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  La Paz, Mexico
Thursday, January 17, 2008

JANUARY 9-15 2008
 
We left Harbor Island San Diego at 2pm on Jan. 9th, after several hectic days of getting final equipment, packing and dealing with an apparent leak in the water tank or system on the boat. The Jeep took longer than planned to modify, especially the special locking system that John designed, but it was worth it to know that it can't be started by anyone once we've shut it down. Our odometer showed 4901.
 
We headed south towards Tijuana and the border crossing, knowing we had to get different papers for the Jeep - a temporary import license - since we are going through Mexico this time and not returning to San Diego. But we managed to get all the paperwork done at the Tijuana border crossing, after we asked an insurance salesman where the right place was. He sent us by foot with his runner to an office and bank several blocks from the border crossing, where our vehicle papers were inspected and our temporary import license issued by a kind and competent young woman

Sea Salt

. So off we went to Ensenada. The drive down the coast was sunny and lovely, not as warm as we would have liked, but the ocean was beautiful. John knew the road well, we followed Highway 1 and quickly found ourselves pulling into the Best Western in Ensenada, where the reception directed us to the locked parking lot behind the hotel. We had to go around the corner and in through the back gate because the equipment on top of the Jeep made it too tall to fit under the front entrance. We were very pleased to see that the back gate locked at night, as it was our first night out of the country with the Jeep and all the equipment.
 
From Ensenada, we drove down the coast to our favorite whale-watching resort -Malirrimo in Guerrero Negro. The drive took us through the central mountains of Baja California, narrow two-lane roads through twisting mountain curves, often with a semi coming at top speed in the other direction. Or left us having to pass slow-moving cars in the relatively short straight stretches between the twisty curving roads. The desert landscape had an austere kind of beauty and a seemingly infinite variety of cactus. Malierrimo was welcoming as ever, three-quarters full of other itinerant Americans, Canadians and Mexicans. It's also a stop for mobile home travelers, and there was at least one cavalcade traveling in tandem. We met a couple who were planning to spend the winter in La Paz and saw more tourists from Canada - especially from British Columbia - than usual, which we attributed to the relative strength of the Canadian dollar

Church of Steel

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We drove out onto the nature preserve at the edge of the ocean - the pools and inlets give sanctuary for migrating birds and whales - but it was too early to see the flocks and the pods we had seen in the past. There were a few eagles nesting in the platforms erected by the side of the tide pools and egrets and other birds. The whales are mating now - so we heard - and the chance to see young ones starts in February and goes on into March.
 
From Guerrero Negro, we went down the coast and as the highway turned east, we drove off-road some 45 miles (and back!) to Laguna San Ignacio, a very good whale-watching spot in the right season. But it was still too early for us. The government is finally building a straight, and presumably gravel, road to make it more accessible. But we had to drive alongside it since it wasn't finished. For us, it was a twisting washboard that took a lot of John's skill to keep us going. We bounced a lot on the way out, but finally decided to drive faster on the way back and found it much smoother. The jeep wheels just kind of plane over the bumps. The lagoon itself was beautiful, very long and quite deserted, with a few houses and a café at the very end of the road.
 
We made our way back to Rice and Beans for a beer, where earlier in the day we had met an American couple even crazier than we are. They were teachers who had retired and moved to China to open an English school in the northeastern section, near Mongolia. Once they got the school up and going, with a new headmaster, they took off by motorcycle (one!) to drive around the world. They went up through Mongolia, across to Moscow, down to Istanbul, across northern Africa to Morocco, up through Spain, France and the Low Countries to England, where they shipped their motorcycle - the second one, a BMW with a sidecar; the first Chinese one fell apart along the way - to the east coast of Canada. From there, they drove down to Texas, up to Prudhoe Bay and back down the west coast, heading for Cabo San Lucas. Unfortunately, they hit a hole in the notoriously uneven Baja road surface and broke the front axel and both wheels and were waiting there in San Ignacio for parts to arrive so it could be fixed. We felt like we lived in the lap of luxury in our Jeep Wrangler Rubicon - especially me, since his wife, who had a tendency to fall asleep, had to hold on behind him.
 
We went on down the road to Santa Rosalia, where we found a good motel and had dinner in a restaurant we knew perched on a hill overlooking the harbor. The city was a center of copper mining and smelting in the 19th century, with a Paris-based company owned by the Rothschild's. The processed ore was ocean shipped to British Columbia. The returning vessels brought back wood and the village is built mostly of wood which is a rarity in the Baja. The French manager had heard about a prototype steel church, easy to pack and assemble - designed by the French gentleman who subsequently designed the  Eifel Tower,  for French missionaries to take overseas. It was stored in a warehouse in Brussels, and he tracked it down, brought it back to Santa Rosalia and put it up in the center of town. We went to see it on a Sunday morning, and it was packed to overflowing with a Mexican priest booming a sermon over a loudspeaker to an overflow crowd. A lovely and accessible church on a sunny morning in the Baja and a side of Eifel not heard of before.
 
We made it to La Paz by 5:30pm and checked out the two hotels John had in mind. The
more expensive one wasn't as nice or as central as the less expensive one, within walking distance to town and right across the street from the Malecon, the paved walkway along the beach. So here we stayed and relaxed and rested, got our laundry done and found the sister of one of our neighbors in St. Charles, who has lived here for more than 24 years.
 We had lunch with her yesterday (the 15th) at her restaurant just outside of La Paz and tonight we are going back for dining and dancing at her restaurant, the Club Marlin. This is a very special place, extremely warm yet exciting. Her sister, who has never visited in 24 years, has no idea what a treat she is missing.
 
For the past day or two we have been getting further organized - it will be an ongoing project - and are trying to correct problem areas - our GPS will be of no further use unless we are shipped the right CD for maps of Central and South America - we were given a Map Create CD for the US. This of course is of no value to us on this trip. We also have some problems with our various security systems. Hopefully these can all be overcome prior to our leaving Puerto Vallarta.

We leave for the mainland via the ferry on Friday afternoon. After an 18 hour voyage, we arrive in Matzaland around noon on Sat. Depending on what shape everything is in - us and the jeep - we will head to PV on Sunday. Our odometer reads 6239 - we have traveled 1337 miles of a possible 16,000 plus mile trip.

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