A quick post, as in ‘‘Where the hell have you guys been?’’

Loreto, BCS, Mexico, 20-FEB-2023 – Okay, let me answer a few questions and defer any answer about why I haven’t been posting as I said I would. Well, I’ll address that here: We’ve been having a good and exciting time.

To catch everyone up:

• My automotive diagnostic abilities have not left me. It was the timing belt. While I came to this conclusion through deduction, it turns out that one can merely pull the plastic timing belt cover aside and see that the belt is broken. Deduction is more fun. The car sat in the parking lot by the side of the road across from the out-of-town restaurant row, untouched and unmolested until Wednesday, when the garage towed it to their shop. When we saw the car being test-driven Saturday morning, the mechanic waved to us. We drove to the shop and paid… wait for it…$140USD for towing, labor, and parts.
• Jennifer came down with the same sort of flu that our host Dennis had had a few days earlier. Dennis and Lisa were nice enough to let us stay a few days longer.
• We’ve been wandering. We saw Cameron (the tandem cyclist) twice more with the wilderness writer Léonie (Laney) Sherman. We passed through La Paz again and saw Thomas and Anja.
• Spent an afternoon with new South African/American sailor friends in Puerto Escondido, where I am headed to meet Jennifer. I find I still can not meet new people without extracting a life story. Shelley Winters said, No one is a minor player in their own life. John D MacDonald said that the sound everyone most wants to hear is their own voice. This sounds so cynical. I like hearing life stories. With sailors who have lived aboard their entire lives, it is a story of being poor, or jumping in and out of a career, or often family money. This sailor had family money.
• That afternoon we arrived in Loreto to find most hotels full. We did wander into the high-end hotel on the square, for $216US – Be careful about exchange rates. Some are a ripoff, this place the exchange rate was better than a bank would give. However, we didn’t feel like spending that kind of money and wandered on. We chose, instead, a small posada, two blocks from the square for $28/night. Wonderful place in need of physical repair, which, we see, is ongoing. We got to know Felipe, the owner’s son, and stayed three nights. *
• Loreto makes much of its money from tourists, but in the square are many locals. It is nice, not built up.** We like it here.
• This could run on, but my highlight was eating street food at a stand with only locals run by Monica and Miguel. I’ll eat there again today. (And eating local ice cream for dinner: getting to know the staff, who greet us warmly, laughingly.)

We’ve spent the last three days with Steve and Liz aboard Aloha. We know Steve and Liz from Ko ‘Olina Marina on Oahu, and spent time with them in Port Townsend, and now here we are in the Sea of Cortez. I’ve written about them before, and it was a very nice time together.

However, getting to them, and getting back from them was the larger adventure. Although Highway 1 will take you north from Loreto, at some point you must get onto a dirt “road,” to be polite. It is generally graded but traveled by four-wheel drive vehicles entirely, so the hump in the center becomes very tall, with quite deep sand and, in places, the road fords streams.

Going there was no problem. Jennifer was with me and we were carrying groceries for Steve and Liz. With little ground clearance, I drove with the left wheels on the center ridge, and the right wheels on the shoulder and kept the speed between 15 and 25 miles an hour. It was fun and very exciting and only once did it appear for a moment we were going to be in deep trouble. But front-wheel drive will save a driver from many things.

The road continues to a locked fence at a ranch.

I don’t understand the laws here as to whether the road we drove on is a public road that crosses a ranch, or the ranch must give right of way (an easement), or does the ranch do it as a public service. But, a very nice young man came out to unlock the gates for us at the largest of the ranches. I do enjoy the look of surprise when we take a car like the Celica convertible in places where people only take four-wheel drive vehicles. He and I discussed it as best we could. He speaks absolutely no English, and I have so little Spanish that Google translate was the best we could do. We spent most of our time laughing about the absurdity of having this car where it was.

What I hadn’t spoken to Jennifer about, though I will guess she was thinking about it, and I know I was thinking about it: meeting oncoming traffic on a road that is exactly one lane wide.

However, we were very fortunate and the only oncoming vehicles were two large four-wheel drive campers that we met at a Y in the road where we were able to pass. One rolled down his window, exchanged pleasantries (he was American), and, after a chuckle, just told us to keep moving and not stop. Something we were very well aware of.

We arrived at the beach, parked, and rode out to Steve and Liz’s ketch in their rib†††. Steve has put sand wheels on the transom of the rib, which is very common for moving a dinghy up the beach. But, he uses them in a manner I have never seen: he extends the wheels down while in the water and they provide enough clearance between the boat and the bottom of the water that the propeller cannot touch the sand and continues to move the rib under power until the bow finally touches down. It is quite remarkable to move in water which would be absolutely impossible to move under power without the wheels. Very cool.

I don’t think we overstayed our welcome. Liz announced to us that her sister had announced to her that she was arriving Tuesday, tomorrow, in Loreto and they would leave the anchorage this (Monday) morning. I don’t think we had overstayed and this was a way of getting rid of us, but we had planned to leave then anyway.

I shouldn’t have been too surprised when Jennifer asked Steve and Liz† if she could sail down to Loreto with them, and told me to take the car back alone. I was a bit surprised that she wouldn’t join me on the drive. But there is an adventure by doing it alone. It was routine for me once a time to take vacations alone and travel backwoods roads alone.

At 8:00 in the morning, Steve dropped me off at the beach, I started the car and started home. At the locked gate of the ranch, the young man greeted me warmly and asked me about my time at the beach, and I explained as best I could that I had been on a barco de vela con mis amigos. We laughed again, and he wished me luck

For reasons I can’t explain, I decided that, perhaps, I didn’t need to be so hard on the car by driving so fast. Not the right decision. Before I left the ranch, I got stuck once in some gravel for a few seconds. The gravel, and then the sand, were each around a tight turn, and rather than driving hell-bent-for-leather, I slowed down because I couldn’t see around the turn. I hadn’t slowed last time, which I thought was a bit reckless. This time, slowing down just got me into trouble.

I came around the corner, saw the sandy rise but did not gather momentum to carry me through: the car lost speed and stopped. It took about 15 minutes to get out. I had buried the front wheels, the drive wheels, up to the body in very soft sand. This turned the car into a snow plow of sorts. I haven’t stuck a car in probably 50 years or more… I’m not sure I’ve ever stuck a car. It took a few moments and a false start or two to understand how much of the very loose sand I needed to remove from under the car, what trench I needed to dig behind each front wheel, and then to merely drive backwards onto hard, stable, packed earth and gravel, get a running start and up and through.

It always fascinates me how the first time through terra incognita is so long. Though I knew by the clock going to meet Steve and Liz wasn’t all that long, it felt hours long. Going back, it felt like the 40 minutes, plus 15 minutes to dig out, that Google Maps predicted.

I’m sitting on the square at a cafe, dictating this, enjoying being alone. The people to the left of me are two Mexican mommies speaking Spanish; to my right is a Canadian speaking English to his Mexican builder about the house the builder is building for them.

In a bit, I’ll be off to lunch at Monica and Miguel’s wheelless trailer parked by the road. It would be nice if they remembered me.

Across the street, the Guardia Nacional has pulled up in a crew cab Chevy Z71 pickup truck with three young men in the back with the Mexican equivalent of M16s called Fire Serpents: all plastic folding stock, 5.56mm by 45mm NATO round. 3-kilogram weight, the soldier at a stop-point estimated.

Generally, the young men are very polite, charming, and very willing to talk with us and tell us as best we can accomplish about what they do, their guns, and ask us questions. It looks dangerous as hell to be in the back of these trucks with nothing really to hold you in. They stand in the openings in the roll cage.

I’m not quite seduced by Mexico, but the seduction is moving forward. If I come again I will not allow myself to do so until I have studied Spanish more. My four years of high school Spanish is returning to me, but it’s not enough to communicate really. I always find myself composing the sentence correctly a few moments after the conversation has ended.

We don’t seem to know when we’re going to get out of Mexico and return to the states.†† It’s also looking as if we need to go to Phoenix for a house Jennifer owns there before making our way to Port Townsend.

I’m trying to go to Eastern Europe in April to visit my friend Elena, and then perhaps sail in Turkey or Greece with Jennifer and Elena for a few days.

It’s very pleasant to have most of the year planned out. We don’t need to do any of it and can change our minds whenever we wish, but there’s always the fear that we will not find things to do after retirement.

Thanks for staying with us. We’ll be back on Caro Babbo at the end of May, and take her back to Southeast Alaska. We’re thinking we may leave her in Sitka or someplace nearby for the winter. Your advice is very welcome and encouraged.

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*Jennifer posted about the posada in a Baja FB group and got pounced on by an ex-pat: How dare she reveal this under-frequented hotel to the outside world. Another ex-pat re-acted in kind and the pissing match was on. I have my own thoughts on this.

**Just before I posted this, I met a Canadian who damned the other Canadians and Americans who have changed Loreto from what it was when he arrived. He also told me how he improved his favorite restaurant – his improvements were sound business improvements and no doubt increased the restaurant’s business, but he has also had a hand in changing Loreto.

†Once again the narrow breadth of the sailing world came into play. When we discussed sailing in Alaska we found we were all friends of Kevin and Julie on Catharpin Blue. Kevin sold Steve a 5KW generator when Aloha was in Puget sound in 2020.

††I don’t like transitions. Now that we’re here in Mexico, I wouldn’t mind staying here a long time. We’re getting to be able to move around and beginning to understand the culture. When I’m aboard Caro Babbo, I don’t really like to come home.

††† RIB – Rigid Inflatable Boat