Around The World In 80 Waves

Again I put the hammer down on the extremely expensive toll road, because I am playing catch up on where I was hoping to be again. A long day of driving will get me back in the water so I am willing to just drive all from dawn to dusk and then enjoy the spoils of my labour.

On the way south I try not to even stop at the lights in Culiacan which is known as ‘Narco City’ because of its heavy involvement in the drug trade. Perhaps next time I will call in…

I was told it would take five hours to get to Mazatlan but burned there in just three and a half, really pleased to be back on track and passing into the Tropical region of the world on my way south.

Immediately I arrived there I got chatting with a lovely family from the Great Lakes area of Canada who buy me an ice cold beer which I practically inhale because it is so hot.

I have just missed the big Mardi Gras festival which is one of the world’s largest but there must be some sort of film festival on now because there are these giant statues all along the sea front. Sadly there are no waves to greet me, because the sea is virtually flat. Never mind I will push further on because I always have miles to cover in Mexico

Not far from Los Mochis is the area known as the Copper Canyon which is a network of river gorges that is so big it actually dwarfes the Grand Canyon in scale.

The train ride through here begins at Los Mochis is supposed to be one of the great railway journeys of the world but I dont have time to take it and wouldn’t want to leave my car unattended for that long either.

The Grand Canyon helicopter ride will be hard to top anyway, and like Niagara falls I am seeing enough water on this trip so dont mind too much.

The ferry took considerably longer than I expected and it is very late when I arrive in Topolobampo. I don’t want to drive after dark, because there is a risk of banditry and the roads are not the safest anyway during the day! As a consequence I will have to find somewhere as quickly as possible.

When I go through the security checkpoint on the way out of the port the policeman just wants to know which football team I support when I explain I am from the UK. When I tell him Liverpool he gets quite excited and starts raving about Steven Gerrard for a couple of minutes all the while holding up the queue of traffic from the boat. It is an amusing welcome to the mainland and he wishes me well on my way.

There isn’t much at the port town and the next one along is called Los Mochis where I find a motel as soon as I can. At least I think it is a motel, the guy at the entrance was talking very fast and I only caught some of what he said.

When I pull up in the parking space next to my room a curtain is drawn to obscure my car from view. He then wanted to know how many hours I wanted the room for and when I get inside my room has a mirrored ceiling so I am not entirely convinced that I am not staying in a house of ill repute!

No indecent proposals yet though.

I was hoping to catch a ferry from La Paz to Mazatlan, which is Mexico’s largest commercial port. However there was no room on a boat until Sunday and I want to make more ground in that time so reluctantly am on the way to Tompolobampo which is five hours north of Mazatlan.

With lots of furrowed brows, a little bit of pictionary-esque drawing and un poco Espanyol I have have bought a ticket, got past an emptying the car customs check even though I am already in Mexico, and navigated the misunderstanding where I thought they wanted to tax me for my surfboard. (There was a tax to go on board!)

Not much else to do for the next couple of hours while we wait to board other than sit around in the sun and actually read my guide book before arriving somewhere.

Eventually I get on to the boat to the now familiar sound of Mariachi music, and we leave port an hour late.

So long Baja, it has definitely been emotional, but I think I will definitely be back. Those waves I failed to bag are an itch I will always have to scratch.

It is good to be on the sea again. Here comes the mainland and I will be heading south again before long. The sea is getting warmer all the time now and I will be back in boardshorts before I know it. Wooo-hooo!!!!

Baja is split into two states. Baja California in the north and Baja California Sur in the south, of which La Paz is the state capital. The movement from one to the other is the reason for the time zone change too because you also move a great deal east as you head south down the peninsular.

There is a rally held throughout Baja every year and to be honest I am beginning to feel like I have entered it. I have driven about a thousand miles without the chance of a wave and Baja has been a blur on either side of me. However my car choice is limiting my access to the beaches, but the beach roads will be better on the mainland, so I am stopping here to catch a ferry across to Mazatlan.

I have picked up a replacement sump for the bug here (buying a reinforced one to boot) but have not had it replaced yet, because the bodged one is holding firm and catching the ferry is my first priority. I have two weeks left in Mexico and will be stopping in a couple of places for a few days so can get the work done then. I could probably do this myself but am not going to risk that if not entirely necessary. I have a habit of not knowing my own strength and making situations worse by breaking things whenever I open my tool box.

I have also sorted a 3G dongle for my laptop so I should now be able to keep you abreast of developments more easily too. The hotel wifi connections are so slow I have been wasting my holiday sitting inside waiting for pictures to upload, etc. so I am sure it is a worthwhile investment.

I really like La Paz. It is a small town alongside the Bay lined with a narrow sandy beach, but get here too late in the day for decent pictures. Once settled into my room, I go out for a few beers and discover it is Valentines Day. I have always loathed the day and the contrived sentiment so am glad to have unwittingly missed it. I am getting more confident with my Spanish (or perhaps just better with my phrasebook!) so go out with the locals to have a few beers in a bar decked with hearts and balloons and bump into the euro bikers again. The young lads are driving past with their music blaring far too loud, nicking ballons from the bar’s patio to give to their girlfriends. Ah the sweet taste of romance!

I roll into this city about an hour after it has got dark. I had hoped to find somewhere north of here but there simply wasn’t anything so Hobson’s choice meant this town was where I pushed on to.

The flip side of all my car woes is that I have been somewhat pushed into talking Spanish with the locals. I am still offering little more than Gringo Lingo but after driving down south listening to more of my educational CDs I at least have enough words and the confidence to go out into town on my own.

Admittedly I only wander around buying some milk for some breakfast cereal and then go for a pizza with some beer but my tache and tan are now so defined that they are not entirely sure that I am a gringo until I open my mouth.

Opportunities to chivvy a few extra Pesos out of me are still occasionally taken though. I bought a coffee this morning which was quoted as 10 Pesos. When I asked about the coins, first handing a 5 over to see if that was enough, I was told corretly that another was needed so handed a 10 coin. All of a sudden the coffee is 15 pesos, which makes me laugh.

After the whale watching it is already 1pm but I decide to drive south as far as I can to make up some time. There is a super point break called Scorpion Bay further down the west coast which I was really looking forward to surfing, but the lovely people at Mario’s tours told me I should give the road a miss with the little green surf machine. Finally some common sense is sinking in so I do so, missing its inhabitants too so not all bad.

I am keeping an eye on the oil level for obvious reasons but the bug and I are flying today carving up endless desert roads and mountain passes. Other than that there is not much to report here because I have to cross the 500 miles of the Desierto Vizcaino in order to get towards La Paz, so I just put the hammer down. I fall back in love with my troublesome car though, as the two of us eat up the miles together.

The road south was awesome and managed to get all the way south to Ciudad Constitucion despite not leaving Guerrero Negro until 1pm. The scenery was simply breath taking and if I had more time would have stayed longer, but I was keen to move as far south as I could while on the Sea of Cortes side of the peninsular. Also think I will be giving the Cabo end a miss to catch a ferry across to the mainland from La Paz and then get ahead of the game for the rest of my Mexican leg of the travels. A baja surf will have to wait for a 4X4 on another trip.

Here are the highlight snaps from the bay of Conception, the desert and the Sea of Cortes coast now that I am on the East side of the peninsular:

I am not risking the car on any more wild roads for now so need to experience some other options to keep myself amused if I can’t surf as much as I would like to.

Guerrero Negro is one of the best places in the world to see the migration of thousands of Grey Whales who travel south from the Baring Sea to give birth in the warm waters of Baja’s Laguna Oja de Liebre. The dark patches in this picture are the areas the females and young travel through, which they do safely because the older whales guard the entrance to the lagoon keeping the orcas or killer whales at bay, who are waiting outside to attack the young as they emmerge.

Being from Wales and having worn a whale tail shaped pendant around my neck for years it seemed appropriate that I should investigate further.

Even though I have already seen a few whales from the road and beaches on my way down, I was told this experience is pretty special so having stayed an extra night I decide to check it out and am up at 7am to go out to sea in a small boat organised by Mario’s Tours(www.mariostours.com) It is actually an hour earlier than I thought having travelled forward through a time zone, without realising for a day.

The pictures speak from this three hour trip speak for themselves, but having gone to sea in a fibreglass vessel little bigger than a rowing boat I’m immediately thinking the immortal line from Jaws “We’re going to need a bigger boat!” when the first of the 17 metre long 45 ton adult leviathans pops up next to us.

Despite Grey Whales almost being hunted to extinction, (Somebody actually claimed to have caught the last one in 1933, and was the reason for the establishment of the international whaling commission) the whales are not threatened by our boats. I have the GoPro which is straight over the side as soon as they come close. I would have got better shots if I could but wasn’t allowed to jump in with them.

They stay even longer when women and children are on board because they are as curious about us as we are about them. Something else I noticed is that they actually have nostrils as opposed to  blowhole like a dolphin, which I never knew. They also have whiskers like a sea lion.

The one you see poking out the water here is a newborn who was so curious that while it’s mother looked on it stuck its head up alongside the litle boat and actually allowed me and everybody else on the boat to stroke his nose.

How cool was that! Amazing morning which lifted my spirits after a trying few days

The hotel I find has wi-fi but more importantly a bar where I enjoy some food, beer and margaritas. I get chatting to a retired couple from Austria who are on their third visit to Baja and enjoying the whale watching. The whales had come so close to their boat that they actually touched one earlier in the day.

I am also chatting to an American fisherman called Dave, who reminds me so much of my own friend Paul Matthews in North Wales. If I have the wave crave he is totally hooked on fishing, and is currently driving south for the winter to do some surf casting at a break he has heard of where 50lb Bass are frequently caught. It is an annual pilgrimage for him and he has brought his dog Zorra along with him, who entertains me by following her nose and running into somebody else’s room and creating an issue, when a waiter carries in some room service that the guest staying in the room had ordered. By the time I turn in, my legs have practically seized up and I am aching all over from the day’s events, which had only just started with digging a car out of a beach with a plate!

I sleep the sleep of the righteous though and am slow out of bed in the morning. As I am loading up one side of the car which is parked outside the hotel by the army barracks I close the door where upon the car decides to lock itself with the keys still inside! I can not F-ing believe my luck. I am really on a bad roll!!! I think the little green surf machine was just letting me know that I needed to treat it better, but it can think itself lucky there was nothing heavy to hand because I was about to go supernova on it!

I have to wait for the locksmith, but while I do I make a new friend who comes along to cheer me up.

Also just as the locksmith has finished, who should turn up but the two German cyclists I had met the day before. They aren’t stopping here but are headed my way so there is every chance I will see them again, possibly further south in Mexico or Guatemala so we hope to see one and other further down the road.

I take so long catching up on blog updates and sorting the latest car drama that it is already 4pm. I decide this is a holiday after all and after the last couple of days I need some rest so stay another night rather than just rushing off towards the horizon once more with only an hour of daylight to make headway. A big group of motorcyclists from Holland arrive and I have great night talking with them in the bar about road trips and motorbikes in general.

The mystery man, whose name I never got, takes me in his car all over town until we find Angel the son of the mechanic, and he eventually leads us both to Chico who is sure he can sort out my car. I then jump in his truck with his son in the back and we bounce all the way back to Punta Rosalito when a quick check of my car and they tell me I have split the sump wide open and there is a three inch gash in it. Now if I thought I was Terry F##kwit getting stuck on the sand last night, I know I am he today.

They tow me all the way out through the various desert ravines, dirt tracks, etc I had traversed on the way in without further incident, and drag my sorry self and the motor all the way to his ‘workshop’. I use the term loosely because it was a patch of ground next to Chico’s old caravan.

While they set to work on my car I play with Chico’s dogs wondering if I am going to get handed a huge bill for their efforts, which I have to say would be justified. They get the sump pan off, hammer the dents as flat as they can and then fill the tiny gap remaining with some sort of polymer bond that myself and Angel take a trip to the shop to buy. There is a police car outside the shop and on the way back to Chico’s place Angel and I muddle through a conversation in which he tells me to watch out for them because they are ‘corrupto’ and in on the drug trade in town. He even points out where it is going on, so everybody in town must know about it.

Angel and Chico spend all afternoon and into the early evening working on the car but just as the sun goes down I am good to go and frankly amazed that I have got off so lightly. Things could easily have been so much worse. When I ask what the bill is. Chico only wants 300 pesos which is about £15. I gave him £20 say ‘Adios’ and am wished well for the journey, but also told to watch out for rocks, before being on my way again.

I have to break my rule about not driving at night because there is nowhere to stay in town and the next hotel is 80km away. It passes without any real incident but there is an annoying habit of placing speed bumps without warning on the edge of towns in Baja, and I take air off on one, petrified that I might damage the sump on either take-off or landing! The car and I get to Guerrero Negro in one piece though I’m glad to say