Travel with Kevin and Ruth: Juncalito Beach

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Juncalito Beach

Wednesday January 2...11:30pm

Got up early this morning and hit the road. Nobody had come to collect the rent, so we decided to leave while we could. We see this happening regularly with other RV's...they arrive late and leave early so that they don't have to
pay. There doesn't seem to be any routine to the collection of overnight fees anyhow. A lot of the time, they don't show up for a couple of days in a row or more.

We headed for the town of Loreto, about an hours drive south. Loreto turns out to be a nice little town. We had read a report online that said we can fill our fresh water tanks at the marina in Loreto, but we get there and find out that's not possible. The report had been a few years old so I guess things had changed. We spoke to one of the fishing guides who spoke quite good English. He said there were water taps along the median of the road running beside the marina. Kind of difficult to get to because we had to actually park in the left lane by the median to access the taps. There was a cop having a snack at the marina snack bar and the guide asked him if we could use the taps on the road. He didn't speak English, but said through our translator guide that sure, we could use them and he'd come out and direct traffic around us. It seemed he was quite happy to have something to do! The water was slow out of the taps and we sat there for probably more than a half an hour. He had no problem with that, and they even let us park at the marina so that we could explore town.

Sherman filling up with water on one of the main roads in Loreto

Steve and Glen walking into the "El Centro" section of Loreto

The bank at the main square wouldn't give us any cash from their machine. It kept saying "cannot communicate with network" or something like that. We heard there was a new bank opened nearer the highway so we walked down there. This was a different bank, and was in fact brand new. It's cash machine wasn't working either! Went and spoke to one of the tellers, and she said no problem...just try again tomorrow. Oh well...we picked up a few groceries and have enough of everything to make it to the next major town of Ciudad Constitution. We've found an online contact on one of the RV forums who has agreed to let us park on their 2 acre lot for a couple of days when we get to that area.

After Loreto, we head to Juncalito, and find a dirt road leading to where the RV's park. But this road leads to a bunch of cottages by the beach. A guy comes out and says we need to go back to the highway and take the next dirt road left. Says it's a rough road, but we should be able to make it if we go slow. We find the road, and Steve and I walk the 15 minutes or so to the beach to make sure it's worth driving our RV's down this bad road. Turns out it is worth the drive. It's a free beach. Really nice scenery, and we think it's not busy because there are no signs, and the road is bad. We crawl along the road easing ourselves over the bumps and find a nice spot with a view of the ocean on one side and the mountains and palm trees on the other. Absolutely beautiful. We think we're going to stay here for a few days. And it's free! And strangely enough, we can get internet by aiming the antenna across the bay to the cottages! We like this place...!