I was slightly apprehensive as we packed GANNET2 for the road. We put away loose dishes and cleared the counter, swiveled the front seats so they faced forward. They both have to be locked in the driving position for the ignition to engage the starter. I had wondered if we could drive the freeways with Layne facing backwards sitting at her table but that is not allowed apparently. With the window covers put away all we had to do was fold our office chairs and bungee them in the back inside the rear doors and we were ready. Frans our neighbor in a tent was nowhere to be seen. Don Taco’s owner also Dutch and confusingly also called Frans, told us the elder Dutchman had gone off up the beach. We left our card with our e-mail address for him at his tent.
He’s 83 and retired from teaching 30 years ago spending his cold Dutch winters in the tropics sleeping in a tent and traveling by bus. He fell in love with GANNET2 and said he thinks it may be time for him to get a van. I can only imagine it would limit him in his travels. Another traveler we met briefly, from Mexico City he took 40 days to tour southern Mexico on his Honda 125. Meet Sergio who lives near Mexico City and toured Southern Mexico, half eager to get back to his kids and half having the time of his life on the road.
Of course I had lots to talk to him about small motorcycle touring. We compared notes and then he was gone. I really liked the simplicity of his bike though at this stage in my life traveling alone would be hard. Frans the campground owner was on hand to see him on his way:
We ate at a couple of beachfront restaurants during our stay in Bahia San Agustin, and the food was indifferent, weirdly lacking in flavor or style, totally the opposite of what Mexican food is supposed to be. We put Rusty on his security leash and marched into town on either side of our timid little boy. I bribed the local dogs with a bag of food strategically spread along the road and while they were busy we got into the village of Bahia San Agustin.
The fishermen were drunk and rowdy, in a more or less cheerful sort of way but Layne (and Rusty) were put off and we turned around.
A pick up soccer match underway on the main drag, as you do on a Saturday evening:
Sunday is the one day off in the week for most Mexicans, though even here not everyone has their Saturday evening to themselves. No one was hurt as the truck barreled through town between the groups of drinking fishermen, delivering bricks to some new waterfront project.
Looking back we enjoyed this stop for the water, both the stuff we swam in which was crystal clear and surf-free in the bay:
The other water we really enjoyed was in the toilets at Don Tacos Campground. Say what you like about how small and tight the place is, and how unconventionally dour Frans tends to be, his toilets are hands down the best of any campground in mainland Mexico. Take look and I'll explain the beauty to you:
I can only imagine how you are scratching your head and asking yourselves what's special about that? The picture above shows the shared open kitchen and there are showers behind the doors at each end of the toilet block. They have tons of hot water which is gorgeous. But the toilets, oh how I will miss them. Doors on hinges that lock. Seats bolted to the bowl. Toilet paper and get this: a spare roll behind the door in case you run out! Sure you still have to put paper in the basket but that's normal in Mexico. But the rest was pure heaven. We stopped using our porta potty these toilets were so nice. They were that good.
Anyway enough of this hopeless nostalgia. We had to get on the road Like I said at the top of the page. And I have to say I was a bit anxious about the dirt road back to the highway. We met some pick ups scrambling madly to get up the steepest bits and the memory of the awful washboard was enough to keep me awake at night. However, like Baldrick of Black Arrow fame I had a cunning plan.
I had bought a clever little bronze tool hoping it would work as advertised but that I had never previously tested. It came well reviewed. You screw it to the tire valve and then wind one of the parts backwards and that safely removes the valve core and holds on to it instead of shooting it hopelessly into the distant sand as it would if you took the core out with a screwdriver, the time honored method. Then you pull back on another part of the tool and let air out of the tire hopefully under control. It took a bit of practice. And the instruction manual.
Airing down is a much discussed but rarely deployed technique to give extra traction to your tires on rough roads or in sand and also to smooth out washboard and uncomfortable driving. The idea is to take air out of the tires thus flattening them and giving greater contact with the ground. Of course if you reduce tire pressure substantially you have to then put air back in when you once again want to drive highway speeds. That brings its own challenges as we shall see.
The reason more people don't actually air down their tires is because it takes time. Most drivers would rather "have a go" and hope for the best, but in this case I really wanted to test the theory because we had come down the road fully inflated and it was horrible. Also I figured the uphill bits would be easier if we had more traction with deflated tires. So I aired down. We normally ride on 65 pounds on the front and I took them down to 50. The rear tires run on 80 pounds per square inch and I took them down to 60. It made all the difference in the world and a 25% reduction in pressure is not nearly radical.
I locked the front wheel drive differential which is an electronic button that locks the front wheels like a differential lock on rear wheel drive vehicles and the Promaster scrambled up the steepest bits with no problems. I was quite pleased and Layne noticed the ride difference which made her very pleased. We will not hesitate to air down in future when we face rough dirt roads.
Odd sections of the road, mostly in front of homes, have been paved and slowed down with topes, the inevitable speed bumps. The odd thing is the steep sections haven't been paved so how people cope in the rainy season I couldn't say. Eight miles of hell I suppose.
This section was paved, though why I couldn't say. This next one wasn't and we met a full sized RV from Quebec plowing along. I reversed to let him by but he didn't acknowledge us with a smile or a wave so I am struggling not to paint French Canadians with a negative stereotype suddenly!
Of course the next thought to come to mind is if they can do it why shouldn't we with our modest van. Then you meet a tour bus!
These things drive everywhere. We actually met a second one on a narrow uphill turn on the dirt and I backed up for him as well. He was Mexican and waved and smiled as we passed each other.
The taxis and collectivo vans race up and down the road mocking our slow poke efforts to feel the least pain. But in the end even we got to the top of the hill and found construction in progress, on a new highway overpass.
We worked our way through the mess, turned right and made our way to the Pemex where we filled up with gas and I tried to use their hose to fill the tires. For whatever reason the attempt didn't work and I couldn't get air into the tires so we parked in front of the Oxxo convenience store and I went to work with our own DeWalt inflator.
The problem with airing back up, a job that should take about half an hour, is that the tires are warm and I had no confidence I would get the correct pressure for road travel.
Luckily we don't drive fast in Mexico but later when the tires were cooled after a longer stop and I found they were fine. so now I feel like I've cracked the airing down skill and I expect we will use it a lot on the dirt we encounter in our future. When we go to Baja next month we are planning to do some wild camping on beaches, especially now that US travelers are pouring home and I expect airing down will be useful for that.
And from there we left refueled with coke and chips and a rather unwholesome sandwich from the US style convenience store...Not all of Mexico is tacos and beans. We had set our sights on a hotel in the mountains a curious alpine village called San Jose del Pacifico in that you can supposedly see the Pacific Ocean from the mountain top 8300 feet up. I never saw it but that's just me, missing the target as usual.
