Another Tucson Road Trip

Technorati Tags: Mazatlan,Tucson,road trip

Another road trip to Tucson to pick up project supplies and parts. This was a big haul with 26 packages for us at the UPS mailbox store and another 10 items waiting at West Marine in Tempe. This time we house sat in Tucson at a very nice and comfortable home of some friends who were travelling up north. It was nice to stay in a house rather than a motel. It's like really living on land like everyone else and gives you a taste of what your missing. Love that high speed internet.

I guess you can tell you're not ready to move off of the boat when you are in a hurry to return to your home on the water after spending a week in a nice house. We're still boat people.

It's 850 miles from Maz to Tucson and another 175 to Phoenix so it's over a two thousand mile trip up and back. Going north we stayed in San Carlos at the Best Western, like last time, but I don't think we'll do it again. They've got a new "boss" and we had to make a 500 peso deposit because we paid in cash and they put us on the second floor and the a/c was located right next, like 6 inches, from the bed and blasted cold air on Linda all night despite her efforts to build a barrier out of a luggage rack and bath towels. We also had dinner at Tequila's restaurant that we used to like a lot when we had the boat here 4 years ago but now that place didn't seem so good. Maybe it's us. When we had the boat here we were newbies and enjoyed the place. Now after 4 years in Mexico San Carlos seems like a gringo town and not like the rest of Mexico. It's all a matter of perspective.

On the whole it was a good trip. The roads up north seemed beat up and the tolls get higher as you go south but they are working on the roads so maybe the money is going to a good cause.

Now that we have a boat load of parts the real work begins just as the hot weather kicks in.

Tucson & Plans

Life has thrown us another small curve. Two months ago we were planning to leave for Panama, then our departure from Ensenada got delayed by a couple of weeks and then the weather turned to crap and we had to wait another 3 weeks to get some half way decent weather. The trip to Panama started to look like a rush so we decided to spend another season in MX and summer over in La Paz. Not a bad plan, go down to Mazatlan and then Puerto Vallarta for a couple of months and then return to the Sea in the Spring and be in La Paz by July. Then Linda's son and wife who live in Tucson decided to move to Indianapolis (Indianapolis???) where her family are. Great, but we stored our Jeep with them in Tucson and they kind of act as our home base up north. So we need to do something with the car and it would be nice to see them one more time before they leave so lets go to Tucson now, say our goodbyes, get the car, drive it to La Paz and store it there until we get back in June. Oh wait, did I mention that we decided to stay in Mazatlan for the summer, not la Paz., so we'll drive to Maz and store the car in the Marina until summer. The boat is in Maz and we can leave it there while we hop back to the States. Change of plans happen and we're getting pretty good at this last minute stuff. Ok, lets buy some tickets, tell people when we'll arrive and hope things don't change again in the next 2 weeks. Oh boy.

So we flew from Mazatlan to Phoenix, rented a car to drive to Tucson where we got our Jeep. We spent 2 days at Linda's sons house where we tried not to get in their way while they packed for their move to Indianapolis and drove to Phoenix to see some old friends. The next day we headed south, stopped at Tucson to see how the move was going and then continued to Nogales and Mexico.

Some thoughts and observations along the way.

Flying sucks. Drive whenever possible. The two hour flight from Maz to Phoenix is expensive, $360 each, and the hassle of airports and TSA should be avoided whenever possible.

Heading south it took us awhile to get to the border and then some more time to get our visas and import permit for the car so we didn't make it very far the first day. We stopped in Santa Ana at the Elba hotel which is very nice but noisy being right on the highway, with our room overlooking the road, and with a late arriving and early departing family on either side of our room. Oh, the bed was as so hard we might as well have slept on the floor.

The plan for the second night was to stop in Navojoa south of Obregon but there was a national basketball championship going on and there were no vacancies in any of the nice hotels along the highway. That was too bad because it looked like a very nice town with plenty of hotels and restaurants. So on we went to Los Mochis arriving at 5 PM and immediately got totally lost in the city trying to find a Best Western that was advertised on the highway. We eventually stopped at a City Express hotel that was a very clean 7 story building with plain but functional roomswith very hard beds.

Los Mochis is an attractive city of 250,000 people with at least 2 WalMarts. We know because we drove past both of them while looking for a hotel.

Sinaloa is known to some as the headquarters for the 'Sinaloa Cartel', one of the largest drug cartels in Mexico. What we didn't know until we drove through it is that it has a large agricultural industry that looks very prosperous. Linda said it reminded her of driving through Iowa, mile after mile of corn fields.

The road trip down highway 15 was very pleasant. There are plenty of services along the way and the roads are ok, not great, with some construction along the way but nothing that slows you down too much. Highway 15 is a toll road all the way, it costs us $65 USD in tolls to get from the border to Mazatlan.

Now that we're back in Maz we are getting ready to head south to PV and try to find some warmer weather. We plan to return to Maz in June for the summer. We are leaving the car in the marina parking lot and we still need to decide what to do with the car next season when we head to Panama. That's a long time from now so we'll see what happens then. No use making plans now.

Living in La Paz

We’re still on our boat but we’ve settled into Marina de La Paz and plan on staying here for awhile, which means at the present we have no plans to leave. We’re no good at making plans let alone following them so we didn’t sign any long term lease, we just told the owner that we’d like to stay for maybe a year to which he said ‘OK’.

We brought the car down to La Paz after our little trip up to the States in July. We flew up to Boise and then Seattle, saw lots of family, and then drove a u-haul truck packed with all our stuff from storage from Anacortes to Tucson. Now days we have few reasons to call Anacortes “home” other than it’s our legal residence in the States, so we decided to move our stuff to Tucson to be closer to us as we travel around Mexico. Linda’s son lives in Tucson and we go up enjoy his hospitality often so that’s a good place to store our stuff.

After the move to Tucson we drove our ‘93 Jeep Grand Cherokee down Baja to La Paz. We made the trip in 3 days with no problems but there are some spots where the road is narrow, the fall off is steep and the trucks are wide and you just hope everyone moves in the right directions at the right time so that everyone comes out the other side unharmed. It’s fun having a car in La Paz, we’re getting out and seeing areas that we never did before and grocery shopping is so much easier with a car.

When we left Tucson, the Jeep had a slow oil leak from the back of the transmissions and estimates to fix it were around $1200+. When we got to La Paz the leak had gone from slow to a noticeable puddle every night so we found a local ‘shade tree’ mechanic recommended by people in the marina. 3 days latter he had replaced the rear transmission seal, installed new motor mounts, replaced the bearings in the rear differential, and put on new rear brakes. Total cost, with parts - $425. After a month everything is still working and there’s no more puddles of oil so it  looks like he did a good job. There was one small issue, he seemed to have loosened a fitting on the Air Conditioner causing the A/C gas to leak out. He denied he did it so we took the car to another ‘shade tree’ shop where they do A/C work and they recharged the system for $35. Kind of a hassle but no big deal.

 

This is Lupe, the mechanic who did the major work on our car in his shop next to his house.

Tucson Road Trips

We've now made 3 road trips to Tucson and back. The car trip takes about 8 to 9 hours northbound depending on the wait at the border and 7 hours south bound. The wait at the border into the States can take 1-2 hours, southbound can be much easier depending if you stop to declare items and how long that process takes. Returning to Mexico the first time we stopped to declare a few items and they just let us go with out paying any duty. The second time we had more items to declare and they quickly processed us, we paid a small duty and in 15 minutes we were off. The last time they made us go through 'Small Imports' and while they were very friendly it took us nearly an hour and cost about $75 to bring in $400 worth of items.

The last time we also had some extra excitement when a car pulled up next to us as we were leaving the last inspection point and told us we had a flat tire. We pulled off the road and some young guys quickly ran over and offered to change the tire for us. They were very friendly and did a quick and good job and we gave them a few pesos for their work. They pointed out a small shop just a few hundred yards down the road where we could get the tire fixed, our spare is one of those mini tires and it was low on air so we slowly made our way down the road to the repair shop. The shop only repaired tires and sold used tires. The man did a good job, 3 days later it is still holding air, and only charge a few pesos.

We will have at least three more trips to Tucson before we leave San Carlos in October. We are planning to buy 2 new heads for the boat, that will take one trip, and a Hookah diving system which will take another trip. Then there will be the last trip to put the car back in storage and take the bus back to San Carlos.

Road Trip- Tucson

Last weekend we drove our Jeep to Tucson and put it in storage at a place near Linda's son, Jeff. We spent 2 nights at Jeff's house and rented a car to drive back to San Diego. The car, from National, cost $148 including gas for the 7 hour drive. 2 oneway tickets on Southwest would have been $150 for a weekend departure, $98 if we left on Tues, Wed, or Thurs. The car was well worth it to avoid flying. The car we rented was a Nissan Vesa which was one of those cars where if you moved the seat forward enough to reach the steering wheel your legs were too close to the peddles, move the seat back so your legs are comfortable and you can't reach the wheel. Linda and I are 8" different in height and neither of us could find a comfortable position.  Other than that it was an ok cheap little car.  In San Diego we had to return it to the airport so we got up at 6 AM to get it back in the 24 hour rental period and then ran it down to the airport and then took the bus and then trolley back to the marina. 

The trip across highway I-8 from San Diego to Tucson is nice if you like flat desert terrain. The picture above is where the freeway gets right next to the Mexican boarder, that's the boarder fence just across the freeway. Customs and Boarder Patrol had the freeway blocked twice going east and 3 times west bound for vehicle inspections.  We got waved through at each stop but it's just the idea that anyone could be stopped and asked to show their papers that doesn't seem right. I guess the idea of 'probable cause' is rather passé. 

We're back on the boat for a couple of days getting ready to head into Mexico. Mid week we'll take the boat up to the public dock at the north end of San Diego bay and the weather looks good to head to Ensenada on Saturday or Sunday.