San Ignacio

                               Church in Bahia de Los Angeles
Last night we went next door to Larry and Raquel’s restaurant for one last margarita before leaving town and to say goodbye to the folks we’d met there. Well, one margarita turned into more than that when Betsy, Larry’s girlfriend, who had taken a bit of shine to Cathryn, kept buying us one more “on the house”. We didn’t get home until 10pm, well past Baja Midnight (for those of you who read our Blog last winter, you know this is the extraordinarily early hour at which most Baja travelers turn in and go to bed – well before actual midnight!).

                                          Military checkpoint on the road to San Ignacio
We left Bahia de Los Angeles this morning about 10am to drive 210 miles south to San Ignacio, which some of you may remember was our staging point for our whale watching expedition last year. The whales don’t arrive until January, so that won’t be part of our current visit. The plan is to stay just one night, partake of dinner on the town square at a restaurant we enjoyed last January, then head south again tomorrow.

 The plan beyond that is a little vague. San Ignacio is at the north end of the swath of coastline that got hit by hurricane Jimena last month, and the condition of the campgrounds in this stretch have gotten mixed reviews from people we’ve talked to on the way down. It’s mostly a question of the condition of the access roads, which wasn’t great before the hurricane, and the number of mosquitoes, which due to the amount of rain, is higher than normal. So we may or may not stay in the area for a few days. If we do, we probably won’t have internet access, so we may not post for a couple of days. We will send Spot (satellite) messages, so you can find out where we are by looking at the “Where We Are” section in the right hand column here on the blog.

The 3 Plus 1 Rule: One of the things we’ve learned this trip is that the number of tourists in Baja is much reduced in October compared with January and February when we were here last winter. Today, for example, we saw 5 other RVs in the 200-plus miles of Mex 1 we drove. While we didn’t count last year we’re sure we’d have seen more than 100 in the same stretch. One of the basic safe/smart camping rules down here is: don’t camp alone. We’re choosing, based on advice received from a long-time Baja traveler, to apply that to mean no “boon-docking” in places where there are fewer than 3 rigs present when we arrive (we then become the “plus 1”). Based on what we’ve heard, this may also contribute to our moving south a little faster than we otherwise would since there just aren’t that many campers here yet. Tonight, we’re one of only two rigs at the “Rice and Beans” RV Park, but it has resident managers on-site who provide 24 hour security, so it doesn’t constitute boon-docking. More later.