Around The World In 80 Waves

Margaritta and Berneditto told me there is a much better road down to Punta Rosarito so I head back to Highway 1 and stop for fuel, where I am told the turning is 8km down the road. Sure enough the dirt track appears on queue and I bounce down it going really slowly to try and avoid the rocks.

Halfway down I am wondering if I am pushing my luck because it is ridiculously undulating at times, but barring a couple of loose stones I make it all 13km to the end. I race to the shore to see what the surf at ‘The Wall’ is like and am distinctly underwhelmed. It really doesn’t look anything special, but I go back to the car to get suited up and go in anyway, but am horrified to see a lake of oil forming under the car! I look underneath and see it pouring out of a hole in the sump, so I can’t use the car because I will probably seize the engine.

I can’t see anybody and am 20km from help so am thinking things are not really going well today. (Remember that I had only just been dragged out of the sand just under two hours ago!) I back track along the oil slick I have left on the path to see if anything has broken off, and cannot believe my luck when a white transit sized van bounces out of a side road, and all the more so when it has a young Australian couple in it. He had been surfing the Wall yesterday and they had stayed on a different part of the beach but are now heading to a different bit of the coast. I ask if they can give me a lift to the next town, which they say is no problem. I run back to the car to get my important stuff like passport, etc but when I have run back around the corner with my daysack the absolute w##kers have just buggered off fully knowing that means I am 20km from anybody or anything.

There is no choice but to suck it up and start walking, so I do so for three hours in the midday sun. I am struggling to get my head around the behaviour of the Aussie couple, and am dreaming up things to say, bones to break, curses to cast, etc in the event that I see them again as I stagger down the dirt road armed with my bottle of water. I would have taken pictures here but in my haste to get back to their truck I left my phone in the car. 10km in I already have several blisters and am actually being circled by the same sort of turkey vultures I had seen tucking into a donkey’s carcass the day before, and thinking this may end badly if I’m not careful.

After the full 20km stagger I stumble into the first building I find, which is a roadside restaurant whose only customers are a couple of cyclists called Fabi and Daniel from Germany. They are doing a trip similar to mine (www.tapinambur.de ) but can’t help me. Having cycled to Paris myself I know how hard their own trek is and I promise to make them a cup of tea if I see them again. The owner of the restaurant can’t help either so I have to stagger on two more miles until I get back to the fuel stop where I had asked for directions. A a bloke in the shop says he knows a mechanic. He offers to give me a lift so just maybe I might be ok…

I have a simply appalling night’s sleep waking every couple of hours in pain, cold or both at once, so it is no surprise that I am awake before dawn. It is too early to bother anybody else with my troubles so I spend an hour using a plastic plate to at least dig my car out of most of the sand it is bogged down in and lay a path of stones towards the harder sand. By 7am the sun has come up and I think I will have done enough that a tow out should be easy enough, (of course assuming I can find one) so decide to put the kettle on and have some breakfast.

I bought some camping gear in the US and it is the first time I have utilised it, but it works well and I have a great cup of tea with a couple of hob-nobs. Whilst noticing the fishing boats are heading out to sea from Santa Rosalito I spot dolphins fishing in the waist deep water of the shoreline, which is just about the most unique breakfast experience of my life.

After the brew I wander the 2km around the headland looking for help. It is still only 8am so the first people I meet are two yummy mummies called Margaritta and Berneditto, who are still in the pyjamas talking over the garden fence. I can’t say what they made of Stig of the Dump who has appeared from around the corner, armed only with the Spanish words for car, sand and beach which he has read in his phrasebook. With mime, some guess work and lots of furrowed brows all round we establish that all the men of the town have gone out fishing, however these two game birds decide they can help me themselves because my car is only a little ‘Vocho’.

Still in her PJs Margaritta goes and gets their pick-up truck, they both grab their kids and I am told to climb in the back. We drive back around the headland where my prep work pays off and we have the car out and off the beach in under 5 minutes. They don’t want anything for their help which is so kind, but I insist that they take some of the fruit pastilles from my stash for their kids. No pictures I’m afraid because I didn’t want to weird them out at any point by asking for a photo of them in their pyjamas, when they were only interested in helping me.

Note to Self – your car is a road car, not a Baja Buggy and should not be attempting beach crossings.

I pull off highway 1 towards Santa Rosalito which is a small fishing village just north of Punta Rosarito and ‘The Wall’ I was told the track to the break was bumpy so follow it south of the town until I get to a beautiful beach with a section of sand I have to cross. With my Sahara Surf experience I know to cross it you have to go as fast as possible, so thinking I’m Ari Vaatenan I take a long run up and gun it. I fly across the sand at first but 150m metres later I ease off at the wrong moment and I am now thinking I am Terry F##kwit because the bug is up to the door sills in sand and I am going nowhere.

The sun is going down and a quick check of the shore suggests I am almost certainly above the high water mark, and there seems little that I can do until the next day. There are worse places to spend the night too and once the sun disappears I am treated to a night sky which is simply breath taking, and the sort of thing the Griffith Observatory can only dream of. I take it all in with a few beef and pickle sandwiches washed down with a couple of bottles of beer, before turning in.

My Mexico rigging for the car entails the back seats being folded down like an estate car, which means I can no longer recline the front seats for sleeping purposes, so I contort myself into a position which feels like it would have made a good medieval torture before nodding off to the sound of the gentle waves breaking 20 metres away..

Whilst having a coffee and taking in the view from my beachfront balcony at the Estero Beach Resort I am pounced on by a young dog, who it turns out is owned by an American surfer called David who has treated his family to a few days there. We are having a chat about the local breaks and my plans, when he tells me that the jewel in the crown of the next section of coastline is the break known as ‘The Wall’ at Punta Rosarito. They think it will take me to days driving to get there and even though I am itching to get in the water I decide it can do my plans no harm for me to put some miles under the wheels of the little green surf machine.

I am driving all day and apart from a venue of Turkey Vultures picking the flesh of a dead donkey at the side of the road, there really wasn’t much to report other than the different types of desert that I cross in the bug, barely seeing a soul all day.

There was:

Curved desert

Cacti desert

Bushy desert

Dusty desert

Dark desert

Rocky desert

Fairground desert

Mountain desert 

A bit of everything desert

And finally dazzling desert

You may think that I have made a few moderations to my VW Beetle, but would be wrong.

The term Baja Beetle or Baja Bug refers to old VWs that people have heavily modified so that they can take them off road sometimes to race them across deserts, beaches, etc.

Some people really go to town on it and god knows how fast they rag these motors.

I’m happy just having added the roof rack to mine to for the Baja leg of this trip.

However having lost another day on what already a tight schedule acrodd Mexico I will probably be driving like a rally driver today to make up some ground.

Note To Self

If you are going to carry a hundred weight of guide books across the world it is probably a good idea to at least flick through them before you enter the relevant country.

To drive a US car through Mexico you need 3 things:

• A Tourist card, which is your ID whilst here
• A Temporary Importation Permit.
• A Bond to stop you selling the car

Driving south today I get to a major checkpoint and am asked for papers. I dont have them so am sent all the way back to the border to sort these. That was a full tank of fuel wasted, three hours queueing to get back into the US doing a u-turn at the first junction in California then joining the back of a two hour queue to get back in. At customs I am told I didn’t have to come over the border at all, but have to go to a small office in the back of beyond in Tijuana. (There would have no way of knowing this without having crossed the border though.)

It takes me an hour to find it and then another one to sort the paperwork out. Huge dose of Deja Vu driving all the way back to Ensenada. To rub the salt in it is a gloriously sunny day and the surf looks fantastic both times I drive past before  arriving again just as it is getting dark. However I make a better job of finding a place to stay as you can see, even if it was a bit more expensive.

Wifi allows the blog updates and for me to catch up on the BBC website.

Seeing that the Welsh rugby team has finally won a match, and away in Paris to boot is the silver lining I am clinging to on this very cloudy day!

I might actually get to go surfing tomorrow.

There is a hotel bar here which takes the edge of the day, and allows me to mingle with other people and have a few chats at the bar.

On the way back to my room after a few beers I enjoy a little chuckle that somebody has rock and roll’d the pool, which is right outside my bedroom.

I need some forms which wasn’t given on way south so have had to drive 50 miles back to cross over and get them 2nd time around. More to follow.

I’m hoping to get my first Mexican surf in tomorrow so a bit of planning is in order. I also try to update the blog too, but no real surprises when my best laid plans are hampered because the mobile phone’s internet doesn’t work as promised now that I have gone south of the border! I waste half an hour trying to sort it phoning the USA helpdesk, being far too politely told by everybody that they are going to sort it, even though nobody does and I am cut off once and put through to the wrong department twice. They can’t even hear me telling me them my phone number and I find I am practically shouting down the phone in my hotel room. My sister describes this as ‘doing a Robert’ and I don’t want to be that me on this trip, so eventually I just hang up and give it up as a bad loss. I can look forward to being metaphorically shafted by a Mexican telephone company next.

Mobile phone companies worldwide please take note. You are a service industry, and should try providing one that people actually want. Stop being such money grabbing b@stards, spend some money training your staff so that everybody you actually allow to answer your incoming calls can really help anybody with everything relating to their account, be it a technical or customer service issue. Go on treat yourself and your customers to some spare capacity in your call centres too.

If my tailor provided me with an equivalent level of service that was just good enough, I would be walking around in an overpriced thong that fell apart as soon as I went abroad and nobody wants that!

Rant over.

Ensenada is where you can get a boat ride out to surf the monster waves which break off these islands a short distance from the shore. The most famous break is called Killers and regularly features in the annual biggest wave ridden contests. This shot I found online was taken there, and I think it is so named either just because it is so dangerous or because killer whales pass regularly through the break. Perhaps somebody can enlighten me?

However because of the distances I need to travel in a short time period whilst in Mexico I pass on this option and push on southwards where I will go for my first Mexican surf session in some of the lovely waves I have already seen breaking alongside the highway. It was a grim day yesterday with strong onshore winds coming from the West and rain falling all day and night, so I’m hopeful for a bit of sunshine later to tempt me in.

Highway 1 is the toll road south towards the tip of the Baja pensular and I am keen to put a few miles between me and the border.

The coastal scenery is epic and I drive all the way to Ensenada stopping only at a cash point on Rosarito, where each ATM was furnished with rear view mirrors like the ones on your car so that you can see who might be creeping up on you.

Not very reassuring, but I take out a few thousand pesos and immediately stash as much of it as I can well away from my wallet.

There is a festival going on in Ensenada when I arrive, which makes navigating tad tricky because they have blocked off all the roads, but I’m not quite ready to mingle with the locals yet, particularly because the first two hotels I stop at that had secure parking, blatantly try to rip me off. It is quite funny really but the 220 pesos price for a room advertised in huge neon signs outside (Approximately £11) magically increases to 800 as soon as I open my mouth. When I question the difference between the sign and the price quoted I get some bull about the sign being the rate for only 4 hours or it is because of the festival. Done with a smile to boot! I thank both politely, but say no thanks too!

I had better get used to life perceived as a rich gringo I suppose, because I will be in Mexico for most of February. Either that or cultivate my Spanish skills and/or my moustache further!

I drive on and it is getting dark so I don’t want to push my luck and am glad when I find Motel ‘El Camino’ on the edge of town run by a charming old lady. She doesn’t speak English and it is immediately clear my Spanish is non-existent, but we get by with mime and writing. She offers me a rate of 350 which is probably still a bit cheeky, but I can live with it for one night and at least there is no sign here to let me know how much less others may be charged. The room is clean and after unloading the car I settle in by watching Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade dubbed in Spanish on the telly in my room, and scoff a mountain of ham and brie sandwiches that are washed down with a couple of bottles of beer.