call me andy...

I found it. The deserted Baja beach I’ve been reading about. I rolled through San Ignacio and got gas, emailed the post about running into the guy who had driven to Ushuaia and headed for the west coast.  Around 4pm I pulled out onto a beach just south of Laguna San Ignacio.  It took a minute to find my way through the low slung dunes guarding the beach but after I did I found the beach that kept Andy DuFresne’s hope alive in The Shawshank Redemption. Sure I wasn’t in the right part of Mexico but this was it. Not a trace of another soul in sight. Not even a tire track or a fire pit to indicate a previous presence. This was it. Sure the sand may have had a slight tinge of grey to it instead of white but it was soft, it was clean and it was all mine. I setup camp, took a few pics and walked for 40mins to the south via moonlight. The water was clear enough that even with so little light I was able to see my feet clearly through 2 feet of water.  A few crab occupied the beach but nothing else.

 

“Get busy livin or get busy dying” is right. (to continue the Shawshank theme) So I woke up bright and early with the sun and took a dip in the pretty chilly water. Or it may have been the air temperature. But after a week of nothing by baby wipe showers it was nice to get wet, clean the dust and dirt off and not just the smelly spots with real soap. Dr. Broner’s all natural.  Yeah that stuff will peel anything off of your skin. I even used it to put to use my roof top washing machine. That tip alone was worth my subscription to Overland Journal.  Basically a 5 gallon cooler filled with dirty clothes, water and soap. Drive a bumpy road for few hours. Drain dirty water, add clean to rinse and do the same. Anyway, shower done, I took another walk. This time north up the beach where I found what remained of the town of El Deleadito.  A few abandoned houses and what appeared to be a grid of powerlines. Very odd. I hit golf balls for an hour or so then packed up the truck. I am planning on getting to la Paz by Saturday so I can book a ferry to Mazatlan for the middle of next week.  I also have a slow leak in my driver’s side rear tire that I’d like to get looked at and I doubt either option will be available on Sunday.

So I pulled out of my Shawshank beach, saddened I didn’t have a skim board. If Noah Webster and Zane Call had been there we could have spent the entire day trying to outride each other. The waves were small but the beach was very flat and shallow. Perfect for long skimming.  Hell I could have even managed to hurt myself the conditions were so good. On the east side of the dunes was a thin estuary and beyond that a dry lake bed or tidal plane.  The road south ran up into the desert. However the locals (and SCORE officials) had managed to run a road through the length of this dry bed.  So for about 20 placid miles I drove along, smooth as possible, at 70 mph on the best road surface I had seen since San Diego. Sure I had to bomb over a few dunes every now and then but it was a good day. DMB at high volume, on a road that I had no idea where it went, windows down, coke in hand. Almost perfect. Hell I should have known better than to think those thoughts.  Before too long the chaco ended and the road went inland. Still decent but washboard and dusty.  Around a few small gullies, a military checkpoint of all places, then my first encounter with real Baja silt. Silt is not exclusively a Baja phenomenon despite what the Score and “Dust to Glory” folks think. I’ve been through it in Utah, AZ, NV, CA and Colorado. The problem with silt is it is silt. Yeah no shit really? Yeah it is really silt and it gets EVERYWHERE. Especially when you’re driving downwind.  So I approached the silt bed with decent speed but I recognized it early enough so I slowed to drop it into low just in case. It ran for about 150 feet. This is where baja silt is different than anywhere else. The depth. There was about a 30 foot section near the end that was about 18inches deep. I red lined it and bombed on through. My entire truck was completely filled with a cloud of dust. So much for the shower earlier. I got back up to speed as fast as possible, dropped all 4 windows and hoped to disperse the cloud before it settled. I didn’t do very well. I get to start tomorrow morning with a nice baby wipe detail of my dash and seats.

 

I cruised the remaining distance to San Juanico. (the one on the west coast, not to be confused with the one directly across on the east coast.) There I intersected with a nice 90kph hwy that I thought would take me down the coast.  10 miles in a detour took me inland on a jaunt of about 20miles or so. No big deal. In the town of La Purisma (where I was once again accosted for stickers)  I had to decide between east or south. East got to pavement shorter so I took it. HUGE mistake. What a miserable road. Rocky, rocky, rocky and a few more rocks added in. Average speed about 15. Took 2 hours to go 62km. awful. That is what I get for relishing in my good fortune out near the coast. I am very happy I am able to sit and type this email.  The folks over at HP that donated it would be in awe of the abuse it took today. Even in its padded case it had to be suffereing. I was ready to call it a night when I hit pavement but wanted to get gas while I could. So south again on the MEX 1 into Loreto at dusk.  After dinner I’ll go find a place to camp.

 

Ciao,

 

Dave Connors

Lead - Expedition Americas

www.expeditionamericas.com