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! 

On The Road Again

We went to town yesterday to eat an expansive brunch on the beach in Zihuatanejo at a place much favored by my sister in law. The food was good, eggs,beans,sauces and so forth and the service was attentive but the wait staff addressed us in English and our restaurant was serving only foreigners. I felt my search for authenticity was somewhat overridden by circumstance. I ate and drank my Americano coffee and enjoyed the view of Playa La Ropa, the city’s prettiest strand. 

Paradoxically the menu was printed only in Spanish so translation was in order. I don’t much like resorts or inclusive vacations as a rule but the sense of timelessness they carry with them was rudely interrupted by the need to catch a flight for the young man in the yellow wife beater. He had school pending so breakfast with feet in sand and Rusty snoozing under the table ended up being rushed. Even when I pretend to aspire to all inclusive resort vacations I fail at them. We drove to the airport in a hustle. 

It was a hot day at the beach, so in the city itself, at the supermarket the van’s thermometer registered 96 degrees. As the family shopped Rusty and I walked the streets hopping from shady patch to shady patch slowly circling the huge Mega Soriana supermarket block. 

The plan had been to walk the city and have dinner and drinks in town, a more sophisticated version of how we travel.  We would have been urbane visitors from another planet for the day, not a couple of gypsies seeking our fortunes in a house on wheels. 

The heat defeated the plan. I was instructed to head for home after groceries were loaded and our fridge was full. We stopped for gas on Highway 200 and Rusty amused the workers by jumping out and sitting in the shade away from the infernal machine. He doesn’t like the van I said, stating the obvious. He prefers the van to being left behind but he likes jumping out when he can. 

Traffic was heavy as the Semana Santa national holiday week wrapped up. We got in line on the highway for a ten mile back up of traffic waiting to pass through the toll booth to take the highway into the mountains. A few cars got impatient and took cuts, my sister in law sitting under the roof air conditioning in the back lamented her fate as though we weren’t entirely comfortable and I sat behind the wheel in a weirdly zen frame of mind. It was three o’clock, we would soon reach our turn off, well before the damned toll booth that was holding everyone up,  and there was a swimming pool waiting for us, the lucky foreigners. 

We stopped to buy roast chickens for dinner, and I managed to avoid taking a Tope (speed bump) in the village at full speed as I had in the morning, so all was well, we arrived without a chorus of groans and complaints from the back. Young Aidan’s flight to North Carolina was canceled   in Houston and we got an anguished call from the nervous traveler stuck in a strange city. As we settled in for a night of margaritas and Spades (my partner, below, and we won, thank you),

…we shared travel stories of getting stuck in strange places in our youth and how much we enjoyed the sudden change in routine. I was 11 when my flight was delayed for three days by fears of conflict between Pakistan and India in 1969, and I lived in a luxurious hotel in Calcutta for the time guarded by Sikhs at the doors and monitored by a beautiful woman in a sari who stole my travelers cheques. I saw my first dead bodies in the streets and I smelled cremation pyres on the banks of the Ganges and I was submerged by beggars and the smells of poverty and pollution in a city barely able to cope. In the modern way I got in a plane finally and was whisked away to a month of luxury on a school friend’s tea plantation where I was waited upon in every way and I learned to swim in a vast swimming pool in the colonial atmosphere of privilege. The dead of Calcutta were still dead on the sidewalks but I was very much alive on the tea plantation. 

I found the same sense of colonial privilege among the vast seaside mansions of La Playa Saladita. In Jesse’s memory it is where he met his wife as they camped, penniless, chasing waves. Now it is home to elderly surfers dreaming of past glories but unwilling to live without the conveniences of home. 

The separation between Gabacho surfers and their fenced lives of luxury is stark. Warning signs are in Spanish only. Keep Out. The book exchange is in English.

It’s another way to enjoy Mexico and I can adapt. 

But I am glad we are on the road again in our own bubble of privilege, all sixty square feet of it backed by the almighty dollar, and my sense of wonder at it all and appreciation for my privilege. Much nicer here than Calcutta.