Looking for a shower
Day 160
Los Barilles, BCS, Mexcico
Roland had most of the shade under the campsite tree and hence was getting more sleep than me, I got up at 9.30 as usual when the suns heat on the tent became unbearable and went to work on my latest obsession, putting the date information on my GPS track. Using Excel I was slowly working out how to search through the information until the date changed and then put in a marker which would also be a link to that days blog entry, but my lack of knowledge of excel macros was holding me back and I couldn’t understand why it was giving me errors. My laptop battery doesn’t last very long anyway and Roland blearily enquired from his tent which bastard was running a generator so close to his head so early… I told him it was 10.30am and shocked him into getting up. We had kind of decided to leave and go north somewhat, if only to look for a shower. Roland is cool, if I had wanted to stay another day it would have been no problem, but we were both getting a bit smelly and the milk had run out! :p
Back on the appalling road we learned it soon became sealed and then we only had to watch for the usual insane pot holes dotted around the highway and the ever present ‘topes’ or speed bumps. There was an occasional cow wandering too and we saw a couple of escaped horses but I kept my speed down enough to avoid such dangers. Later on we saw a rolled car, complete with emergency vehicles right outside a school along with scores of on looking children and a body on the ground… Not the way I want to go…
Up at the next town, Las Lagunas, we drove around looking for a Taco place and checked out the beach. There was no surf as promised in our guidebooks so we looked, reversed and drove off towards Santiago. We needed somewhere to camp, with a shower and we hoped to find somewhere there. The weather is just great now, its mid twenties all day and the nights are usually cloudless with a nearly full moon, cold enough to enjoy a fire but not so cold to be uncomfortable. Perfect weather, it can’t last. When we eventually found Santiago we discovered a charming little town with no cheap food and no where to camp. The one hotel/bar in town was no longer allowing camping and again we couldn’t find a Taco place. I was getting very hungry now after only eating half a papaya in the morning but Los Barriles was only 25km away and I thought I could make it.
It would take longer since seeing my first dead Mexican…
Los Barriles is gringo-ville but still we couldn’t find a cheap taco stand, there was a nice seafood restaurant though and after not paying for accommodation for 10 days or so could afford to spend the $10 on the seafood soup which was very tasty but not very filing. I will get the special Tacos tomorrow then, Marlin, Octopus and Shrimp. If I didn’t eat seafood now I would be losing lots of weight or possibly ballooning out on cheesy quesadillas. The town was dotted with RV sites and after checking out the nice, but empty beach we decided to splurge on the $13 to park up and get a hot shower. The RV park is really just a big car park for Americans but lots of them stay here for months and make their spots really quite nice, planting fauna around and even building their own shower blocks on their sites. We settled for a place to pitch our tents and I got the usual regular comment about my Massachusetts licence plate. ‘Yes I have come quite a way….’.
Tonight was a lunar eclipse at 8pm so we showered, went to get beer and went over to the pot luck by the beach to watch the show. Roland didn’t know what a pot-luck was and seemed disappointed when I explained it wouldn’t be a party for stoners :p It was moderately cloudy but regular breaks meant that we saw most of what was going on . I have seen 2 solar eclipses but can’t remember if I have every seen a lunar eclipse. They happen regularly enough but its usually too cold or late to watch them. Either that or I have something more interesting to do. It wasn’t exactly mind blowing so we finished our beers and then went looking for some action in town, which basically meant we went for a walk because there was nothing going on at all…
Doing gps logs/papaya/sealed road/crappy beach at next town/no camping at santiago/up to los Barillos/seafood soup/shower at camground/130 pesos/out for beer/lunar eclipse/looking for bar/charlie wilsons war
Tags: blog, tents, beers, sleep, set, gps, laptop, crap, cheap food, balloon