Taking the baja down the Baja: Day Five

Note: This is a recap of Day Five of our journey driving a ’68 bug from Sacramento, CA to Sayulita, Mexico.  You can catch up on day four here. 

The first thing we did on Day Five, was get out the toolbox and give the bug some attention.  Well, the very first thing we did was get coffee.  I ordered from the hotel restaurant, and used my weak but growing Spanish to say “Cafe con leche. Dos. And….(I mimed walking fingers) vamose!”  It’s rough, but people seem to appreciate the attempt.  The waitress returned with two coffees to go and asked me for 35 pesos.  I handed her 40, and she handed them back to me and shook her head.  I looked down and noticed I had given her $40 Canadian.  Travelers’ problems

We spent about an hour in the hotel parking lot checking oil, reattaching fenders and getting the LED bar to work.  Then it was time to set our sights on Scorpion Bay.  We drove for a while before deciding to stop for lunch at a roadside restaurant.  Tacos, a torta and two coca lites really hit the spot.  The bill was a whopping 131 pesos, or $7.

At a gas station stop, Edgar filled up the tank and I went inside the little store for snacks.  I spotted a little bag of something called Choco Retas and decided we needed to try them.  They tasted like tiny little peppermint patties.  Addicting!

On the way out of the store I spotted a small dog, and of course stopped to pet it.  “You like dogs, amiga?” the man sitting in front of the store asked.  I admitted I did.  “I have puppies for adoption.  You want one?” I said no thank you and held firm, but I had to speed walk it out of there.

We’d spent some time researching the drive to Scorpion Bay, so we knew we would be a while on a dirt road, then take a left at a fish camp, and then we’d have the option to take the salt flats, or the north road.  There were warnings included with both.  Don’t stray from the path.  Don’t go alone.  Take a short wave radio…. and so forth.

We decided to go alone and take candy and a good attitude.  The north road needed a grader and it needed one badly.  It was washboard the whole way.  We tried to weave to a “better” part of the road, but better never really came.  A few times we would run into really soft sand, and we’d have to get a run at it to stay unstuck.  Other times we had to slowly rock crawl and rattle our way across stretches with no sand at all.  It was pretty exciting and we always made it up and out.

A few hours in we spotted a van coming the other direction, and the driver slowed to talk to us.  It was a couple from California and they were coming back from Scorpion Bay.  The driver offered us directions that included go straight, pass a goat farm, keep going, drive through the creek bed…. “How much farther is it?” we asked.  “Oh at least two more hours,” came the reply.  We waved our thanks and put the bug in gear.

All told, we were about seven hours on the north road.  We passed lots of cows, and a group of wild horses.  Of course I wanted to get close, but they were skittish and had foals with them, so they stuck around long enough for a couple long-distance clicks and then took off.   The scenery changed from the salt pools to sand to brush and then tall cacti.  We got a good long look at all of it, since the road conditions only allowed us to go about ten miles per hour.  (by ear)

Finally, we saw lights, and Scorpion Bay was just a right turn away.  The town is lovely… small, and developed just enough to have a few places to stay and one selling gasolina.  The Scorpion Bay Hotel still had rooms and the upstairs restaurant was open.  One note about the temperature – because Mexico is typically hot, the places we stayed had air conditioning but not heat.  If you travel during cooler weather, you might want to bring along an extra blanket.

After dinner, we took a walk and craned our necks to see a sky lit up with stars.

Miles traveled on Day Five: 194, including a decent section of the Baja 500

Coming up on Day Six:  Scorpion Bay delivers on its dependable reputation, and we meet a group of VW enthusiasts with an enormous amount of stoke.  Stay tuned (bro).