We knew we had a few outs as we sat on the beach in Pelican Bay. The highway wasn't that far away and 3 or 4 times every day The Green Angels would be passing by. If you've never heard about Los Angelos de Verde they are a very cool service provided by the Mexican Government that cruises the highways and byways of Mexico rescueing stranded touristas in car trouble. They drive green trucks loaded with parts and tools, they speak great english and have saved many a stranded gringo on Mexico's deserted desert roads. We had enough supplies to last 4-5 days at least so we figured we'd put some energy into trying to get 'er running first then see. Next morning after out traditional beans-eggs-coffee-sprinkled wood ash breakfast we got to putting the jidsaw puzzle distributor cap back together. A few large chunks still were attached to their spark plug wires so we marked them before we moved them to our tarp-workbench. Sure enough we had all the pieces and fitting them together wasn't that difficult but we had no glue. What we did have was a roll of elastoplast bandage in our funky first-aid kit. We bandaged our bits together and snapped the mass into place. Next we re-connected the wires we had marked and set about figuring out where the others should connect. We tried a few different combinations with no luck but it did fire once so we knew there was hope. Sure enough before lunch we had 'er running again.
Next step was to go back to the arroyo seco and build a much better bridge. This time we used our little fold up shovel to dig down the edges and hauled way more rocks and branches including lots of palm fronds from along paradise beach. After a couple hours during morning and evening of the next 2 days it looked fairly good. We spent our final evening there finishing off our beer supplies just to lighten our load.
Early the next morning we packed up said our prayers to the road gods and turned back toward our bridge. We knew there'd be only one shot at it and that the 'fast as hell' method had sorta worked the first time so off we flew in a cloud of sand. This time we hit the bridge straight on and though it crumbled behind us we made it. Things went flying around in the truck as i kept the pedal to the metal and we raced back uphill toward the highway. As we hit the highway and took a hard left Barry started re-stowing the gear. "Holy shit, look at this" he yelled. i looked back and saw he was holding a fairly full bottle of tequila that we'd stashed under the seat way back in Ensenada. Needless to say we took this as a sign and drank it while singing Barry's songs as we rolled south.
We stopped a couple times for gas at the Pemex stations along the way but nobody had any idea where we'd find a new distribuor cap before La Paz so we just kept going. We pulled into the Chevy dealership on the outskirts of La Paz 2 days later amazed at our luck. Our spanish was very rudimentary so was their english but soon between hand signals and good intentions we had the manager looking under the hood at our bandaged up cap. After looking he just closed the hood and said "no problemo" we followed him back inside expecting him to get us a new cap. But he just started dealing with the next customer. Thankfully this next guy was bi-lingual and after he'd finished we asked him to please translate for us. A culture lesson quickly followed. The manager couldn't understand that we wanted a new cap even though our old one still worked, we all had a good laugh, he'd never seen such a thing. But he knew all gringos were locos so he sold us a new one. We stuck it in the back of the truck and kept going to the little municipal campground beside the terminal for the ferry to Mazatlan.
It took a couple days to get the right 'permits' and pay all the 'fees' but we made it and by late the second afternoon we were chugging our way accross the Gulf of California on the overnight ride to Mazatlan. Whadda ride it was, there were staterooms but we traveled on deck with the Mexicans. The ship bounced like a bronco through the huge swells, the women wailed "dios meo" and crossed themselves constantly, deck rails were shoulder to shoulder with seasick wayfarers, including me and Barry a couple of times. During the night the Dino truck drivers staged cockfights on the upper deck, we got to watch because they all thought i was the biggest guy they'd ever seen and wanted to be me amigo. By the time we got off the next afternoon in Mazatlan we had mucho amigos and were barricho again.
A few days later my daughter was due to fly in to meet us for a week of beach holiday there. More on our excellant adventure tomorrow.
