After surviving entering the marina with the dredger blocking the way, we settled into chores for two days. We ate several delicious dinners at Palermo, a pretty high-end restaurant on the malecon, and walked a lot. Leif then decided that we needed to get out, so we rented a car and took a drive... This seemed like a great idea, relaxing, sight seeing and getting out of town. As well as a chance to get some shopping done at Home Depot and other exciting stores.
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| Marina Ribera near Los Frailes. Not much happening as far as construction today, hope it makes it. |
Off we went, on a trip towards Los Frailes, and a new marina that Leif wanted to check out. We sped along the smooth highway towards the low lying hills between La Paz and the cape. Lots of cactus, trees that looked dead, (but probably aren't) and desert, and not much else for miles and miles. He promised me a lovely lunch somewhere along the way. We arrived in Los Barriles, the home of the new marina and drove around for about an hour looking for jetties. The Marina Ribera was down the road another half hour we discovered, after finally stopping to ask where it might be. When we arrived at the "marina" it looks like it will be quite fancy, with homes lining the canals, and lovely new docks. At this time, it's basically two docks with fishing boats, surrounded by dirt and digging equipment. We had heard that some sailboats had anchored there, but probably only shallow draft vessels.
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| Marina Ribera and our little Nissan March, note the tiny tires, and low ground clearance. Perfect for the Mexican 1000! |
And... no restaurants in sight. It now is 1:30 p.m. and a cold beer would be really good. So off we go to Punta Arena and Cabo Pulmo. It sounded like a lot of fun and cute little towns? A half mile out of La Ribera the lovely road disappeared and a well traveled dirt road started.
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| "Scenic" isn't exactly what I'd refer this to be. Desolate maybe? |
We had hopes that it wouldn't last too long as we wanted to drive all the way to San Jose del Cabo. Wrong. We didn't tell the guy at the car rental what we had in mind, so our Nissan March was in for a beating. Thank heavens for full insurance coverage. We drove on, and on and on. The views were beautiful I have to say, but the washboard road kept us on our toes to keep from becoming high centered and leaving us dangling. Only twice. And, no cute restaurants. I forgot to mention that the Mexican 1000 road race was in town, and our dirt road had signs posted that the road would be closed tomorrow, May 14th as the race would be traveling its path. Yup, we did the Mexican 1000 road. I kept looking at my GPS which constantly told us that we were less than half way. UGH.
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| One of the highlights of our drive. I hope these guys manage to stay off the road tomorrow! |
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| Ok, this is NOT Yellowstone park, and I did roll my window down on purpose. She was looking for handouts, but only got rubs on her cute face. Sorry, no carrots. |
Finally, some cute burros or donkeys appeared to get me laughing, as at this point I was not happy. And, I'm a pretty patient, forgiving person I think??? I guess not.
The homes became more and more like compounds, with many buildings and lovely gardens as we finally got closer to San Jose del Cabo. It looked like we were going to make it as we finally jumped for joy at arriving on a paved road. Well, that lasted only until we saw the huge holes which had been created by sand eroding out from underneath the sides of it and marked with sand filled soda bottles by some saving angel! Truly, they extended into the middle of the road at some points, so you had to be on your toes. After surviving that, we pulled into a restaurant in SJ del Cabo at around 5:45 p.m. and plopped down exhausted from our "lovely drive through the Mexican countryside".
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| This was one of the smaller holes, but still caused alarm as we slowed down to pass. Note the markers next to it. |
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| This is just before San Jose del Cabo, one of the nicer views showing the large surf. |
We had a very nice meal at Milagro restaurant, and decided that we'd drive on, after all it was only 7:00 p.m. or so. If it got dark we would stop and stay for the night. Not. Entering Cabo san Lucas we saw a Holiday Inn Express that looked good, so we pulled in and asked if they had rooms available. The concrete truck in the entry way should have been a clue, as they were still under construction, not open yet. So, off we went, maybe stopping in Todos Santos at the Hotel California? No, we ended up driving all the way back to La Paz, getting home around 9:30 p.m. Leif looked at me as we entered the boat and asked " you're going to bed already?" I just laughed and climbed in and nodded off immediately.
The next day we hopped into the little bomber and drove around Bahia La Paz. We drove until we hit a turnoff for San Juanico, at which point the road became dirt. This was about two hours into the drive, so we stopped and turned around. It travels along the high cliffs and the scenery was more dramatic than yesterdays drive. There were fishing boats surrounding a large ship, possibly shrimpers around a mother ship near the end of the bay. We saw more horses and cattle along the road, unrestricted by fences, just hanging out eating the trees or small patches of grass.
This time Leif did take me to a nice dinner, after turning in the car. We laughed about the previous day, and walked the malecon back to the boat. All in all, it was a memorable excursion with the car.
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