On The Road Again (South to Cabo)

Things are moving along a lot faster now.  We left Punta San Carlos and drove south to meet our friends near the tip of Baja at the end of October.  Just south of San Carlos, the highway veers inland from the Pacific side to the Sea of Cortez side. It was still insanely hot during our drive, so we were on a mission to quickly get back to the Pacific side.  Typically, the cooler Pacific ocean keeps air temperatures moderate on the west side. Not this year. The water was warmer than we've ever experienced -- 85 degrees!  Swimming isn't exactly refreshing.

Bay of Conception, Sea of Cortez -- trying to smile in the sweltering heat

On our way south, we hit the cute Baja town of San Ignacio where we purchased 5 lbs of dates for the LOW price of $8.  Two hours down the road we found them in the grocery store for $5/lb (which is still insanely cheap). San Ignacio is a desert oasis teeming with date palms as far as the eye can see.  Dates are everywhere!  We camped under date palms and our tires became covered in the sticky dates.

Hanging out under the date palms

One of our next stops was near Pescadero at the San Pedrito surf beach.  Normally, I wouldn't make note of this in our blog, but the drive was a bit interesting.  One week prior to our trip to San Pedrito, Hurricane Paul caused major damage to southern Baja, including this beach.  As we were bumping along through the sand to get out to the beach, we noticed that the track was getting narrow, and the sand was getting deeper.  For some reason--probably because we've driven the road several times before--we decided to just keep going.  Normally, we would have stopped and walked the rest of the road to make sure it was drive-able, but stopping is a big no-no in deep sand. Once you're moving, you have to keep moving.  

As we drove, the sand got deeper and deeper.  Both of us were white-knuckled and wide-eyed.  Scott was driving, and I kept saying stupid things like, "whoa, keep it movin'... slow and steady...we're okay, we're okay, we're okay".  We made it to some hard ground and literally had to catch our breaths.  If we had gotten stuck, we would have had to wait until the next morning to go hiking in search of someone to pull us out. In the future, we both agree that we must avoid situations like that. Past performance is no guarantee of future success.

Even though we made it to the beach, we were worried about getting out. Our initial plan was for one of us to walk out the way we came, and use our walkie-talkies to give the all clear signal. Meeting another vehicle on the deep-sand, single-lane track would have been really bad. Instead,  Scott spent a good part of the next morning finding a 2wd route under some palms over hard-packed ground.

The day after leaving, we learned that all roads heading south from Pescadero were blocked by protesters (if you care, you can learn about why here).  If we hadn't left, we would've had to make a large detour north to get back to our friends the following day!  Whew, I guess if you can roll with it, things usually work out in the end.

Our "boutique" overlook camping spot at Cerritos, south of San Pedrito