Wifi, at last!

Alright, here's a big update for y'all. I've been writing them, but couldn't post them due to the extreme scarcity of wireless internet access on the Baja Peninsula. Here ya go:

MARCH 17:
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There aren't an abundance of internet connections in Baja California. We've been moving steadily south for three or four days and we are about halfway down the peninsula, in Santa Rosalia, as I write this.


It is the evening of March 17 now, but I won't be able to post this update 'til I find an internet connection somewhere! This is probably about as far south as we will get. There is a ferry from Santa Rosalia to the mainland and we are planning on getting on it the day after tomorrow. If we were to continue further south, our trip would be all driving and no relaxing, and that's not what we signed up for. Also, the truck and trailer have been taking a lot of punishment and we don't want a catastrophic vehicular failure in the middle of the Mexican wilderness. The roads are narrow and unpredictable, and make for slow driving, so we have made the decision to try and relax a little instead of simply taking a survey of the highway system.


A few weeks ago I complained about California drivers. I need to do that again. In Mexico stop signs, red lights, and especially speed limits are taken as nothing more than a suggestion. Mexican drivers even ignore the lanes painted on the road if they think three cars will fit side by side instead of just two! However, they never seem to put other cars at much risk, and they patiently allow other drivers to use the road in the same fashion. California drivers come down here and try to drive like Mexican natives but just end up being rude, aggressive, and dangerous. And they are everywhere!

Okay, SPEED BUMPS (a.k.a. Topes). There is a completely different philosophy, I mean completely, about these things here. As we drive down the highway, we often drive through a village or small town. Mexican authorities believe that this is enough of a reason to add a dozen speed bumps in a row to THE HIGHWAY, followed by one extra large speed bump at the end. I am not exaggerating. Oh, and while driving on the highway, if there's a curve in the road ahead, they'll add about twenty speed bumps. In towns that have more than one paved road they go nuts. We lost the connector to one of our safety chains going over a very pronounced speed bump in Ensenada while trying to find the main road. The thing was almost square!

Another fun activity on the highway is the military "inspection stations", which are numerous. The Mexican military has seen fit to pick random spots on the highway, blockade the road with a 10 foot wall of tires and rocks, and force everyone to drive into the ditch to be inspected. Mark got a little excited during one of our first check-point crossings because he noticed a guy pointing a "very large" machine gun at him. These inspection stations seem to be pretty harmless though. The soldiers are all pleasant and professional, and when we don't understand them the first time (some of them speak fast!) they always politely rephrase their instructions to us until we get it, and some of them even speak English to us. Sometimes we have to give them a tour of the Yukon Ho; sometimes they don't ask a single question. We haven't had a problem with them though, and they do add excitement to the day.


MARCH 18:
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It's Tuesday March 18th now. We had a breakfast of sweet bread bought at the local bakery this morning in our campground. The shore birds put on a show for us as we drank our coffee on the beach, under our "palapa". Although we are the only guests at our campground, the water abounds with fishermen, and locals keep driving into the campground to see if anyone has landed with a catch. Meanwhile, the pelicans kept skimming the water so closely that we were sure they'd crash, and a bird of prey has been diving spectacularly for fish right in front of us all morning. We'll be going in to town today to buy a ferry ticket for tomorrow's sailing to Guaymas. If all goes well, we will spend tomorrow crossing the Sea of Cortez.



MARCH 19 & 20:
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More time has passed! It's now Thursday March 20th, and we are in San Carlos, Sonora, on the western coast of mainland Mexico. We went to buy a ticket for the ferry on Tuesday, and it was an exercise in frustration. Clearly posted on the wall and on our information sheet it said that the ferry sailed "Wednesday, 9am", and said we could get tickets the day before a sailing. Fine. With much gesturing and halting language, we managed to communicate to the ticket agent that we wanted to go on the ferry with our truck. He gave us a piece of paper with ticket prices on it, scratched out the "9:00 am" part that was printed on it, and hand-wrote in "8:00 pm". He also indicated that we couldn't buy a ticket now; come back tomorrow. With our feeble grasp of the language we were kind of nervous that we'd misunderstood something and we might miss the ferry, which wouldn't run again for three more days...eek!

As we were instructed, we showed up the next day at noon and the good news was, the ferry was still supposed to run at 8pm that night, and we could buy a ticket, but the bad news was: their credit card machine was broken. We would have to find a bank machine and pay the huge ferry fee in cash. In to town we went, got the money, went back to the ferry terminal, and a different person, who also didn't speak any English, was now manning the ticket booth. How to tell her we had already had our tickets printed, and the man had hidden them somewhere awaiting our money? Argh...it eventually got sorted out and we got tickets, with clear instructions to be in the parking lot at seven pm.

Fast forward: it's 7pm; like good little Canadians we are in our truck, in the parking lot. There is a rowdy but jovial gang of young-ish Mexican men hanging around, as well as a pair of Americans we had met the previous day. They are also going on the ferry. We chit-chatted with them while watching the young Mexicans swill beer and wrestle each other. No ferry in sight.

7:30. No ferry.

8pm. No ferry.

8:30, the ferry pulls up! It's tiny! At the same time, a truck full of armed soldiers pulls into the parking lot. They are there to inspect every vehicle leaving the ferry, and it's a slow process! We have our tourist cards, passports, and customs questionnaires at the ready, but the army men leave as soon as the last vehicle is off the ferry.

8:45pm. Some officials come out of the ferry building and inspect one of the trucks that the young Mexicans are driving. They don't look our way. The truck, thus inspected, starts driving around the parking lot. Are we supposed to get into some sort of line? Everything is unclear.

8:55pm. A vehicle drives onto the ferry! Mark eyes are a bit wider than usual, because it has come to light that we must drive about 150 feet down a sloping ramp into the belly of the ferry, in the dark, BACKWARDS. He glances frequently at the travel trailer in the rear-view mirror as we wait.

9:05pm. The ferry employees start directing us, backwards, towards the ramp. We are the last vehicle to be loaded. Suddenly, the official-looking agents that had inspected the other truck earlier come out of the building and halt our progress. They look over all our paperwork carefully, even comparing our truck's serial number with that of our Mexican vehicle permit. GET ON WITH IT, PEOPLE.

Finally, we inch down the ramp backwards, Mark valiantly correcting for the trailer's willy-nilly movements so that we don't fall off the side of the ramp into the Sea of Cortez. The ferry crew is good at directing him and we get on board FINALLY. The truck gets winched to the floor of the ferry, and we are sent into the lounge, prohibited from sleeping the night away in our comfy Yukon Ho.

It's now about 10pm and in the lounge a spanish-dubbed version of the movie "Major Payne" is playing.

Fluorescent lights make us all look slightly grey, and the rocking of the tiny ferry doesn't help, either. We sit like zombies until the movie is over, and then most of the lights are turned out and all dozen of the ferry's passengers stretch out in a lounge built for maybe 150. Mark and I stretch across four seats each, with the metal frames of the seats digging into our bodies where the cushions end. It was a LOOOONG night. At about 6am, everyone but us seems to decide that it's time to buy coffee and Mr. Noodle cups from the cantina. An hour after that and it was land ho and thank goodness our ferry ride was over.


MARCH 20:
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As I mentioned, we are now in San Carlos, which seems to be a somewhat touristy little town. We have lucked into a cheap but nice RV park that has real hot-water showers (haven't seen one of those in a while), a pool, INTERNET ACCESS, and is right across the road from a pretty beach. We will hunker down here until the end of the weekend and wait out the chaos that is Mexican Easter, or the end of "holy week" as they call it.

If you're still reading, thanks for hanging in there for this super-long post! If you're NOT still reading, well fine, I never told you but I don't like you that much anyway. (That's a joke mom. And you're still reading anyway, so you don't count.)

I'll post another update soon. Hope you all are doing well!