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It was nothing new to awake at San Pedrito that morning, a beach we have stayed at countless times over the last eight months. What was new, was that for the first time in three weeks we had arrived somewhere under our own power. The camper was a tip, tools and boxes everywhere which we hadn’t had time to sort out since our late departure from the garage the day before. We spent the morning reorganising, the only thing that was left out was the toolkits, I still didn’t quite

We waited at Cerritos. With our engine dispatched, there was little else to do. Fortunately, we could surf to break up the day and cool off. Despite the fact that it was the end of September, it was still incredibly hot with little sign of cooling down. Lazy van food - loaded fries Our engine was dispatched on Tuesday and according to UPS would arrive in San Diego the following Wednesday. We waited with baited breath, I checked the tracking rather obsessively and occasionally

I would like to say I awoke afresh that morning, ready to come up for a plan to solve what had probably been the worst thing to happen to us so far. However, due to Lee’s inability to go to bed, I was absolutely shattered, I don't do well on not enough sleep. This accompanied with being in our current predicament meant I was pretty useless.  We headed into La Esquina that morning, a lovely outdoor restaurant with tables interspersed between a jungle like garden. We had some c

This was the turning point of the next month. The big puddle at Cerritos was back, but a lot smaller than before. We figured a bit of speed to stop us slipping and we could easily make it. We were very wrong. It was infinitely deeper than we thought and very dirty. I suppose, in hindsight it was pretty stupid. We got stuck pretty much instantly. The good thing about Mexico though, is that it’s part of life here. We have pushed many a stuck local out of the sand so maybe we h

In Baja, the nights we have spent alone have been few and far between. It felt odd to be driving off by ourselves, even though we knew they would catch up with us later. We left Cerritos and headed for Cabo to stock up again for a week off grid. I also wanted to take my new laptop back to Costco, the right hand speaker had developed a nasty crackle after only a month. As ever, things took longer than we thought. Food shopping was relatively straightforward, taking my laptop b

It was the first time in months we awoke somewhere new. The beach of La Ribera is a massive sandy expanse, that is immaculately clean. There are bins, toilets and even showers which is incredibly rare here. You definitely get the sense that this is a local spot, most of the tourists either going to Cabo Pulmo or Los Barrilles with little need to stop in between. The locals obviously take pride in their beach, not a single piece of litter was in sight. It was a Sunday, the day

After spending a while at Cerritos trying our best to surf, we were a mixture of excited and apprehensive to head to this surf beach just around the cape. We had visited once before back in March when we travelled with a group of vanlifers and at the time had no real interest in surfing, let alone equipment. I think we were offered a board to borrow at the time, but after watching the low tide expose just how many rocks were hidden just below the surface, we declined.  Now, s

Having left Cerritos on Friday, we wanted to be in town for Monday morning to check the post again and from there we would head to Nine Palms. Not wanting to go far for camping, we decided to try La Pastora again, now the only campers here we got a nice spot to the side of the beach. Hopefully we could stay here undisturbed for the weekend.  On the way we stopped at the vet, Aimee had developed a lump a few days after the dog attack on Cerritos and we had taken her to the vet

With winds and waves back to normal, we decided to head back to Cerritos for some more surfing. We were slowly improving at this, the only downside being the aforementioned car park camping. This was clearly a problem for one of the people staying in the hotel opposite. A glance at their website promises beautiful sea views, with an onsite bar and a spacious infinity pool. Reality gives a regular hotel room with insulation so thin that it is apparent exactly what the people a

We arrived back at Rancho Pacifico towards the end of the afternoon on Sunday. Having forewarned Alejandro of our arrival, we waited in the road for him to come down and unlock the gate for us. He was happy for our return as the water tanks needed filling up the top, a job that is easier with two people.  While he may have been glad to see our return, it was still odd for us to come back to the ranch. When you travel around you rarely come back to the same place, and if you d

We had wanted to leave the ranch in the middle of the week, as this is generally a quieter time to move around. Somehow things ended up being a rush. How we managed to run out of time when we had been there two months I have no idea, but all those little extra jobs meant that by the time we left it was actually Friday night and we were headed to Cerritos after a big camp site tidy up season. Cerritos is a relatively nice spot to surf if your a beginner, certainly one of the e

Now that Dane and Sabrina had left the Rancho, we were keen to follow suit. There was a matter of a few other small jobs to be done. We were satisfied that we had fulfilled our work agreement with regards to the campsite, but we needed to do a few bits to the vans first. Kiki and Hanno also had their own list of jobs to be getting on with so we decided to stay a few more days and get our rigs ready for the road. This also included a final desert brewing session. For us, this

The mood in the campsite had definitely shifted, change was on the horizon as we prepared to leave the ranch. Only a few things remained to be done, the van needed repacking, the drive shaft boots needed changing and we needed new visas.  In the meantime, Randy showed up again at the ranch to collect the bed that Julian had been using. This arrangement had not worked out for a variety of reasons, Julian had left. After the previous events, none of us were sad to see him go an

We had agreed to a carry out some kind of work on Rancho Pacifico instead of paying for campsite fees while we stayed there. It was however several weeks before Dane and Sabrina made it clear what they wanted us to do. One afternoon they came down to the campsite with some tools and some tape. After establishing that it was too hot to do any work right now, we walked around the campsite and they set about marking out a perimeter of the area they wanted us to clear in order to

It was now the 18th of July. Dane and Sabrina had been housesitting at a beach casita for several months now and had invited us over several times in case we wanted to use a proper shower or the washing machine. These are both quite appealing prospects, as camper van showers, while not too bad, are limited by water consumption and Mexican laundrettes have a habit of ruining of clothes. Anything nice and lacy will not survive long. To escape from what Sabrina accurately descri

Over the next couple of days our new solar system shone. We could now make coffee on a little coffee machine we had bought, as well as run the fridge easily and charge the laptops to our hearts content. We even discovered that we could run our Remoska, this looks a little like a pressure cooker but is basically a mini electric oven, off the new batteries. This meant I could make bread without the generator, what a luxury! Everything was going rather well, and I only wished th

We had now successfully installed and run our new solar panel for a week or so, it was working well to the limits of the old charge controller. Our current controller was rated at 10 amps and reckoned it would power a panel up to 130w, so now it had to deal with a 405w panel, it was obviously not able to maximise it. We needed at least a 30A controller. Even with this limitation, it still meant that we had a steady 10amps of charge current for nearly 10 hours of the day, and

In the interests of keeping ourselves entertained, we spent the next month in our desert camp spot using our time to complete niggly little jobs on Ruby we had never had time to do. The list of these was pretty long, and the first thing we decided we should do was to put in an air vent for the fridge. The instructions for the installation of the fridge were pretty clear, adequate ventilation was required and we had not only got none, but had also insulated behind the compress

During our trip so far, we had been lucky that any mechanical problems we had come across had been remedied fairly easily. We had had three separate holidays prior to our departure to really test what life would be like on the road. The first, a cold and damp trip to Scotland reassured us that we were capable of living together in a space of that size for two weeks without killing each other. It also proved our camper was capable of doing a long haul drive.  The following sum

Now we settled into rancho life for another long haul. Committing a month to a place may not seem like a long time, but when you’re on the road, things are different. I remember back to a time in the northern states of the US where for months on end we rarely stayed more than one night in any one spot. Now we are at the other end of the spectrum. Both are probably not how you would want to travel. It took us quite a while to settle into this lifestyle, and feel like we were ‘