Day 13 Chula Vista - tour is over

Day 13  Chula Vista

A great pancake breakfast cooked by our Wagon Masters and Tail Gunners.  It was time to say our goodbyes and swap e-mails.  We make a lot of great friends on this trip and look forward to seeing their upcoming adventures on Facebook.  We also picked up a new hobby - geo-caching.

On these trips the road always takes it's toll.  The finally tally was: 

One accident - before we even left the campground on the first day

A rock jutting out from a cliff side that took out the steps and dented the entire side of an rv

One broken windshield - motor home

One broken rear window - fifth-wheel truck

One blowout - fifth wheel

3 cases of Montezuma's revenge 

Luckily, none of these things happened to us!

Day 12 Ensenada to USA Border via Tecate to Santee - 112 miles

Day 12  Ensenada to USA Border via Tecate to Santee - 112 miles

There is a list of items we are not allowed to take back into the USA - potatoes, apples, blueberries, peaches (all stone fruit), raw eggs, pork, poultry.  So last night everyone was checking their rigs for prohibited items.  Everything not permitted back into the USA was given to the Green Angels.  They were so happy to receive these food items!!

Although this was the last leg, it was one of the most nerve racking.  There was a tremendous amount of traffic on the road today.  We had to stay very alert as cars and trucks were hop scotching from the rear, and there was also a lot of on coming traffic.  The people here seem to play "chicken" while passing.  Many times they did not have a clear view (plus double yellow lines on the road), but they would pass you anyway.  Luckily, we all got through ok.

One of our members was stopped by a Mexican motorcycle cop close to the border.  He said they ran a stop sign and wanted them to follow him back to the station.  They just kept saying that they needed to stay with the group and cross the border; but the officer wasn't having any of it.  Luckily the Green Angels were still with us and spoke to the officer and got him to let them go.  But the officer was not too happy to do so.  The couple was really lucky, as the Green Angles were actually leaving us at that point and the Tail Gunner was able to quickly call them back.  If the couple had to follow the officer back to the station it would have been a huge fine and a big delay for them.

The border crossing was very smooth.  As usual, the list of allowable foods was not up to date, and so we all had to hand over our limes.  We were also asked about chicken and  the inspector said he was supposed to take our chicken lunch meat (that we bought in the USA and never opened!!) but he was going to let us keep it.   He was really a very nice guy.   He even let the Wagon Master keep the sausage and eggs (that are for our pancake breakfast tomorrow), once she explained that she needed to feed us all!!  Those items were very high on the no go list, so he looked at them, closed the frig door, and said "I never saw it".

Back in the USA.  Phone service again!  Whoo hoo!!!  We all got settled into the campground pretty quickly and easily.  Collected our jeep from the storage lot and was very relieved to see the kayak and bikes just as we left them. 

  I spent the afternoon catching up with our kids and friends.   Dinner tonight was provided by Fantasy and it was a fabulous catered meal.  Of course, we also had the obligatory Margaritas!!!  We have drunk more Margaritas on this trip than in our entire lives!!!!

Day 11 Ensenada day tour

Day 11  Ensenada

Today we took a bus tour of Ensenada.  Our guide on the bus was excellent.  She gave us a lot of history and was amusing too. 

  The first stop was the convention center.  It was once a military base, then a casino (where Al Capone gambled!) and now it is a convention center. At the entrance was a sign with a quote from John F. Kennedy on the back.

  It has amazing hand painted ceilings and beautiful murals. 

I can't show the painted murals as they are mostly naked women!!

Mexican people believe that nothing is perfect except God.  Therefore they put a little imperfection in very thing they do.  Here our guide pointed out the imperfection placed into the tiled floor.

When this building was a hotel, the Margarita was created for the first time.  Here is a sign commemorating the occasion.  It tells how the bar tender created the drink for his girlfriend Margarita.

The grounds surrounding the convention center were beautifully landscaped.

There was also a geo-cache hidden in the garden!  It was inside this little hole in the light post.

Next we took a short trip into the city to do a little shopping.  We were all quite impressed with the bus driver paralleled parked the bus into a very small spot

There was plenty of shopping stops available.  

Including one pharmacist who had a distinctive way to attract shoppers

We were then back on the road to our next stop the famous La Bufadora (The Blowhole).  The views of the coast along the way were amazing.

According to our guide, there are three of these in the world, and this is supposed to be the largest.  There is a large cave in the side of the cliff.  When the wave comes in, it changes the air pressure in the cave causing it to billow out a spray of water.  It was interesting, but it was low tide, and would be so much more spectacular at high tide.  

The scenery in that same area was beautiful

The best part of this was the open market.  All the merchants were trying to convince us to visit their stalls - it reminded us of the Mexican ride in EPCOT at Disney world.  We were told never to pay the first price given, so we had a great time haggling and shopping.   Also in the open market were a lot of food and bakery stands.  They were all handing out samples!  They were pretty insistent in giving out the samples.   I ate and drank so much  - cheese cake, candied nuts, sweet breads, and even non-   alcoholic pina coladas!  I could barely eat the lunch that came with the tour!

We heard this all up and down the street:  "Come into my store - I have special price just for you!!"

Samples yum!!

A wonderful lunch, and then it was the trip back.  On the way, we passed a tuna farm.

It seems that many Americans have decided to live here in Ensanda.  They cannot buy the land, as only the Mexican government can own the land.  So they lease it for 30 - 90 years.  Here is a rather large community with a great ocean view

We got back to the campground at 3pm and at 5pm we are gathering for Margaritas and snacks - our last Margarita party in Mexico.  We have had margaritas every day - it seems like it is the national drink for Mexico!  

John looks like a two fisted drinker, but he is really holding my drink so I can take his picture (that is his story and he is sticking to it)

After a very pleasant evening we all retired early.  Early call tomorrow.  It is back to the USA and we have to be at the border by noon

Day 10 Vicente Guerrero to es.Ensenada 99 mil

Day 10  Vicente Guerrero to es.Ensenada  99 mil

We have a 9:30am travel briefing - whoohoo we get to sleep in!

This drive was very stressful.  We were going over the most nerve racking roads (steep drop-offs with no shoulder on the road and little or no guardrails.  To top it off, we faced heavy traffic coming from both directions.

At one point the road was 4 lanes (one of the few good ones!!) that was going down to two lanes.  We had two Coca Cola trucks beside and a little behind us as we entered the merge.  Although we were ahead of the coca cola truck, he decided to push ahead and not let us in.  That meant we were pushed off the road.  Thank goodness there was no drop off there, and John had just enough pavement to stop on before hitting a metal pole.  We called them the kamikaze trucks after that.  We were the last of the caravan, and they terrorized the rest of the caravan being very reckless when passing.

Once we got into town it was a little quieter.  To get around here, some locals go via horseback

 

When we pulled into the campground, we were all pleasantly surprised!  The grounds are beautifully landscaped with gorgeous flowers.  There is a pool and hot tub and a fantastic view of the ocean.

One of our fellow travelers made ankle bracelets for all the ladies.  So before dinner we took a picture of our ankles!  (Faces have been cropped to protect the innocent!!)

We had a wonderful dinner at the restaurant right on the beach while observing another beautiful sunset.  We walked home exhausted at 8pm!!

Day 9 - Bahia De Los Angeles to Vicente Guerrero - 233.5 miles

Day 9 - Bahia De Los Angeles to Vicente Guerrero - 233.5 miles

We were up at 5:30 for another beautiful sun rise, although cloudy one. 

Yesterday we enjoyed visiting with a colony of seals.  This morning, unfortunately, we observed a dead seal had washed up on the beach.  The vultures were feasting, and it seems their numbers grew by the minute.

We got an early start and were all out of the campground by 7:30am.

Starting out we saw some beautiful cloud cover on the mountains.

These are the same roads we traveled when we were going south.  So we knew what to expect.  It did not make it any less scary!!!

This shows the twisting roads we traveled on this leg

The best shot I could get to try to show the steep drop offs

he 5th wheel in front of us was being driven by an elderly gentleman.  He had great difficulty keeping his wheels on the road.  He scared us half to death a couple times.  Once he dropped both rear tires off the road aTnd nearly rolled his rig trying to get back on the road.  We were very glad that he made it through this leg in one piece.

We faced a lot of trucks coming from the opposite direction.  The trickiest part was when the truck mirror passed the mirror on the motor home.  There were only inches between them

  The wagon master was very smart to schedule a break at the end of the worst part of the road (the white knuckle tour, we called it).  The drivers needed to get out of the rigs and relax a bit before moving on!!

 The next area we drove through was extremely rocky.  It was interesting how the rocks just seem to be placed in spots

However, you can't stop mother nature.  Plenty of vegetation manged to grow in this rocky soil

including a couple huge cacti 

We went through another military check point and got boarded again.  This soldier let me take his picture.  Then John told him that he was retired Army.  The soldier got excited and asked to see John Military ID, and then took out his own wallet and showed us his Mexican Army ID!  All young men must serve 2 years in the Army here.  So these are mostly young kids, very polite and mostly curious about what all the different rigs look like.  We had fun with this one.

We were very happy when the ocean came back into view:

I was able to get a couple shots of the roadside memorials we passed along the way.  Sadly, we saw most of them around the sharp turns on the hill sides.  Two in particular were for truckers.  The first one is for a gentleman by the name of Hector.  His family seems to really want him to be remembered by all the work they put into the memorial and placing his name there. 

More memorials

Sadly, this memorial appears to be for an entire family

We fueled up before getting to the campground.  Here is the gas station owned by the government.

We paid $2237.00 pesos for 172.74 liters of diesel.  Which come to about $1 a liter, or $4 a gallon.  Same thing we paid on the way in.  Although, if you ran out of gas along the way, you could get gas at some of these smaller (really smaller!!!) gas stations:

We got to the campground around 3:30pm, which wasn't so bad.  John and I immediately went down for long hot showers.  They felt wonderful!!!

6pm we had an excellent group dinner.  I had ribs that were very good and John had fish that was cooked perfectly.  We enjoyed a lively conversation with our table mates with much laughter and shared stories "from the road".  Every one seemed to have a story that started with  "wait until I tell you the time I did............"  which invariably was something