We Broke a Rule (Don’t Tell The Kids!)

 

So yesterday morning we pulled out of Playa Juncalito after saying goodbye to all our wonderful friends and neighbors on the beach and dropped the Arctic Fox off at Loreto Shores RV Park 15 miles north before heading to our favorite Tianguis, or Sunday Market, in all of Baja. We bought lots of fresh vegetables and fruit from two farmer’s stands and had tamales for lunch from another stand. Practically everyone we know in the area from the beach and village was also there, so we got in one more round of “goodbyes”.

We returned to the RV camp in Loreto to make phone calls to family and friends on Skype as we have internet here, did a load of laundry and emptied the holding tanks and filled the water tanks. At 5:30 we drove back to Juncalito Village to have dinner with Bill and Tey Seaver, a couple we met last October when we were here. She’s the Vice-Commodore of the Puerto Escondido Yacht Club nearby and helped us take care of details to join the yacht club last October. They invited 6 of their village friends and us for dinner tonight. We’d never met any of the other guests, so had a good time hearing stories from these folks, all of whom spend half the year or so here, and the rest somewhere in the U.S. One couple told us the story of their 45-foot sailboat’s sinking last Fall – yikes! All of the men and some of the women go fishing regularly, and all of them are good cooks, so the food was delicious and we had a lovely evening.

There are many “rules” that prudent travelers in Baja observe. One is “Never drive after dark”. While we’ve driven after dark when we’re staying in a city, such as La Paz, we’ve never driven on Mex 1 after dark. It’s advised not to do this because the free-range cattle and goats often seek out the warmth of the highway after dark, and it’s near impossible to spot a black cow on an unlit highway when coming around a blind corner. We actually met a man who ran into a herd of wild horses in his truck one night and survived. His truck didn’t come out so well.

It’s also the case that when the 18-wheeler truck drivers have a flat tire or mechanical break-down, they place large rocks in the roadway behind their rig because they don’t carry flares or orange triangles. When they’ve repaired the flat or fixed the break-down they drive away without removing the rocks. There are even official highway signs that advise “Don’t leave rocks on the highway”! Anyway, it’s hard to spot these rocks in the dark. And finally, while we don’t worry about “bad guys”, it’s assumed that if there are any such folks about, they’ll do their work in the dark rather than the light of day. So travelers like us avoid driving after dark – a widely agreed upon rule. However, tonight we had dinner in Juncalito Village but are staying in the town of Loreto, 15 miles up Mex 1. Dinner ended early, about 8:00 pm as always, due to “Baja Midnight”, but it was long past dark. We hit the highway and drove more slowly than we do during the day, saw only one herd of cows immediately adjacent to the roadway, and no rocks. So we made it back without incident. But we still don’t like breaking those rules!