back in the truck, jumped straight on to the 1-D (toll road to Ensenada) and headed south. We left the border around 6am and didn’t hit any traffic on the toll road. We passed straight through Ensenada without any problems and continued south along the transpeninsular highway, Mexico 1. We went through the string of dusty towns like San Quintin (pronounced “San Kenteen”), Lazaro Cardenas and El Rosario. We did stop in Camalu to put more gas in the tank, then we stopped at Mama Espinoza’s in El Rosario for lunch. El Rosario was the end of the paved road for a long time, and has been a checkpoint for the famous Baja 1000 off road races since the 60’s. I had some fish tacos and they were decent.
We continued on down the road, into the strange desert area surrounding Cataviña. Dave was impressed by all the odd flora, like boojums, elephant trees, cardon cacti and cholla. We passed through a total of 4 military checkpoints on the way down, plus the border crossing in TJ and an agricultural checkpoint when we crossed from the northern Baja state into BCS. The agricultural checkpoint is right at the border, along the northern 28th parallel, and just north of the BCS town of Guerrero Negro. You pull up under this shed and pay a guy 10 pesos ($0.81) and then roll up your windows and drive over this little sprayer thing on the ground that supposedly coats the underside of your vehicle in some sort of pesticide or insecticide.
We pulled through our final military checkpoint and into our hotel, the Baja Oasis Motel, about 30 minutes after it got dark (~6:30pm). We checked into our room and then went into town to see what it looked like. The town is called San Ignacio and it is almost in the center of the peninsula (both north-south and east-west wise). The town is really nice and is as close to the picturesque Mexican village as I’ve ever seen. Unlike all the dusty and depressing towns you pass going south, it actually has a lovely little town square with a park in the center and a huge old mission church right on the square. A bunch of locals were out partying in the square, and we ended up going to another Baja 1000 staple for dinner, Rice and Beans. The meal was pretty good but overpriced.
We headed back to our motel and hit the sack shortly after dinner. Here are a couple of pictures taken at Mama Espinoza’s on the drive down:
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