1 January: A pretty easy day today on good roads but campsite is nothing great (or bad) but somehow, we are unsettled. Chatting this evening over supper we think a lot has to do with now having a very nice home to return too, and so when we are in places that are average or worse we begin to feel like this. The reality is that many days of overlanding are average or worse but are necessary evils in order to get to the good places.
3 January: Yesterday we stopped at a little beach where there was meant to be nice camping at a restuarant and to be a nice surf spot. The IO reviews were right about the owner (Oswald) who was just lovely and such a salt of the earth friendly person but sadly the wind here honks almost as bad as Patagonia and becuase we desperately need the sun thanks to our poorly functioning fridge we had to face with our backs into the wind. Credos to the AluCab tent, it held up really well in some horrifically strong wind but wasn’t a very relaxed night.
6 January: It has been an easy few days camped in San Agustin. We got to park Mr J directly under a palapa which was great from a heat perspective and necessary too as Tania has picked up Stuarts cold and was feeling a bit grotty. The location is quite spectacular in a bay with warm flat water, large rock islands not far away but it is super touristy with Mexican and Canadians – even the swimming area is cordoned off. The main reason we hung out for 4 days was too allow the New year holiday period to finish.
7 January: After not liking the camping option in Mazunte, we pushed further towards Puerto Escondida today and to campsite called Casa Colibri. The campsite is run by a very friendly Mexican, with a lovely swimming pool and generally good vibe. Only negative is it is about a 15min walk to the beach and while it might be possible to eek out a surf, the waves do seem to break hard and fast onto the beach and close to a bunch of rocks so surfing most likely won’t happen especially as there are no other surfers around.
10 January: Mr J has had a little bit off a vibration in his brake pedal since camping on the windy beach (3 Jan) and so this afternoon I investigated thinking he had just picked up some grit and I would need to blow it out with the air hose. How wrong I was and instead found a totally destroyed brake pad and badly scoured brake disc. Could kick myself for not investigating earlier and can make many excuses like it just being so hot and I thought it was just some grit on the pads but nonetheless now we are going to lose more days because it is the weekend and so while can make an online order for the parts front he UK, nothing will happen until Monday.
14 January: At the moment our DHL delivery seems to be moving well and has already left the UK and landed in the states. The test is going to be when it arrives in Mexico and needs to clear customs and be despatched to a remote rural location. At least for now we have movement and there definitely could be worse places to be waiting for the delivery.
16 January: Frustrated and irritated with myself as I responded incorrectly to a delivery query from DHL. The query was in Spanish and a bit confusing and the two possible answers where using option A1 or AA. A1 meant DHL handled end to end and A1 was a hand-off to another agent we nominated. I responded with wording that I want DHL to do the delivery but mistakenly in the confusion of using google translate put in AA and now they are asking for lots of extra information which seems to relate to the nominated agent. I have replied and said I made a mistake please change to A1 but now we have had no response!
17 January: Still no response from the customer representative (Maria) at DHL despite two further emails today, getting very worried that my mistake is gong to cause major delays and we have no real means of contacting them other than via email.
18 January: Awoke to a message on the tracking app that the shipment is “on hold” and despite hours of chatting to BOTS, attempting to chat to commercial WhatsApp accounts and using FB messenger AND downloading the DHL app we have not managed to make any progress other than need to speak with Maria. More than slightly frustrated, irritated and stressed. Have sent another email to Maria. Technology is great and not great…
23 January: With nothing to do but wait, today we tried to forget about the obstacles and headed to the beach for some us time. A nice bottle of cold white wine and some lovely rock pools to sit in took the worries away for at least one afternoon.
24 January: It is 6 days since we got the on-hold notification and we still have no progress despite having involved so many people both within the UK supplier, DHL Mexico and friends and the campsite owner. Very very frustrating!!!! What we have established is that in order to clear an item in Mexico you need to be registered as a commercial importer with the Mexican customs authority and that this could take at least 3 weeks to complete. Apart from being impractical for us to do, as we are not Mexican citizens and thus don’t have a tax number it is also extremely annoying that the supplier to who we paid extra for an end to end service and delivery was not aware of this. They are one of the largest exporters from the UK of landy parts.
26 January: The stress of waiting and not being sure what is going on with the brakes and not being able to decide on a way forward just become too much today and we both had mini breakdowns. Once the dust had settled, the decision was made to instruct DHL to return the items to origin. We have some old brake pads as spares from when we last changed them and the “plan” is to head for the USA where we can get receive a shipment painlessly. The gamble is that by doing a daily inspection of the pads and if need be cycling through the old ones we have that we can cover the 3500km we still need to do before getting to the border.
27 January: Fellow SAFFAS, Graeme & Luisa Bell have been fantastic and offered to send us their spare brake pads so that at least we have more backup pads. They live in Mexico and although we have never physically met, over the years we have chatted quite a bit and consider them overland friends. Now all we need to do is wait for this internal courier shipment and hope nothing goes wring with that.
29 January: More frustration as the internal shipment seems to be delayed about 100km from us with no indication as to why. Have involved the campsite owner to make phone calls but he seems to only ever get connected with a BOT – admittedly a very chatty BOT but nonetheless still a machine. At least the BOT has “lodged an investigation”
30 January: This date may have to be marked down as a more important date than when we first starting going out or got married (both of which we both always forget)! Afterweeks of immense stress and frustration, within hours, we received the spare brake pads sent to us by A2AOverland (The Bells) and got confirmation that the disastrous order of replacement parts from the UK had entered “return to sender” status.
31 January: Spent the morning in Puerto Escondido attending to chores: shopping, haircuts for both if us and laundry. Eventually hit the road just before 2pm and did about 130km northward to a truck stop. Road wasn’t great but that also kept the speed down and any attempt to try go a bit faster which meant it was easy to take it easy on the brakes despite the many topes en-route.
1 February: Last night as we took a shower before bed, Mr Jones loadshed us properly and we lost power to all “house items” including lights, usb etc. Apart from being a royal pain in the proverbial this was confirmation that our auxiliary battery needs replacing. Stuart has thought so for a while becuase the fridge cuts out as soon as the voltage gets to 12,6 which it should never do but was hoping it was just another issue with the fridge.. The loadshedding also meant we had to do some re-wiring this morning in order to use the linear actuators to lower the roof but despite this we were on the road by just gone 8. Again the drive was slow but relatively easy and we are now in a fairly nice campsite on the edge of the ocean and about 2 hours south of Aculpulco.
3 February: Murphy is definitely working against us, turns out today (Monday) is a public holiday so the battery supplier in Acapulco is closed so we need to sit around yet again before we can replace the auxiliary battery.
4 February: Murphy continues to haunt us, the battery supplier has no stock of the type of battery we need. Autozone do have a suitable battery but it is the Rolls Royce of batteries and costs over 7 thousand Rand so we have placed an order for the normal one but that can only get here in 2 days time (if we can rely on that….) so we drove across town to another RV park except this one actually has a sign to say “trailer park”. Guess we are officially trailer trash now but at least this is directly on the beach with more breeze than the last one.
6 February: The new auxiliary battery arrived on time which was a a pleasant surprise. It did require a bit of modifications to the wiring as it has different lugs to the old one but nothing we couldn’t handle. Now we just need to make sure we manage our “power hungry: fridge until we get to the states and can purchase a new one.
7 February: Tania birthday and a travel day, which is not how we would have generally liked to celebrate it but considering the recent frustrations we are happy to be moving. Only did 230km but it took 4 hours. The positive is we have stopped at a really nice RV park which has a ncie vibe and friendly residents.
9 February: Lunch at a local “restuarant” of barritos. Will never qualify as a lekker birthday meal but is the best we can do in this little village.
11 February: It has been a nice chilled few days at the RV park but time to move on. Stuart did try his hand at surfing but it was just a sign of desperate times to get in the water!
12 February: From a fancy RV park to a bohemian surfers camp, thankfully we feel at home in both types of places. The wave is very much a long-boarders wave and very packed with Europeans and Californians but nonetheless Stuart is itching to get in.
15 February: A few days of surfing which were quite fun despite initial reservations, mainly becuase after initially trying to have a go on the knee high and crowded long boarder section, I paddled far left to what can onl be described as a submerged rock point break and this turned out to be quite fun with often only 3 or 4 surfers. Sadly, this morning I snapped 2 leashes, not becuase of wave size but rather due to them having perished from a life in a bag on the roof.
16 February: We left Punta Saladita today becuase the campsite was going to have a trance party which we didnt feel like enduring. It was a short drive to the next surf spot called Rio Nexpa which is quite famous for being a superb left hand point break but we ain’t feeling the vibe. The campsite is very basic with only outdoor salty showers and toilets where two cubicles share one door! Add to that, is the campsite vibe which feels more like a squatter camp of Canadians and so we will be leaving tomorrow.
17 February: After a quick surf in the morning which was okay but also had quite an agro vibe amongst all the visiting/squatting surfers, we made a few hour hop up the coast to another surfer village called La Ticla. First impressions are much better despite there also being lots off long term surfers here too, it seems more Americans this time. They come down and stay in the village living out off tents for up to 5 months.
24 February: It has been a pretty awesome week in La Ticla! We like this spot a lot and would definitely return if in the area again, from the outlook across the river with a fair bit off birdlife, too the chilled camp vibe, too a few nice and cheap Mexican restuarants around and then of course some decent surf it was all round a good experience.
26 February: Slowly ticking off the mileage as puch north. Today we are just past Puerto Vallarta and camped in another “trailer park” and the name appears appropriate but beggars can’t be choosers when there are no other options.
28 February: Big driving day today – 500km which included stopping in Mazatlan to get an oil change done as we know it will be a lot more expensive to do in the USA. Mr. Jones must feel like a formula one car.
2 March: roughly 100km to the USA border (Nogales). This little town of Santa Ana very much reminds us of a Karoo dorp, campsite even has funky art type things made from scrap, a gravel parking/camping area and few tiny and hardy trees.