Tequila Surprise

“I think I’m seeing things,” I said to Layne who had already seen all the canyons she needed to see on a Mexican road trip and was trying to nap quietly in the passenger seat letting the magnificent scenery slide by.“I just saw a sign pointing to tequila down the road.  That can’t be right.” Layne sat up as I spoke. 

“Alcohol?” she said slowly. “On the highway?” She grunted in disbelief. 
I put my four way flashers on as you do in Mexico when taken by surprise on the highway and we lurched into a scenic overlook called Mirador Tequila on Highway 15D.  There were a lot of references to alcohol around here. This needed investigation, especially as miradors are as rare as hens teeth in this spectacular country. 
I should point out we curl up with embarrassment when people naturally ask us, the travelers, what our plans are. Usually that cheerful friendly query is greeted by a long silence, a sucking intake of breath and evasive glances. 
“Not really sure…” one of us will mutter sounding like drug dealers trying to account for their time. 
It’s not that we don’t want to share our plans; it’s that our plans are made in liquid goo. If they were set in jello they’d be more coherent than our usual style of go and hope. Or go, change our minds and immediately go somewhere different on the spur of the moment. Luckily we live in a van and deciding to sleep in a town previously unknown to us is pretty much our back up plan and not terribly inconvenient. I’d never heard of Cuauhtémoc nor did I know there was a Valero gas station or that they wouldn’t mind at all if we slept there.
 It would never have occurred to me I might end up actually sleeping there but sure as eggs is eggs that’s what we did the other night.  I blame Google maps for distracting me with possibilities and inducing me to make yet another unplanned stop. The town was  very nice if a little noisy. Quite a lot noisy actually but we slept a little bit. 
So when I got out at the mirador Rusty took off chasing smells and I went to read the informational billboards talking about alcohol. Tequila it turns out was the subject of the roadside information. Quite the obsession, tequila. Layne turned to me and said we should investigate tequila. Who was I to say no? Another unplanned  deviation. 
You may be astonished to learn, as was I that tequila is an actual  functioning town named for the drink they are very busy producing. 

The streets were a cobblestoned squeeze  for our portly Promaster van and the Guardia Nacional truck patrols were not hugely enthusiastic about the need to fold all our mirrors so their bristly machine guns might just barely squeeze past my mobile porta potty and fridge without mutually assured destruction. I hadn’t even had a drink and I was threatening to collide with the police.Layne told me to drive to the Sauza factory which houses (tequila) a restaurant of world class quality and which she had set her heart on. 

It was a glorious lunch. We should have been rolling into the campground in Tepic at that hour but that plan could wait. I had stuffed peppers and a cold timbal of shrimp in a black sauce and a goat cheese quenelle to demolish before the universe took this magnificent opportunity away from me, as fate is inclined to do occasionally. 












Confession time: not all our deviations and planning failures are quite so gloriously successful but every now and again something manages to go spectacularly right. (Tequila). It’s not every day you stumble backwards into a World Heritage Site but we did! 
Somewhere deep in the bowels of GANNET2 there hides a fairly expensive bottle of Tequila lying in wait ready to leap out at me when we have a sudden change of plan and something unexpected needs celebration. 
It turns out tequila is a superb way to go off the rails and you don’t even need to drink the stuff. Imagine that, I was driving and tequila never became anything more than a word, a promise, an opportunity to muck up one more plan by hint alone. Had I actually drunk tequila I hardly dare wonder what might have got unplanned.
As it was we arrived at Tepic, later than planned of course (Tequila). We are still on time to catch the ferry to Baja which is our next plan. Probably. 

Highway 200 North

We left the family and the plush rented beach house and for the first time retraced our steps up the coast north from Zihuatanejo. We’ve circled around this area for a while but now we were ready to think about spending some time in Baja. To get there we have to drive to the ferry terminal on the mainland coast near Los Mochis. We started our driving north. 

Our first stop was at a campground which was on our radar but was closed when we drove down three months ago, in early February. At that time the American owner and his Mexican wife were sick with Covid and Rancho B ( Bugambilea) was closed.  On this return trip up the coast orchard open and it was our target for the day. 

We ate breakfast en masse, we showered and packed the van. It was not an early departure but by ten o’clock we were rumbling down the dirt road once again by ourselves, all the noise and chatter of three generations silenced by sudden distance. 

Highway 200, the coast road, took us over a river and in the middle of the bridge we said goodbye to Guerrero State and were welcomed in to Michoacán once again. We passed through the traffic of the industrial port city of Lazaro Cardenas until, in one suburb Layne shouted “Stop!” and I pulled up in front of an Agua Purificada store. 

We had about five gallons left in our thirty gallon tank so we paid for five jugs at 70 cents each. I used my new siphoning house as suggested by Bruce months ago and supplied to me by my nephew in his vacation luggage! 

It worked! 

And the only water I spilled was on myself on a 90 degree day. The van stayed dry: 

The road was not busy once we got into the country but I was ready to arrive. We stopped once to drop off some food for two dogs by the side of the road who presumably lived in a house in the forest. For the rest we wound slowly up the mph rains and across the valleys occasionally in sight of the sea. 

We listened to a Ruth Rendell mystery on Layne’s Libby app download and the miles passed by at an average of maybe thirty every hour. There were topes and a few potholes and lots of rough patches along with the turns and the inclines all accompanied by hardly any people  by the side of the road in this area of under developed Indian reservation. Local gas stations:

Layne reminded me to stop at the Pemex at the beginning of this long empty stretch of coast and we filled up but after that all we saw were a few home made signs offering fuel mostly to locals on their motorbikes. We carry a special marine fuel filter funnel (a Baja Filter was the brand name) which we used when sailing to clean water and debris from diesel. So far we haven’t had to use it this trip. Which is good. 

We made a couple of stops to stretch our legs but mostly we drove. 

I noticed on one stop our skid plate has a few scratches. That sheet metal under the engine and transmission designed for a Promaster and able to protect our second alternator as well, has been worth its weight in gold for the peace of mind it delivers.  

Not forgetting the brilliant winch of course. Both options installed by FreedomVanGo, of Jacksonville, Florida. 

There weren’t many trucks but those there were could be very slow and smoky. I made a couple of passes in the winding road, to Layne’s delight. 

Finally around 5:30 we reached the dirt road turn off marked by Google Maps’ blue line. The mapping app is really excellent, not perfect but even off line it shows us the way with 99 percent accuracy. Sometimes it confuses dirt with pavement but not often. 

Google promised four tenths of a mile of dirt because we haven’t switched the van to metric measures. We still think in miles and gallons. And then the locked gate appeared. 

Sandy the owner appeared on his fort bike after we honked and he told us to park in spot five where we had privacy, power and a sewage drain. 

Layne set to making dinner while I got the Christ’s out and put up the moonshade awning. It didn’t get dark till 8:30 as we are on the edge of mountain time here on the Pacific. 

There is a middle aged Mexican couple living here long term in their home built Ford Trandit with their dog Napoleon who is a little too aggressive for Rusty. 

Sandy’s home where he’s building an apartment for rent. All in the middle of his own ten acres. 

The coconut grove belongs to a buddy of his and there are no neighbors so the beach is totally deserted. Too bad the surf is so big it’s not a swimming area. 

This is a nice spot with a strong phone signal and hot showers 
… which Layne loves…

…and friendly dogs who put up with Rusty’s neuroses. 

Sandy is from San Diego and has sailed and surfed this coast for forty years before putting down roots here. 

He’s a happy man and I can see why. This isn’t a bad place at all!