We flew back to LA for a couple birthdays and an anniversary celebration. Packed Alex’s car with an air conditioner, five solar panels, three batteries and 75ish Amazon deliveries plus the contents of one Costco run. Left at 10 PM and got to Mexicali about 1 AM, hoping to get lost in the crowd and just get waived through without any questions. There was not a single car at the checkpoint! Three border guards standing around chitchatting but they just waved us through -hallelujah!
About five minutes later we are following the phone directions through Mexicali and found ourselves in an…”interesting” part of town. A lady of the night standing in the middle of the street wearing next to nothing and, umm, openly scratching an itch…distracted Theresa, who was driving, and she proceeded to run a stop sign. You know, that one over there bent back behind the tree, yeah that one you can’t see. Local cops were sitting right there (staged?) and flipped on their lights. Bad cop #1 insisted that Tess pay him $150 cash on the spot. She refused and said she wanted a ticket. (I’m so proud of my wife!!!) He said we would have to go to the station for that and the station was over 30 minutes away. A bit of back-and-forth and he had her get out of the car to separate us. I got really irritated and called his partner over and finally identified myself. He was suitably impressed and asked me how many years on the job and a few other questions and indicated to his partner that they should show a little professional courtesy and let us go. However, the greedy SOB would have none of it even though his partner had gotten into their car and was ready to drive away. He finally told Theresa to start driving and he would direct us where to go from behind us, via PA, in order to get to the station. After a few blocks he stopped us a second time, again demanding payment on the spot. She said no so we continued on. A few minutes later he turned off and we kept going. FUN STUFF.
The rest of our 840 mile, 18 hour drive down Baja consisted of a two lane road that varied from “scary as hell” to “we’re gonna die for sure”. Few guard rails and probably 50 separate places where the road has washed away from the recent storms and there is just a single lane of gravel or hard sand. We saw four separate dead cows on the side of the road. We passed two big rig crashes that had just happened. Found out later that the first was a head on between the truck and an ambulance, killing both people in the ambulance.
There were five military checkpoints along the way, complete with fortified machine gun nests. Apparently they’re looking for guns going south and drugs going north. We also had one “agricultural” checkpoint roughly at the border between Baja North and Baja South. The guy let the two cars in front of us pass by (Mexican plates) but because we are gringos he demanded 40 pesos ($2) for a fumigation. We paid, he hit a switch and a few wisps of vapor started coming out of the concrete in front of us. We drove over it and that apparently keeps the world safe from any pests that might hitch a ride on the bottom of your tires! Found out later it is optional and only 20 pesos. Grrr.
On the way back, a couple days later, there had been an earthquake in the high passes causing a whole bunch of landslides that blocked one lane or another and finally the whole road for a few minutes. And just to top things off, we got sent to secondary inspection at the US border. Google had directed us into the SENTRI lane so that was our penalty. Maybe they could put up some signs?!? Then we got stopped at the second border patrol checkpoint a few miles into California. The handler ran his dog along the line of cars and the dog alerted to us! OMG, this is unbelievable!!! So, we were sent to another secondary inspection. I was removed from the car while they started searching only to figure out that a prescription medication Theresa has contains some kind of ingredient used in the training aids for the dogs. Fortunately that was the last checkpoint of the trip and we never did have to pay any taxes or bribes.
The drive overall is incredibly beautiful with dramatic scenery varying from vast plains of saguaro or ocotillo cactus to crumbling mountains, lava flows and magnificent vistas of the sea. Only a handful of towns and the gas stations are few and far between.
The mining pictures are from the town of Santa Rosalia which has been mined since the 1880s and the town is built directly around the mines. Very old west feel. The town of “Heroic Mulegé” is so named because they held off the Americans for two years during the Mexican American war.
