We had just settled into our air-conditioned seats in the bus on our way to Tijuana from Guaymas at the end of my last blog. The total trip would be about 14 hours and just the air-conditioned nature of the trip was a godsend for us. We pulled out books and IPods, had a couple of diet cokes to sip on, and indulged in some snacks as the sun set in the west to our left as we headed north. We found we could lean back in the seats and put our feet up to be completely relaxed and comfortable.
About two hours later Sheilagh began shifting in the seat to find a more comfortable position, and she continued this practice for the next twelve hours. Having traveled by bus for up to 48 hours at a time when I commuted to high school from Walla Walla, Washington to Columbus, Ohio in the fall and back in the spring, I learned that there is no position in a bus seat that can ever bring comfort over a long period of time. The only thing to do is to assume a single position, move one’s feet a few inches occasionally, and make one’s mind fixate on something other than one’s bodily comfort. This did not fall willingly on Sheilagh’s ears. Instead she continued to swivel her hips onto the edge of my seat, then reverse herself in the other direction with her head and shoulders overlapping. Later on in the trip she found another seat that allowed her to drape herself over two seats together. Needless to say she never achieved the comfort she sought.
Every three hours we came to a stop for a 15-minute break, where a few of us got up and walked around. If you’ve never ridden a long-distance bus you wouldn’t know that these stops always coincide with REM sleep, and they are announced by turning on the overhead lights in the bus and waking everyone. The food was the same as that found in train stations, namely pre-wrapped cold turkey and ham sandwiches, and burritos that could be warmed up. This was offered along with all the cold soft drinks one might find anywhere and candy and snack treats. Over time the bus became littered with the packaging of all these items after they were consumed by the riders.
Sometime around midnight we were stopped at a military checkpoint and everyone was herded out of the bus to stand around as our bags were opened and searched. Some military types also searched the seating area in the bus while we were disembarked. It appears nothing was found of any significance and no one was escorted off the bus. We were loaded back up and the trip continued. We found nothing missing from our checked bags when we had a chance to look through them later.
I actually got some good sleep despite the conditions, but Sheilagh developed a bug of some sort during the trip and was miserable. The bus climbed over a very high pass to get to Tijuana from the east in the early morning. The pass seemed higher than the 7,000’ Donner Pass I’m familiar with, and I have never seen so many boulders piled on one another. I was surprised there weren’t more rock falls on the steep faces of the hills. For that matter I couldn’t see how anyone could have built a road over what appeared to be loose boulders everywhere. In the case of Donner Pass in California the road was carved out of granite and there are no apparent rocks hanging over the highway ready to fall. In the case of this pass in Mexico it would appear that any slight earthquake tremor would cover the highway in very large boulders. I kept my eyes on the situation; so I could brace myself and Sheilagh when a boulder rolled down and tipped the bus off the edge of the steep road!
We arrived almost 14 hours to the minute after we left the bus station at Guaymas. That means we were about 45 minutes late at every stop (based on our 45-minute late departure), but that didn’t bother us nor the other passengers who got on and off at various stops along the way. We retrieved our bags and decided that they were too heavy to take on a local bus to the border. We hired a cab which took us to the back of a long line of people entering the U.S. that Saturday. We were immediately met by a couple of entrepreneurs who suggested we take their bus through the checkpoint, so we wouldn’t have to carry our bags in a long line for at least a quarter of a mile. We took them up on it and spent the next 30 minutes or so sitting on a very slowly moving bus that saved us a lot of wear and tear.
Getting through the final checkpoint required that we carry our bags a few paces, and then we spilled out in front of a San Diego McDonald’s, where we had good old American Sausage McMuffins with Eggs. We had planned to load our bags on the trolley and disembark about a block from our condo, but the number and weight of the bags, along with Sheilagh’s not feeling well, caused us to decide in favor of a taxi. This 20-minute cab ride cost about half as much as the total cost of the 14-hour bus trip. Furthermore, adding up all the taxi rides from the marina to the Guaymas bus station and the three cab rides at this end of the trip, we paid $5 less for cabs than we did for the entire bus trip. So we got off with a tab of about $250 plus snacks and drinks to get from Guaymas to our condo in San Diego – cheaper than an airplane ticket for both of us by about half.
We got into our condo where our niece (who is renting it from us) had previously purchased a battery for our car. We quickly installed it, got an oil change and fluids checked at a Jiffy Lube, pumped up the tires, got a car wash, and checked into a local motel at about 4 times the price of the rental we receive on our condo. We crashed for the night and then spent the next two days ordering new halyards for the boat and buying a few other items that we have needed for some time on the boat. We also called Rich and Debbie of ‘Oasis’ who had sailed back to San Diego a few weeks before. They invited us over for pizza on their boat and offered us nearly a ringside seat to a Pat Benatar concert scheduled for the same night beside their marina. We had a great time catching up on their travels and comparing notes.
Today we are setting out to visit relatives up and down the west coast and will discontinue this blog until we start back to the boat in late September, or maybe even late October. We will be doing car camping on the way up the coast, and plan to loop back inland a bit to catch some National Parks going both ways. The climate in California has been wonderful, compared to what we just left in San Carlos, Mexico, and we are very appreciative. Hopefully we will be ready to return to the warmth after spending some cool nights camping in the mountains.
We hope you have enjoyed some of our experiences and musings as we have vacationed for the past nine months in the waters of Mexico. We’ll be back in the fall. More later . . .
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