November 22, 2012 – We arrived at Rancho Verde yesterday about 3:30 pm, a long day given we only drove from from Playa Tecolote, about 105 km or just over 60 miles. We stopped at a different fuel stop on the bypass around La Paz, and a different grocery store just on the outskirts of La Paz off Hwy 1, this worked well and will be part of the 45 tour into the future. Everyone enjoyed our stop at El Triunfo including lunch at the Caffe El Triunfo, we had the special, a Ruben Sandwich, fabuloso! Sadly we must report Nicholas Carrillo, operator of the Music Museum and Concert Pianist passed away suddenly in September, we sure missed him tinkling the ivories, he will be missed!
We had a great time at Tecolote, lots of beach walks and shell collecting, Lisa managed to get on the Stand Up Paddle Board a couple of times. We met a young Italian at Mike & Bertha’s (Palapa 206), Gianni (Johnny) and gave him a ride to Tecolote, this was a chance encounter and he was wonderful to camp with for a few days. Johnny, aka Drummer Boy, had been working on the west coast of Vancouver Island. We dropped him off at the Ferry last Tuesday and he is headed off to Mazatlan and is headed down to the tip of Chile in South America. We were given some freshly caught fish by Bill on Tecolote and Johnny had them cleaned in no time at all, we had these at our Pot Luck, very yummyo!
Our drive thru San Antonio, the site of the Paredones Amarillos gold mine, operated by Echo Bay Company, a subsidiary of the Canadian mining conglomerate Vista Gold (Argonaut Gold Inc. (TSX: AR) was uneventful. The Spanish mining enterprise Concordia is also involved in the effort. But, unlike these two enterprises, Pediment Gold wants to use water mixed with cyanide as a means of extracting gold from ore through a dissolving process. This has been a very controversial project in the region particularly with Expats in Todos Santos. The word is the entire town has been offered a lot of money to sell the whole Ejido, we will see what happens.
Oh as a last note, I lost yet another mirror, this time to a Baja Racer with a race car in tow going the opposite direction, going too fast and cutting the corner about 60 km north of La Paz. last night everyone slept well it went down to 10C, cool at last! We are now starting week 4!
