Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Baja - 3 - Across

By the time we settled in to our room in Ensenada and got ready to head out for dinner, it was about 8:00 PM.  

The cruise ship was just heading out to its next port of call.  The snowbirds are in the midst of their northern migration so things were pretty quiet in town. So quiet, in fact, that our preferred restaurants had closed for the evening.  It fact most every place was closed except the loud karaoke bar.  If it wasn't that they serve one hell-of-a-good Caesar, we may not have stopped there either. 

Back and settled in early, gave us an fresh start about 8:00 this morning.  

We had checked the previous evening, at the restaurant where we first met "Elvis" (Miguel?).  They told us he is now working mornings so we decided to make that our destination for breakfast.  As luck would have it, they were not open when we arrived. Just across the street was a good meal.  

On the road early, we topped off the tanks and hit the trail.  It was a beautiful day for a cruise.

 

 We had a little over 150 miles of mostly twisty road to travel over to find the other side of Baja and the Sea of Cortez. 

There are several resorts and "camps" along the road into San Felipe before you hit town proper. We had seen these on a previous trip down and since it was still early, we decided to stop and have a look around.  


The first stop was at El Dorado Ranch. I huge development with condos, rentals, golf course and all of the rest of the facilities.  A look around and a stop for a quick beer and we were off to the next stop. 

This time we stopped at Pete's Camp.  A rather large place that features a restaurant/bar with acres of houses of every description. Single wides under awnings to large homes. Quite an interesting mix. The whole place seemed to be teaming with lots of nice people. 

We saw a few interesting things and met some of the locals over a couple of beers.  After a nice visit, it was time to saddle up and head into town to get a room, clean up and play tourist for the afternoon. 

Peter went to hit the start button in his bike and nothing, nada, completely dead…. The bike showed no signs of life at all.  A few checks of the obvious things and still nothing… Humm, a few hundred miles to the nearest dealer.  Well nothing much better to do than to grab the tools we brought and tear into the beast. 


They let us wheel the the bike into the shade of a carport to work on it.  We were also directed to one of the local Baja racers and suggested that he would be glad to help.  After tearing the plastic body panels off and digging into the innards, it seemed that the battery had up and died. 

We took the battery to the Baja racer to see if he could check it.  He was able to confirm that the battery had died and amazingly offered us a car to run into town to buy another battery.  

You won't find any more friendly and helpful people anywhere.  Perhaps it has something to do with an environment where you might need help someday yourself.  It's pretty sparse around here and a helping hand could save your life. 

Anyway, we hopped in the car and headed off in search of a battery. 


The first, and recommended auto parts store had a pretty good selection of batteries. Nothing exactly like what we needed, but pretty darned close.   

We decided  to shop around.  The next stop was at a motorbike repair shop. They had several chickens, dogs and broken bikes and quads but no suitable battery.  


The next stop was a beauty shop and alternator repair (in the same shop). Again, some options but nothing good enough. 

Back to the first store to grab the best compromise.  It was getting late by now and it needed to be fixed. 

Things fired up when all was reassembled.  Peter thanked the Baja racer with a bottle of tequila and were planning on stopping by tomorrow to say hi. 


A great dinner at El Nido and a margarita on the Malecon.   A full and interesting day. 

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