Baja 2016 - The Ultimate Road Trip
One Dog, Two people and Four Wheels
A wild 6-month ride wheeling through Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, Heidi, Tom and Sam here we go…
After Loreto there is a long Baja cruise before the next city with a possible dog friendly hotel, there are two small cities Ciudad Insurgentes and Ciudad Constitución. Ciudad Insurgentes is the smaller of the two but big enough to have a few hotels. I was confident we could get a place that will take Sam but we felt like pushing on to the next city that we have dog friendly hotels picked out, Ciudad Constitución.
It seemed like we drove around town for hours looking for the hotels we had bookmarked. We found one place down a dirt road but it was nothing but a seldom used RV park, the pool was not like the one in the photo. We never found any of the other places even after a ton of driving. I asked at a place back at the start of the city, the clerk said "no" to dogs but he recommended a place back on the main highway.
Again the desert changes as we ride south.
The last three days’ have not been good. Five days ago I woke up in the middle of the night with a headache, not bad but bad enough to take two aspirins. The headache lasted the entire next day. That night Heidi and I were staying at a city in the heart of Baja Mexico, Ciudad Constitucion, just a couple hundred miles from our final destination near the tip of the Baja peninsula, and nearly a thousand miles south of the US border. We love cities like this. There are no tourists, prices are less than third of what they are in tourist destinations and the street food is fantastic. We enjoy three nights at a beautiful little hotel for $25/night. With my headache still underway and the now addition of stomach issues, Heidi and I prepare to hit the road again to the beautiful port city of La Paz. Before leaving Ciudad Consitucion we stop for breakfast. It’s a standard Mexican breakfast of scrambled eggs, refried beans, salsa and fresh tortillas. Fantastic as always but something isn't right. My gut feels like I ate a basketball.
La Paz is a little over a hundred miles away on a mostly straight and flat road, a welcome reprieve from the mountainous twisty and narrow roads we have endured so far this trip. While driving along I’m experiencing a weird sensation, and I still have that basketball in my gut. We reserved a little casita (small cabin) just off the Sea of Cortez on the outskirts of La Paz. On this trip we research hard for places to stay because we have Sam along, our half Raccoon Hound, half Labrador Retriever. This little casita place takes dogs, it is in our price range and it has a pool, all is good. Just before checking in we gas up. One of our adventure travel rules is to always gas up when we arrive at a destination, not when we want to leave. Often times the filling stations will be out of gas so that can leave you stranded until the tanker truck comes to refill the tanks, and in Mexico, no one ever knows exactly when that will be. Anyway, at a convenience store we proceed to provision up for a three-night stay. In the store we get the regular supplies, tortillas, refried beans, salsa, beer and ice. At the counter we spot fresh empanadas in a glass case. Empanadas are one of our favorite foods. We ask what flavor they are “?que sabor empanadas?” Beef, perfect. They’re huge so we get only two. After checking into our room we enjoy the empanadas and beer poolside, another perfect end of a day in our world.
That night I again wake up with a slight headache coupled with the worst body aches I have ever experienced. Lying in bed my hips hurt, my back hurts, my neck hurts, every point of my head that touches the pillow hurts. I take Sam for a run on the beach the next morning so he can do his thing, then I immediately crawl back in bed, where again everything hurts. Sometime after noon Heidi prepares for a couple hour hike along the beach, I call uncle and stay in bed. An hour later I dive into the bathroom and proceed with the drama. After the third or fourth trip I finally give in and admit ‘I got IT’, the dreaded 'Montezuma’s Revenge' Throughout our two decades of adventure travel through developing countries I’ve always carried Cipro, a strong antibiotic used to treat Anthrax and a multitude of other ailments. Heidi used Cipro once while in Honduras, I have used it in the past for infections. I assumed I had a cast iron stomach and was immune. But there was no denying it any longer, I got it. I dig out the Cipro from our survival kit and pop the first one down. The next sixty hours are not pretty. I had hopped the pills would take effect right away but no, the agony continued out both ends. I am not a happy camper.
While adventure traveling Heidi and I constantly engage in some of the most intense and technical discussions. This time it’s about what the heck happened to me? We re-play the last several days together. “We both ate the exact same thing. We both drank the exact same thing. Why did only I get sick?” Heidi feels fine, usually she is the one to get sick. Weird. Then I remember one small thing that happened 5 days ago at the hotel lobby in Ciudad Consitucion. While re-filling my 16 oz water bottle from the purified water bubbler I emptied the 5 gallon jug. Later that day I returned to see if they replaced the empty water jug with a new one. When I get to the lobby there was water in the jug but just a little bit, enough to fill my bottle so I was happy. I filled my bottle and slammed it down when I got back to the room. I remember thinking it was weird the bottle wasn’t fuller because a new 5 gallon bottle should last over a week at this little hotel. The theory: The clerk in the hotel lobby didn’t have any spare water bottles so he partly re- filled the jug with tap water so he wouldn’t get complaints from the gusts who wanted to use the water to make instant coffee, the only coffee offered by the hotel (Instant coffee is standard practice in Mexico). Often locals have an immunity to the tap water in developing nations and the lobby kid probably didn’t realize he was poisioning the gringos. Either way, now I’m at peace with the experience and will have no problem continuing to enjoy the street food with Heidi at the road side taco stands we love so much.
Stay tuned for more fun in Mexico’s Baja Peninsula…
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