Fibber McGee – Travel・Surf・Yoga

Taking the baja down the Baja: Day Four

May 12, 2018 Leigh Surfing, Travel

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

Do you ever eat a dinner so delicious, you wake up thinking about having it for breakfast? We greeted the two ladies in the kitchen on Day Four and used our poquito Spanish to explain where we’d stashed our leftovers, and to request they crack an egg on each one for breakfast. Smiles and nods confirmed they understood, and they threw in some tortillas for extra measure. We drove away munching happily on lobster tortillas, and knowing we needed to get some surf time in pretty quickly before our travel pants wouldn’t button.

It was time to fill up when we reached San Quintin, and since we were told there was no gas station for a couple hundred miles after that, we filled up our gas can too. We ran into a few other Americans and Canadians at the gas station, and fielded some questions about the bug. We did some rough math, and figured we could make it to Guerrero Negro if we took it easy. The gas station employee advised Edgar to keep his foot out of it. (Even if he had suggested a max speed limit, we couldn’t have adhered to it. The Green Meanie doesn’t have a speedometer. You gotta drive by ear and feel.)

Before the trip, we’d scoped out a few surf spots we really wanted to see on the way down. One of them is called The Wall. The internet will tell you that this beach is remote. That doesn’t really do it justice. We drove and drove and asked around everywhere we stopped, and at a couple friendly-looking security military checkpoints. (We were never searched, or even paused more than a few seconds just to ask where we came from and where we were going. Eye contact, smiles and polite greetings go a long way, and are always recommended when speaking to men with tactical rifles.) Some of the roads south are great, and you can clip along at a speed that sounds to be around 60 miles an hour. At other times, a swarm of potholes come at you out of no where, and at other points, that swarm contains bees. Real ones. Lots. We smacked into them and left an interesting group of smudges on the windshield, and a group of live ones buzzed right into our open windows. Luckily, they did not appear out for revenge. For some reason they were drawn to the gear shift, and one after the other crawled up the shifter and onto Edgar’s hand. We devised a release method. When the bee got on Edgar’s skin, I would hold us into fourth gear, as the car was still slipping out, and he’d keep one hand on the wheel and use the other to set the bee free. We repeated these steps a few times until the remaining bees had been sent on their merry way. We thank them for their non-stinging cooperation.

Our bee kill-and-rescue mission and our search for The Wall nearly had us forget our need for a gas station, but signs for Santa Rosalillita brought us back into reality. It was a neat little fishing town with a couple of stores and homes. The first shop lady we spoke to didn’t know about The Wall, but she did know her neighbors sold gasolina just down the road. Sure enough they did, out of jugs stored in their shed. While Edgar got that handled, I made sure all the dogs in the neighborhood didn’t miss out on a good scratching.

Gas station, Baja style

An American pescadora who happened to be doing her shopping was familiar with The Wall, and explained the possible routes to get there. “Is that your bug out front?” she asked. We nodded. “Oh, take the coastal road. You can go anywhere in that.”

This was a refrain we heard a lot, but knew to take lightly. The bug has some great tires, and a lot of heart, but she is a ’68. We gave the coastal road a good once over and decided it was indeed the way to go. It was sandy, bumpy and seemingly forgotten. It traveled along the beach, through some ravines and a little inland. We saw some tire tracks, and got a chance to get up on three wheels, but we didn’t see any other vehicles in the action. We did see what was later confirmed as The Wall, but it wasn’t working because of two much onshore wind. What we didn’t see, was an exit.

After bumping along for an amount of time that was just beginning to be concerning, we spotted a camper in the distance. We cruised up to it and were greeted by a man with a beard, hat, open bottle of red wine and purple teeth. He put out his hand and introduced himself as Fibber McGee. He said it like it meant something, but he could tell by our faces that it didn’t click. “Fibber! From Fibber McGee and Molly in the morning!” Nope. Doesn’t ring a bell. Fibber told us he was part of a very popular radio show in LA, and that he’d been on the air for years before they let him go over “something stupid”. He offered us wine from his bottle, and a plate of the chicken and potatoes he was cooking. “I’ve been here six months,” he informed us. “I pay a local $100 a month and I live in paradise.” We declined his kind offer, and he was visibly disappointed, but agreed to point us toward the way out. Literally. “You see that feather ridge, over there?” Fibber pointed at a spot about two miles away. “Take a left.”

It was thinking seriously about dark when we finally saw telephone poles, and then a paved road. It was at this point we realized Fibber’s nickname wasn’t entirely accurate. We turned south once again and set our sights on Guerrero Negro. The bug was really hitting its stride when we hit a stretch of mean potholes – swerving away from one just meant smacking into another, and we heard a dreadful noise that sounded an awful lot like a flat tire, less than an ideal situation for 9pm on a Mexican highway. We found a turnout and grabbed our flashlight for a look. The tires held up, but the fenders took a hit on both sides. Thanks to our stash of zip ties, we were able to zip them back on temporarily, and roll into town. The Halfway Inn had rooms and a restaurant that was open for 15 more minutes. The waiter explained this when he met us in the parking lot. He also recommended the surf and turf, which was pretty good, and we turned in with a plan to get up at a decent hour and spend an hour or so “mechanicing” our little hearts out.