Back In The Dirt (Day Seven)

After a lovely night’s sleep in a big soft bed, we packed up and had a nice resort hotel breakfast and got back on the road. We had a lot of miles to go, and we were looking forward to taking the last part of the actual rally route off pavement to get into our next campsite in San Juanico, aka Scorpion Bay.

We backtracked our way up the highway, zagging over to La Paz and zigging back over to Ciudad Constitución. Stopped for a quick lunch and kept powering north.

Early afternoon we finally got to the spot we could leave the highway. Now we’d see what that “new” spring could do! Luckily, these roads weren’t too hairy – just sandy and a bit bumpy. No problem.

Along the way we detoured to see an abandoned town out in the desert. This was a normal small Baja desert town until 2006, when Hurricane John pummeled the Baja. This place was positively eerie. Our rally roadbook informed us that some residents are actually moving back into the town (which you could see evidence of in one area) but most of it is like every town you see driving down the road, only shelled out and empty.

We carried on down long stretches of smooth sandy road and several water crossings. There were roads going off every which way, but we stuck to the track and soon came into view of a beautiful bay. And for once, we were arriving before most everyone else! We navigated down to the beach and, along with a few other rally teams, established a camp spot.

We had a really fun night! It felt like what the rally would have been if the competition had been allowed to proceed… everyone gathering around a fire (using firewood we’d all been gathering along the way) and sharing stories of the adventures we’d had so far. We stayed up late and crawled into the tent tired and happy.