On our own

As Louise has already posted, we are back at Playa Tecolote (map).  The sewer gas had dissipated completely by the time we returned from our bus tour, and we spent the rest of the day at Casa Blanca, including the hamburger cookout which was quite good.  We turned in around 9:30 with no problems, but, at 10:45, just as it had the previous night, the stink returned with a vengeance.

Now, sometime during the day, we had been reassured that the previous night's problem was due to some crisis at the property next door, which had been fixed.  But last night's experience convinced us otherwise -- the smell was prevalent not only throughout the park, but also outside the walls, everywhere we walked.  We still don't know the cause, but we now suspect some routine process, perhaps at the sewage treatment plant, that is started nightly around 10:30.  In any case, it woke Louise up just after 11, and was making her ill, so, as much as we hated to fire up the big diesel in a campground at midnight, that's exactly what we did.

It was pretty much midnight straight up when we pulled out of the gate, and it took us almost exactly one hour to come the 20 miles to Playa Tecolote.  The first half of the trip was through town and along the malecón, which was actually quite beautiful at night.  We passed half a dozen night clubs that were hopping, even on a Wednesday night.  As we left town, the road got quiet and dark, and we made our way slowly, having been warned many times about the hazards of driving in Mexico at night.  We had traversed much of the route previously, it was nearly a full moon, and we have our enormous HID flood lights to help us along, so we had no worries.  The beach was quiet and peaceful when we arrived, with only the sounds of the surf to lull us to sleep.

Yesterday at dinner, we had arranged an optional boat and snorkel tour this morning out to Isla Espiritu Santo, which happens to leave from right here at Playa Tecolote.  So at 9am we were joined by a dozen other members of the group.  Unfortunately, the surf today is quite wild and woolly, and the decision was made to cancel the tour.  We all had breakfast together, though, at El Tecolote restaurant here, and we had a chat with the wagonmaster about making our way to the next stop apart from the caravan.

We'll be spending tonight right here, after an early dinner at the Palapa Azul restaurant, just a couple dozen yards from us.  The caravan will be leaving from the Casa Blanca RV park first thing tomorrow morning, probably around 7:45ish.  As the route out of town for us goes right back past Casa Blanca, and we are a full hour from there, we have opted to proceed to the next stop on our own, rather than leave here at sunup to try to catch them as they leave the park, which would be logistically tricky anyway.  Besides which, tomorrow's drive is a long 200 miles, across to the Pacific side, north a ways, then right back to the gulf side, and the caravan will likely drive it straight through.  We'd like to stop at one or two of the little towns en route, whereas the caravan generally makes its comfort stops at Pemex stations, so those who need to can fuel up.

We may or may not make it all the way to tomorrow night's stop, at the El Tripui trailer park in Puerto Escondido.  We've been told the park is no great shakes, and the stop is really designed to keep the day down to 200 miles, while still providing a "full service" park in anticipation of three days of boondocking just a little ways up the road, at Bahia Concepcion.  We dumped and filled yesterday, so we will not need the services, and we may elect to make a boondocking stop again tomorrow night, either before or after El Tripui.  We'll make the decision as we get into the afternoon hours, which will feel familiar, as it is the way we have always traveled (when not in a caravan).

We told the wagonmaster to send a search party if he doesn't see us in Bahia Concepcion in two days.

As I am typing this, the ferry California Star, now an old friend, is sailing past us on her way from La Paz to Topolobampo.  And the surf is still wild and woolly now at nearly 4pm.  We did venture in for a swim, which was fun right up until we encountered the buoy ropes marking the swim area, which were under so much tension in the surf as to cause us welts.  Still, the water here is very inviting, and I'm glad we went in.

In other news, we are making plans to try to connect with George and Tioga, who are making their way down the Baja.  Apparently, many people have also noticed that our location as shown on the DataStorm users map puts us further south than anyone else on the Baja.  Some were surprised to see us get any signal at all in Cabo.

While I am thinking about maps and routes, I will note that our new GPS has been keeping careful track of our full route through Mexico, including the train (though the ferry passage was not recorded, as we were below decks).  I can upload the route track to my computer in any of several formats that Garmin supports, but I don't yet know a good way to display the track on a reasonable map to post here on the blog.  If anyone has suggestions on how to do this, please contact me off line -- I'm sure many of our readers would love to see our track plotted on a map.