Brynne, Lyndal, Chris, Tia, and Bryson

The Great Mr. Mickey Haskell

An old fisherman's house near P. Abreojos

Her Majesty enjoying the sunset

This entry comes several days early due to the recent tropical storm which leaves us stranded here in San Ignacio, Mexico.  That’s right, to all the naysayers out there (Mark Nelson!), we have finally crossed the border to the southland, and we are now in central Baja California waiting for Mexican Route 1 to clear.  Amazing how a simple rainstorm can close off the entire route to southern Baja (La Paz and Cabo San Lucas).  Although we have been isolated from the radio and television for the last several days, we caught word of a hurricane headed towards Cabo from the locals, and although it was degraded to a tropical storm, the road is washed out and we have been rendered idle until the water lowers.  Ok, so where we left off….
After an afternoon of working on the web page in Santa Cruz, we met up with Nima’s old friend Bryson and his girlfriend Tia, whose aunt owns a house just one block from the beach.  Once again, special thanks to Brynne, Lindal, and Eric for letting us pop the top in their driveway for the night!  The next morning, the whole group awoke early for a surf session at Pleasure Point.  Although the waves were small and the water cold, it served as a great spot for Nima’s first time surfing.  Sporting a new wetsuit and a 10’4” board borrowed from Tia’s family, he managed to catch a few waves on his first day.  Hopefully in a matter of months we will have him on the pro circuit.  After a farewell to Bryson, Tia and the family, we headed south to San Luis Obispo through Big Sur on the Pacific Coast Highway.  Arriving in San Luis, we stayed with another of Nima’s high school friends, Mikey, and prepared to bring the van to GoWesty! the next day.
GoWesty! is a shop that specializes in VW Vanagon campers, and despite a completely booked schedule, they helped us to fix our sink, fridge, sunroof, and spare tire.   They even allowed us to work on the van ourselves in their parking lot for the entire day!  Another special thanks to Chris and Dustin who were extremely helpful and weren’t hesitant to share their VW knowledge.  They even provided us with our first sponsorship of the trip and gave us two free t-shirts!  We passed the entire day at GoWesty!, and headed back to Mikey’s house where we installed two killswitches in the van to finish off our anti-theft system.  Luckily for us, Mikey is a computer genius, and he helped us to fix some problems on the website…he will be one of our first contacts should we encounter computer problems later on.  The next morning, we bid farewell to Mikey and continued south to San Diego.  Although it is a beautiful city, it turns out that camping in your vehicle overnight is extremely difficult, so we ended up on the side of a random road directly underneath the final approach path for the San Diego International Airport.  Although loud, we escaped without trouble in the morning and made our way past the border into Mexico.  Finalmente! 
Passing down the coast from Tijuana, we drove by hundreds of ramshackle buildings shrouded in the coastal fog layer, which didn’t want to burn off.  Finally, in Ensenada, we saw our first ray of Mexican sunshine.  Continuing south, we found a lonesome beach on the outskirts of El Rosario that turned out to be a 30 minute drive on a winding, rocky road.  Although we were treated to a great sunset, the waves did not appear in the morning, and we set out again to find another surf spot.  However, the road meandered away from the coast most of the day, and as dusk approached we chose to sleep atop another desolate beach in Punta Hipolito.  The next day, after several gasoline stops (only PeMex here, but prices are slightly cheaper than the US), we found a deserted beach where we surfed for a few hours before continuing southbound.  Without Tia’s longboard, Nima had a little trouble getting some rides, but I’m sure he will soon grow accustomed to my shorter board.   In the evening we found a camping spot in Punta Abreojos, a well known surf spot.  There were several other gringos camped there as well, and they all made us feel safe and welcome.  We found some fun waves the next day, but the flies at our campsite finally drove us out, and sent us towards southern Baja and Cabo San Lucas.  However, the recent hurricane washed out the road in several locations, and we are now camped under our newfound friend’s garage waiting for the road to open.  When we found out that we couldn’t pass any further south, we headed back for the town of San Ignacio, but another wash had covered the road, and we were stuck just to the east.  After a stop at the local tienda, we quickly made friends with the owner, and he offered his driveway as a camping spot.  Before we knew it several locals were playing our guitars, singing Mexican folk songs, and buying us cerveza.  This continued for several hours before we finally retreated to the van to work on the website and take a siesta. 
Our plans….once the road reopens we hope to head to Cabo San Lucas and La Paz, where we will take a ferry to mainland Mexico (maybe Mazatlan?) and continue our journey southbound.  Already we are excited to get out of the Baja desert and into a more tropical climate with warmer water and lush vegetation.  The next time you hear from us we hope to have passed over to the mainland and we will be well on our way to Central America. 

Que les vayan muy bien,
-Jeremy