EA & AT's Baja Adventures

Junction at Mexico 3 (from the South)

2007-07-12T23:17:00.000-07:00

July 7th, 2007...another day of 4-wheeling in Baja!

2007-07-12T22:30:00.000-07:00

Mike's Sky Rancho

2007-07-12T12:45:00.000-07:00

Tucked away in the middle of the mountains in northern Baja, is Mike's Sky Rancho. It lies on the northwestern edge of Parque Nacional Sierra San Pedro Martir. Described as "a beloved haunt of off-roaders," Mike's is set in a small valley framed by the pine-covered foothills of the Sierra. To get here, the turn off from Mexico 3, is at Km 138 or 37 miles (60km) west of the junction with highway 5. The rancho is 22 miles (35km) from this turnoff.

By the time we made it to the turnoff for the Rancho (which is by-the-way very well marked) we had already put in a full day of off-roading. Mike's road was much friendlier to the Jeep, especially the earlier portion. We were able to make 30-35mph on the soft sandy graded road. Then the road got more difficult and more rocky. We had a delay of game due to two cows standing in the middle of the road...and then we ran into a truck and tractor that were doing road maintenance (SCORE had been through here as well.) After passing the tractor, the road became more exciting...back to 4-low.... Arrived at Mike's just at dusk. :)

Mike's offers modest and clean motel rooms surrounding a large (clean) swimming pool, a dining room where dinners and breakfasts are served, a charming bar, and an officina. Off-roaders, racers and visitors alike make their mark on every surface of the bar, its walls, and windows. (Bumper stickers, team logos, patches, signed dollar bills, and business cards are tacked up EVERYWHERE.) Here we met a handfull of friendly off-roaders...americans with years of Baja trails under their belts. Mike is a very cool guy...kind of Godfatheresque. He's the boss...whatever he says goes...and his visitors get whatever they want during their stay at the Rancho!

Hot showers were very much appreciated. (The picture of my dashboard in the "note to self" section was taken at Mike's.)

"Graded" road

2007-07-12T12:21:00.000-07:00

Actually, the pictures we took of the roads are not the worst we saw...I was operating by the theory "if you are going through hell, keep going." I am not trying to imply that it was hellish, but the constant crappy status of the road made for lo-gear 4-wheeling at 5 mph...it got hot...it got old...and I got tired.

Once in Valle de Trinidad and at the local Taquerilla we were sitting pretty. It was like ordering off of a dollar menu except the food was AMAZING! (And it was more like a 91cent menu.) We sat on bar stools (outside) at the tiled counter and ate the food right there. The owner set out a whole spread of accoutrements including fresh salsa (with cilantro, Mom!), salsa verde, chopped cabbage, quacamole, and diced tomatos with onion. Carne Asada's the word. Also, the bottled Coke is delicious...the sugar cane tastes WAY better then the aspartame that is used in the US. While sitting there, we joined in watching a mexican soap on the TV (the only television I saw the whole trip!) We also watched a freshly emancipated truck tire rolling down the road...(this country has 400% more dead tires scattered throughout the landscape than actual functional tires!)

From here it was off to Mike's Sky Ranch via 8(ish) miles on Mexico 3 and some more off-roading...

Back to the interior...July 6th, 2007

2007-07-12T12:17:00.000-07:00

We made our way back to San Vincente before embarking on another 4-wheeling adventure to Valle de Trinidad.

It's amazing how much of the landscape is dirt brown when you move away from the coast...except when you happen upon a view with a prickly pear cactus farm, a winery, a field of carrots, or a field of onions.

Camping in Baja!

2007-07-12T11:38:00.001-07:00

We took a right turn off the Mexico 1 to get here...yes, I said right turn. It was difficult to find the thru street to the coast. With the help of the GPS, we navigated the little neighborhoods and found our way to this spectacular location! (We saw a roadrunner along the way!)

We arrived at this campsite about an hour and a half before dark and spent a lot of the remaining daylight harvesting dead Agave stalks for our fire. (see "notes to self.") That was fun. Aaron managed to knock off the spikey bases with only one almost incident. (The agave tried to attack his eye...and my legs.) I bundled them and stacked them onto the Jeep's front bumber and Aaron strapped them down. (The first use of our parachute chord.) The agave was a pleasant surprise. It burned well, but fairly quickly...and had a kind of sweet smell. So we cooked hot dogs, drank mexican beer, and listened to the waves and the offshore sealions by the fire.

On the "road"

2007-07-12T11:22:00.000-07:00

While driving during this trip was both arduous and exciting, it was also exhausting...we switched drivers quite a bit. Aaron was great at taking the wheel when I was tired...allowing me to PTFO in the passenger seat. (An impressive feat, considering the amount of bumping and jostling the ol' Wrangler was dishing out.)

Notes to self

2007-07-11T21:49:00.000-07:00

-BYOFW = Bring your own firewood...a good idea since dry Agave are hard to find, harder to collect and generally dangerous to be around. Keep your tires away from the Agave plants especially the spines at the ends of the leaves! Definitely keep your legs away from them. Thanks to Emily for testing that out for us on accident :-(

-BYBH = Buy your beer here..no kidding, they make it here, its good, its cheap, its everywhere....even places where they dont sell water or gas...just look for the Tecate or Corona signs. Pacifico is sold at the Corona stores, Dos-Equis at the Tecate stores for anyone who cares.

-Bring more pesos & cash. Generally it seemed to be about $100 total to get the tourist cards (fine for not getting them closer to the border included) and buy our first tank of gas.... About $55 for the tourist cards, $11 for the fine and $30 for gas...cept we paid in pesos some of the time... We brought a limited amount of cash as our previous global travels had tought us that Visa is everywhere you want to be...except its not in Villas at 4000' in the Baja mountains...or at remote beachfront resorts...or at any gas station that we went to....so Visa was generally useless in Baja and we made three pilgramages to the cash machine--a once a day occurence. Resorts prefer dolars, Pemex prefers Pesos...and...surprise, you keep running low on both.

-Check the SCORE race schedule... If you are unlucky there will have been a race recently on the roads you are trying to drive on (this was twice the case for us but it took a while to figure that out based on the strange little signs) and the roads will be destroyed, passable only in a SCORE race vehicle or a suitable truck in 4-Lo... If you are really unlucky there will be a race on at the time of your transit and you will be lucky if you see the truck before it hits you... On the second day we drove from San Vincente to Valle de Trinidad on a "graded dirt road" that had recently been used for the SCORE Baja 500...the 35 miles took almost 4 hours...painfull!

-Need to have the Baja Almanac. The AAA map was so-so on paved roads, inaccuarate on road conditions and didn't include many of the unpaved roads... In a province with a total of like 3 paved roads and very very few paved streets this can be a bad thing. We SWAGed our way here and there by comparing the map the GPS was drawing with the AAA map.

-Bring a Garmin GPS...See above for explanation

-Wear good travel clothes: Columbia Titanium was the best, Patagonia and REI nylon were a close second. Anything you wear sould be nylon, dark in color and not especially valuable. There is a lot of red/brown/tan dust here and it gets on everything. Nylon allows it to sluff off and lets your skin breath freely. Cotton is a nightmare as any moisture or oil quickly accumulates and creates its own mud. Dont bring white clothes.

-Bring a well thought-out vehicle repair kit. We did one repair to the Jeep and it was easy...except we forgot to bring electrical tape...or duct tape... Furtunately another 'wheeler had some. We also forgot to bring Tranny or Diff Oils...fortunately we didn't need any.

-Know your vehicle before you leave the paved roads. Not a problem for us, but clearly had been for others.

-Don't take any new truck mods to Baja without first trialing them somewhere locally--vibration and dust are your worst and most prevelent enemies, test your gear before you go.

-Take batteries for everything you bring, preferrably make sure they all run on AA's and just bring a lot of those.

-TJ at night = scary as hell...not the people, the navigation. There were literally signs for I-5 that took us in the opposite direction... See Garmin comment.

-Bring stuff to wash your windows..the dust makes driving into the sun or at night impossible.

-There is no such thing as a dust-proof CD player... Sorry Em, I think this ones had it... RIP Pioneer....

-If you take the Jeep windows out, they need to be in individual cases...or the dust will scratch them beyond usefullenss.

-Bring a lunch and some munchies for sure, but dont bring a ton of stuff unless you are dry camping immediately. There are markets and grocery stores everywhere and its cheaper than California. Besides the luxury of cold water/juice/beer, a cooler is mostly a waste of space that consumes lots of Ice. Dont get me wrong, the cold drinks are awesome and we heard that cold beer traded for exhorbitant sums away from civilization so we stocked up just in case.

-We drank about 4 bottled waters and a gallon from our CamelBaks each day between the two of us (and an averrage of 5 margaritas or 7 beers...well...it is mexico afterall).

-Local Taqarias (taco stands) or Burrias (you guessed it...burrito stands) are excellent.

-Carne Asada here is awesome.

-When coming into TJ from the south, take the exit labled for San Diego, its a Right exit from Mex-1D, cross all three lanes of traffic directly out of exit ramp and make the U-turn infront of that first Pemex. This will take you to the border stations...otherwise have fun turning around (near Tecate!) See comment on TJ navigation. Garmin saves us again....

-Go to the bathroom before you get to TJ as the traffic and border wait will take about 2-3 hour when its crowded. Chill in line with your ice-water and eat the snackies still in the cooler as you wait in line...or buy food from one of the hundreds of vendors walking between the cars.

-You don't NEED spainish to survive...but if you want gas, food or help at least a tacit understanding of spainish and a decent vocabulary is very important. A phrase book is a nice security blanket...we bought a nice (read expensive) one but only used it to confirm our vocabulary when reading highway signs. In other words we only used it when we were bored...we relied on memorys of spainish class for pretty much everything...what do you know dad, I finnaly used that shtuff.

-WHEN IN DOUBT: SMILE, BE NICE, APOLOGIZE AND KEEP TRYING TO UNDERSTAND WHAT THE HECK THEY ARE TRYING TO TELL YOU, SOMETIMES ITS MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOU THINK.

Ensenada, July 5th, 2007

2007-07-11T09:32:00.000-07:00

Ensenada lies 68 miles (110km) south of Tiajuana/population 370,730. Our first stop was at a nearby PEMEX for some Magna Gasolina. Once through the craziness of Tiajuana, the highway to Ensenada/Rosarito is beautiful...it is properly paved and painted and there are actual guard rails and reflective lights throughout...AND TWO LANES! The highway makes its way along the rolling coast towards Ensenada and suddenly Mexico 1 turns into the main road through the city. You will not make up any time here because the Mexican "'burbs" (eg: COSTCO, Home Depot, fortified McDonalds, Auto Zone etc...) are on this drag of Mexico 1...there are many "Alta" (Stop) signs and stoplights. An anomoly...most of the "towns" we saw in Baja consisted of unsigned dirt roads, a speed bump, little family run roadside taquerillas, stray dogs, and little convenience stores with TECATE or Corona signs and a PEMEX station...some more charming than others. Surprisingly, most of the PEMEX stations are new all along our route in northern Baja; therefore, gas was more readily available than we had expected based on the locations indicated on the AAA map.

Before making our way south to San Vincente we stopped for lunch at Hussong's Pelicano Cantina and Bar. As advertised in the Baja & Los Cabos guidebook, Hussong's makes a mean margarita! "Hordes of gringos descend on Ensenada in search of the perfect margarita, and many become derailed as a result--the victims of their successful 'research.'" Thank you, Lonely Planet Publishing, for sparing us of this fateful end...we found our "mecca of margaritas" in Hussong's.

Also while in Ensenada, we made a trip (or three...because we couldn't find the right office the first time) to the Officina Tourista and Officina de Immigracion. Here we obtained our "tourist cards." (For any tourist planning to stay in Mexico for more than 78 hours.) To my knowledge, we paid aproximately $25-$30 each for a paper "visa" that we ended up not really needing anyway. It's probably the same deal as the Mexican car insurance...you don't need it until you really NEED it. (By-the-way, the HSBC ATM we found in Ensenada had a good exchange rate.)

Off to San Vincente...

Mexico or BUST!

2007-07-11T00:21:00.000-07:00

"Baja, California" vs. "Baja, Mexico"...I entertained this discussion in my head before embarking on our trip. In hindsight, I have come to the definitive conclusion that anyone who has actually seen (or smelled) Tiajuana knows to click their heels three times because they ain't in California anymore!

As the Lonely Planet guidebook states (this is my favorite description of all)"Ain't no lie: the air quality in Tijuana on any given day will knock a buzzard off a shit wagon."

2007-07-10T15:05:00.000-07:00

Pictures and text coming soon!