February 24 Guerrero Negro = A return trip to Mario´s Restaurant and RV Park

Mexican accommodations always keep us guessing and this location was not any different. We had stopped at Guerrero Negro on our way south and while we liked his restaurant we were not impressed by the facilities provided to us at Mario’s RV Park. The road and grounds are very rough as they have been hand “paved” by Mario and his workers with large shells from the ocean. While the RV sites are nice pull throughs with concrete stanchions for the hookups…the hookups are not there or do not function. The septic dumps are functional. The water faucets give only a trickle of water and there was no electrical to be found. Their contract with Adventure Caravans required them to provide these amenities.

Our wagon master discussed this with Mario as we were planning to stop again for two nights on our way north and also had whale watching trips booked with Mario. True to Mexican optimism Mario promised us that when we returned 29 days later he would have all the deficiencies fixed. Well, when we pulled in on this day, we saw a beehive of activity. The trencher was in the roadway and had just buried the conduit for the electrical wire. A number of men were refilling the ditch by shovel so we could drive in. The Mexican power utility company was there with a brand new power pole, working to dig and set it in the ground. It was like Mario had told them it had to be done by February 24th so they all came on the 24th to do it. The size of the power service was inadequate and the gauge of wire undersized but somehow they had power to half of our rigs before they went home that night.

The water faucets were still a trickle but we finally organized a system of refilling our tanks by turning off all the faucets and just taking turns with the trickle until we had our share. Water is a very precious commodity here and we had to just appreciate what we were able to get. By the way, in Mexico we do not drink the water. We fill our tanks with Mexican water but we filter it two times and spike it with a little Clorox to kill any bacteria. This we use for bathing, washing and bathroom but have bottled water on hand for drinking, cooking and coffee. We are so lucky in America to be able to trust our water sources and the sanitation that we can count on !

Tonight as we gathered for our social hour, we had a guest speaker to talk about Gray Whales…it was Gary. He was glad to share with the group the facts we have learned in our Oregon gray whale watching training. He started out by sending one man out the door of our meeting room with the end of a rope in hand to demonstrate how big a full grown gray whale is. It was a great visual and helped to prepare us all for our whale watching boat trips the following day. Gary got great feedback from the group on how they enjoyed his “talk” and how it added to their experience.

For Gary it was a demonstration of how much he used to enjoy teaching.