January 7 to January 14, 2017—San Felipe, San Luis Gonzalez, Guerrero Negro
Passed through two federal checkpoints en route to the west coast of the Gulf of California. They are looking for people smuggling guns from US, among other things. They are intimidating—a half dozen guys in fatigues, some with their faces covered, some with automatic weapons. At the first stop they held us maybe five minutes, going into the Scamp and poking around. The next checkpoint was more relaxed and the found something amusing about the Scamp. I think I heard the Spanish word for “egg” being bandied about.
Route 2 runs around the head of the bay, most of it within twenty miles of the US border, I think. After rounding the head of the Bay and heading south we came into a small town, the name of which I missed. I wanted to get gas but didn’t recognize that the line of cars up the block were queued up for gas. I had to circle through the town and found another Pemex station with a shorter line. The attendant “forgot” to clear the previous purchase from the pump until I moved my eyes back and forth from him to the pump. He cleared the counter and pumped half a tank. This proved to be a timely purchase; if I hadn’t stopped I would have arrived in San Felipe (SF) near empty at the start of the gas crisis.
We took a spot at in SF at Club de Pesca on the edge of town, within walking distance. Thirty dollars American per night, at a spot on the beach with a concrete patio and a palapa, a palm-covered area to sit, dine.
Within a few minutes of our arriving another couple arrived in a Itasca, a camper mounted on a dual-wheel Toyota frame. They were from California, Alan and Betsi, and we have become fast friends. Betsi and Brenda have opinions and preferences (hot showers) in common, Alan and I tend to see the world in the same light. On the other side of us were Mark and Valerie from Ontario where he has some kind of marine salvage business. He has a heavy truck rig, a monster pick up with a Cummins engine, with a camper, a sixteen foot inflatable boat, and all kinds of gear for off-roading. Mark is a big dude whose friends call him Shrek and between the three sites we had a cool little scene going.
President Nieto of Mexico had proclaimed that he was going to end the subsidization of the price of gas in the country and let it rise to market levels. The first installment of his plan went into effect while we were entering Mexico. Overnight the price of gas went up 20%. The price of a gallon of gas was now equivalent to a day’s earnings under Mexico’s minimum wage. The populace was furious as there were simultaneous raises in the price of electricity. Protestors, like the ones we had seen in Sonoyta, were blocking access to stations. Some stations in the more radical states of Mexico were looted, some were torched. More significantly for us, protestors in the border town of Mexicali took over the Pemex transport depots and blocked shipments of gas into the state of Baja. (For a time they even took over the immigration checkpoint and waved everybody through). The upshot is that there was no gas in San Felipe for almost a week. None. Incredibly, there was no official statement on the situation. None. There was only rumor, in person or on the internet. For five successive days every Mexican I asked about gas said, “Maybe tonight, definitely tomorrow.” Manana, in other words.
But being stuck in San Felipe is not a bad thing. We could walk into town for shrimp or fish tacos at $1 apiece (the fish taco was supposedly invented in SF). We could buy a six pack of Tecate at the camp store for $4. We had good company and a fabulous setting on the beach, mid to upper 60s everyday. Things we so cheap it didn’t make sense to cook but go to restaurants for every meal. In the evening the local troubadour Guillermo found us and serenaded us with his lovely baritone and his banged-up, bittersweet-sounding nylon-stringed guitar. There were very few other tourists in town so I really think he looked around town to seek us out, such appreciative listeners and good tippers.
[I always cut the heads off dieties in pictures.]
The beach at SF was like the Bay of Fundy in that the geography of the sea floor and the height of the tides cause the sea to recede a great distance at low tide and come almost to our palapa at high tide. Sightings here of seals, dolphins, fishing boats (until they ran out of gas) and the frequent appearance of a Mexican navy gun ship(enforcing a net-fishing ban on the San Filipeans because they almost devastated the vaquetos porpoise with their carelessness).
I had half-a-tank of gas, not enough to make a run for the border or try to make the next town south with great confidence. Shrek made a run for it south on Wednesday because he had a healthy supply of diesel and is an adventurous sort. He was to report back on fuel conditions as he went but for reasons I now understand I got no reports (no telephone or internet connection.) Gas returned to SF on Friday and we caravanned south with Alan and Betsi.
Bahia de San Luis Gonzaga
We drove south three hours through the desolate, beautiful desert and then the beautiful, scary mountains. We missed our turn for Papa Fernandez’s campo and passed through a military checkpoint with no hassle, then realized our mistake and doubled back through the military checkpoint again. They were cool.
Papa Fernandez’s son, I’m guessing, took our money and gestured over the hill to the beach. He looked at my Maryland license plate and said “mucho camino.” Took me a minute to comprehend. “yes, a lot of road.”
Over the hill we found palapas right on the beach, at the base of a high hill, no electricity or water, $15/night. We were the only campers on the whole cove.
We explored around the next day (the weird eroded cliff caves where Brenda heard singing, the beachfront filled with beautiful rounded stones in three colors and shop-quality seashells) then headed out. I couldn’t get traction over the hill going back and made a barely-controlled slide backward about twenty feet. Back on the beach after a few scary minutes I found a less steep approach. We crossed back through the military checkpoint with the same guards who just waved us through like old amigos.
We drove about 90 miles south, stopping at a roadside shack for fish tacos, and at the little town of Puertocitos for gas.
Then we drove the roughest 26 miles of road I’ve ever been on. Our guidebook was dated 2012 and said that the highway south should be completed in a couple of years. Well, it ain’t. This was bone-and-kidney-jarring camino of washboarded sand and big rocks embedded in the road. You could not take your eyes of the road right in front of you except to check how close you might be to the edge of the cliff face or if another driver was approaching fast from behind or approaching in a cloud of dust from ahead. After an hour I was exhausted. After another hour the cats were acting sick and Brenda was cursing. A little while later Alan broke some welds on his truck frame causing the carrier that was attached on the back and his bumper to bounce too much and too low. We transferred the weight (water and gas cans) to my carrier and motored on. We made it to the highway and decided to go to Guerrero Negro, a larger town that might have services he needed, rather than the picturesque but otherwise barren town of Bahia de Los Angeles. We arrived after dark and are here now, in Malarrimo RV park, about which anon.