We packed up the gazebo, chairs and matting and cleaned out Howie for the next leg of the adventure. We changed things around a bit for this leg and things seem to be fitting better. The campsite has water and dumps at the campsites, so we filled up and cleaned up and made sure we were all set. We decided to get a shower on our way out of the park instead of packing last. The showers were hot and clean and it was nice to get the salt and sand off.
We saw they had a Walmart in town so we wanted to take a look. There are several other Mercados in the area, but we were trying to find some pods for the black tank and thought that would be the best bet. It turned out the Walmart did not have an RV section and we couldn’t get the pods. We did find some water and some other necessary supplies. We spent about $17 for water, tortillas, a bell pepper, and some bathroom supplies for Kathy. Across the street there was a Pemex station so we topped off the Diesel. The cost was $40 for about 7.5 gallons, which is $5.25 per gallon. We were paying about $3.50 in the states before we left.
We headed to the Malecon (Boardwalk) area of Penasco to see if we could get a sticker and to check out some shops. I managed to find a parking spot for Howie and actually parallel parked the beast. Kathy also found some vitamins at one of the “pharmacies” for about $10. The pharmacies are not like Los Algasdones in that they seem to only have a few of the items, and not a full store. The Malecon ares is nice and filled with tons of vendors selling all of the typical Mexico items from shirts, to talavera, to silver trinkets.
We headed out towards San Felipe around 12:30. We needed to get on the road since we agreed to not drive at night and that put us there at around 5PM. Or so we thought. LOL. The drive was through the desert and sand dunes up and around the Sea of Cortez. on Mexico highway 4 at El Doctor, there was a military inspection point. We got in the line with personal vehicles and after 20 minutes waiting, the soldier told us we had to turn around and get in the line with the Semi trucks. He had the gun, and I don’t know spanish yet, so I turned us around. We were #5 in line and it took about 60 minutes to get to the inspection, which went pretty quick. The soldier looked around inside, asked about our bin of alcohol (left over from our move out) and poked in the closets and cabinets. 5 minutes and we were done after a 90 minutes wait.
We headed north and then turned south on MX 5 but realized that the time change also changed the sunset time to 4:38PM and we would not make it to San Felipe before dark. So we got on iOverlander and found a wild camp about 400 meters off the road that was next to some sand dunes. It was easy to find, easy to get to, and quiet. The night stars and the moon later in the evening were amazing. I took some pictures with the night settings on the iPhone and they came out like it was daylight.
The night was peaceful and quiet and we got a great night of rest. Tomorrow we will make the 90 minute journey into San Felipe and find a place to hang out for a few days.