Wyoming to Panama and back in a UZJ100.

[SNLC]

There is a nasty cactus in Baja you got to watch out for!

Cheers

 

[SNLC]

More from Cabo Pulmo.

Cheers

 

[SNLC]

Cheers

 

[SNLC]

From Cabo Pulmo we decided to go up to Los Barrilles. Ultimately we were making our way back up to La Paz because we would be taking the ferry from there to mainland Mexico but we had a lot of places we still wanted to go.

In Los Barrilles it started raining so we got some sushi, both got a shave at the barber and grabbed a hotel. We went out on the town and partied a bit that night as well.

From here we headed north up the coast. The road turns from paved to sand to rocks. It is a fantastic drive but don't attempt it without a 4wd and some clearance, some sections have big rocks.

We had no plans and had plenty of time.....

Cheers

 

[SNLC]

We found an amazing spot to camp along this road. Had it all to ourselves! This was much more our style than some of the touristy spots we hit earlier in the trip. So we knew as soon as we pulled in we would camp here for awhile.

Cheers

 

[SNLC]

The rock here is great for climbing and we even find an anchor up top to rope off of. So we enjoy some climbing while we are here, the first real climbing on the trip. I think we spent three days camping here before moving on.

Here is a youtube video of this location and another of Roy bouldering on the rock.





From here we headed north towards the Bahia Los Muertos.

Cheers

 

[SNLC]

We make it to Bahia Los Muertos and go for some lunch.

That night we just camp down on the beach from the restaurant a ways in the dunes. The next day we head for La Paz and spend the day in town getting the truck washed, grabbing lunch, using free wifi and grabbing supplies before heading up to Playa Tecolote where we plan to camp for awhile and do a bunch of drone filming for TRAK. It is a touristy hot spot but mostly for just day trippers and we will just post up in the parking lot while here and camp out of the truck.

Cheers

 

[SNLC]

We were coming to the end of our Baja trip. We knew it even if we were not talking about it much or planning anything. It just started feeling like it was time to move on and get to mainland Mexico. We had a long ways to go and had already been in Baja over a month. We could easily have stayed here another month or two, there were a lot of places left to go and things to do but we were getting that itch to move on. We had gotten well over 15hrs of video footage just for TRAK as they had requested and we wanted to get one last good round before leaving Baja. We knew Tecolote was a good spot for it.

I will tell you, I have lot's of pictures from this trip but I have way way more video. We were taking a lot of video because we had planned to do a bunch of video series on youtube. More about this later.


So Tecolote and parking lot camping!

Cheers

 

[SNLC]

Early morning hike.

We had planed to grab our ferry ticket after camping here and spend our last night in La Paz. We headed to an RV Park in La Paz and clean out the truck, organize it and prepare for the ferry crossing.

Cheers

 

[bj70_guy]

Anybody following along!?


Cheers

Yes!
Great stuff.

 

[LEX]

Me too. Looks like a fun trip.

 

[DickM]

Also enjoying Baja vicariously through your trip. Thanks for the effort to document the fun!

 

[SNLC]

Yes!
Great stuff.

Cool, I asked because it does take some effort to post all this.

Cheers

 

[SNLC]

So as I mentioned before, I have a lot of pictures from this trip but I have A LOT of video. Just an example, one file out of a dozen is 300GB and over 800 video clips. We were filming with the drone, GoPro, Osmo, a Cannon G-series and even with our phones so it is a HUGE amount of video to go through, edit and make something worth watching out of it.

I had picked up some video production software before leaving. Back at home I always had a pretty powerful desktop pc, in the past I had built a lot of desktop pc's. My laptop was only for backup, it was hardly used but I have had it since 2009. So it is a bit outdated. I didn't really try to run much of the video production software on it until we were on the road. Come to find out, it doesn't like the software. It is a high end laptop but old and outdated. So making the video productions became very difficult. My laptop will crash doing it, clips in projects I am working on get corrupted and then the work is lost and I have to start over. This is even with Windows Movie Maker. So I struggled a lot to get these video productions done. Plus I/we had to learn to use the software, edit hundreds of hours of video, assemble it into something worth watching, build titles, pick out and add music and so forth. It is no small feat if you are not proficient using video production software which I am really not.

Roy's laptop would not even run the software so we worked off mine with this stuff. In hindsight, I should have purchased a new laptop before leaving but once on the road I was very hesitant to make any expensive purchases.

Any ways, I am still working on a number of video productions. A couple are pretty far a long and nearly complete but every time I sit down to finish them I get problems, get frustrated and walk away from it. I am sure at some point I will get them all finished up, we didn't take all the footage for nothing!

Here is one really short sample of the Cruiser.




Cheers

 

[SNLC]

So we finished up getting all the video and pictures ready for TRAK that we had been working on the last month. We decided to ship it from our next destination.


When we went to board the ferry I weighed the truck for the first time on the trip. We were not fully loaded with extra fuel, water or adult beverages but the Cruiser was just under 8,000lbs! I knew it was heavy but wow!


We had been in Baja more than a month, our plan was to head to Guanajuato where Roy is from. We planned to hang out there awhile, work on the video productions, get some things for the truck shipped down and installed and have some fun in his town and area. I have been all over Mexico by road but never been to Guanajuato and I have heard a lot about it so I was excited to see it.

Just by coincidence we got the ferry the day of my birthday. So once we had the truck in line to load we started having fun!

I have taken the ferry from Baja to mainland Mexico before but when I did it I went to Los Mochis which is more north up the coast on mainland Mexico. We wanted to skip the drive from Los Mochis to Mazatlan so we got the ferry from La Paz to Mazatlan. We opted for the cheap ride with no room. It is a long ferry ride, it leaves at 3pm and arrives at 8am the next day. We partied it up for awhile on the ferry got a tour of the boat from some guy working on it and just killed time.

There was some funny old school stuff on the ferry.

Horrible picture but this is me bedding down for the night on the floor of the restaurant in the ferry.

The next morning we unload from the ferry and hit the road. With Roy navigating it is an easy drive. I had driven this route before as far as Tepic so it was cool to see this section of road again. My last drive through this area I had taken the Mex200 down the coast from PV all the way past Puerto Escondido. I wanted to visit at least some of that again because it is a fantastic 1,000 mile stretch of road down the west coast of Mexico. But for now we were headed to Guanajuato.

Cheers

 

[SNLC]

We drove through Guadalajara and Leon and finally arrived at Guanajuato. We stopped in Guadalajara for some of these Birria tacos that are a local specialty. They are sooooo good, some of the best street tacos I have ever had and I have had a lot.

When we got to Guanajuato it was about 8pm. It was a long two days because I didn't really sleep on the ferry and it was nearly a twelve hour drive to Guanajuato from Mazatlan. We parked the truck though and grabbed a cab downtown and went for some dinner.

Wow what a cool city! It did not disappoint.

Roy's family has been here for a long time. His grandfather and grandmother have a big place in town, his father also lives there. We pretty much just left the truck at their place and did stuff in other vehicles or on foot. We didn't really have a lot of plans as far as when were leaving on such and such date and going here or there. Like most of the trip so far, we were just letting it unfold and taking things day by day. However, we were starting to make some plans for things to do here in the state of Guanajuato but also San Luis Potosi, the state next door.

At this point we had already done a lot of miles in the Cruiser, iirc we were around 4,000 miles since I had left Wyoming. The Cruiser had not missed a beat or let us down. All we experienced in Baja was a chunk of metal in one tire which I quickly plugged. So far the UZJ100 was proving to be a very worth steed for the trip!

Lot's more of Guanajuato and San Luis Potosi to come!

Cheers

 

[Dprio34]

@RMP&O, Thanks for posting! Looks like a great time.
Just curious, did you take the Baja Route from Panama because it was safer, more interesting, or all of the above?

We did a trip to the Baja in February to hit Canyon de Guadalupe and Bahia Ojo de Libre. We had a blast and plan on returning sometime and hopefully go all the way down to La Paz. Maybe after I retire, do the entire drive all the way to Panama.

Hopefully, I get up to Boise this summer. I'd like to buy you a beer at 10 Barrell BC and share some stories.

Thanks for sharing!
Don

 

[SNLC]

@RMP&O, Thanks for posting! Looks like a great time.
Just curious, did you take the Baja Route from Panama because it was safer, more interesting, or all of the above?

We did a trip to the Baja in February to hit Canyon de Guadalupe and Bahia Ojo de Libre. We had a blast and plan on returning sometime and hopefully go all the way down to La Paz. Maybe after I retire, do the entire drive all the way to Panama.

Hopefully, I get up to Boise this summer. I'd like to buy you a beer at 10 Barrell BC and share some stories.

Thanks for sharing!
Don

Hey Don,

Thanks! Anytime I am here in Boise I am up for a few beers.

We hit Baja on the way down not on the return trip. We went to Baja because, well it is Baja and why skip it!? It is one of my favorite places on the planet so I will always go there every chance I get. I have been on three fairly long trips all over Baja and there is still so much for me to explore!

I read in another thread you have a D90 in Panama? If so I am sure you have spent a lot of time down that way too. Perhaps you will recognized some things when I get to that part of the trip.

Cheers

 

[Dprio34]

Look forward to reading the rest of the thread and some beers at 100BBC!

 

[ewillis]

We got into Mulege in the evening and went for dinner. That was where we met these two bikers, they were friendly guys and we drank a few beers with them after dinner.

"Butch"
View attachment 1688953
"Doc"
View attachment 1688954

It was getting late so they invited us to come camp on their property on the south end of town. We went for it.

The next day we spent some time in town, I sim-carded my cell phone, we checked emails and I sent out my new number to people. I got a call not long after from TRAK Kayaks, they want to know if we can put together a bunch of video over the next month for an upcoming promotional video. Of course we can!

So, with this new mission, we set off down to Playa Santispac just south of Mulege. It is a pretty touristy camping area but it is right on a very beautiful beach with lot's of opportunity to play with our gear.

View attachment 1688955
View attachment 1688956

Cheers

Very cool thread. Off topic, but biker #2 looks like he's dug a few holes in the desert...