SOUTH by BUS - NORTH by PLANE
Mirador is anchored in Puerto Escondido and I am in Tacoma Washington. This morning, Monday July 28, I drove 39 miles to Bellevue, Washington and left my ICOM M710RT HAM/SSB radio with the repair technician at ICOM America. It will cost me $45 and two weeks of time to find out what is wrong with the radio, how much it will cost to repair it, and what they think the odds are of the radio lasting another four or five years in the hot and humid climate found in Western Mexico.
I arrived in Tacoma about 11 PM Friday evening, July 25 after leaving Mirador at 9 AM July 24. I had no idea that it would be so difficult to get from Puerto Escondido to the Cabo San Lucas airport when I decided to fly to Seattle from Cabo. Earlier in the week I had found a relatively cheap, $440 round trip, ticket on Alaska Airlines that would take me from the Cabo airport directly to the Seattle airport on July 25. When I purchased the Alaska Air ticket I didn't realize that there were no direct buses from Loreto to Cabo and no airplanes at all from Loreto to Cabo. I had a vague idea that it was about 250 miles from Loreto to Cabo and if worse came to worse I would take a bus to the airport.
The worse did happen and, as is usual in Mexican travel, it was worse than I could have imagined. It is only 194 miles, in a straight line, from where Mirador is anchored to the Cabo airport. After buying my Alaska plane ticket I went to the AeroCalifornia ticket office in Loreto, they are one of the two local Mexican Airlines that service Loreto, and found that there is no air service from Loreto to Cabo. I checked on a plane ticket from Loreto to La Paz where I thought I could catch a bus to the Cabo San Lucas Airport. That plane ticket would have cost me $257 round trip for a 30 minute, 115 mile flight so I decided to take the bus.
I then walked six blocks to the Loreto bus station and discovered that that there are no buses that go directly from Loreto to Cabo AND the fastest bus takes five hours to cover the 115 mile straight line distance to La Paz. Then I learned that the bus leaves La Paz for Cabo every other hour and takes three hours to get to Cabo. So, at best, figuring a one hour layover in La Paz, it takes nine hours for the express buses to go from Loreto to Cabo, thus averaging less than 22 miles per hour on the straight line route.
My flight out of Cabo was at 5 PM and I had to fill out some forms for the Mexican Customs office at the airport. I figured I needed to be at the Cabo airport by 3 PM at the latest. The first bus out of Loreto leaves at 8 AM so, if every thing worked perfectly which is a rare event in Mexico, I would not arrive at the Cabo airport before 5 PM.
At this point I was beginning to wish I had bought my plane ticket out of San Diego and had planned on taking the 18 hour bus ride to San Diego. I now knew that to use the cheap Cabo ticket I had to leave Mirador the day before my flight, go to La Paz, spend the night in hotel, and then catch a mid-morning bus to get me to the Cabo airport by 2 PM.
Thursday morning David from SV Hoveday gave me a ride in his dinghy to shore and then a ride in his truck up the mile long hill from Puerto Escondido to Mexican Highway 1(Mex 1) where I could flag down a bus going to La Paz. Mexican buses, even the big comfortable express buses, will stop anywhere on their routes to pick up or let off passengers. I had decided I would try hitch hiking for a few hours because the bus that left Loreto, which was 20 minutes north of me, at 2 PM would get me to La Paz in time for me to check into a hotel and still have a nice dinner.
David let me out at the Tripui bus stop, which is just a wide spot in the shoulder with no bench or sun shade, at 9:15 AM. The first southbound vehicle I saw was at 9:37 AM - nothing had come by for 22 minutes! This was on the main, and only, Mexican highway that connects Cabo San Lucas, and La Paz which is the Capitol of Baja California, with Ensenada, Tijuana, and the United States. I saw a total of five, count them - 5, southbound vehicles in the first hour I stood on the road. At least the sun was partially obscured by the clouds and it was only 90 degrees.
About 11:30 AM a Ford Windstar Van stopped to offer me a ride. When the door opened I found two smiling young women in the front two bucket seats, two more young women in the two place center seat, and four young men in the three place rear bench seat. I also noted that the windows were all wide open and there was no air conditioning. They were very friendly and said they wanted to practice their English while giving me a ride to La Paz. I decided to pass on that ride when they couldn't find a place for my duffle bag, let alone me and the ICOM radio in it's dry box.
Another hour passed until a Chrysler Caravan stopped to offer me a ride. There was a mid-30s Mexican in the driver's seat and an older Mexican gentleman in the front passenger seat. But, I had the entire rear bench seats to myself. The driver spoke pretty good English and told me he was from Sacramento, California and was headed to the city of Constitution to see his parents. That would get me half way to La Paz and would be a better place to hitch hike from since it is a town of about 50,000 people.
About 10 minutes south of Tripui Mex 1, which is a narrow two lane highway with limited shoulders and no guard rails, starts a very steep climb to a 4,500 foot pass thru the Sierra Gigante mountains. As we started up thru the mountains my driver again told me he was from Sacramento where he had lived for 11 years. He then proudly told me that he had driven 29 hours NON-STOP from Sacramento and was really tired. Whoa - that is not what I needed to hear as we began a steep, windy, and really scary drive up and down thru the mountains. He did turn out to be an excellent driver and showed no signs of fatigue.
About half-way up the mountain we saw a very old cab-forward semi-tractor with no trailer coming down the hill toward us. When it was about 1/4 mile and two hairpins from us we saw it start to weave and then crash into the cliff on the inside of the curve in front of us. It ended up broadside in the road, with its front wheels in the ditch between the road and the cliff. We stopped and talked to the shaken truck driver who told us that the steering wheel had come loose and that he could turn the wheel without turning the front wheels. He said he was very lucky the truck swerved right instead of left which would have taken him off the outside of the curve where there was no guard rail and a 1000 foot drop off.
We squeezed by with both right side tires on the very outside edge of the shoulder and drop-off.
I got out of the van in downtown Constitution right on Mex 1 where I could stand in the shade of a palm tree and hold up my big sign that said "La Paz." Two hours later I decided to schlep my bags six blocks to the bus station because I just couldn't get a ride. I got to the station just in time to catch the 4 PM bus to La Paz which cost me $11. That meant I had spent seven hours hitchhiking and had saved $10 in bus fares.
Mexican highway buses are really nice and very comfortable. The seats are similar to first class airline seats, only bigger and further apart. There is an overhead TV every six rows so I got to watch "Titanic" in English with Spanish subtitles - almost! When the movie started there was a large message that said "This movie is on two cassettes, when the first ends put the second tape in and start the movie again." The first tape ended just after the Titanic struck the iceberg and the builder announced that the ship would sink in two hours and there were only enough life boats for half the passengers. Then the first tape ended.
The driver, who apparently had not seen the two tape message, just reached down and turned off the VCR and we proceeded on to La Paz, never to find out what really happened to the Titanic and all it's passengers. None of the bus passengers bothered to tell the driver that there was another tape to play.
When I arrived at the La Paz bus station I found out that I would have to catch the 10:30 AM bus on Friday morning to Cabo in order to be at the airport before 3:30 PM. I also learned that the bus does not go to the airport. They would let me off on the airport access road, about a mile from the actual Alaska check in counter. Or, I could take the bus, which cost me $11, another 15 minutes into San Jose del Cabo and then hire a taxi for $15 to take me back to the airport that we had just driven by.
The bus to Cabo was a brand new Volvo with 10 rows of four seats. It was clean and beautiful inside. The driver really enjoyed pushing thru the mountains that separate La Paz from Cabo. I have been racing cars, motorcycles, and bicycles thru mountains for 35 years and have always enjoyed twisting, steep, and windy roads. But, I've never set behind the rear axle of a huge bus, about 10 feet above the road. As we descended an exceptionally twisting section of the road I began to feel hot and uncomfortable. I soon noticed I was sweating, my stomach was doing flip-flops, and my mouth was producing way too much saliva. Pretty soon I figured out I was getting carsick. Well! Never in my life has that happened to me. It got bad enough that I started looking for a barf bag!
Fortunately the bus reached the valley floor where the road ran straight for a while. Then we started up out of the valley and the twisting and turning started again. The driver was very good but he was pushing the bus right along. I was constantly being thrown hard against the outside wall of the bus since I was sitting in the window seat. Then I had to hang on to keep from getting thrown into the aisle. That went on for another ten minutes until we reached the coastal plain NE of Cabo.
The bus did let me off on the main highway and it was about a mile to the airport. I lucked out when a Hertz Car Rental van stopped and offered me a ride to the airport.
I did arrive at the Mexican Customs office at 2 PM with the expectation that I would spend an hour or so filling out forms so I could re-import my $2,000 radio without paying the 17.5% duty. The customs official spoke pretty good English and knew exactly what I wanted to do and what forms I might need. However, he made a phone call and then told me that they had just changed their policy about re-importation. I did not need any forms as long as I had my 10-year Temporary Import Permit (TIP) and USCG documentation, both of which I did have. He said that when I came back to Mexico all they needed to see was the TIP and the invoice for repairs on the radio. I asked him if I could please get the old style form that showed the serial numbers of the equipment that I had taken out of the country. He said they no longer had those forms and he assured me that I would not need them. Well - we'll see on August 20.
Mirador is anchored in the NW corner of Puerto Escondido. She is sitting in 43 feet of water with the 66 pound Spade anchor firmly set in the heavy mud bottom. I put out 150' of chain and 280' of nylon rode. David, who I mentioned earlier, has been using the Puerto Escondido anchorage for 17 years and has a business that watches boats for owners who leave their boats for extended periods. David said that everyone anchors on only one anchor and 300' of chain/rode. He also gave me several recommendations about preparing the boat for the August thunderstorms and possible hurricanes.
I removed Miradors dodger and bimini. I wrapped and securely tied line around the roller furled genoa and then tied lines from the roller furler drum to both toe rails to prevent the drum from turning. He wanted me to take the genoa down but that is a huge amount of work and I was a little too lazy. I have had the genoa furled in several nights of 70+ knot winds and have little concern about it coming loose.
I also tied six wraps around the boom and mainsail cover to prevent that from coming loose.
Other preparations included pickling the watermaker, closing all the thruhulls, defrosting and drying the refrigerator, disconnecting all the electronics, and closing all the hatches.
It took me about 10 hours on Wednesday and Thursday morning to get everything ready to leave.
I'll be in Tacoma until August 20 when I begin my two-day return trip to Puerto Escondido.