ODO: 310,371
Its the start of our second week in the shop. We were supposed to be here for two days. It’s all fingers and toes crossed hoping our parts will start to arrive today so we can get to work. The UPS guy shows up, but unfortunately he couldn’t find our boxes in his truck. KoKo explains to him the urgency, but to no avail, and he continues on his route. The disappointment is real. And then a miracle….the UPS guy returned about an hour later with our parts! Turns out he’s a big fan of off-road everything, and wanted to make sure we could get back on the road as soon as possible too. Now that we had some parts, we got to work machining the spindles to fit inside the axle housing. Spindles turned for about 7 thousandths of interference and into the freezer they go.
Now to the hubs! This was supposed to be an easy step, but the hubs we were sent also needed some machining to fit. Morale was low when we discovered this, so it took some pep talking to get back into the swing of things, but we got it done. Once the hubs were ready, we got the spindles out of the freezer and fired up the torch. We heated up the ends of the axle tubes and our frozen spindles slipped right in! Fired up the welder, and a few moments later we had a full float housing. Throw the hubs on, and the truck was a roller once again.
We were starting to think we might be able to start feeling cautiously optimistic about our chances of getting this done.
Now that we had some momentum going, we really got after it. Next up, installing rear brakes, brackets to hold the brakes, brake plumbing, getting the axles and drive slugs installed. Whew! But wait, there was more! We bled the brakes, added rear differential oil, engine oil, power steering fluid (and bled the power steering, KoKo’s shoulders got sore from this…), and put the new tires on. It was a long day, but worth it because now our house was ready for an alignment, which meant our house was almost ready to go!
After many 10+ hour days of welding and grinding and lathing and stressing and freezing, it was time to drive the truck off of the alignment rack and around the block to make sure everything was good to go. Thanks to Berne’s skills with all the tools, we had done it! It was time to pack up and hit the road back to Baja, which we managed around 6pm. We made it to Los Banos before finding a place to sleep for the night.
The next morning it was groceries and then straight for the border. We made it all the way to San Felipe and back to our Metal Wizard. In the morning it was time to hit the road to head down to Gurreo Negro for a two day whale watching tour that had been on KoKo’s bucket list for the past 2 years. This was the reason for all the stress, and up until we actually hit the road, we hadn’t been sure we were going to make it…..
Unsure of what to expect, we got checked in and set up camp at Whale Magic Tours HQ. We were on the early boat (6:30am departure time, yikes!) with the owner as our tour guide. A tiny woman who devoted 40 years of her life to whales, we were excited to have her showing us around.
It was a wild day. As we pulled up to the lagoon, we could see whales spouting all over the place. We headed out in a small panga with 10 other people to see what the whales had in store for us, and they did not disappoint. Our first encounter was a sleeping whale, who came over to check us out when the boat noise woke her up. One whale petted, and we only just got into the lagoon! The rest of the morning we were treated to whales breeching and spy hopping in all directions. It was non-stop. We only had one other whale come to check us out. What does a whale feel like? Oddly squishy and rubbery, sort of like an eggplant. At the tide change every whale in sight started to head towards the mouth of the lagoon, we were told they were likely starting their journey north. It looked like everyone had been called to lunch, there was such a rush.
With very few whales left in the area we headed back to shore. Along the way we also saw some turtles and sea lions. Back on the bus, everyone shared their favorite moments and photos. It was a pretty cool experience. Since we were camping at HQ (it was a small, kinda crappy dirt lot behind the small single story building), we signed up for the optional dinner. Turns out the chef is from Argentina and this week was handmade pasta. Specially, we had the ravioli and lasagna, and both were amazing. Full and tired, we called it early because we had more early whales ahead of us tomorrow. What a day!
