Back to Mexico

It was only fitting that we left Portland for the sunny south on a day of socked in pouring rain. Visibility on I-5 was bad to horrible and the discussion in the car was whether we stayed on I-5 because we know it’s pretty straight and therefore predictable in poor visibility or head off at Eugene on Hwy 58 toward Hwy 395. We opted for 395 and the weather began to clear. Hwy 58 is picturesque. Highway 395 was the correct choice. Ending up in Reno for the night, the option was a casino/resort hotel or a random find.

Heading south the next day, we cut through the Sierras and discovered that summit gas prices were just over $6.00 per gallon. Ended up in Victorville, CA, on historic Route 66 at another funky little motel and before hitting the road for Tuscon. We took the Twentynine Palms Highway on the north side of Joshua Tree. The stay for the night was in Green Valley, just down the road from the Titan Missile Museum, which we didn’t see. We had to circle back to the motel an hour after leaving to retrieve Bill’s phone from where he’d left it in the loo. Made it over the border without any other problems, except that we overshot the place we needed to stop to get our tourist visas. It looked like a roadside stop selling Mexican insurance, which we already had. Solved that and headed toward San Carlos, in Sonora.

Mexican highways are interesting. The speed limit will change for no apparent reason. The road is straight, no change in elevation and the speed will drop from 110 kmh (about 65mph) down to 90 or 100 kmh. There weren’t really distance signs to upcoming towns on Hwy 15, but every couple of hundred meters there were a variety of other signs. They translated roughly to exhortations to don’t drive tired, seat belts save lives, don’t throw trash. We followed all the directives and arrived safely without any conversations with law enforcement, who were having a busy day conversing with other folks they’d pulled over. Our favorite sign just had a sillouette of a rabbit. 50 meters later there was a second rabbit sign. We never did see any rabbits.

We decided that rather that try to live on the boat in the work yard in the marina seca, we’d try an Airbnb. Bill found what looked like a nice studio apartment with a reasonable price. The view was incredible, the beds were not. We finally bailed a couple days early and slept on the boat in the yard anyway.

Thanksgiving, el Día de Acción de Gracias, was feliz, with shrimp and lobster we bought from a guy parked in front of the supermarket. It was a lovely meal while the wind whistled away through the marina.

We finished our projects in the slip. We got sails on and went out for day sail to see if we got the watermaker working okay so we could make some drinking water. The weather didn’t cooperate. It poured. The wind, when it blew, kept changing direction. Seas were big enough that we realized our sea legs were a bit wobbly. The watermaker worked beautifully until we put it in flush mode. It created a bit of a flood, but it was thankfully, easily solved and mopped up. We were now ready to head south.