Of our original group of 87 people and 49 RVs, only 22 RVs continued south. With the charity work done, the others decided to return home or head north to another destination.
With our smaller number, we still divided up into groups with a group leader and a tailgunner and stayed in touch by CB radio. We had heard that the road from Ensenada to San Quintin which is Mexico Highway 1 was bad in places due to road construction. This had no connection with the toll road collapse between Tijuana and Ensenada. We knew the 122 miles from Ensenada to San Quintin would probably take four and half to five hours due to detours onto dirt roads.
We did encounter 4 detours onto dirt roads with pot holes, but the trip was not as bad as expected. In Baja there are many many “topes” which is Spanish for speed bumps. The Mexicans love speed bumps and you can come across them very unexpectedly. The most unnerving part of driving in Mexico are the narrow roads with no shoulders and big dropoffs. The driver has to constantly be on guard and I did quite a bit of watching out my side window to be sure we were not over the white line on the shoulder side.
This area is largely agricultural and we saw asparagus and a type of prickly pear cactus growing. We saw a lot of the cactus for sale in the grocery stores and were served it in restaurants. They scrape the spines off the cactus before selling. They can be sautéed or boiled and taste very much like green beans. In this area they also grow peppers, onions, strawberries and tomatoes. We saw many greenhouses and Baja’s largest tomato processing plant is in this area. We also saw many vineyards. We stopped to take a break and there was a truck selling oranges and one person in our group walked over and bought some. As we got closer to San Quintin (pronounced San Canteen), we saw 5 inactive volcanoes of San Quintin Bay. Due to haze we were not able to get a picture from the window of the RV.
About 5 miles outside of Ensenada we came to a military checkpoint. Every RV in our group was inspected which meant a military policeman with a large rifle came inside to look around. He asked us where we were going, if we had a dog, looked under the bed and then asked if we had a GPS. When we said yes he asked where it was. When we showed him he said okay and left. It seems everyone in all the groups were asked if they had a GPS. We had been warned in advance that sometimes they ask for Coke or candy and one man had his rib eye steaks “confiscated”, but we did not experience that happening. We passed through one other military checkpoint but they just waved us through.
Everyone arrived safely at El Papellon RV Park and we pulled onto the beach for dry camping. That means we are self sufficient and do not rely on electricity, water or sewer hookups. Bill set up the solar panels he bought to recharge our batteries and we used fresh water from our RV water tank. We all set up in time to continue our Happy Hour 4 P.M. tradition, except this time it was on the beach! During Happy Hour a man pulled up in a pick up truck loaded with fresh clams. Several of the people in the group bought the fresh clams…..a dozen for 50 pesos which is about $4.00 in dollars and they were huge!
Bill and Bob spent some time discussing engines and RV stuff. You can see the reflective tape on the driver’s side mirror. We had been warned before leaving for Mexico to put reflective tape on our mirror so the truck drivers and buses could see the mirrors on the narrow Mexican roads and not knock them off.
We finished the evening by going next door to Bob and Sharon’s RV where we enjoyed a spirited game of Mexican Train dominoes.