Bill and Devi's Wild Ride!: Los Barriles

I think we were both prepared to not like it here, from what everyone had been telling us on the way down, but we came down to get our deposit back and stay two days to see what's what. Then we stayed another two days and I'll go in this morning and extend to a week. First off, the weather is glorious, we have a little bit of wind, but nothing that bad, and the campground is great and full of friendly people. We've met two from South Lake Tahoe and a fellow burner as well. And as luck would have it we also got to meet fellow full-timers and blog readers, Jim and Julie, from an Imperfect Destiny. Jim contacted me through my blog and we met up for beers the other night at the beautiful casa they are renting here. They left their "home" at his mother's house as he wasn't sure about driving it down here. I think he has been following our blog with real interest about our "drive." They are spending two and a half months traveling around Baja and are at the end of their journey and will head home in a week or so. We are planning to get together again today to rent some atvs and go check out the aquifer that our neighbor told us about.

Yesterday we went to the hot springs just past the town of Santiago - a really cute Mexican village. It was a half hour drive on the highway to the town and then another half hour drive to go eight miles in on washboard dirt roads; but it was absolutely beautiful. Because of all of the water in the area it was lush with green trees, bushes and lots of cacti starting to bloom.

The Entrance to Santiago

Santiago Town Square

Some funky art on the way to the hot springs

Beautiful Cordon Cactus in Bloom

As we were getting ready to leave for the hot springs yesterday, Dave approached us and asked if we were actually from Shingle Springs (where we purchased our Subie), and we told him that we were full-timers now but we used to live in Tahoe...and so it goes. He left Tahoe and moved to Hood River, where he lives about seven months of the year, four months here in the campground, and about another month traveling. Sounds like a plan I'd like to follow!! He asked about our interests, and told us about the Friday hiking club here. He also gave us some valuable information about the hot springs, most importantly, that there are quite a few of them. He also told us about hiking up to the aquifer that we're going to check out today.

We finally made it to the hot springs, which really weren't that hot, but they were a wonderful temperature, with water leaking out of the veins in the rock everywhere. We were told that if we kept hiking through some very large boulders about half an hour away was another pool and a waterfall. We must come back when we're suitably attired. In the meantime we set up our chairs, snacks and books, and had a lazy couple of hours. The water was swarming with little fish, and when you were in the water they came up and nibbled on you everywhere, tons of them - it was quite a feeling, very ticklish! We were the first ones there that day and it seems that everyone that arrived after us, had never been there before either, so it was fun to watch them freak out when the fish started attacking!

I'm sitting on the bottom here - at it's deepest it was about 4 feet.

There are two towers for the internet here, but they only work if you are right by them. One is at the office, which is pretty far from us, and one is at the hotel, close to the beach and pretty close to us. The hotel tower was down for a few days when we arrived, but now we get a little bit from that. Bill put our big antenna up today and with my phone in the booster, attached to the antenna, we're getting a little bit more, but not much. To send an email I have to click on send about four times and writing this blog is becoming very, very frustrating. But, with that said, we just paid up through Saturday. I had hoped we could stay another week, but I just can't make it with the internet, and I have a March 15th tax deadline coming up. So the plan, today, is to drive over to Pescadero on Saturday and go look at the two rv parks, one there and one in Todos Santos. Hopefully at that point we can stay put for a month or so!

In addition to the people friends we've made, Bill, as usual, has been adopted by our neighbor's dog, Rider. He's a cutie and waits for Bill at the doorstep in the morning - he seems to know exactly when Bill is up and moving around!