December 15th – December 29th (San Carlos, Sinaloa, Mexico):

I had originally planned to block out my blogs more or less by country but San Carlos was a truly unique experience and shouldn’t be bundled in with a broader Mexico blog about time on the road. Through a significant mechanical issue, I was sidelined in the small beach town of San Carlos, Sonora for around two weeks. This is that account.

Arriving:

To be honest, I was quite nervous the night before I crossed into Mexico. With research beginning over two months prior about visas and temporary import permit for my car, I’d built up the Mexico crossing up quite a lot in my mind. And this is despite having crossed probably a dozen times from San Diego into Tijuana in my earlier years living in Southern California. But it represented a large frontier in the journey - the difference between the relative ease of Canada and the US into unknown, from English to Spanish, from a preface, a trial run of my adventure, into the real thing.

First 36 hours:

Initially my plan was two days in San Carlos. At the time I saw that as a generous allowance and a nice break as a reward to myself for making it into Mexico. I found a lovely and relatively expensive hotel on the water and put my feet up on the balcony overlooking the Pacific with a beer in hand.

Second day was a fishing trip and caught lots of bonita, scorpion fish, sea bass and they made me fresh fish tacos right on the boat with my fresh catch - quite easily the best fish tacos I’ve ever had (even better than the ones I made a few years back with freshly caught Alaskan halibut). I gave the rest of the fish I couldn’t eat to some locals and saved a portion for dinner that evening to be served up at one of the local seafood restaurants.

Drone photo I took of my first hotel, the Sea of Cortez. A great spot to relax after landing in Mexico, right on the water

One of about a dozen bonita I caught my first day out fishing. After 12 of them in 60 mintues, my arms hurt and it was time to start switch to bottom fishing

Bonita: I’ve always heard about these but never had an opportunity to catch one. Having spent a little time in San Carlos, I now realise you do everything you can to keep these off the hook and aim for the yellowtail. But was fun to catch a few

Elias, the skipper of my first boat trip. Good guy and great first person to practice my Spanish with

These pelicans put on a show while waiting for our fish scraps

Trouble begins:

Driving out of my hotel on the way to dinner, I heard the most ominous sound of something going horrendously wrong, accompanied by an almighty clanking and I ground to a halt. I pulled over immediately and saw my front drive shaft hanging from the differential and a bunch of unidentified liquid leaking onto the ground. I knew this was bad but figuring there was nothing I could do in that moment and not wanting to spoil my dinner of fresh caught bonita, I rolled the car back into a parking spot, leaving it in the hotel lot, ordered a taxi and went to dinner, resolving to deal with the issue in the morning.

At first light I was under the car and realised it was worse than I thought. Not only had my universal joint snapped and left drive shaft unattached, I realised that my transmission had a hole in it the size of my palm with some of the internal parts wedged into the hole. I’m still not sure if it was a uni joint failure that put the shaft into the side of the transmission or transmission failure that caused the uni joint to break but either way it was a big issue that required switching out both.

I spent the morning on the phone with the help of my hotel staff scouring Mexico for Land Rover service centres but there weren’t any within 10 hours drive. I called my guys at Goodway Auto and they jumped on to problem searching for replacement parts. I also found a local mechanic who was willing to come to the hotel to check out the issue and decide if he could fix it. By lunchtime, Jonathan (my San Carlos mechanic) had agreed to take on the job and Josh at Goodway had ordered me parts - a refurbished transmission and drive shaft. I then had the car towed to Jonathan’s shop (actually just a car wash with some pavement to work on the car).

The reality was that I was going to be lucky for the parts to arrive before Christmas if everything went to plan. And the danger was that if they didn’t, the mechanic was leaving on Christmas holiday shortly afterwards. The added complication was that the parts supplier wasn’t authorized to ship to Mexico so I’d need a mule to ferry them down from the storage facility it was being delivered to just north of the border.

My drive shaft hanging limply from the differential

Car arrived at the car wash where it would sit for 10 or so days. The workshop was open air next to a three bay car wash. Thankfully not much rain in the desert there

New friends:

To my great fortune, Jonathan didn’t come alone. He showed up at my hotel getting a lift from a gringo named Shawn (nicknamed Tweeter). Tweeter suggested that if I was going to be stuck in San Carlos for a week or so, I should consider moving into the apartment complex where he was staying which was essentially empty except for him and only US$20 a night. Thinking this would be a good way to save money and make a friend, I took him up on the offer and moved in the next day.

What I didn’t realise at the time was that Tweeter was soon to become my new best friend. Life is slow in San Carlos and having someone to meander around with worked for him. Thus began my new existence in San Carlos - largely lacking purpose, free of stress and as part of a content and welcoming expat community that opted to spend all their spare time in San Carlos when not in the US and Canada.

Tweeter in his natural habit, his favourite bar stool at Hammerheads bar

Tweeter and I just hanging out by the car, accomplishing precisely nothing

A day in the life of San Carlos:

While I’ve been keeping a journal of this trip, I largely gave that up in San Carlos. Each day blended into the next. It followed a general pattern like this:

Wake up between 8am and 9am, depending on how drunk we got last night. Coffees with Tweeter in the courtyard of the apartments, often eating a breakfast our lovely landlady Nelly has prepared for us
Fabricate a list of things to do that day. In reality, nothing on these lists ever actually needed to be done but it was nice to establish some vague purpose for the day
With Tweeter being a marine mechanic, mostly we drove around town helping people with various mechanical problems. We fixed a fuel line on a boat, re-wired a bilge pump, a puncture repair on golf cart, a fuel pump on car, tried to get a boat fired up that had sat for 8 years gathering dust, pulled apart a starter motor on an ATV, changed an alternator belt on a golf cart and various other little fixes. For our troubles, often we’d get bought a beer or two, sometimes a meal, sometime a modest amount of pesos, often nothing
After feeling like we’d accomplished something for the day, it was time for lunch and our first beer, usually somewhere between 12pm and 2pm
From there we’d hop between a small handful of preferred watering holes, talk shit with the bar owners and other regulars and kick on until we were too tired from drinking that our beds beckoned

Each day started in this courtyard with coffees with Tweeter and I the only guests and Nelly and the handyman the only other people around.

Then we go around fixing stuff. This is working on Pobre Juan’s bilge pump

… or see a mechanic at the marina who knows a guy who can maybe help with a permit

Then go to one of a few bars. This is Soggy Peso

… and more often than not to Hammerheads at the marina, often to see the band (Mostrip, a touring Mexican crew in a combi van)

And then watch the sun go down over the Marina from our bar stools at Hammerheads

… and in general, hang here in San Carlos. Photo taken from my drone (DJI Mavic)

This pattern was largely maintained for the two weeks I was there with a few exceptions. Some highlights outside of the normal days included:

A day of fishing with one of the local charters guys (Brian along with Zach, Tweeter, Ryan and I with a couple of their kids along for the ride). I caught a great yellowtail, the biggest that I was aware of for the time I was there
A night out at the local nightclub with a new friend (Tyler from Oregon) which was a relatively messy and left me with my worst hangover of the time there
A house party at the home of one of the local bar owners (Troy)
A few days unsuccessfully trying to get a boat licensed which required working some unconventional channels to try to navigate the system there

Zach pulling in his yellowtail with skipper Brian

Tweeter, Zach and Ryan’s daughter Correlia on the flybridge

Tweeter doing what Tweeter does - putting away cans of light beer

Christmas Party at Troy’s who owns the local bar Hammerheads

Fixing the car:

Just before Christmas, I learned that the delivery scheduled 21st to Nogales just north of the border didn’t get delivered. A call was made to the owner of the storage cage who didn’t confirm the ‘delivery appointment’. This was bad news for lining up with a friend of a friend driving down from the US who was to transport the parts for me.

Talking to the mechanic, it became clear that the only way I’d be able to get the transmission in time was to drive up ourselves, intercept the delivery in Tuscon at the depot and drive it back myself. Jonathan volunteered to drive us up on Christmas Day so that I could be at the depot the next morning to get the parts when the depot opened, turn around, cross the border and meet him in Nogales (Mexican side). He even pushed back his trip to accommodate the delay.

So this is what we did. Christmas morning was a few beers at the only open pub which opened at 11am. By 2pm we were in the car for the four plus hour drive to Nogales. Arriving near the border, we dropped in on Jonathan’s aunt and her family who were having a Christmas gathering so at least I spent time with someone’s family on Christmas. Then we grabbed a hotel in the border town and called it a night.

Next morning went smooth on the way up. The US border had no issue with an Australian crossing into the USA with a Sonora-plated car. Got the parts no issue in Tuscon (an hour north of the border) and turned around for Mexico. My luck ran out when I declared my cargo and they bailed me up for four hours in the most idiotic bureaucratic process imaginable. Nevertheless, eventually I paid my import tax and we returned to San Carlos late the day after Christmas.

The next day Jonathan and his uncle were at the car wash all day under my Land Rover and mostly went to plan. The estimated time for completion moved from 12pm at the start of the day and ended up being 6pm. It’s fine, that’s Mexico time. There was one hiccup: rusted bolts on the exhaust meant it couldn’t be reattached and I needed to visit the welding shop in the morning to torch out the troublesome bolts to seal the pipe near the catalytic converter - so add another day’s delay.

What wasn’t disclosed to me, which Tweeter and I realised first thing the next day, was a bad seal where a gasket had blown out where the exhaust manifold meets the pipe to the catalytic. This was a reasonably big issue. Since Jonathan had gone on holidays by then, I had to enlist the help of San Carlos’ other mechanic at the Sons of Freedom bikey club house to work with the welder to get it apart and reattach it with a gasket fabricated from a sheet of asbestos gasket material. This included pulling off the manifold which we worried would be a whole other can of worms if he broke a bolt or gaskets to the block were bad.

In the end it worked out ok and I was back on the road the next day. As it turns out, the fix wasn’t good and I had O2 sensor warnings by the time I reached Mazatlan and again by Guadalajara. At the time of writing, having seen an exhaust specialist, I believe this problem is behind me.

Just managed to fit the transmission in the back of Jonathan’s Kia

Happy moment as I turned around from Tucson and headed south. All going well at this point

Then sat in this dull room on the border for four hours waiting for seemingly nothing while they ‘processed’ my tax paperwork. In actual fact, they just sat around looking at videos on their phone and talking to each other. A little frustrated at th… — Then sat in this dull room on the border for four hours waiting for seemingly nothing while they ‘processed’ my tax paperwork. In actual fact, they just sat around looking at videos on their phone and talking to each other. A little frustrated at this point

A change in perspective:

I’m thankful that this crap all happened. In part because it makes a good story. But mostly because of all of the great people I met in San Carlos. If any of you read this, big thanks to all of you I met there. Some of you became closer than others; some will be friends for life, others I hope to see again some day (next time I visit San Carlos … and I will) and the rest, thanks for the memories.

It was awesome to meet everyone: Tweeter, Pobre Juan, Alex, Ericka, Anna, Zach, Dulce, Tyler, Pepe, Troy, Jeremy, Hawk, Nelly, Brenda, Susie Q, Cowboy Bob, Sven, Roo, Jonathan, Chuck, Gary, Brian, Esmerelda, Val, Gary, Donna, Chino, Elias, Kevin, Felipe, Laurabelle, Brad, Virginia, Gene, Wild Bill, Steve and Loco Miguel.

The other reason I’m glad it happened when it did is that it forced me really disregard my schedule and acknowledge that things out of my control and beyond my knowledge will get in the way. Sitting still for two weeks waiting for parts really beat this lesson into me. Now I know for this adventure that planning to meet people in the future will require maintaining flexibility in either timing or location but I won’t be able to commit to both or I will be sure to disappoint or change the plan on them.

It also taught me to slow down and take more time in each place I visit. If I didn’t spend the time I did in San Carlos, I never would have had the amazing experience or met the amazing people I did. So moving forward, I’m being more generous with how long I spend in good places and being open to extending if I’m having fun - but equally, getting out quicker if the opposite is the case.

And Tweeter, I can never repay you for the generosity in taking me in, helping me navigate my problems, being my Uber driver and in general being an awesome mate. Won’t be long til I find an excuse to visit you in Iowa or maybe I’ll catch you in San Carlos next winter. Or I’ll definitely come to the wedding when you find your Mexican bride haha

Someone said to me in the last few weeks, the difference between an ordeal and an adventure is your perspective. I’m happy to say, I’m definitely on an adventure and enjoying all of these new and random challenges.