After spending a few days at Bahia de los Angeles watching the Moon rise over the horizon, walking the beaches and relaxing we decided to continue north towards San Quintin.
First stop was Catervina to see some ancient cane paintings that were located in a desert area just outside town, there were also some interesting cactus.
Continuing on to San Quitin we stayed in the Mision Santa Maria parking lot for the night, there was a nice long beach here to take a walk along.
Next morning, we continued, this time stopping at Obervatorio da San Pedro located high in Parque Natural Sierra De San Pedro Martir at over elevation of 2800m/9186ft. When we arrived in the mid afternoon, the observatory was closed as they only open between 11am to 1pm.
We found a campsite in the National Park for the night and toured tte observatory next morning when it open.
This is the elevation at the observatory we parked at, 2820m/9252ft, this is the highest point in our travels to date. From here you can see both the Sea of Cortez in the east and the Pacific Ocean in the west and the Valle Santa Clara to the north.
There are three new observatories being built here in joint ventures between Mexico, USA and China where they will share control of the telescopes remotely.
On the way down a Coyote ran out onto the road in front of us.
From here we headed to Ensenada stopping for some diner of BBQ whole chicken, salad, beans and rice all for $5CND.
We also took a detour to some natural hot springs southwest of Ensenada. We thought we would camp at the hot springs, as it was along a very bumpy dirt road.
This turned out to be a bad idea as the place was full of families celebrating Samana Santa (Easter) with lots of food and loud music. In Mexico Easter celebrations can last for up to two weeks. Easter was the week before we were there, but celebrations were still in full swing!!. At this point we decided to go back to Ensenada for the night. When we arrived at our determined camp spot for the night we opened the camper door only to find out the inside of the camper was totally consumed in toxic gas. Stewart went in and opened the skylights and windows to dissipate the gas. At this point we decided we would book into a hotel for the night while the gas dissipated and we could figure out what the problem was.
Next morning the camper was clear and we could go in and found the problem, that being, our can of bear spray had discharged itself. We think this was due to it being punctured in the cabinet while on the bumpy road to the hot springs.
With this problem solved we set off with the skylights open slightly and our extraction fan on just for good measure. Our goal was to take MX2D across the northern part of the Baja to Mexicali where we would clear the US boarder and stay in El Centro for the night. This road is a toll-road and was a slow climb up and runs through a high pass before winding down into Mexicali.
We took our place in the line-up at the US border where vendors were trying to sell us all kinds of goodies from drinks to sombreros.
It took us 3 hours to cross the boarder, 2 hours to get to the customs officer, 5 minutes to cross into Calexico where we parked the truck and walked back to the Mexican Banaceto Office to cancel our Tourist Visa and stamp our passports, this took another 15 minutes then another 45 minutes to clear the US Customs again. After this we continued up to El Centro, had some dinner and parked at Walmart for the night.
Next: Southwestern USA.