ODO: 314,035
This morning we were off to San Ignacio, and our only hotel night. We stayed in the Hotel La Huerta, which had the most amazing showers (hot hot and lots of water pressure), had a decent bar, and was a three minute walk to town. Speaking of town, we walked to dinner at Rancho Grande (Berne’s favorite margaritas). Afterwards, the hotel bartender was kind enough to reopen the bar for us so we could celebrate the newly engaged couple and have some dessert. It was a great night with great people.
The next morning, more than one of our group was feeling a little rough. After a solid breakfast we loaded up and headed a couple hours south to Bahia de Concepción. We spent the afternoon swimming and relaxing on the beach. The ice cream vendor was much appreciated and made a lot of money off of us. It’s hard to say no to ice cream that comes to you on the beach. It was windy during the afternoon when we arrived, but calmed into a lovely evening so we were able to have a fireworks duel with another campsite.
Our first morning in Concepción was perfect. The weather was amazing, the water crystal clear. A little send off party happened the night before, so almost everyone was extra rough today. Luckily dragging camp chairs into the water for a neck deep soak brought people back to life. We enjoyed the ice cream guy again, as well as the fresh shrimp guy. This was our last day with friends before heading to the ferry, so we didn’t end up leaving until late in the afternoon. This was a hard group of people to say goodbye to. Even though they live a state away, we normally see them every few months. There were tears. We made it just north of La Paz, camping in a cactus forest for the night.
Ferry Day. We wanted to be able to hit the ground running in Mazatlán, so we got supplies (and cookies from Doce) before heading to the ferry terminal. Once at the terminal we set to work getting our temporary import permit (TIP). It was an extremely easy process, the hardest part was weaving through all the commercial trucks to get to the window. We handed over our documents (passports, fmm, registration) and copies of our documents, and a nice lady did all the work and took our money ($475 that we get back if we leave Mexico in 139 days or less). Once she was finished, she had us sign the bottom of her customer service survey that she would fill out later. Back at the truck it was time to get weighed and pay for our reservation, $210 pesos and $7800 pesos respectively.
Back at the truck again, we went to line up for boarding…three hours early. Around 6pm we finally backed onto the ferry. We were one of the last vehicles loaded which meant we would be one of the first off. Once all the vehicles were loaded (98% commercial trucks 2% vehicles like us, and a handful of adventure bikes) and secured (the bikes and several trucks were strapped to the deck) our sea voyage began. Being a commercial ferry, passenger luxury was….not a priority. There were shower and toilet cubicles on an upper deck, a small cafeteria, and two small viewing lounges for people needing a break from the inside of their vehicles. The reason we picked the commercial over the passenger ferry was we had heard rumors they let you stay in your vehicle, and sure enough, they didn’t care at all when we popped our tent to go to bed. Sleeping on a moving ferry is weird, one of us didn’t sleep all that well, and one of us slept like a baby being rocked to sleep and soothed by the diesel lullaby.
Thirteen hours later it was time to unload in Mazatlán! Excited to be somewhere new, we did a little exploring around town. We found a delicious bakery before heading north of town to check out some potential camp spots. A friendly local told us that area isn’t the safest, and our bakery haul was starting to kick KoKo’s ass, so we headed back into town to regroup. After getting stuck in a grocery store parking lot and picking up some ramen, we went to check some spots to the south. This ended up being the hot ticket, and we set up camp on the beach, a short walk from an old fishing boat shipwrecked near the shore.
After all the excitement, we took a relax day, which meant Berne was making a big breakfast: potatoes, sausage, gravy and eggs. It was delicious. The sand on our beach was super, super fine. In the afternoon when the wind started to pick up this became a problem. It got everywhere. And as the wind picked up more, it created a vortex at the door to the camper, so we couldn’t open the door without tons of sand billowing inside. Then the wind picked up some more and we were now being sand blasted. We couldn’t hide inside, the sand was so fine it came in the screens so we had the close all the windows, and it was hot. We did the only other thing we could, leave. We packed as quickly as we could, and in our haste we accidentally ran over our shovel. It was extremely lucky we didn’t pop a tire. We headed into town for a taco and a think on what to do. Eventually the wind died down so we headed back to where we were to catch the eclipse in the morning.
Eclipse day!! The whole reason we were here. We woke up extra early from the excitement and started making our plan for the day. We got all our cameras out and decided which camera got what tripod. It took us about five minutes to do all of this, so then we had to wait. And wait. There were light clouds rolling in, and we didn’t know if they would be enough to block our view. Finally 9:50am rolled around, and the clouds did not ruin our show. We turned on all of our cameras and settled into the couch to take it all in. It was pretty spectacular at totality. We didn’t get the weird shadows, our guess is because of the clouds, but it was still amazing.
Once it was over, we did a little cooking experiment. We heard rumors you can bake a cake in a rice cooker, and it turns out you can! We made a pineapple upside down cake, and couldn’t have been happier about how it turned out. This was a super exciting discovery. Later in the evening we were treated to a solid fireworks show over the ocean. This was a pretty killer day.
