Category: Guatemala

I believe there is a specific state of sanguine reserved for the last of anything. A relationship, a life, a road trip or an expedition. The trick becomes capturing it in long term memories, to be able to recall the ghost in the machine later.

The GWagon now is a name, “BajaG”, I have made a new friend and learned new things about an old one.

We had no connectivity of any kind last night in Catavinia. It’s a hotel built for the President of Mexico in 1973 and is a gorgeous place.

Plan for today is to get from Catavinia to San Diego airport. A long drive but doable.

We are at Mama Espinosa’s which is a famous Baja stop, Luis loved the food! It was very good!

Fueled up and on the way

The Pacific

Can you tell I am not driving?

This shows the scale and is very close to our actual route…

Delivered!!

Today is a big day, both miles and reminiscing. We head out from Loreto to Bahia de Los Angeles where Jim and I used to have 3 beach front acres on the Sea of Cortez. That is a long story. Buy me a beer next time you see me.

It’s going to be a beautiful day!

This is why I miss Baja….

Stop for breakfast and then my turn in the drivers seat again…

Bahia de Los Angeles

The beach picture was taken on “our beach” which was the three acres we had leased a long time ago..

This is the view from Roger and Jeans place, Villa Bahia.

So, little tip when booking a Mexican cargo ship. Do not trust the time estimates. 14 hours has come and gone and we are looking at more like 24 to 28 hours on board.

We had rough seas last night as there are no provisions for stabilizers on cargo ships. At times we probably made 15 to 20 degrees side to side. At least I don’t get sea sick. A few folks did… We are in a nice-ish room with seats for passengers and a lot of pirated movies in Spanish. I really preferred The A Team in it’s original English. After the time we and the truck drivers with cargo in this ship the room has it’s own distinguished odor.

This puts us behind schedule again. Way behind.

We are still on the ship but can now see land and have cellular signal once again.

Baja is beautiful! Can’t wait to get Linda down here some day!

So the current “plan” is:

Saturday – La Paz to Loreto

Sunday – Loreto to Bahia de Los Angeles

Monday – Bahia de Los Angeles to Tijuana

However, given that the ship was late, we may not be able to get to Loreto tonight. We shall see!

What could possibly go wrong?

10:38pm – Made it to La Mission Hotel on the ocean in Loreto. Time for a couple of drinks!

See that bartender? Yeah him… He is a thief!!! I was tired and left my credit card on the bar. He took it and used it a couple of times before I realized it was missing when attempting to purchase fuel the next morning. All fixed now.

We got another early start today at 6:30, hopefully headed to the Ferry Mazatlan.

We are trying to sneak a ferry ride to Baja California in between two Pacific hurricanes, Rosa and some other storm who’s name currently escapes me.

Problem is the Baja Ferries web site SUCKS. It’s either been down or not usable. They also do not like to answer their freakin phone but only after about 15 minutes of phone tree torture which gives on false hope.

So we are hoping that the ferry from Mazatlan to La Paz is working – we were told it was by Oscar the very friendly Federal Policeman who actually called a friend of his in Mazatlan to check. If it is NOT running, we drive 5 more hours north to try and catch the ferry from Los Mochis.

If we don’t make that well then…. We keep heading up the coast to cross in Arizona…

IBMers who may be following – we are safe so far but running a little late due to various issues – no of which are mechanical – yet!

Just hit traffic and an inspection.

10am – Made it to Mazatlan and are booking passage on the ferry. However, this is not a tourist ferry but rather more like a cargo ship. Basic necessities only. But we get a couple of hours in Mazatlan to do laundry. Should be a very interesting experience!

Vamos a la Playa!

Waiting the load up and preparing for a 14 hour tour to La Paz!

I also found the rarest beverage in all of Central America:

Jim loading up the GWagon

5:10pm – We have boarded and these seats are our home for the next 15 hours or so…

Today we plan on making about 656 km to Guadalahara. We have been averaging less than 50 MPH. Not the best but we are driving a tank in traffic and up mountains. We hit about 7,800 in elevation going through the mountains yesterday.

It was 50 degrees in the morning…. cold for 30 year old Diesel engines and tall bald white gringos. Had to warm up the GWagon and park it in a handicap spot which means nothing here.

Dear Apple – please stop crashing my iPhone while taking photos. It’s annoying.

We have developed a list of possible problems and are developing solutions in advance. The biggest of these problems is that there are NO Monster White’s in all of freaking Central America.

In the States it’s “Protect and Serve” but more like “Pester and Swindle” in Mexico.

Oops… didn’t mean to go through Guadalajara Centro… but got a cool reflection picture!!

So it looks like we actually drove around 885 kilometers today. We went past Guadalajara and on to Tepic.

Tomorrow – Mazatlan and the ferry to La Paz and Baja California.

Goal is 592km today. We have to try to push hard the next couple of days to make the ferry in Mazatlan.

We met the guys who maintain the many wind turbines in the area at breakfast. They said it usually a one year project but has taken six because the workers here are not educated.

Luis was holding court with them:

While driving I also learned what “Mineralizda” means in Spanish. It was emblazoned on the side of my nice new 2 liter bottle of cold water. It means “I will explode in your face when you open me”. Not fun when driving.

We stayed in Puebla City at a nice hotel with showers!

Today the plan is to cross into Mexico and get to Oaxaca. This may be quite a process.

We all have to get Visas and then get the newly registered GWagon pass the border and fumigated. Hope they fumigate Luis too!

It was a “drive thru” fumigation process, in a straight line. We hope there was some wax or Rainx in it at least…

Now we wait for bank to open to pay more fees.

Right after I snapped that picture of Jim waiting at the bank everyone commenced to yelling at the Bald Gringo, or “Pellon” which is my newly acquired nick name. Not supposed to take pictures of banks eh? Who knew….

But wait. We need ANOTHER copy. So we crossed the border into Mexico, made a copy and walked BACK into Guatemala.

I won’t put another picture of the bank here… oh but we can’t use the copies just on the other side of the glass inside the bank… cause that would be to easy.

Next is the security inspection. Things are known to sprout legs and disappear. Can’t wait.

update: made it through the security inspections and drove about 92 kilometers and then at a checkpoint we got to get the entire GWagon x-rayed! We drove up on a platforms and a very large X-ray machine scanned the car. Now we are waiting for the results. Hope it doesn’t have cancer!

Drove for a bit and stopped for A Luis bucket list item!

Then we made some new friends who wanted a close look at the GWagon. Sheesh.

Staying in Santo Domingo Tehuantepec tonight.

And 9:46pm local time we had an earthquake! Slight tremor but shook the building good.

Here is the USGS page for the quake we felt. Ah, cool there is a fault line nearby!

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us1000h5sq/map

Woke up early and had a nice “drip”. Won’t say it was a shower because for me that implies some semblance of pressure and even heat. It did end up warming in the end so I suppose I know what a shower would be like in a jungle.

We checked out of the hotel and got a call from Luis that he was able to take care of his last bit of business and so we though we were good to leave.

Silly us.

Apparently the Guatemalan bank declined to accept the last payment to the owner of the GWagon. Not good. Can’t leave the country without complete payment – even though Jim paid for half of the vehicle sight unseen. Fortunately the credit to his account had shown up in Jim’s bank so we at least knew where his money was.

The short version of the story is that we pooped some extra cash together and paid the balance and we were on our way.

We are currently averaging 32 MPH. Yeah. Not a typo.

At this rate we are estimating a 7 day drive assuming no issues.