Week Five, last week in Baja Sur

Week 5

Baja California Sur, Mexico

April 20^th – 26th

Our final week on the Baja has been great. We’ve been hanging around Loreto colleting our last few gallons of oil, camping, a little fishing, making/selling caramels/fudge and visiting with our new friends.We made our reservations to cross over to the mainland via the Santa Rosalia ferry on Sunday the 26^th at 8pm, with help from our friend Ramon in Mulege. Thanks Ramon!

(Kindra loving the beautiful rocks and cave carved out by the coastal tides)

Day 29, Mon: Nopolo, B.C.S, Mexico

On Sunday when we returned from the mountains of San Javier, Kindra and I went to the Tiangues market where we again bought enough produce for the week, some delicious date/plantain bread from the cutest old man and stickers for our caramel wrappers (Sponge Bob, Superman, and Betty Boop!!) We’ve actually been having a bit of luck with the caramels and made around $50.00 woo hoo!!! Walking through town and talking to people seems to work alright but the real money was at the local resort beach where we preyed on the vacationing Americanos. The first day we went out to the beach we sold out!! The beach goers told us to come back the next day with another batch and they would buy them up from us. Wallace has been a great little ice breaker and is a wonderful little conversation piece and lead into our caramel sales, “Oh he’s so cute….what’s his name….how old is he?” Then comes us, “Wanna buy some delicious caramels!?” We had a wonderful evening at Patricia’s place with Neil and a few of her friends there too. Pati made Chili Rellenos and John and I made fresh chips and salsa verde. We sat around a small makeshift fire and listened to Indian music on her patio.

(pic: john washing dishes)

Day 30, Tues: Rattlesnake Beach, B.C.S, Mexico

The second day on the resort beach we met a sweet lady named Linda who actually invited us over and into her home for some afternoon coffee. She and her husband John have been living in Loreto since February in an attempt to immerse their children in a Spanish speaking culture and get away from the mainstream of Seattle. John is an amateur/semi pro coffee roaster and I had the opportunity to see him roast around 7 pounds of green Kenyan beans. We hung out at there place for a few hours chatted and traded some caramels for some delicious fresh roasted whole been coffee…thanks for your hospitality guys! We filled up on propane, water and diesel, bought a few groceries and I filtered the last of the close to 30 gallons of oil we had collected. I should mention how we went about getting oil, it seems asking an establishment if they would put their used oil in a provided container at the end of the day is the best way to go about it. There are no such things as ‘grease dumpsters’ down here and they just throw their old oil out or use it till its black. Neil hooked us up with some great restaurants that gave us their old oil happily. I went back on more than 4 occasions to one specific establishment called “Las Palapas” where the guys greeted me every other day or so with another full 5 gallon container and they were happy to fill an empty one. I would recommend eating here since we know they change their oil very often, unlike many other restaurants we have seen so far. We are not sure how the food tastes because up to this point in the trip we haven’t eaten out once. Every time we discuss going out to eat we always look at how much money we would save if we didn’t… gets us every time. I have been pre filtering the oil through old t-shirt/ tank top material that I'm finding in the trash or discarded at camp sites, drapped over the top of a large concave, metal strainer that fits perfectly into the top of a 5 gallon bucket. This gets out all of the really big chucks and a good bit of the small ones to. I then pump it from the 5 gallon bucket w/ my hand pump (that’s now mounted outside the truck above the ‘veg tank’ to the underside of the camper that goes out over the cab of the truck) into the centrifuge bucket. I then run small batches of oil 15 to 20 gallons through the centrifuge as this takes less time to heat and process. Patty was nice enough to let me use her power and the system is working great.

(pic: Linda and John)

Day 31, Wed: Nopolo, B.C.S., Mexico

It’s April 22^nd today!!! Happy Earth Day to everyone and Happy Anniversary to my mom and Dan (14 years!) Today was so hot and on my way out of one of the mini marcados I saw a man with a little white cart with a bell on it… you know what that means! Cold refreshing popsicles! I got strawberry and coconut to share with John and oh they were so refreshing! I just wish they hadn’t of splattered all over the truck and our cloths when I ripped the plastic with my teeth… red popsicle stains, oil stains, etc… my clothes have no chance of surviving this trip!

Day 32-34, Thurs-Sat: Mulege, B.C.S., Mexico

We left for Mulege on Thursday morning and arrived in town early in the afternoon, greeted by our friend Ramon. It was his son’s 9^th birthday party and he invited us back to his house to have some cake later. While we waited, we took the opportunity to do some laundry. While waiting for the close to dry we ran into our friends Grace and Faith. After the birthday party we went over to Faith and Eric’s new apartment in Mulege overlooking the mouth of the Bay of Concepcion and the eastern coast of the Baja. We had a nice home cooked meal with Grace, Rance, Eric and Faith, and then headed across the river to spend the next 2 nights camping on the beach. I’m happy to say I have been able to find some meetings on the Baja. Two or three in Loreto and one in Mulege (all of which I have been selling caramels at hehehe) so that’s been a blessing. I rode my bike into town one afternoon to hit a meeting and do a little grocery shopping. As I said earlier I have done a little fishing, Rance gifted me a rod/real/tackle starter kit in San Javier, and so I've been waking up early and doing some shore casting. No luck yet but it’s nice and relaxing and gets me out of bed early. Kindra started doing a yoga series that Neil was kind enough to print out for us as well as Leslie’s (John’s mom) ‘core series’. I’ve been slacking on exercise and am slowly growing a little Mexican pot belly.

(pic: "I've got my whole world in my hands")

Day 35, Sun: Somewhere in the sea on a ferry!!!

After camping for a couple nights in Mulege, we headed up to Santa Rosalia to check on our reservations. We spent the day walking around the little town, talking to locals and mentally preparing for the trip to the Mainland. Boarding the ferry was quite and experience, it was a much smaller vessel than we had expected and only carried 2 motorcycles 3 cars and the Colonel. The 8 hour ferry trip was uneventful. Kindra, Wallace and I all slept for most of it below deck in airplane style seating galley, while they played that silly RV movie with Robin Williams in it (dubbed in Spanish). They told us initially Wallace would have to stay in the truck, but we snuck him in with us and no one contested. The best part was it costs half the price we thought it would be! The lady only charged us for a regular sized vehicle and we got a discount cause we traveled on a Sunday.

(pic: John in the ferry after a restless night of sleep)

The Baja was a beautiful place and could easily be explored for months but we felt as though we had seen what we were meant to see and had a wonderful time all together there. It was a great introduction to Mexico as a whole and we are looking forward to Mainland and our future travels….back in 1 week, love JnK

(pic:Bahia Concepcion)