Traveler's Report

The following are some observations from an aborted trip which started on 18 July 2001 and ended the next morning.

We had planned to explore the mid-peninsula area roughly around Calmalli, Mision Santa Gertrudis, Sierra San Francisco, Santa Marta, Bahia San Juan Bautista, and the coast southward over a five-day period in a 95 Toyota 4-Runner. Unfortunately, a bad throttle position sensor forced us to turn around four miles north of Cataviña.

Specifics:

1. Gasoline - No problem getting three full cans (18 gallons) on my roof rack across the border. However, I have read that it is illegal to carry full cans into Mexico. Therefore, I do not recommending trying this. No Rojo was available south of Maneadero. If you want Rojo in your extra cans and you plan to turn off the highway north of Guerrero Negro, as we had planned on doing, fill your cans in Maneadero.
   
   
2. Beer - We paid around $4.50 for a six pack of Pacifico cans twice, once in San Vicente and once in El Rosario. A six pack of Negra Modelo bottles was around $6.50 in both places. This is a far cry from the $4.00 a case plus $1.00 a case deposit we used to pay in the mid-80's for Pacifico and Corona.
   
   
3. Checkpoints - Going south, we encountered checkpoints south of Maneadero (permanent and joint PJF/Army checkpoint) and at San Agustin (Army checkpoint). We were waved through south of Maneadero and searched for five minutes at San Agustin. Going north, we encountered two open checkpoints. The San Agustin checkpoint had just closed down as we were coming through (around sunset), so we weren't stopped here. We were searched for three minutes at the Maneadero checkpoint by PJF agents. And we were searched for about 15 minutes at the Rosarito toll booth by a young army soldier. In both cases heading north, I took the advice of a previous writer who recommended that travelers display a family picture in plain view of the inspectors. So I hung a (recent) 5 x 7 wedding picture containing my wife in a wedding dress and myself in a dress Navy uniform. The results were mixed. In the case of the Maneadero checkpoint, as soon as one of the PJF agents saw the picture and asked me a few questions about my rank and what I did, he called several agents over. The stern faces were quickly replaced by smiles. The agents never finished the inspection, and we were on our way about one minute later. Just the opposite happened at the Rosarito toll booth. As soon as the soldier saw the picture and asked what I did, he snorted with contempt and arrogance and drastically slowed down his search speed while increasing the thoroughness of his search.
   
   
4. Crossing the border northbound - For years, I have taken the eastern approach through the Rio Zone when coming north at San Ysidro. It now appears that it is faster, at least in the middle of the night around 1 am, to take the toll road all the way to Playas de Tijuana and approach from the west. On that side, cars were only waiting around five minutes to cross. Having taken the Rio approach, we waited 30 minutes to cross while dealing with several attempts at cutting in front of us. In one instance, a Sentra got about an inch from my truck, and my passenger had to reach out and fold the Sentra's driver side side-view mirror in to avoid scraping. A verbal exchange ensued with the Sentra driver repeating several times, "No toucha my car."

   In summary, we are anxious to go back. The second half of 2001 will probably be the last chance we get to take a serious Baja trip for the next four years as we will soon be off to lovely Newport, Rhode Island.

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   Baja California Information Pages - Contents Page: http://math.ucr.edu/ftm/baja.html