A MEXICAN ADVENTURE

Mexician Adventure!

We spent 4 nights at Jojoba Hills, an escapee resort near Temecula, with our friends the Kuhns, before coming to Chula Vista where our Mexican caravan begins.
The park here is very nice with a beautiful Marina next door. Casey and Mickey will have lots of company on our trip and they have met four friends already.
Jan,27th We took the trolley to Little Italy in San Diego where we enjoyed a walking tour of the area and a really good lunch. We learned that the Italians there were routed out of their homes with just hours notice because they could see the harbor and the activities going on there, and a lot of them were not American citizens. Some never returned. The community is coming back and becoming more trendy. It had declined after the fishing got bad.
Weds day we traveled by trolley to Tijuana where we had our passports and visas stamped and money changed to pesos, and returned promptly to the states. The exchange was 13 pesos per dollar, I think we did well.

Baja California is a 56,600 square mile peninsula about 1/3 the size of US California. No place in Baja California is more than 90 miles from the sea. It is 806 miles from north to south (twice the length of Florida.)

Thursday we headed out in three convoys to Ensenada. We were in the last convoy of 8 RVs. There are 25 trailers and motorhomes on our caravan. Everything went well, it was only an 86 mile trip. Going through Tijuana there was much poverty, and even traveling along the beautiful coast there weren’t many homes of distinction like you would expect to see along the ocean. Mostly small shacks! There was some development about 30 miles south of Tijuana, we even saw a picture of Donald Trump on a billboard advertising a new beachfront complex. We traveled the toll road 1D south, our tolls were about $16.50 for the trip. That is the last toll road we will be on. From now on there will be 2 lane narrow roads. We saw large circular nets in the ocean that we later learned were for salmon.
We arrived at our campground (Estero Beach Hotel and RV Resort) around 1:30 PM and went to the hotel on the complex for a great meal, we had halibut and it was good. We were the only people in the restaurant and the campground is empty also. Our economy surely must be affecting them. The campground is right next to the bay, with a short walk to the ocean. BEAUTIFUL!
Friday, January 30, 2009
Today we had a huge breakfast at the Hotel after which we toured a museum explaining the history of Mexico. Then 4 couples drove about 20 miles to a spot called La Bufadora, (The Buffalo Snort).We walked by a lot of venders to get to a rock formation that acts like a natural sea spout. Water rushes into an underground cavern sending spray shooting into the air like a geyser. On the way we saw many great views and came upon about 6 speed bumps (topes). They put them right in the roads and you better not hit them with any speed or the bottom of your vehicle will suffer. We shopped at the venders, It was a lot like the shops in a border town, they are mostly there for the cruse ships that come to Ensenada.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Today we leave for San Quintin, a 126 mile drive. Norm is putting the drivers’ side mirror in as far as it will go. We were warned that the roads were narrow! We travel in groups of 2 or 3 and the roads aren’t near as bad as we expected. I didn’t take any photos, we passed several cactus farms, a nice winery and some farming fields, other than that it was very poor, with just shacks and a few towns with dirt roads as soon as you left the highway. After about 100 miles we stopped at a Pemex station in San Quintin. The Diesel ran 2.09 per gallon. All through the town there were taco shops and Clam stands. We ask at the gas station if they had a restaurant and the referred us to a building just down the road. It had just opened 20 days earlier and was very clean and as nice as any in the states. We all enjoyed our food and headed toward our campground at El Pabellion RV resort
Sunday
We rose early and walked the beach for shells, sand dollars are plentiful. The campsite is right on the beach but we have no hookups.
There are nice showers We are in the cookout crew for today. We’ve planned steaks, baked potatoes, corn on the cob and avocados, with apple pie for desert. We stocked up at Cosco in Chula Vista before we left.
We go through a check point between Baja California and Baja California Sur tomorrow and they could make us fork over our citrus, and produce so we are juicing lemons and oranges and cooking up potatoes and onions and tomatoes.
I have Internet here so I’ll send this off now.
More pictures to follow
Lois