Mexico - Baja California Norte
29th June - July 4th 2005
Out of L.A., a night in San Diego and south to the border...
Unlike the hundreds trying to go north, we were heading south which as you can imagine, is a lot easier - we had to voluntarily stop to get documentation stamped.
Tijuana - tequila, sexo y marijuana.
No thankyou, we're British. We drove straight through and headed down
Baja California for Ensenada, on
the way passing a great surf spot down a dirt road (first taste of off-roading
mmm) where we met a bunch of surfer dudes giving it plenty of
. e-j's eye was resulting in a Well Below 90% health
reading so we made an emergency stop
at the first five 5 star looking hotel we could find, called Las Rosas. during our three course breakfast the next morning we updated our daily expenses and realised that this lifestyle was unsustainable. that night, come what may, we were going to stay in a campsite, using our backup 2 man tent because we were missing part of our roof tent (mysteriously disappeared during shipping). So back on the road and towards our first real tourist attraction: La Bufadora, a blowhole. Not really worth mentioning but for that fact that there is practically a small town of shops and restaurants which has appeared as a result of the blowhole, each one barely selling a thing. the people of this country are very poor and the stark contrast with California was more of a shock than we anticipated.
That night we camped near La Bufadora. what an error. never camp Below 90%. queuing for showers, peeing in the dark, clambering in a tent and quickly zipping up to avoid mosquitos and dust (oh god the dust) - not for us. not yet anyway. certainly not for e-j's eye which took a rapid turn for the worse. someone make us a 5 star reservation quick time...
not wishing to overstay our welcome we were up at the crack of dawn and ready for our first big drive. as intended, we managed to share the driving. mg did 8 hours and e-j clocked up about 4 minutes. (as we write, the odometer (NB STEVE!) shows exactly 1000 miles of which e-j has clocked up a highly respectable 1 mile (LA hotel to laundrette with 1 small roof prang... "please can you drive back michael")).
the roadside scenery and the long drive was fantastic.
lush greens of carefully irrigated LA suburbia replaced by an open road
through the scorching Mexican desert covered in a blanket of cacti. With a
warning sign that there was no petrol,
or indeed anything for 400 miles, we knew we were in for a drive through
wilderness and that's what we got...
After 8 hours of driving in the searing
heat accompanied by nothing but cactus, telegraph poles and vultures, it was time to find our next destination. The > 40 degree
temp was
clearly getting to us and with michael suggesting large faceless buildings
in the middle of the desert were shopping malls and the faded tips of
mountains were snow caps (no kidding) it was time to stop.
And so we arrived at our next destination where we stayed for 3 wonderful days.... Bahia de los Angeles, a tiny village on the west coast off the Sea of Cortez. One of the world's richest natural marine ecosystems, there are over 3000 species of fish to be found in this area as well other mammals (whales, sea lions, dolphins) and marine life. A morning of snorkelling resulting in sightings of 100's of sting ray (eerie, seemingly intelligent alien type fishies), colourful nemo lookalikes and a group of fatboy sea lions basking in the sun. Some pics from Bahia des Los Angeles:
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We just wanted to add how sorry we were to hear about all the bombings in London. We hope (and we are pretty sure) that all of you, your friends and families are OK.
