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An easy week rolled by in our new campsite and before we knew it, it was Friday again. I can’t say I missed a single aspect of the casita, not even the convenience of running water or a hot shower. Wildlife buzzed in the air all around us as the desert started sprouting up with new greenery in readiness for spring. Hummingbirds were a daily sight in our camp, but I’ve yet to be fast enough to catch one on camera. Aimee was still loving the freedom of the outdoors and not havi

As we drove out of the casita, it felt like a weight had been lifted. This is was somewhat ironic as we had gone from the guaranteed cheap accommodation back to having nowhere to go that night. Funnily enough though, it still felt good to leave.  I had spent the last two days cleaning Ruby’s inside from top to bottom and with everything cleaned and repacked we were ready to live back inside her again. We headed into town towards the end of that Thursday afternoon. We had agre

Several days and games later, saw the arrival of Francesca the owner, as Hanno and Kerstin’s rent was due for renewal. This marks a month since our arrival in Todos Santos, when we struggled to get through the road blockade. Casually, she told us that another couple would be looking at the other casita the next day. This was the one whose balcony that I regularly frequented during that day as it was the only place in the whole complex that got any sun before late afternoon. I

Following the large curry of the night before, the kitchen still contained a lot of half full pots and pans. We had decided to have round two of curry tonight, and I wasn’t convinced even that would make a dent in it. I decided to try and make the leftovers of Jen’s dish into some couscous cakes, so that it we could freeze it and focus on trying to eat the rest without wasting anything. While I made a production line of couscous cakes, Rob appeared with a new piñata. The girl

Before I start this post, I have to say that all of the photos in this blog are either Jen's or Kirsten's, and I can't take any credit for them. I'm glad someone took some photos though, as I took absolutely none, maybe I was somehow incapacitated. Having celebrated Lee's birthday only a couple of weeks ago, in what would turn out to be the last wild camp for the foreseeable future, it was now my turn. The day started off with birthday pancakes which Lee whipped up for me, an

With Aimee now comprehensively bandaged, we could set about life in our new casita. We had grown accustomed to the thought of settling down for a few weeks or so, and we had plenty of catching up to do with our Youtube channel and blogs. Lee especially in the blog department. I also wanted to spend some more time learning Spanish. Our little compound was pretty good. From the upstairs balcony where our friends were staying was a view of the ocean through the palm trees. The r

We spent that weekend playing some board games, watching films on the balcony above and trying to write some of our current book. We made some nice food, having the luxury of an oven, and Jen experiemented with making Bloody Marys. Always in the back of our mind was the lack of uncertainty in regards to our current travel plans. We decided to wait until Monday and see what the vet said then, hopefully we would have a more definitive answer and we could plan accordingly. Setti

We awoke that morning in Rob and Jen’s garden, ever hopeful that our post would arrive. If it wasn’t today, then we were in for another few days wait as it was a Friday. We sat in the camper enjoying our tea and contemplating where we would go next. Aimee explored her new surroundings like normal. Everything happened so quickly, I barely registered the snarling of the dogs next door until I saw Lee halfway over the fence that divided the two properties, and heard the cry of a

After a very peaceful night in our new spot; without any noisy night time animals, passing traffic or even any wind, we awoke feeling ready for the day. The boys had several ideas of improvements to make to our campsite. The toilet, had collapsed slightly, so Lee wanted to rebuild another one. Carsten wanted to make a garden. I wanted to make a water filter. We set about our respective jobs. Hanno and Carsten climbed up the waterfall and brought back some building supplies. L

Today was Lee’s birthday. It was also the day we would be leaving the ranch and attempting to make our way to a small waterfall a little further south. The plan was to hide out here for the remaining two weeks of the quarantine, and then hopefully continue traveling in our respective directions. It wasn’t too long before the campsite was packed away and we headed out. Ruby’s battery was predictably flat after a week without driving, but fortunately our emergency jump-start ci

We drove down the main road and into the town of Pescadero, following the two German campers. At the town, we turned off left and headed out on a dirt track into the mountains. The two big rigs rolled easily along in front of us while we vibrated our way across the washboard road on tyres we hadn’t aired down. Fortunately it was only a couple of miles until we reach a sign that announced we had arrived at Rancho Pacifico Baja. Leaving our rigs parked in the road, we hopped ou

The following morning, we packed down Ruby and made use of the hose one last time to fill our water tanks. We drove back to Todos Santos, fancying a brewery trip to refill our growler. As we were in town, we decided to get some tacos too as places were still open. I didn’t take long for the military to turn up here either, but at least for once we weren’t the focus. They made sure that everyone was dining far enough away from each other, before leaving. Full of fish tacos, we

The next morning it wasn’t too long before we were ready to head off to the hot springs. This is only a short drive down the main road from Los Barilles, before you turn west into the mountains on a dirt road. It’s a fair drive from here, bumpy washboard limits your speed and stretches out the drive far beyond the time that google estimates. Still, it’s a pretty drive through the mountains, it was nice to be in a different landscape, driving through orchards in the bright sun

So there we were driving to La Paz at around midday on a Friday, trying to google VW scrapyards. Someone suggested Yonkees, but after a little research it turns out that this is just Spanish for ‘scrapyard’ and not that helpful if like us, you have a very specific vehicle. We were both sure we remember seeing a baywindow, rusting away in a scrapyard to the south-west of the city. We decided to try this first. Lee remember the right road, and we drove down keeping an eye for t

Tuesday morning saw Aimee complete unfazed by her operation the day before. The vet here hadn’t bothered to give us any aftercare advice, we asked if she should have a cone to stop her licking it and he shrugged. “You bandage it, if you need. It’s no big deal.” Our English vets were a little more overbearing when we had had our two boys done. The list of instructions was quite large. Don’t let them jump up, don’t let them out for three days, don’t let them lick the wound etc.

It was Friday the 30 th of March, 2020 and two things of note happened that morning. The first was the government announced that the US/Mexican border would close at midnight that night. This prompted the second thing, which was for everyone we had been travelling with for the last 3 weeks to pack up their things and leave. We knew from the previous evening that Rachel and Ola had decided to head back up to the States, and with the announcement that the border was actually g

Now in Todos Santos, we met up with everyone at ‘Bahia’ for some fish tacos. This place had been closed the last time we went, and apparently this was much better than where we had ended up last time and waited for ages. We ordered a couple of fish tacos, while Ina was brave and went for a shrimp ceviche. Our food arrived quickly, and I was pretty happy to see that they had given us double tacos. This means you basically get 4 tacos while paying for two, as there is no way al

By the time we’d left Playa Tecolote and finished our shopping in La Paz that day, it was getting way too late to think about driving anywhere. We are now all parked up back at the car park in La Paz centre. Lee wanders off down the street with a beer to see if he can find the part that fell off our shower. I forgot to fit the valve back on when I was trying to fix it and we think it fell off just down the road. It’s kind of annoying because it means we can’t pressurise the s

There was another VanLife gathering scheduled for that weekend on Playa Tecolote, and we debated whether we would hang around till then. Still, we were enjoying spending time with our group and so we followed suit when everyone else packed up to head out of La Paz, and followed. We stopped off for a few errands on the way, in particular our compost toilet needed attention. We had spent the morning cleaning it out, but now we need a new composting medium as we had run out of c

We first arrived at La Paz, driving up from our afternoon in La Ventana. We had decided to drive around and park on a sandy spit that goes out into the bay. Our friends David and Katie had parked here recently and said they had seen whale sharks. As the paid tour for this is $100 USD/pp we were all up for the free option. We decided we would try and paddle out on our surfboard into the bay and spot the that way. We arrived in the evening, after driving a while down some rathe