February28th through March 2nd
Loreto proved to be a bit of a letdown. After Santa Rosalía it was to be expected but the entire city left something wanting. We left SR early in the morning and were awed by the beautiful coves of Bahia Concepción which the road dropped into after some short mountain passes. The only thing that spoiled the view was the neatly arranged RVs which bordered every beach and only parted their flanks around palapa bars. Josh charged ahead and I took it easy and decided not to pass RVs on blind corners of mountain passes. At one sharp corner I felt something fly up my right sleeve and only had a moment to wonder what it was before it stung me. Then I realized it was a wasp. Then it stung me again. I tried to look for a place to pull over but there was no shoulder and all the curves were blind ones so I’d just get hit if I stopped so I continued up the road as the wasp stung me again. I started to get a bit angry and frantic before I found a spot to pull over, rip off my jacket and start pounding the sleeve. I looked down at my arm and it was bleeding in several places. After a bit I cleared out the sleeve and looked up to see Josh bearing down on me at full speed; seems he waited for me at the top of the pass and when I hadn’t shown up he thought I had gone off of one of the cliffs and died. He’d been looking over the sides for signs of wreckage. Although I’m sure he was glad to see me he didn’t show it other than through utter anger that I had scared him half to death. We roared off both somewhat shaken by each of our experiences.
During this angry acceleration/abrupt braking during the wasp biting somehow my sleeping bag tied down on the back of the bike fell off which was the beginning of some cold, cold nights.
Loreto had been a dustbowl of a town with only one paved road when we first came here twenty years ago but now has somehow convinced cruise ships to stop here and disgorge their passengers for walks down the long Malecón so they can take various pictures from different perspectives of their cruise ship in the bay. Joshua and I road along it for a bit and then settled into a restaurant to contact the parents and find out where we had anchored along this coastline when we were hit by a serious Chubasco. It took longer than we thought and had drunk a bit more than we should have so we found a cheap motel and walked around Loreto. The town has been taken over by Americans; most of the restaurants and the signs are in English, the bars only play American music, and the prices are also American. We bought two drinks at one place which turned out costing us the same amount as our room for the night. Ask how much before you have a drink in Loreto. We decided to turn in before our wallets were emptied.
The next day it turned out that we had overshot the bay we were looking for and that it was thirty minutes to the north of Loreto. We hopped on the bikes and headed up for just a day trip; we had been told that there would be a sign for San Juanico at around kilometer marker 48. There wasn’t. We stopped for directions again and were told that we had overshot it by a bit and we turned around again and finally spotted what looked to be a road leading east to the coast. Another washboard dirt and sand road that was supposedly 16 km to the coast. We dove in. I put my bike down again. I decided to wait and have Josh scout out ahead since the road kept branching off and we had no clue which direction we should have been going.
I sat down slightly exhausted and realized that we were once again out in the desert with absolutely no food and no water without any foreseeable way to rectify the situation. Josh screamed back after a while and breathlessly told me about his run in with a bull that charged him and the deep quicksand that he made it through. Luckily he ran into a rancho and he gave us directions albeit quite vague we soon realized. We rode on after we switched bikes because I wasn’t going to be able to keep mine upright (but I could barely keep the KLR 650 upright in some places and was amazed when Josh only put my bike down once). I was ahead when we came up to a bend and saw the remnants of a fire in the middle of the road and luckily stopped. A camper was parked in the middle of the road with no way around and a friendly Canadian came out to greet us.
Turns out that Glen and his wife Robin had been stranded overnight on the road leading up to a different beach - not the one we were looking for – and that a couple kilometers back was a fork in the road that led to San Juanico. They funny thing was the reason why they were “stranded;” a water truck was blocking the only road up a hill that led to Playa Le Mangre, their beach. They had run into the driver hiking out to find a mechanic and said he’d return as soon as he could but it was likely that it wouldn’t be for a day or two. They had decided to wait. I decided to wait with them. Josh took the KLR and made his way to San Juanico where he shot this video. He wasn’t entirely convinced that San Juanico was the right bay where the boat had been driven ashore.
Before Josh returned a Toyota pickup truck with two men drove up and one turned out to be the driver who explained what had happened; he had been driving the 5,000 gallon water truck up the mountain and had almost reached the top when the engine died. This wouldn’t have been so bad but the air-brakes were dependent upon the engine being running. He started gaining speed as the truck bounced backwards over boulders in the road. His heart was beating so fast he said he thought he was going to die as he spun the wheel trying to dig in the front tires and finally after five hundred feet of blindly driving just to stay alive (there was a considerable drop off to the left) he wedged the back of the truck into the cliff face bringing it to a stop. It stayed there overnight leaking water out the back and creating a little muddy stream all the way down the rest of the road.
After the mechanic and driver had been around for a while Glen headed up to check on them. We all have heard of the Mexican mantra of Manana when something needs to be done but when Glen walked up the hill he found them in the cab of the truck; one was taking a big bong rip while the other was reading a porno magazine. Apparently the mechanic could fix things better when he was high and horny.
They finally did get the water truck fixed and backed it down to let us through. By this time Joshua had returned and assured me that there was no way my bike was going to make it down the road he’d just been on so I suggested we head over the hill with Glen and Robin. We made it to this gorgeous beach with one other person camping and a nice protected cove with three sheltering sailboats and came to the realization that it was this bay that the boat was ravaged by the Chubasco(See Next Post).
Our boat the Edward D. Rowan that washed ashore here in a Chubasco.
We parked the bikes like watchdogs to the entrance of the beach and chatted with Glen and Robin (we told the story about being run aground here and ending up stranded on the beach naked as boys of six and eight years old while they told us about how they live in total wilderness up British Colombia every other week and just make enough money to get by). Glen’s a lawyer and Robin is a therapist that sold what they call their “stupid house,” a giant dream home they built when they were young and into the business of making money and driving fast cars, and decided to live more simply instead after a transformative wilderness vacation in which they decided that they’d had enough of the material world. They also gleaned that we had neither food nor water and were generous enough to provide both before a couple of French tourists by the name of Jean and Jean-Christopher showed up with overflowing coolers of fancy French food that they couldn’t get rid of fast enough. We obliged them.
Camper Chris, Ian, Robin and Glen relaxing on astro-turf and drinking green tea.
Now you may or may not recall that I have lost my sleeping bag recently and am now looking ahead to a very cold night. It turns out that Jean has started a new company guiding French tour camping groups and was actually booked for this week but it had been too windy for his patrons so he and his friend decided they might as well go camping in order not to waste all the supplies and perhaps do some scouting for subsequent trips. You guessed it. They had four extra sleeping bags.
We ate goat cheese and grapes while we warmed up around the bonfire and told stories in between Kit Kat breaks.
Some stranded gringo fishermen who were actually awaiting a taxi that miraculously arrived.
A Spanish Countess had a giant home built here so the next day we decided to hike up and find out what was truly behind the myth of the eccentric Countess. Turns out there is no myth. She’s Spanish and she’s a Countess. Although she wasn’t there she was expected soon and all the staff were busy fixing the place up (which included pumping salt water up to the infinity pool) so we had a little chat with the caretaker who filled us in on the batty old lady (she had recently turned 76 and was still coming to stay at her villa via the terrible road we had just taken) and the fact that they were awaiting delivery of water which was two days late…
The Spanish Countess’ Villa with Infiniti Pool and its view below.
The Stick Bug that Josh woke to with a girlish scream.
A Monument Tree that passing boaters have left inscribed with their boats’ names.
A More Serious Carving; We looked for one of our boat to no avail.
More to come…
