In the course of eight full years of driving the Baja peninsula, Robert, Rob and I can attest to one piece of popular advice - that is to fill your gas tank "wherever you can, whenever you can." Just because we totally agree with this advice, though, does not necessarily mean that we follow it all the time.
So far, on three of our four major trips together down to Cabo San Lucas, we have had situations where we have needed gas fairly urgently. One time, it hardly affected us at all. Another time, two of us cut it very close, and the third time, it knocked our schedule totally off of what we had planned.
The first case happened, naturally, on the first day of our first trip. The three of us had never been further south of San Vicente in a car before, but we felt we were prepared for anything. After all, we had the AAA Baja book and map, and we had read up pretty well in preparation for this trip. We had filled the tank of Rob's Honda in San Quintin. El Rosario was the next town with gas, but it was only a scant 35 miles away, so no need for gas there. On the way to Cataviña, we decided to take the short side route to Mision San Fernando.
After leaving the mission, we cruised into Cataviña, our tank still almost ½ full. As we passed the tiny "town," it did not appear gas was available anywhere, so on we drove another 65 miles to the Bahia de Los Angeles junction, where we found the gas station to be closed. We were now at about ¼ tank. Villa Jesus Maria was the next option, about 50 miles away. When we arrived, there was indeed a line at the gas station. We got in as the third car on the right side (there were also two cars on the left).
As we sat and waited, it seemed the pumping was going a bit slow. Upon closer inspection, we discovered that the "attendant" (actually, a teenage boy) was pumping gas from barrels into the pumps, then into the cars ahead of us. Well, at least we would be able to get gas.
After 35 minutes, our turn came, but the boy had stopped pumping. In fact, he was changing pump covers. We asked him how much more time this would take, and he said 30 minutes. Well, we decided that in 30 minutes, we could be in Guerrero Negro, but we were now at about 1/8 of a tank. Rob assured us we could make it, and he was correct. We made it into Guerrero Negro, and the gas station, with no problem. This did show us, though, that gas was definitely not reliable in Baja. You'd have thought that we would have learned this and put it to good use. Think again!
The next case involved just Rob and I. We had just said goodbye to Robert as we left Cabo in 1996 (Robert had to get home early, so he arranged to drive down with us, and fly back). We filled the tank of my Acura, and headed out. Originally, we had planned to drive to La Paz, spend the better part of the day at Tecolote beach, then head to Loreto for the night. However, once we got going, we decided that without Robert, the trip was essentially over, and it was time to head home.
We agreed to try to drive as far north as we could that day, in hopes of being home in 2 days. This meant that we did not even so much as stop in La Paz. We began to look forward to the delicious tortas for lunch in Loreto, and I think that this may have influenced our decisions not to stop in La Paz, El Cien, or Ciudad Constitution for gas. We didn't think this would be a problem, however, because the map said there was a gas station in Ciudad Insurgentes.
Sure enough, the map was right. However, the gas station was closed, and didn't look like it had even been opened for years. Now we had a problem. Perhaps too stubborn to turn around, we decided that my fuel efficient vehicle could make it to Loreto with what little fuel we had left.
As we got into the hills just south of Loreto, though, we began to believe that we may have made a big mistake. My gas gauge had slowly moved to the lower portion of the "E" stripe, and we were still at least 15 miles away from town. We pulled over, and put in a pint of gas treatment, hoping that it would miraculously help us to get at least 15 miles further down the road. As we pulled out of the hills, the road straightened out. Ten more miles to go. We began to wonder out loud if we would make it.
As we got closer and closer to the city, however, we began to get less nervous. If we ran out on the road, at least we wouldn't have as far to walk. We ended up getting to the gas station, with our engine still running. We breathed a sigh of relief as we filled up the tank. We ended up driving over 360 miles to the tank (+ one pint of gas treatment), which translates to roughly 27 miles to the gallon. We got an idea of just how close we came to running out, when Rob tried to start the car after getting the gas. At first the car would not turn over, because there was no gas left in the fuel lines.
Our third and clearly worst episode, happened on our second trip. There were four of us, the three normal ones plus Jorge, and we had spent the first night of our trip in Mulege. When we got into town, it was raining pretty heavily, so we did not stop for gas before going to the hotel. We were close to ½ tank in Robert's Taurus. We were not overly concerned, however, because we could always fill up the next morning.
As we left Mulege, it wasn't until we were back on Highway 1 before someone realized that we had forgotten to get gas in town and suggested we return to fill up (I don't recall who made this revelation, I know it wasn't me). This person was out-voted 3 to 1, for two reasons. One, we could easily get to Loreto and fill up there, and two, we were already on the highway, and we were simply too lazy to turn around. Rarely is someone out-voted by his peers, and then proven correct. This was one of those rare occasions.
After a stop at Santispac, we pulled into Loreto, and immediately headed for the Pemex station. There, we found three other cars, with the drivers out talking to each other and the station attendant. The hose was still on the pump. Not a good sign. We inquired about the availability of fuel, and were told that gas would get there "around 4:00" (it was 12:00).
There had been a series of rainstorms up north that had washed out portions of Highway 1 (we saw two such places), and apparently the gas trucks were delayed in getting through. We were too far away from the next station, either north or south. In essence, we were stuck. So we went from planning a big night in La Paz, to checking into a hotel in Loreto. This meant that in our 2nd day, we had managed to drive a total of 84 miles!
We made the most of it, swimming and playing in the hotel pool all night, but it threw our whole "schedule" off by about ½ day (bear in mind, Rob and I had talked about this trip for some 200 days, so this schedule was well thought out). We ended up getting gas around 5:00, after an over 2-hour wait in line. To show how long we waited, Rob and I drove to the station, waited a good half hour, Rob got out and walked back to the hotel, and was back to the car by the time I was ready to pump the gas. It was getting dark already when we got our gas. We headed out early the next morning, and still got to La Paz at a reasonable time, but we had, again, learned our lesson (or so we thought).
We still always make a point of telling one another to "fill up wherever we can, whenever we can" when we go on our trips. I guess we just don't like to listen.