Playa Bonita

Playa Bonita means pretty beach. You decide: 

Our neighbors say it’s thirty miles long and the longest in Mexico. Fair enough but I have all I need and more, right here.

A jellyfish dead in the sand. Such a strange shape nearly buried. 

An equally dead jellyfish getting ready to be buried and converted into sand. 

Mexicos favorite cheap light beer. I like Indio best and Victoria second best. Tecate is light and low on the list. 

Mexicans fishing and camping:

“We don’t ask you to clean the beach, we simply ask that you don’t make it filthy.”  I did my bit: 

The main drag through Las Glorias, a four lane brick extravaganza lined with homes in various stages of repair and failed landscaping everywhere. 

There is breakwater for boats at the light tower,  to come into the lagoon but you’d have to time it right and also assuming there’s enough water to carry you in. Not a concern for a man in a van. 

Cartel Country

29 people died in firefights the first week of the year in Sinaloa State.  Government and police lost control when hordes of cartel soldiers took to the streets shooting and tipping over trucks and setting vehicles on fire. 

The Sinaloa cartel reacted like a hornet’s nest poked by the Mexican Government, which had raided the home of the cartel leaders, the Guzman family, and arrested El Chapo’s two sons. The idea was to behead the cartel as the patriarch known as El Chapo (a nickname that translates as “Shorty”) is in US custody. You pull shit like that and all hell breaks loose in Mexico. 

We saw a larger police presence than usual when we crossed into Sinaloa. 

There is a checkpoint on Highway 15D, the main toll road and this time they actually checked out papers, professional, friendly and swift. We were on our way to the sunshine we hoped. 

The letter “D” on Mexican Highways indicates it’s a toll road. The tolls, and the road quality, vary wildly. The amounts are clearly shown and you get a receipt so it’s all above board. Some places take Visa cards, some have electronic passes but we keep it simple and pay  cash. In God we trust, all others…

One of the things I missed driving Baja was the roadside vendors. It isn’t sustainable in the low population and traffic of the Baja desert, but on the mainland it’s a way for the unemployed to make a living and I’m happy to help. 

They call them burritos but not as we know them. Burritos were invented in northern Mexico as simple filled flour tortillas usually  with shredded meat and potatoes or beans. A delicious mobile breakfast, bought on the fly at toll booths and topes (speed bumps) on the highways. Usually around a buck fifty for a packet of burritos or sandwiches or cakes. 

The other trick is the magic third lane. Slow traffic keeps to the shoulder on either side while passing traffic runs down the middle. No road rage, no tailgating, no speeding up to accommodate impatient drivers who don’t know how to pass. Around here they just go for it. The worst wrecks we’ve seen have been drivers falling asleep at the wheel, trucks or cars rolled over by themselves on long straightaways. The magic third lane is surprisingly effective and I miss it when I’m in the States. 

The roads are full of the past meeting the present, signs of a more rural experience still present, a slower pace caused by lack of opportunity and the cost of mechanization. It’s best not to romanticize a slow way of  life because when they can afford it horse riders switch to internal combustion. Around here small business loans are hard to come by. 

Through all the violence and chaos Mexicans keep on keeping on. For now everything is back to normal with a few extra police patrols. 

Layne found a campground with all the fixings in the beach village of Las Glorias on a thirty mile long beach. This we had to see and the violence has indeed died down. Check it out, no wild eyed gunmen to be seen. 

The only question is, will it be hot enough to swim in the ocean? And can Rusty handle the stray dogs wandering around? Can I, as my heart goes out to every one of them. 

We started at the flag in the north and are at the blue dot in the south. So far.

Driving South

The cop pulled alongside my window on his motorcycle so I wound it down saying out loud: “What have I done now?”  Last year in Huatabampo I got fined $50 for stopping on a pedestrian crosswalk in an intersection. I got my photo taken as a joke when I paid the judge. 

Consequently I am allergic to cops in Huatabampo but my worst fears were not realized. He figured we were looking for the way to the tourist draw in this agricultural town so we must be looking for the road to the beach. He pointed the way, smiled from under his helmet and left. Well, I said to Layne, that was a surprise.

I got to work siphoning water into our tank at the purified water shop. Fifty cents for five gallons. I joked with the delivery guy Jose about my various encounters with the cops. He had nothing good to say about them as he got a running jump on his motor tricycle and set off on his rounds as photographed by Layne. 

We bought fly killer at the veterinarian, the most effective fly killer I’ve ever seen.  A few little pellets moistened on a wet paper towel and flies leave us alone. The lady clerk at the vet’s was brisk. Ten bucks for four packets of the stuff- Totenfli is made in Germany so it must be good! 

They sell everything from Swiss Army knives to dog toys and leashes. They also operate on pets in a side office. I saw that once and it freaked me out a bit. From there we went to look for our favorite flour tortillas but Doña Paula’s looks closed for good. Drat. We set out for the beach.

We like to shop locally as we travel and around here we are familiar with what we are looking for which makes it easy to breeze through town. Huatabampo is an agricultural center of 80,000 residents set in the middle of neatly tilled fields and it is focused on local needs not on people like us.  

The city’s most famous resident is Álvaro Obregón, Mexico’s 46th President who was murdered in 1928 after winning an election.  He was an amazing dude starting out a peasant with nothing to his name and becoming a millionaire farmer exporting chickpeas of all things to the US.  You’ll see his name memorialized all over Sonora State. 

But the tourist draw here is the beach, a funky collection of vacation homes where the asphalt runs out. To get to Huatabampito you have to drive half an hour through the fields. It looks like you’re going to a 4H gathering, not to the Sea of Cortez. To remind us where we were going to, we stopped to buy a fish lunch to go. Lunch for dinner at the beach.  

The village, named not too well for an English speaker, Moroncárit ( with the emphasis not on “moron”) is known for its clams fished from the estuary nearby but they were only offered raw. We ordered a whole grilled fish with Ajo sauce, onions and tomatoes and peppers. Delicious. With a ceviche appetizer. 

We had a splendid dinner sharing one plate. Huatabampito was as we remembered the village. 

It’s chaotic and constantly under construction, the only street is dirt and not very well looked after. Several of the homes have for rent signs on them for potential vacationers. This is very low season of course. 

There is an RV park on the water but we like to camp for free. 

So you drive past all styles of beach house many with construction workers adding to the dust and wind blown sand. It looks pretty desolate. 

The road base is solid so our heavy front wheel drive van had no problem driving far past the village. 

In the photo below the blue dot is on the beach where we were at San Carlos. The red dot is where we drove to try to escape the cold. Snow in Tucson meant chilly nights and cold mornings for us on our favorite beach. So we went south looking for heat. We did not find it at Huatabampito!

This is a special spot which we first found on iOverlander of course, wilderness with some mosquitoes and wind reported by app users. We had flies and wind this time. 

I think this strange lonely place down the road beyond the village itself is becoming popular. We saw squares of fencing enclosing freshly cleared sand dunes. I think locals are ready to claim the land to sell to wealthy outsiders for holiday homes. The beach however is as broad and empty as ever. 

There’s trash of course to which we did not add. The north wind was hellacious and pretty soon I could feel sandy grit between my teeth. 

It got so bad we stopped exercising as sand flew in our eyes and we three retreated to the interior of our home. It was absurd sitting indoors watching the sun set but the outside world was a swirling mass of sand. 

After the sun went down the temperature plunged and it was only slightly warmer than San Carlos. We were going in the right direction but not far enough. 

We were going to leave first thing in the morning and leave the beautiful scenery behind. It was still too cold to swim. 

We watched the sun set through the windows and darkness fell around us. It was a quiet night.  

Naturally Rusty had me up in time for the dawn. It was cold even though the wind was down a bit. Time to go further south on Mexico’s coast.