Home |About Us|Baja California|On the road|Catavina Desert| Cacti|Bahia Concepcion

3. On the road.

 In late fall in Northern California, it's cold and rainy. The leaves on trees are gold and ready to fall down.  As always leaves blowers all day long blow leaves along the streets, but now it's not enough, they should pack all leaves in the garbage bags and take them away. That makes their work more purposeful than usually.

After packing is finished, we ready to leave... It's about 9 a.m., November 17, 2001.

We going by the road #5. It's not very interesting. On left, the California , on right - hills, sometimes several cows or horses, browsing on the hills. And a fog, covering everything farther then 50 yards.

 After only tree hours on the road, all of us feel hungry. We stopped at Rest Area along road #5 and had a lunch. It's good to have a hard ground under the feet, to walk, to stay, to stretch those  muscles tired of sitting. Fresh veggies, baked meat, cheese, fresh bread, even several pieces of cake, hot tea from thermos - that's what we had. Kids are glad to be together. Girls are exchanging some secrets. Pavel is shooting with the camcorder to get more practice  before Mexico. After some bending over the map, we agree about the next stop, and hit the road.

This is our family in the car: Pavel, concentrated all his attention on the traffic; Dasha, listening to her music; Grigoriy, watching the changing landscapes...

incar.jpg (67895 bytes)

We cross the Mexican border at 6 p.m. without any problems:  nobody stops us, nobody asks questions. But this is rather an unwanted situation, because we have questions like where to get tourist visas  we need and where to exchange money for Mexican pesos. And we don't see any board with directions. So we proceed to Ensenada by the toll freeway. It is scenic route, but how to see its wonders in complete dark! And it is rather expensive - $6.90 to Ensenada.

In Ensenada we stopped at the sea front with rows of palms. We found a nice hotel, quickly brought in our bags and packages, and went out for a walk. It was Saturday night; the streets in downtown were crowded. We watched an amazing local ceremony: young guys were riding in cars  along narrow, one way streets of downtown in circles, they stopped at intersections, honked, exchanged some words, traded places. Every other had a very loud music in car. Everywhere were guys offering roses wrapped by one and by  dozens. While we were walking , restaurants closed one by one, and we had to stop at the only one open, one of Tecata's chain. We sat behind the tables on the sidewalk and watched the same cars passing by numerous times in this strange ceremony. Waiting for our food, we breathed the air densely infused with exhaust, and used to refuse guitarists in traditional costumes to sing us a serenade every 5 minutes. The food was not good, the chickens were really grandparents of what they should be, but the warm tortillas were the hit.

Next morning we walked along the sea front, took some pictures.

flag.jpg (40713 bytes) encenada0.jpg (135033 bytes) Head.jpg (46257 bytes)

encenada3.jpg (63187 bytes) encenada2.jpg (45003 bytes) mashina.jpg (52393 bytes) enc2.jpg (142678 bytes) enc3.jpg (122741 bytes)

The immigration office had been closed,  of cause. Exchange kiosks were closed too. The rate at a gas station seemed too low  to us, so we didn't change any amount. Later we understood that it was a mistake: in the inner areas, the rate was even lower, but at gas stations it proved to be too difficult to follow the calculations: gallons into liters, and pesos into dollars, we were fooled out almost every time. 

We follow further by the road #1, it is the only one road along the peninsula. Getting used to Mexican road signs, names of the shops: carniceria - meat shop, panaderia - bakery,  dulce - sweets shop, lecheria - dairy, etc...Here are  pictures from the road, some of them, of worse quality, are cut out from the video tape. Pemex - the name of any gas station in the Baja California. For many small towns the road  is the main street. We had seen the huge fields with cultivated prickly pears under protective plastic cover, but didn't stop to take a picture. Amount of trash along the road is amazing. The road surface is good, but there are no shoulders, so it is dangerous.

pemex.jpg (56507 bytes) road_1_1.jpg (141478 bytes) colonet.jpg (46765 bytes) clnt3.jpg (47413 bytes) clnt2.jpg (50986 bytes) sem1.jpg (125146 bytes) sem2.jpg (132500 bytes) road_1_2.jpg (110937 bytes) road_1_3.jpg (107764 bytes) trash.jpg (115498 bytes)

After refilling our tanks with gas in El Rosario we were ready to overcome the longest stretch of the road (394km) without gas station.  Somewhere in the middle of that distance, in Catavina Desert we found the most interesting landscapes with large stones and huge cacti.

After Guerrero Negro the road becomes almost straight, and we decided to continue our way even though our traveler's book strongly recommends not to drive after dark: it might be dangerous, because locals sometimes forget to turn on their headlights.  Several times we stopped at military posts and were interrogated. But, I guess, we were of no interest to them: first, a family is the least suspicious category; second, we didn't speak Spanish, and most of them didn't speak English. Darya and Anna tried to use the Spanish they acquired at school, but it was not enough to keep a dialogue, nevertheless, it was helpful in many situations.

We arrived in San Ignacio at 11 p.m. and stopped at the first hotel that were on our way. That was a nice hotel, surrounded by palm forest. After shower, were all gathered in the inner yard on the lawn, around the table, had some excellent Ceylon tea, talked and gazed the stars.

hotel1.jpg (46589 bytes) hotel2.jpg (52229 bytes) hotel3.jpg (67577 bytes) hotel0.jpg (64782 bytes) road_mulege.jpg (50732 bytes)

In the morning we could see, what a nice place San Ignacio is. It's like an oasis in the desert: two lakes, forests of palms. There is a huge fish skeleton on display at the turn to San Ignacio from the road #1. Unfortunately, we didn't drive to the center of the town to see an old mission, we all were eager to get to the sea as soon as possible.

Home |About Us|Baja California|On the road|Catavina Desert| Cacti|Bahia Concepcion

 

 

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws

1