Across the border and south, finally

Indio Tamali Festival

Tarantula found on our desert walk

Miles of greenhouses along the coast

Ocean side at San Quintin

12/4/10
After returning from Portland and a good Thanksgiving, we spent three days in Palm Springs with Aunt Marg.  We said our goodbyes on the third day and then headed out of town south toward Mexico.  We had one short detour, as we were caught by a sign in Indio: “Tamale Festival Parking, turn right”.  Well, we couldn’t pass up tamales could we?  We checked out the street fair which was several blocks of tamale stands and music stages, and ate our fill of tangy tamales.  The hometown parade with high school marching bands, horses and cars full of politicians and the Tamale Princesses took up a bit more time, but hey, that’s what serendipity travel is all about, eh? 
Tortuga took us southeast to Anza Borego State park for two days, where we camped along side the outlaw campers on the back roads of the park.  Anza Borego is a beautiful high desert, full of wonderful cacti, oasis, tarantulas and other desert things. Camping is free in the outback and lots of people drag their campers/motor homes out here for the winter.  They bring barrels of fresh water and have solar panels on their rigs and just hang out there for free..There didn’t seem to be many rules; at least that’s what we discerned.

Heading south again through the dry desert we were surprised when we gained altitude over the mountains and came back down through beautiful little canyons full of live oak and yellowing sycamore, the ranch/cowboy country of my childhood Saturday morning western dreams... Rin Tinn Tin, Furry and Roy Rogers. Then we realized that we were only about 40 miles east of San Diego. This really could have been the places where they filmed these sagas.  We drove on to Tecate on the Mexican border, passing a rather creepy looking, huge iron wall out in the middle of nowhere that stretches for some miles along the border as it comes close to the road.   Tecate is supposed to be the easiest border to cross, and following advice from friends who have driven to the Baja,  we crossed over on foot the day before to get our tourist cards and pay for them in town at the local bank.  We returned to the US and stayed in the County park that night, then got up early the next morning and scooted across while all of the “bad guys” were still asleep. A piece of cake.

Our first few hours driving in Mexico were fairly intense.  The crossing was mellow and getting out of town wasn’t too hard, but then we hit road construction for about 12 miles. Yikes!  With the rising sun in our eyes, dust flying, and an unmarked, torn up, bone jarring, car wrecking, two or one lane road to follow, it was quite exciting to navigate.   Every once in a while there was a flag guy to show you which way to go or stop (if you could figure out what the strange flag signals meant... “does waving backward mean come or go?”)  and hoping that you didn’t get in the way of the oncoming trucks filling both sides of the road.  After that, the regular, narrow, semi-smooth roads felt pretty good.  The road is about 19 feet wide with no shoulder all the way down most of the Transpeninsular Highway.  One crazy thing that they have on the roads are the “topes” or a series of speed bumps which will take out your front end  if you don’t slow down.. They show up in the middle of towns, before dangerous curves, and sometimes out in the middle of nowhere just for the heck of it.  It starts out with teeth grinding bumps far apart and which get closer together at you approach the “big bump”.   One really does have to slow down on that dangerous curve, or it will wreck your tires.  We drove down the windy highway where it came in just north of Ensanada, and just kept driving until we hit San Quentin about 200 miles down the coast.  Our goal was to get far south in one day to avoid any hassles/bad stuff related to the border.  The plan seemed to work. One impression of the drive south along the coast was the immense acres of greenhouses lining the roads.   The rows of white wagon train-tube-shaped houses, blocks-long would stretch out almost as far as the eye could see.  Our “campground” the first night in Mexico was right on the ocean, in a big flat lot.  Not too scenic, but we did have a front room view of the ocean and a great sunset.  We just kept our fingers crossed that the tide didn’t come up too high, as we could see the remnants of sandbags which once kept water at bay.