People Fishing

Meet Tonino and his grandson Yantzen. They came by our beach (“our beach”!) to say hello. Tonino owns the fishing camp palapa behind our van and he invited us to use them if we feel like it. Pretty decent. 

Toby is his dog who was glad of a cookie and two bowls of water after his run behind the motorcycle. Rusty inspected him and got suitably grumpy. Toby as a puppy was dumped by a military patrol camped here who left him behind when they moved on.  Tonino adopted him. 

Two other dogs showed up and we managed to get them some food despite Rusty’s irritation. They were sweet but shy and honestly not terribly hungry interestingly enough. 

Not a bad view, even though swimming is going to be awkward with swells and shallow water a long way out! Typical Pacific Ocean swells. 

Rusty and I went for a morning walk and I was intrigued to check out the approach road.  My eyes are glued to the surface when I drive these dirt tracks obviously but walking with camera I wanted to look around and see what I had missed. 

A slick use for trash bottles added to the tidy cared-for appearance of the first house we passed. No sign of life but Rusty wasn’t buying; he went no further worried no doubt about local dog ambushes. My tough scrapper. 

I met a guy sitting astride his motorcycle rather glumly so I said good morning (“Buenas!”) and he explained he was waiting for his buddy who dropped something while they were up the beach but didn’t seem to be coming back. His slump was explained by the fact they caught nothing. I forgot to make a picture till he was putt - putting off down the sandy lane back to his home in Dimas…

We decided it was time to air out the bedding and clean the sleeping compartment, known as a bedroom

to some of you wastrels with separate rooms in your mansions. 

Plus I got out my grabber tool from

my days in the hospital when I couldn’t pull up the blanket without help, never mind reach my distant cellphone while lying on my back. I wandered around the van picking up dorito packets and soda bottles, discarded masks and mysterious wads of paper towels. I had local support (basura means trash) as the sign said don’t dump or burn trash on my private property: 

It was a spot worth cleaning up for half an hour. For those of us from Up North watching Tonino unwrap a candy for his grandson and toss the wrapper on the ground is an act of vandalism. Around here it’s the cost of freedom. So I clean for my pleasure. In the US if you find trash and clean it up, the odds are even it will stay that way.  Here? Five minutes after we are gone it will revert. It’s a fact of Mexican life. 

Tonino came back and did a beach patrol on his feisty horse, clearly a local bigwig. He offered us the use of his fish camp shelters and grill fireplace behind our van. A decent sort I would say! 

We aired everything out, sorted our winter clothes and buried them in compartments under our bed and reversed our cotton sleeping bag for summer use. We have left winter behind. At last. 

Layne pulled out another of her innumerable tools and kitchen appliances and made smoothies for lunch. The temperature gauge in the cabin shows 95 degrees much cooled by Pacific Ocean breezes. 

Ron who we met in San Carlos showed up, the man from Iowa. The day devolved into much chat and lounging around. As you do. 

He had stopped on the way for beer and tortillas and happened across shrimp ceviche for his lunch. 

Our spot is Grand Central Station-everyone passes by here including two guys collecting…rocks? Later Tonino explained they were paving a parking lot with them. 

I immediately wanted to swap GANNET2 for their motor tricycle. 

Rusty is well settled into life as a traveling dog. A morning walk, an evening walk and a day of lounging around camp. He yawns in the morning as he used to when it was  time for our morning walk before my commute. Nowadays he yawns and Layne let’s him out to start his day earlier than us. His wild roots show all the time. He loves the outdoors sitting around watching the world go by. 

A new palapa (palm thatched hut without walls) was starting construction down the beach. My telephoto lens was at full stretch for this one: 

The sand is soft enough here to swallow a Promaster and soft enough to force them to park down the beach and carry the logs up the sand. Not easy work for these stereotypically lazy Mexicans- and not a sombrero in sight. 

Tonino came back on his bike accompanied by Toby and he picked up a log for his grill at his fish camp palapa behind our van. 

Some random dude going for a ride on a beach. Imagine being able to do this when you feel like in the US…

We are neither of us equipped for beach driving..,

Our old nemesis the foggy cool marine inversion layer above the cold waters of the Pacific is back. One of the reasons I left California for Florida. 

It looks like rain but after the sun has safely set the clouds blow off and the stars come out. 

And one final fisherman of the day boasting enormous success. Three fish- big smile, when off camera he was smiling like a man in love. 

There endeth another serene day at the beach aboard GANNET2. A trawling trawling slowly offshore. 

A young couple in love, I hope trawling all day in the beach. 

The internet signal gets weak sometimes here and screwed up my first attempt to post which I hope explains the pictures without words if you noticed them earlier. Also we are on mountain time in Sinaloa so even though ships time is Key West things happen a little later in my life now! 

Another Crazy Spot

When we are on the road we like freeway test stops in the US as easy uncomplicated free places to spend the night in our van. In Mexico truck stops serve the same purpose and some are really nice with showers and washer/dryers while others are barely passable as a place to stop.

The truck stop in Los Mochis was of the not very nice category filled with broken cars, dust dirt and rows of trucks coming and going at random. Los Mochis is the mainland connection for trucks going to and from Baja by way of the ferry on the coast. We decided to park outside the truck area in the alley behind the 24 hour restaurant. As usual no one  bothered us or even spoke to us. Might as well have been on I-75 in a rest area.

The hot dog lady blasted corrida music into the night. Corrida is a ballad style supported by thumping tubas telling of the heroic derring-do of narco -traffickers endemic to Sinaloa State. With the doors closed we couldn’t even hear her musical joy.

We got up at first light and while I walked Rusty (and dutifully collected his egg and disposed of it lest you imagine I think Mexicans should step in it) Layne cleared the decks for travel and made us coffee and tea to power us into the traffic flow. 

We took the toll road which by now you know is called the “Cuota” and which cost us $17 from Los Mochis to the state capital of Sinaloa which is Culiacan, and slightly beyond, close to Mazatlan. The rates at each tollbooth seem totally random.  My buddy Robert asked me to include a map of our travels, thus:

I’ll be honest because I always try to be at least that. The drive down Highway 15 was pretty boring even though it is Mexico! Layne denies it but she dozed off twice as we listened to a Carl Hiassen novel (Hoot, downloaded from the Libby app). The countryside was miles of corporate farms growing an ocean of corn -no surprise- with mountains looking hazy and insubstantial in the distance. The road varied between ghastly potholes and stretches as smooth as a baby’s bottom. Totally at random.

I love driving in Mexico. Compared to the stress and aggression in the US Mexicans take care of themselves. When rejoining the highway you drive the shoulder to get up speed and if you need to ride the middle to avoid potholes and no one is around you do it. On two lane roads people pass as they see fit and if you want to help keep hard to the right and use your left turn signal to tell them it’s safe. No tailgating, no inability to pass, no resentment if you do pass. It’s easy.

In cities it’s more complicated but people will give way if you need to change lanes. Parking spots are narrower and shorter and tighter to get into so I appreciate the tight turning radius of front wheel drive.

After we shopped at Costco, and we like to offset Mexican food with familiar food, a subject for later, we set off from Culiacan for the beach. The state capital is modern and reeks of prosperity. American fast food, a big Ram/Dodge/Fiat dealership and two Starbucks, both resisted by my wife, show it off as a city in touch with the world, like it or not. Away from the glitz you can enjoy a different pace of life as we like to, between shopping expeditions. 

The iOverlander app, our camping Bible, showed a much enjoyed RV campground on the beach with full facilities and a pool. Layne overrode  my objections and we headed for our first opportunity to pay to sleep in Mexico. Guess what? They didn’t answer our horn, our calls or our text.

When using iOverlander, in the US or anywhere in the world, it’s necessary to have a back up plan as the spot may have changed since the last visitor posted about it. Half  an hour down the road according to Google maps there was a spectacular free campground overlooking the ocean. You be the judge.

To get there was a bit of a faff. Here’s how it works: you look at iOverlander and find your spot with a description and sometimes a picture. At the bottom it offers you a chance to open the location in Google maps. Easy. Then you set the mapping, turn off the Internet to save gigabytes, and off you go.

For a while we felt like we had turned down a rabbit hole picking our way through sand and dried mud.

Then we popped back out into the freeway. Just like that. I kept following the blue Google line. For a while after we turned off the freeway again we had pavement. That dream shattered soon enough.

It was apparent the village of Barras de Pixtla had been hammered by heavy rains. The government answer was to throw down pink gravel and hope for the best. Layne was not excited to be sitting alongside the voids that appeared from time time as we squeezed the elephant past the broken bits.

It had to happen and of course we drifted off course. Suddenly Google was wagging a finger at me for going off course. “That turning was a road?” Layne asked me indignantly. “Are you sure?” Bloody hell no I wasn’t sure. Nothing much made sense. We turned the beast around in an open space that appeared by magic as though everyone misses the turn and needs to pull a u-turn there.

Yes, it was worth it, the stones, the dirt, the sand, the sense of being lost as our home lurched down a narrow road to nowhere.

We might be here a bit. A friend might join us. We’ve already met some locals and we’ve seen mysterious lights in the night. Oh dear me who knew living in a van could be so much fun? 

Weekend At The Beach

A quiet Saturday birthday for Layne that we shall celebrate with first world bells and whistles in our next large city. Sunday we plan a make and mend day with much cleaning and reorganizing and a swim if the sun is stronger and the sky is clearer than it was Saturday. Monday we plan to be on the road driving through Huatabampo picking up some supplies whose location we already know.  That makes it easy. Monday night sleeping at a truck stop in Los Mochis before moving on to Culiacan for a visit to Costco and a night there or at the beach. Next post on Tuesday morning I hope when I have something to write about.