Road trip: Day 7

We woke this morning to an amazing sunrise!

Brett was happy as I finally broke out the shorts. It's been driving him crazy that I was still wearing jeans everyday but it wasn't quite warm enough yet.  I think we're far enough south now that shorts will be the attire of choice for the next few weeks.

Right after breakfast we took a walk on the beach.  We were hoping to see some whales after hearing them all night long but there were none to be found.  Brett did some meditation on the beach while I went in search of more sea life.  It was unbelievable how many sea snails were on the rocks and I enjoyed watching them move about.  I could have sat there for hours watching the little snails and little shells move. I rarely think of all the shells on the beach as once being alive so it was neat to see them roaming, albeit slowly.  I also have a bad habit of collecting every cool shell, piece of sea glass, or coral that I find and Brett has to weed out what I'm allowed to take back:-)

Driving back out to the main road we noticed all the cacti were in bloom.

The scenery wasn't too exciting on this leg of the trip.  Since we had a side trip yesterday to the Sea of Cortez, we figured today we would take another side trip, this time to the Pacific Ocean side.  I had read good things about Bahia de Asuncion so figured we would give it a try.

We stopped in Guerrero Negro at a roadside taqueria for lunch of tacos and mulitas.  Lunch was 120 pesos ($9.60 US).

Roadsigns indicating the location of the next phone are good reminders that you're in the middle of nowhere.

I had thought Bahia de Asuncion was 35 miles off the main road, but later realized I had miscalculated and it was more like 110 miles and about 70 of those would be on a dirt road.  Oops!  We figured what the heck, we were here, let's go for it.  The good news is that our guidebook was old and outdated and it's now only 73 miles and it's all paved.  Hallelujah!  The bad news is we weren't impressed with the town and it was windy, so after only about 1/2 hour, we turned back the way we came and drove the 73 miles back to the main road.


We passed salt flats on the side road.

Again, the road was very desolate and when there was an occasional car, you would use your left blinker to signal that it's ok to pass.  Remember what I said yesterday about praying they weren't actually going to make a left turn?  Well, we had a Bimbo bread truck in front of us and they put on their left turn signal.  I mentioned to Brett that it seemed odd since we weren't right on their tail that they would put on their signal so early.  Brett took advantage of the opportunity and sped up and passed them.  As soon as he did, I looked in the rear view mirror and saw that they had made a left turn.  They weren't signaling for us to pass!  Ok, we're even.  I chose a place 73 miles of the way that wasn't good so we had 146 mile detour and he could have gotten us killed.:-) Good thing tomorrow is a new day!

It was also a good thing that there were few cars as there were several places where the sand had drifted and had covered one of the two lanes.

We had two military checkpoints today.  At both, we were simply asked where we were coming from and where we were going and if we were on vacation and then were on our way.  We also went through the agricultural checkpoint when crossing into the state of Baja California Sur.  They asked if we were carrying any fruit which we advised we had some citrus and they were fine with that.  We paid the 20 pesos and they sprayed the car undercarriage with what we presume was insecticide.

Made it to the state of Baja California Sur!

The sunset as we drove into San Ignacio.  You can't tell us there's no God!

We ended up stopping for the night in San Ignacio and are looking forward to checking out the town tomorrow. There's a mission here from the 17th century that we're especially looking forward to seeing.   We're camped in a grove of palms about 20 feet from the Rio San Ignacio.  Surprisingly, and happily, mosquitos are not a problem.  Campsite was 120 pesos ($9.60 US).

The sounds of the night include the gentleman next door playing his guitar and singing, the occasional car and the music of the frogs.