Wow it's been an marathon 4 day drive so far and still 930 kilometers to go! We left La Paz on Sunday morning after having put Kasasa to bed for the summer. We made good time and our first night was spent camping in San Ignacio right on the river. How strange and wonderful to find ourselves surrounded for miles by palm trees when we are located smack dab in the middle of Baja, Mexico which is pretty much a desert of sand, rock and cactus. But every so often there are these amazing oaisis that have palm trees and birds and rivers. San Ignacio is at the head of a very large lagoon which leads out to the Pacific Ocean and is a major whale watching destination to see the baby grey whales. But for us this time around it was just an overnight stopping place. During the night we could hear a fish/bird/frog or whatever croaking very loudly all night. It sounded like a fog horn. The cool part was that it would croak in a series and all down the river you could hear others croaking too. With the full moon shinning on the palms and river and these sounds, I felt like I was in the movie 'Avatar'.
Day two we drove and drove and ended up spending the night in Ensenada. Nothing too exciting to report about that except that in the morning as we were driving away I turned my head and looked out the passenger side window behind Ian who was driving. I just caught a glimpse of this humungous spider crawling up the window and onto the roof of the car!!! I could barely speak and I told Ian to pull over and I jumped out of the car and ran to the sidewalk. Ian got out and saw the BIG spider on the roof and swatted it off. I was convinced it was a small trantula but Ian said it was just a big wolf spider. So I googled it and I think he was right but my god it was BIG and HAIRY! About 2 inches long! Ever since I've been spooked and if anything touches me in the car I jump.
Then onto the border. We decided to drive through wine country and cross in Tecate where they make the beer, because it seemed less busy and scary than Tijauana. Since it wasn't busy at all I guess they decided to kill some time by making us pull over and going through the car. Everything had to come out. When he called us over once he was finished he had my cactus box that a friend had given me and he said I couldn't bring it because the cactus used is an endangered species. I convinced him that the artist had a license to use that wood (which is what me and my friend were told) and there is a sticker on the bottom with the artist name and phone number. So he said okay but not to try it again. So now I have to hope the Canadian border guards is as understanding.
I find it interesting that people are afraid to come to Mexico. The two days we drove north we went through 5 army checkpoints where there are lots of army guys standing around holding machine guns. But at each stop when they asked us to step out of the car so they could poke around they were very polite. And as the one or two guys looked in the trunk and car, we often spoke in our broken Spanish with the other army guys. They were very polite, liked to joke and very friendly. So then we get to the US border and even the woman at the booth seems intimidating and they are only carrying a small side arm gun. But they are unfriendly and not interested in chatting or joking around. It's all serious business. More scary than Mexico I think.
Anyhow on that note, we are now in Oregon having driven through the farmbelt of California which was very beautiful. Now we are just riding the I5 home. Tonight we are camped beside a babbling river which will be very nice to fall asleep to. Vancouver either late tomorrow or early Friday.