Baja tour part three
Day 14, 6/25: Baja Tour, Day 3
And in the morning, the buggies were turned around and fueled up again, ready and waiting.
Oops, maybe not quite ready. Maybe I was a bit too exuberant on the rocks the first day.
Now, here's the thing: any damage you do to the car, you pay for. They let me slide on that one, because it was kinda a crappy tire to start with.
Unlike any previous times I've wrecked a tire, this time I had a team of guys waiting just to fix such things. I could get used to that.
The support crew were actually awesome guys. Between their remedial ESL English, and my absolutely crap Spanish, we managed to get along pretty well.
We headed back out onto the lakebed. The first time we just bombed across it (aside from stopping for cervezas) but this time we stopped...
Our tour guide was way in front as always, and caught these guys doing donuts in their Humvee. Suddenly they were all business and demanded to 'inspect the cars for contraband'. This consisted of knocking on the bodypanels and asking us about the engines, the tires, how they handled and performed, etc. Soon it devolved into a discussion about the relative merits of the TSL Superswamper vs BFG MudTerrain lines of offroad tires and we were all friends.
Motorgeeks have a universal language, it appears... also I found my Spanish got better when there were 7.62x51 caliber rifles involved and in hands other than my own :/
Since we were already stopped, it only made sense to just screw around in the lakebed for a bit.
It was a big lakebed.
We made our way up to Mike's Sky Ranch, an amazing little hotel halfway up a mountainside that caters primarily to Baja racers.
Stickers everywhere again.
And inside, the front room was a tapestry of tshirts left by various sponsors and race teams.
After lunch, back on the trail. Lots of fast, deep sand on this stretch, so Jody was driving.
Matt and Lindsey, keeping up.
After a few hours, we stopped at another little "rancho" for refreshments. A lot of the farms out here are basically open to the offroading public and have a room set aside for drivers that are looking to buy a cold beer.
I have always respected those who live far from "civilization" and learn to be self sufficient and provide for their own needs.
BEST STICKER of the whole trip, hands down.
Back on the trail again.
After about 15 minutes, Jody has it pinned trying to catch up to the tour guide in the deep sand. We're drifting pretty hard around a corner and then THUMP and then you could just tell... something ain't right.
Oh... well crap.
Turns out there was a sharp rock hiding in the brush right on the edge of the trail, and he drifted the driver's side rear tire right into the point of it.
Jody posing with the rim and tire he just bought.
Pitcrew to the rescue.
And again we're moving.
The trick to deep sand, as explained by Jody and as experienced by myself on this trip (my first exposure to that terrain), is to keep the pedal on the firewall. Do not slow down. Matt and Lindsey slowed down. Pitcrew and tourist alike got in on the extraction effort.
I was impressed, in hindsight, that this was the only stuck on the entire tour.
Later on, Jody was still driving and we're looking for a right turn we're supposed to make through a gate in the fence to our right. We see it approaching and suddenly he's got us going damn near sideways again, fenceposts zipping by the front of the car going left to right. With the last post just about dead centre between the two front tires, he pulls off the gas, flicks the wheel, hammers the gas again, and we rocket forward over the cattleguard with a few inches to spare on the left and maybe a foot on the right. After my heart slid back down to its rightful position I was highly impressed.
It still kills me that you can drive one of these on the roads, no license plate, no turn signals, no problem.
Later in the day we encountered some vegetation that looked suspiciously like home.
And then it looked like Mexico again.
We got stuck for about an hour behind a convoy of military vehicles and official-looking minivans. Most people pull over on these back "roads" when they see race buggies in the mirror; these guys did not. We were guessing it was a politician's convoy or something. Turns out it was Mexican CSI investigating a drug-related multiple murder a few ranches over. "War on drugs" FTW.
Finally we got around them on a bypass and made it back to MSR, where once again beers were waiting for us before we even disembarked.
Hey, look what I found:
Also:
Hector, the guy who (near as I could translate) was the head of the support crew, is apparently good friends with the owner of this shop. He even had considered moving to Calgary to work at a Ford dealership as the lead tech for their proposed "factory offroad modifications" department. He and his wife came to check it out one February and she said there's no way in hell she would move to anywhere that got that cold :D
We added a shirt to the collection. Canadian Rednecks Represent!
Awesome poster in the bar.
So we basically got lightly plastered for a couple hours, talking with the hotel owner, his son, and the support crew. Apparently there was a small earthquake while we were in there, but I didn't notice :/
OK seriously now for a moment, moths are the most disgusting insects on the face of the planet and that is a goddamn quarter! *twitch*
I'd live here. I'd have the same issue as Hector however, although for the opposite reason :D
And in the morning, the buggies were turned around and fueled up again, ready and waiting.
Oops, maybe not quite ready. Maybe I was a bit too exuberant on the rocks the first day.
Now, here's the thing: any damage you do to the car, you pay for. They let me slide on that one, because it was kinda a crappy tire to start with.
Unlike any previous times I've wrecked a tire, this time I had a team of guys waiting just to fix such things. I could get used to that.
The support crew were actually awesome guys. Between their remedial ESL English, and my absolutely crap Spanish, we managed to get along pretty well.
We headed back out onto the lakebed. The first time we just bombed across it (aside from stopping for cervezas) but this time we stopped...
Our tour guide was way in front as always, and caught these guys doing donuts in their Humvee. Suddenly they were all business and demanded to 'inspect the cars for contraband'. This consisted of knocking on the bodypanels and asking us about the engines, the tires, how they handled and performed, etc. Soon it devolved into a discussion about the relative merits of the TSL Superswamper vs BFG MudTerrain lines of offroad tires and we were all friends.
Motorgeeks have a universal language, it appears... also I found my Spanish got better when there were 7.62x51 caliber rifles involved and in hands other than my own :/
Since we were already stopped, it only made sense to just screw around in the lakebed for a bit.
It was a big lakebed.
We made our way up to Mike's Sky Ranch, an amazing little hotel halfway up a mountainside that caters primarily to Baja racers.
Stickers everywhere again.
And inside, the front room was a tapestry of tshirts left by various sponsors and race teams.
After lunch, back on the trail. Lots of fast, deep sand on this stretch, so Jody was driving.
Matt and Lindsey, keeping up.
After a few hours, we stopped at another little "rancho" for refreshments. A lot of the farms out here are basically open to the offroading public and have a room set aside for drivers that are looking to buy a cold beer.
I have always respected those who live far from "civilization" and learn to be self sufficient and provide for their own needs.
BEST STICKER of the whole trip, hands down.
Back on the trail again.
After about 15 minutes, Jody has it pinned trying to catch up to the tour guide in the deep sand. We're drifting pretty hard around a corner and then THUMP and then you could just tell... something ain't right.
Oh... well crap.
Turns out there was a sharp rock hiding in the brush right on the edge of the trail, and he drifted the driver's side rear tire right into the point of it.
Jody posing with the rim and tire he just bought.
Pitcrew to the rescue.
And again we're moving.
The trick to deep sand, as explained by Jody and as experienced by myself on this trip (my first exposure to that terrain), is to keep the pedal on the firewall. Do not slow down. Matt and Lindsey slowed down. Pitcrew and tourist alike got in on the extraction effort.
I was impressed, in hindsight, that this was the only stuck on the entire tour.
Later on, Jody was still driving and we're looking for a right turn we're supposed to make through a gate in the fence to our right. We see it approaching and suddenly he's got us going damn near sideways again, fenceposts zipping by the front of the car going left to right. With the last post just about dead centre between the two front tires, he pulls off the gas, flicks the wheel, hammers the gas again, and we rocket forward over the cattleguard with a few inches to spare on the left and maybe a foot on the right. After my heart slid back down to its rightful position I was highly impressed.
It still kills me that you can drive one of these on the roads, no license plate, no turn signals, no problem.
Later in the day we encountered some vegetation that looked suspiciously like home.
And then it looked like Mexico again.
We got stuck for about an hour behind a convoy of military vehicles and official-looking minivans. Most people pull over on these back "roads" when they see race buggies in the mirror; these guys did not. We were guessing it was a politician's convoy or something. Turns out it was Mexican CSI investigating a drug-related multiple murder a few ranches over. "War on drugs" FTW.
Finally we got around them on a bypass and made it back to MSR, where once again beers were waiting for us before we even disembarked.
Hey, look what I found:
Also:
Hector, the guy who (near as I could translate) was the head of the support crew, is apparently good friends with the owner of this shop. He even had considered moving to Calgary to work at a Ford dealership as the lead tech for their proposed "factory offroad modifications" department. He and his wife came to check it out one February and she said there's no way in hell she would move to anywhere that got that cold :D
We added a shirt to the collection. Canadian Rednecks Represent!
Awesome poster in the bar.
So we basically got lightly plastered for a couple hours, talking with the hotel owner, his son, and the support crew. Apparently there was a small earthquake while we were in there, but I didn't notice :/
OK seriously now for a moment, moths are the most disgusting insects on the face of the planet and that is a goddamn quarter! *twitch*
I'd live here. I'd have the same issue as Hector however, although for the opposite reason :D