Travels With Crazo

Tijuana, Ensenada, And Points South! (part I)

Baja 1990

Authors Note: This is my version of the journey, it is not intended to be 100% complete or acurate. Some names and situations have been changed to protect the innocent.

"Wasting away in Margarittaville" - Jimmy Buffett

Map of Baja

Prologue

Shortly before Presidents Day weekend in 1990, I learned of a special airfare to San Diego; $49.00 round trip. Having been to Mexico twice before, and knowing San Diego's close proximity to Baja, I got excited. I immediately told my roommate Ken, and called my high school buddy Russ, both of whom are avid Scuba Divers. I soon arranged for the three of us to dive the Punta Banda region, just south of Ensenada. We were to do the whole trip without a sophisticated plan; Fly to San Diego, then rent a Jeep and drive to Ensenada to dive.
After diving El Zeppelin and the underwater arch in Punta Banda, we decided that it was just too cold to party in Ensenada, so we took our rented car over the mountains to San Felipe and the warm Mar de Cortez. What a marvelous drive! We had never felt so free in our lives, buzzing across the Mexican desert on a dirt road, in a rented car at 100 miles an hour. This was where the bug first bit us. Russ and I vowed to return for Christmas break, and drive the length of the Baja peninsula to Cabo San Lucas in his motor home.

Roster

After our much too short diving trip was over, I soon started planning our Christmas trip. I invited everyone I knew to attend, hoping to have 8 or more participants. Traveling in groups as large as this could potentially be a nightmare, but from a financial standpoint, it made sense, besides who knew how many people would cancel out? To promote the adventure, I created a flyer, giving an itinerary of all the great times ahead of us.
At this time I was living in Milpitas, and frequenting the San Jose State Pub on Thursday nights.
I knew quite a few members of the San Jose State Ski Club who also frequented the Pub on Thursday nights. I must have passed out two dozen flyers to various friends and acquaintances at the Pub, one of whom was Chuck.
Chuck and I had always been more acquaintance than friends until he read my flyer. The next Thursday Chuck came in with a big grin on his face, bought me a pitcher of Carlsberg beer, and said that he had already asked for the days off for the trip; nine months in advance! Over the next nine months, Chuck and I became good friends. Out of all the people that I knew from the San Jose State Pub, only Chuck committed to the trip.
The Pub was not the only place that I gave the flyers out; I called everyone on my extensive party-with list, and made a road trip up to my Alma Mader, California State University, Chico, to deliver them to friends still in school.
I know some pretty hard core party people; people who down a twelve-pack of beer AND a flask of Jack Daniels Old Number 7 Whiskey (each) in one sitting and still are able to function. I figured that some of these wild and crazy types or maybe my college friends would go -- Chico does have a reputation for being the kind of place that adventurous, outgoing type people go to school (it won Playboy's coveted "Number One Top Party School In The Nation" award my senior year).
I received many "I'd love to go's" but in the end the only firm commitments were from Chuck and another high school buddy of mine and Russ's; Craig.
Craig is a close and dear friend of mine, and makes a good traveling companion because he is willing to do and try just about anything and go anywhere on the shortest notice.
I had made several trips before with Craig, to Venezuela and Canada where Craig proved to be a good traveling companion; we could each do our own thing without upsetting the other. There are times though, when traveling with Craig can get annoying. We have never managed to cross a border together without being searched. A few years ago, when Craig and I first entered Canada, Craig, not realizing that the Canadian immigration forms were bilingual, filled out the French side of the form. This in itself would not have been bad had Craig not also waited in the French speaker's line at the Toronto airport. The immigration officer, assumed that Craig was French speaking, and proceeded to speak to Craig in French. Craig, not understanding a word of French, started to wave his hands in the air, saying "No Par Le Vous" very loudly. This caused a reaction in the immigration officer that caused both of us to have our bags searched rather thoroughly.
Besides this, Craig did not know how to Scuba Dive. At the time, I was studying to be a NAUI scuba instructor. I spent several weekends in the pool and in Monterey Bay teaching Craig the rudiments of diving. Craig did not become a good diver, but would be OK with supervision.
About a week before our trip, Chuck had to cancel. After months of preparation, our trip appeared to be in jeopardy. Not only did we need at least four people to go to make the journey cost-effective, we were relying on Chuck for clean water during the trip. Chuck works for a manufacturer of water purification systems, and had promised to outfit the motor home with a state of the art water purification system so that we could use Mexican water.
Both Russ and myself scoured all of our friends and acquaintance in hopes of finding someone who could go at such short notice. We figured that we could take enough bottled water to maintain ourselves, even if it would take up heaps of room in the motor home. It turned out that one of my coworkers, Abe, was interested in making the trip.
Because the trip was over Christmas, and it was very short notice, Abe was worried that he would not be able to get the time off. Abe's manager at work was not very enthusiastic about letting Abe have the time off. Initially she told him that too many other people had already taken that time off. After a week of negotiating, Abe's manager made the mistake of telling him that she did not want him to go because there were many other people who wanted to see their families over Christmas, and since Christmas did not mean anything to Abe (Abe is Jewish) that she wanted to let someone else have the time off instead. She quickly realized that this was not a proper reason to deny him vacation, and relented to let him go. We still hadn't completely given up on Chuck, but even without him, we still had our foursome!

Inventory

Being one of the most remote, underdeveloped regions of North America, Baja is an excellent place to enjoy the great outdoors. Miles upon miles of deserted sandy beaches, waves that make those of Australia or Hawaii look like bad surfing, chrystal clear tropical waters full of brilliantly coloured fish, rugged mountains thrusting out of the bone dry desert. To take full advantage of all of this, we brought with us a plethora of toys. Fat tyred 18 speed mountain bikes to explore the desert, an inflatable boat with an outboard motor powerful enough to water ski behind to zip us over the water to the reefs, scuba and snorkeling gear, spear guns, a three wheeled all-terrain motorcycle, boogie boards to ride the surf, a TV, VCR, compact disc player, tape deck, radio, heaps of CD's, tapes and videos.
Two of the key words in any description of Baja are remote and underdeveloped, and believe me, it is a lot of both. To prepare ourselves for any eventuality, we brought four gerry cans of extra gas (plus more gas for the boat and three wheeler), four carboys of water (plus the water in the holding tank on the motor home), a water purification system (thanks to Chuck), tools, an extra jack, a CB radio, heaps of food, AAA maps of Baja, Mexico, and Central America (Just in case we got carried away) and even a brand new burglar alarm system. About the only things we didn't bring (to our dismay) were extra spare tires.

21 December: Getting started and breaking down

I was working the 6-3 shift, so I told Russ to pick me up at 3:00 at work. Abe didn't get off work until 4:00, so Russ and I busied ourselves drinking beer while we waited for Abe.
Once Abe finally got off, we headed back north to San Jose where Chuck was waiting for us with the water purification system. Chuck was busy with a customer, so we ended up sitting around for another hour (and a few more beers) before getting it installed. I wasn't much worried about time, because we didn't wish to drive in Mexico in the dark and by my figures we should reach the border a couple of hours before dawn, leaving us with some time to kill.
Installing the water purification dealy-bob was real easy, so after trying one last time to talk Chuck into going (Russ even threatened to kidnap him) we were off to pick up Craig. We were meeting Craig in Milpitas at Ken's house. Craig was wondering if we had left without him because our original plans were to meet at 4:00 and it was now 7:00. Craig's fears were feeding on themselves because he was late getting to Ken's house as well, so it was natural to think that we assumed he chickened out. The look of relief on Craig's face when he saw us finally pull up was golden.
We got Craig's stuff on board in no time, and after only a few minutes of trying to convince Ken to come we were finally on our way. We didn't get more than four blocks from Ken's house when we ran into our first problem; we were already out of beer. At this point, since I was driving and wished to end this horrible crisis, I pulled into Union 76 and parked. Abe ran across the street to pick up new case of beer from Safeway.
When Abe got back, we had another problem, the Motor home had stalled and would not start! After another beer, and some thought, we checked all of the fluid levels and tried to start it again. It fired right up. Before it had the chance of stalling out again, I gunned it and got onto the freeway. We headed down Interstate 880 to US 101. We were going to cross over to I5 ASAP, but wanted to get moving. Our first real stop was a "town" called Firebaugh right near where we crossed over to I5 from 101.
The motor home was not running very well. We were having minor electrical difficulty. The headlights were so dim that we could barely see, and the CD player would not play. we had made it the last 10 miles or so because Russ had turned on the generator, and held his finger on the electrical crossover so that we had enough juice to run the lights. We also needed gas, so we stopped at the Chevron station. We weren't going to let any little problem phaze us, we were on our way to Cabo and were riding a high.
We were in the middle of a cold snap and it was in the single digits temperature wise. Some guy at the gas station claimed to have driven all the way from Washington with snow on his roof, none of it melting! Boy, where we glad that we were headed to the tropics. Russ bought a new battery, and another case of beer, and that seemed to solve the electrical problems, so it was time to head out.

Sunrise over Bahia Los Santos from Mex 1

22 December: Heading south for days

Being that I had driven all the way from Milpitas, we deemed that it was someone else's turn to drive. Both Russ and Abe were pretty well sloshed, and since Craig had only three or four beers, they "nominated" him to be the next driver. Russ and Abe finally passed out after about another half hour or so, I was left to help keep Craig awake and see how deeply I could dent the supply of beer. With Abe and Russ snoring in back, Craig drove on through to summit of the grapevine where Russ wanted to take over due to the snow.
Craig and I decided that it was finally time to get some sleep. Slightly hung over Russ was now driving, with slightly incoherent Abe keeping him awake. Somewhere near Magic Mountain, the trailer door blew open. Craig completely slept through it, I ignored it, Abe talked about it, and Russ fixed it. Craig and I slept clear on until morning when we stopped at Denny's in San Diego. It was just false dawn, so we were pretty much where we wanted to be schedule wise.
After breakfast, amidst jokes about Taco Bell, we made our run for the border. As we get back on the freeway, the sign says: "I5 to Mex 1 Tijuana Ensenada and Points South". We stopped just north of the immigration check to get insurance for the motor home at a place called Tarjeta Mex. The guy at Tarjeta Mex took a look at our paperwork, and asked Russ what his trailer was worth.
"About ten dollars"
"Ten dollars?"
"Yes, ten dollars"
That trailer was the most pitifully looking thing you had ever seen, and Russ did not care to pay any extra money to insure it. As it was, it cost us about $145.00 to insure the motor home for ten days.
We drove through the checkpoint and into Mexico. We stopped right after passing the checkpoint. The AAA book said that if we were going to be south of Ensenada, we would need tourist cards. We planned to obtain them here. Abe and Russ decided to remain with the motor home while Craig and I got our tourist cards. On our way to American customs, Craig says, "Well Mike, we did it, we crossed a border without getting searched. I never expected these stupid Mexicans to search us, they're way to lazy"
I almost shit. "CRAIG! watch your mouth, we are surrounded by MILLIONS of the very people you are insulting!"
" Oh don't worry about it" he says with confidence, "No Hah * Bla in * glace" Craig has a good vocabulary of Spanish, but cannot pronounce any of it.
"No Craig, I bet that everyone around you can speak almost as much English as you do."
"Whoops, Sorry Mike"
"Urrgh"
We walked back through American customs into the USA, and then back through Mexican customs where we could get our tourist cards. The line at Mexican Immigration was long. Normally, one does not need to wait in line to enter Mexico, but we needed paperwork. Paperwork is excruciatingly slow in Mexico. In front of Craig and I were about twenty or so Mexican nationals with their children and livestock. Once we finally got to the head of line, my tourist card got processed quickly and my passport even got stamped. After I'm through, I turn around to hear Craig
"Ho * La, Ness * seeto Unah Tar * Jeta de TOUR * ISTA"
The immigration man smiles a big wide grin and launches a barrage of light speed Spanish at Craig.
I groan, now we will be here for days. The passport checker whom spoke perfect English to me but a moment ago, now refuses to speak anything other than rapid fire Spanish at Craig. An hour later, as Craig re-packs his now thoroughly searched bags, Craig finally gets his tourist card.
Meanwhile, back at the motor home, Russ had applied the tourista stickers supplied by Tarjeta Mex, and some "Coors Lite Safari" stickers to the motor home and trailer. Russ and Abe were itching to go, and did not want to wait in the horrendous line for tourist cards. I figured that we could pick them up at the customs office in Ensenada, but as it was a Saturday, we should hurry.
There are two main ways to get from Tijuana to Ensenada; Mex 1, a brand new beautiful toll road that starts near Border Field Beach where the Bullfight ring is, or "El Libre Uno" which is the old Mexican Federal Highway 1 and full of potholes, mud, and mule shit. It turns out that we picked the day to go to Ensenada when Mexico performs it's once a century road maintenance on Mex 1; it was closed. We had to take El Libre Uno to Rosarito Beach where Mex 1 was again open.
The toll was running 5000 MN every ten Kilometers (about $1.75 every five miles). We made it to Ensenada by 9:00am, and it was shaping up to be a very nice day.
In Ensenada, we stopped at Immigration once again to get Russ and Abe their tourist cards. While they were doing this, I shaved and changed my clothes and Craig went and picked up two cases of Pacifico beer. I felt like a new man after my first beer of a new day, and a shave.
Abe did not bring a passport or birth certificate so he was unable to get a tourist card. We decided that he really didn't need one unless we had trouble with the law, so we ignored the fact that he was supposed have one and proceeded south.
Our original plans were to Dive Punta Banda, then camp the night. We headed to the only dive store in town, El Yaqui. It was closed! Since we couldn't fill our scuba tanks, we decided to keep on heading south. I took the wheel. Roads south of Ensenada could barely be considered roads, they were the size of bicycle lanes and in desperate need of repair. I drove off the shoulder more than once, almost upset a mule cart full of oranges and tomatoes the first time. For the next two weeks, the person in the passenger seat took on the responsibility of yelling "WATCH YOUR RIGHT!" every time the driver came close to the edge.
We drove on in this manner for several more hours until we reached San Quintin. San Quintin is the last gas station on Mex 1 for 350 miles (until Bahia Los Angeles Junction), and as we were down to about a half tank, we decided to pull up to the PEMEX and fill. The whole town is a mud pit full of entrepenuerial kids wanting to wash the car windows of every Gringo passing through. We paid some kids 500 pesos apeice to wash the windows, and fought off some old Krone that was begging. The water that they used to wash the windows actualy made them worse. I got out of the Motor Home to have a look about. I stooped down in the mud to talk to one of the urchins who washed our windows.
"Hola muchacho, ¿Como se llama?"
"Me llamo Pedro"
"Ah, Pedro, ¿hablas ingles?"
Pedro holds out his little hand with thumb and forfinger held close together, "Poquito"
"¿Cuantos años tiene?"
"¡Tengo siete y quiero mas!"
"¿Que le gusta?"
"Me gusto MUCHO dinero"
"Pedro, trabaja defecil"
I thought I was doing quite well talking away in Spanish. "¿Este cuidad es San Quintin?"
"San Kin teen"
"¿Cuantos personas vive aquì?"
"No Sè"
I now entered the bathroom of this Pemex, and like lightning left it again. What a putrid situation. Almost every bathroom that I had been in in Mexico to date had been well maintained, this one was FOUL. I wandered around the mud gas station lot in my thongs for a while, and talked to a few americans whom had just spent about a week in place just south of here that they called Surfers Paradise.
After filling up, we headed south. In the town of Lazaro Cardenas, trafic slowed up because there were numerous people in the street. Apparently the Police were gathering donations for the red cross. As we get on, it was gettin to be late in the day. We were trying to decide if we should camp it near the beach, or push on to Cataviña where the AAA guide (our bible for the trip) said there were showers.