Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Travel Day | Loreto to Los Barriles, Mexico

ODOMETER: 84,770 | TODAY’S MILES: 284 | TOTAL MILES TRAVELED: 6,555

Gamble Family Adventures and Travel Blog | Jana

by Jana

Our initial plan was to drive from Loreto to La Paz today and then continue down to Los Barriles tomorrow. But in an effort to simplify the trip, we decided to complete the 5-hour and 45-minute drive to Los Barriles today. Telcel coverage looked promising for most of our journey, so after talking to Jack and Stellie about it, we collectively decided to leave for Los Barriles first thing and they would try to do their classes on the road.

The trip ended up an exercise in endurance. Between the narrow roads, steep grades, mountain ranges and dodging cows, mules and goats along the way, the trip took 7 hours and was exhausting. We had a beachfront spot reserved at the Baja Sunrise RV park in Los Barriles and the thought of getting there and not having to drive anywhere for a while kept us going. Telcel let us down, so Jack and Stellie missed several classes each, but it was worth it.

We pulled into what looked like paradise at Baja Sunrise. Beautiful palm trees swaying in the wind against a bright blue cloudless sky, bright tropical flowers on all sides of the RV spots, a turquoise and ultramarine ocean sparkling in the sun and a white sandy beach that was beckoning. The scene was so idyllic, it made the difficult 3 days of driving worth it.

Jorge, the park’s owner, came out to greet us and his kind “Don’t worry about anything, get settled and we’ll figure everything else out later” was music to our ears.

We were then greeted by our neighbors, Heidi and Talan from Wisconsin who have been spending 6 months a year here for about 5 years. They were extremely friendly and welcoming and we couldn’t feel more excited to be here. It almost seemed too good to be true.

We quickly figured out that indeed, things were not going to be as idyllic as they seemed. Our two biggest challenges this whole trip, our dogs and the internet, were here to stay.

As usual, the WiFi advertised at the park is patchy and insufficient. The internet system we have works pretty well in the U.S. but it’s based on Sprint so it’s useless here. Even though Sprint and T-Mobile are advertised as having merged, in reality that merger has not created a seamless network. The two networks remain separate, so just because Baja has T-Mobile coverage doesn’t mean that Sprint works here.

T-Mobile uses the Telcel network, so we purchased special routers in order to use prepaid Telcel SIM cards. However, we only have two routers which leaves Grant and me relying on the local WiFi. Also, data is pretty expensive.

As far as our dogs go, they were one of our main unknowns when we embarked on this trip. All three of them have lived their whole lives on a property and we never felt the need to socialize them with other dogs since we never planned on doing anything like this. It quickly became apparent that Phoebe, our Great Dane, was typically skittish and when triggered had a fierce protective instinct and would react aggressively toward dogs she perceived as a threat. On the flipside, she is extremely gentle and friendly to humans. We have worked with her relentlessly and she is now much better, only reacting to dogs that come out of nowhere or that are moving toward her in close proximity. This situation is typically controllable in the U.S. where most dog owners responsibly leash their dogs.

But Mexico is a whole other story. Not only are there stray dogs everywhere, almost none of the dogs we see are leashed. This means that we have to be extremely vigilant and dog walking can be pretty stressful at times.