January 2nd, Saturday – Chula Vista to San Quintin
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| Loading our Toyota 4-Runner at the Holiday Inn |
After an uninspired Holiday Inn breakfast buffet, we ask Siri directions to Ensenada. I drive and Art navigates and the border crossing is disappointingly easy. No one asks to see our passports and we miss the turn out immediately after the border crossing where Dave has told us to pull over to get our visa’s. Art is very anxious about this and mutters that we will all be taken away in handcuffs. We cruise through Tijuana quickly. The immense fence paralleling the U.S. Mexican border is off putting and inhospitable and topped with wicked curls of barbed wire. Thirty minutes later we pull into a rest stop where other travelers tell us not to worry about our visas; that the visa office is closed today anyway because it is New Year’s day. We also learn that one does not need a visa if one is staying in Mexico 7 days or less (actually this applies withing 20 miles of the border)so we are more relaxed as we continue our drive to San Quintin.
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| Roadside Lunch in San Vicente |
Shortly after 1:00 P.M. we stop in a small town to look for lunch. Art asks a bored local man where to find a restaurant and he points across the street to a large beer sign. We drive over and park in front of a tiny open fronted restaurant. Two men are finishing their lunch of folded tortillas stuffed with meat and cheese. John and Will point to what the men are eating and order two of the same. Art and I peer over the counter and see that the women also have a plastic container of cold and coagulated chile rellenos. We each order one with rice and beans and she puts them on the grill. The restaurant is little more than an open camp kitchen with two tables but I ask for a restroom and the younger of the two women takes me a few buildings down the dusty street and into the back courtyard of a private home. We pass the family sitting in a back courtyard and she points to the toilet door, askew on it’s hinges. The young woman who is escorting me hands the woman in the courtyard a coin to pay for my toilet. I wash my hands in a large bucket filled with opaque blue water, presumably infused with some sort of soap. Lunch is reasonably good but I worry that we may get Montezuma’s revenge.
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| Hotel Jardines Courtyard |
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| Hotel Jardines Grounds |
Art drives the final leg of today’s road trip to San Quintin. We have reservations at Hotel Jardines and following Dave’s directions find the turn off on the right, at the far side of town. We follow the well graded gravel road 900 meters to the west and are surprised and delighted to find this garden oasis in dusty San Quintin. We have reserved a family room with three queen beds and we maneuver our suitcases and Art’s Bicycle into our room before exploring the lush grounds and surveying the restaurant.
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| Margaritas at Hotel Jardines Restaurant Bar |
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| Barbecue Snails |
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| Father and Son |
The boys are a minute ahead of Art and me and when we catch up to them at the restaurant, we find them sitting at a table in the bar having already ordered a pitcher of margaritas. We settle into Baja time. It’s much too early for dinner but we peruse the dinner menu and order a platter of barbecued sea snails as an appetizer, in honor of John’s Moorera project. They arrive sliced and barbecued, piled in the center of a large platter rimmed with toasted bread. They are chewy, flavorful and surprisingly good. We ask our waiter the kind of sea snail and he confesses that they are from a can, but in the process, he tells us that it’s just a short drive down to the oyster beds where we can eat fresh oysters. His instructions take us a kilometer north on the main highway with a left turn just before the military base. We are instructed to follow a dirt road several Kilometers down towards the beach and that the road will go between two “volcanoes.” Miraculously we get his directions right and find the oyster beds and the makeshift beach side restaurant. There are a several plastic tables and chairs and a barbecue grill. Art orders a dozen raw and a dozen cooked oysters. I sample one of the raw oysters but oysters are not my thing and I leave the rest for the boys and enjoy watching them slurp down their slippery treats as the sun sets and the water turns a steely silvery grey.
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| John and Will Eating Oysters |
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| Preparing the Oysters |
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| Art and Will Eating Oysters |
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| Sunset at the Oyster Beds |
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| Barbecuing Oysters |
When we return to Hotel Jardines restaurant for dinner and thank our waiter for telling us about the oyster beds. We each order various platters of fresh fish; all very good. It is very cold when we head back to our non heated room, but seemingly everyone sleeps well enough.
