South to Casa Metta, our Home for a Month

After Saturday night in La Paz we headed to Tecolote, the beach just south of La Paz, rather than drive on a Sunday on Baja, generally not a good idea. We have been told there tends to be copious drinking and driving on Sundays, so a good day to just hole up. Tecolote is a beautiful white sand beach with lots of shells – I know, I think there is something about women and shells – we just have to collect em. As much as I kept reminding myself I already have many containers of shells at home, as much as I walked along doing my best to hold my head up and look into the distance, I kept finding myself finding more treasures along our walks. Even trying to make a deal with myself: nothing in my hands or pockets till on the way back, no matter how pretty…. To no avail; before I knew it I had my hands and pockets full. Of course Lorne will not carry any of my treasures for me; in fact he tries to get me to carry great huge rocks, insisting they are absolutely beautiful and must be carted back, by me. I think he is having me on.

After completely filling the motor home with bags of good things to eat and drink from Soriannos, and CCC, our favourite supermarkets on the Baja, we headed south for the final few hours drive to Los Barriles and our home at Casa Metta for the next month. The road was twisty and narrow – so what else is new you ask? Well we were able to look down on small interesting pueblos and more lush vegetation, palm trees, bougainvilleas if glorious flower; there is definitely water in this area.

Los Barriles was a welcome sight and we could see some of the remains of the damage deal from Hurricane John. The roads through the two arroyos were quite damaged and have not been repaired yet, although there is work on them and there is an alternative road beside the one being repaired.

There are two choices of roads to get out to where we are staying – the paved road through mountain passes that eventually gets to El Cardonel and has a cut off road through the arroyo to Rancho Pescadero where we are located, or the sand Beach Road. We were advised to take the paved mountain road. Oh my goodness….. what a scarey trip!! It’s only about 11 km or so north from Los Barriles on this road – however – it has suffered horrendous damage from the hurricane. Coming this way was a bad decision.

Our first clue should have been when the road crew, who were busy sweeping the road with their new brooms and wearing their brand new safety vests (very unusual to have safety vests on the Baja) looked quite stunned as we drove by. Not a single smile, not a single wave, nada. You have to realize that in Baja, whenever we pass a Mexican they smile and wave; men, women, children – really – everyone does it, and we find that we are cheerfully waving back to complete strangers whenever we pass anyone. As you drive through the little pueblos you are greeted with big smiles and waves from everyone on the street, the truck drivers driving by or passing smile and wave (I wish they would keep both hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road) all the road crews stop working and smile and wave. Even those guys on the telephone poles smiled and waved! BUT – not these guys on this road.

Our next clue – not one single person passed us, nor did we meet anyone on this highway (thank goodness as we were hugging the left side of the road and this is not Britain). Back to this mountain road… I wish I could post pictures – I was trying to distract myself from completely losing it by taking pictures - there were about five places where the road was narrowed to one lane. Why? because the other lane was gone – truly gone – as in down the mountain gone. There was one spot, the very last gruesome piece where it truly looked to me that there was nothing underneath the pavement we were about to go over. The road was so undermined…. I was trying my best to be calm and keep breathing as I demanded that Lorne move over more from my edge – he kept telling me that he couldn’t as there was nothing on his side either ….. now what does that tell you?? I think we are very lucky to be alive.

We successfully made our turnoff (obviously) to cross through the arroyo to Rancho Pescadero (the name of our small community of 8 houses along the beach) however, as we drove on this narrow sandy road throught the arroyo we met two large trucks, one of them the water truck and we knew that at this time of day they could only be heading back to Los Barriles - so they drive that road…. Regularly we find out. And they live. At least so far. HOWEVER – that does not mean that we will drive it. Ever. Again. At least not this trip south…. and certainly not with me in the motor home. What remains to be seen is how on earth we are going to get out of here. I think a helicopter would be good.

At last Casa Metta! Ah what a wonderful sight, we can just relax and enjoy for many days to come. The grandchildren arrive on the 5th (and their parents) for 10 days. That will be fun. We have a little pool (actually a large hot tub) so the kids should have fun with that. Of course there is the ocean at our doorstep as well and low and behold a good effect of Hurricane John is that the beach has returned to sand – the last two years the beach was deep in round boulders, very slippery when getting in and out of the water. Sand is much better.