Onward to the Beach

Todays drive was only 222 miles but it took us over 9 hours to get to the Playa Tecolote, 20 miles from La Paz, where we are all camped right on the beach.  Normally it should have been a 7 1/2 hour drive but due to one rig having engine trouble, road construction and city traffic, it too much longer.

We had to climb over the mountains again to get to the middle of the peninsula where the road ran on fairly flat land.  One climb involved three switchbacks, and since we were near the end of the pack, we could look up and see the rest of the caravan proceeding along the side of the mountain on each leg of the switchback.  This is where we lost one rig with engine problems.  Our tailgunner stayed with the lame rig and that was the last we saw of them for the whole day even though we had several rest stops waiting for them.  The road seemed too good to be true in several places where it had nice wide shoulders and a smooth ride.  Then is would revert back to the narrow, bouncy one.  There is hope this will change in the future as we had to endure road construction in three places.  In the US, we would drive on blacktop detour but here it was one big rocky, dusty road around the construction.  And the semis passed us on this rock road as did most of the cars behind us.  It was so bumpy that we couldn’t go over 10 mph without damage to the rig.

Just outside of La Paz we stopped at a Pemex to let everyone gas up.  Boy was that a mistake! Two of the 6 diesel pumps were closed and since most of this group uses diesel, we were backed up! It took forever!  Then our leaders decided to divide the caravan into two groups with one following Jim and the other following Mary.  Not a bad idea except that we could hear Jim’s instructions on the radio and some got confused and start asking directions from Mary, more than once!  If they would just follow the travel book!

Once we got to the beach, Playa Tecolote,  Jim had to park everyone and that was a long wait!  Many of these big rigs are scared to get near the sand for fear of getting stuck for good reason!  I made John pull into a fairly level spot and just park it!