January 3 to January 7–Old Mexico
Crossed the border at Lukeville AZ into Sonoyta, Sonora, Mexico without incident. In fact we didn’t even stop—there was no one to give us the order to stop on the Mexican side of the border. I assumed the border check station would be further on but it never appeared. The border station turned out to be hidden away right at the crossing gate; not spotting it at this time wound up costing us half a day of driving.
I crept along at the posted speed limit through the dusty and busy main street. One minute after arriving in Mexico a guy in a banged-up pickup passed us on the right at five times my speed, kicking up a cloud of dust and scattering pedestrians.
In the previous days the federal government raised the tax on gasoline, increasing the price by 25%. The common folk were enraged. In Sonoyta we saw groups of cars and trucks with anti-government messages written on their windows in soap gathered around the Pemex stations (the national gas company Pemex is the only vendor of gas). When we returned to Sonoyta two days later there were balaklava-clad soldiers armed with automatic weapons in armored vehicles throughout town. The protestors had tried to block access to the Pemex stations by circling the wagons. In other cities Pemex stations were torched.
We drove ninety minutes to the east coast of Gulf of California, Puerto Penasco (a.k.a. Rocky Point, aka The Arizona Riviera.) We chose the RV park on the outskirts of town, the Reef, which proved to be a good choice. The in-town camps were crowded, noisy, surrounded by concertina-wire-topped fences we later learned. It was very nice, right on the beach, uncrowded, quiet, a bar, a restaurant, and a store on premises.
Vendors came along the beach peddling gaudy wares. Small fishing boats worked the water in front of our campsite. We went into town several times. At the farmacia by the railroad tracks the lady filled my prescriptions from the containers I presented or the names I had written down. No scripts to show (no English spoken) and it cost me a few dollars less than refilling at the Leonardtown CVS.
There are 20 pesos to the dollar. Seems weird, of course, to be peeling off 500 peso notes to buy less than 100 dollars of groceries. And things are inexpensive in Mexico. A pound and a half of some of the best shrimp I’ve ever eaten, peeled and deveined, for $8. Six pack of Tecate for $4. Fish tacos and corn/cheese/poblano pepper tamales for a buck apiece. (Altho I am still dreading that yesterday’s tamale will turn on me.)
Mexican cities are a carnival. Everyone is outside, colorful decorations everywhere, hand painted signs for the endless number of little shops on the malacon, each store blaring some manic Mexican music that my son memorably described as sounding like “music from a circus on the moon.” Guys walking around selling cotton candy on tall sticks, traffic and pedestrians darting around in the most disorderly fashion, laughter and shouting and car horns.
The back streets show the direst poverty—ramshackle shanties, dirt streets, flooded intersections, unowned dogs always in sight. And in these residential streets the same mad music and colorful decorations.
There were gunshots in the desert outside our campsite one night but I’ve heard lots worse in New York and Baltimore. The seaside geology eluded me—slabs of gray and pink granite next to friable slabs of concretized fossils of marine life (volcanic tuff?), feet thick, then a stretch of what appears to be hardened lava. A couple of small hills along the shore, mostly covered in sand, and a scrubby desert behind us stretching to the distance.
We needed a tourist visa which I had intended to get in Sonoyta at the border station which I never spotted. I assumed we could get one in Puerto Penasco but that turned out not to be the case. I left a message at the airport office thinking they must issue them there but after two days and no reply we had to drive the 90 minutes back to Sonoyta. After some searching around we found the proper office and got our documents. When I got back to Penasco the airport responded that, yes, they could issue tourist visas.
After four nights here, on a Friday, the ugly americans started showing up, with 4-wheelers, booze, loud music. Despite the prominent signs saying the Mexican Dept of the Environment had put the area under a burn ban they started up fires along the beach. Fireworks were bound to come on Saturday so we hitched up and drove from Puerto Penasco 5 hours around the Gulf of California to a point directly west, San Felipe, Baja California.