Thursday, June 28, 2007

*sigh* i've been soooo busy, im really behind on my blog posts.. in fact while searching through some image folders, i came across this, which i totally forgot to post..

Well, on the weekend of 06.01.2007 I had the opportunity to visit Mexico to check out the Baja 500 race and for those of you who do not know what the Baja 500 race is about, you can check out the
SCORE website. I was invited by my friend Brian and Bryan (yep, that's two different people, not just a typo) to ride with them and camp out for the weekend. We followed their friend Pat, who was basically the navigator of the entire trip..

Here's the race map..


we made our way to Mexico by way of the 5 South, 805 fwy south to San Ysidro. Once across the border we made our way along the coast enroute to Ensenada. I forget exactly where this restaurant was, but the guys stopped off at a place called Taco Surf for lunch.



Taco Surf is a small hole in the wall place, where there's two cooks, and third guys who's basically a cashier and helps prepare the meat.

I started with two carne asada taco's, cause i was a little suspicious of the food, and the fact that they didnt wash any of their plates, but rather they vigorously wiped them clean with a singe semi-dirty rag that they used to clean almost everything else...

anyway, back to the food. after inhaling my first two carne asada taco's, i didnt really care about the cleanliness of this joint anymore. so i order myself two more carne asada taco's and a pork torta (hey! i didnt have breakfast). The food was SOOOOOO freakin good, it was ridiculous. I haven't tasted food that good and authentic here in the US, and i visit plenty of authentic restaurants where i live like Taco Bell, Del Taco and El Torito.. (okay, im just kidding, anybody knows that those places are nowhere near authentic).. The best part, was the price and as you know, its cheap..



Here's the view across the street of Taco Surf



after our little feast, we continued on our journey..















A quick stop off at some local store to pickup some fireworks for the weekend.. Hey, they're legal in Mexico!!






We continued with our journey..... Alot of the smaller towns that we passed, contained only a single paved road through the town, while everything else was dirt road..











We finally make our way to Ensenada... Make a quick stop at a hotel (forget the name) to meet up with their friends, drink and check out all of the expensive cars and trucks!!



After leaving Ensenada we made our way to San Vicente, where we would cut through the actual track to make our way to Erindira (or actually about 10-15 miles just south of Erindira). Our drive from San Vicente was very rough and filled with bumps, even bigger bumps, rocks, even bigger rocks, and some pretty technical terrain. Im just glad that Brian's Yukon held up and the fact that he drove the terrain very well and got us safely to camp.

We did have some issues after the rough terrain.. notice the hot dog buns located under the blue cooler? Well, when we first started out trek, these things were nicely packed off the side where they woudn't get squashed.. The terrain was sooo bad, it actually re-arranged some of the items in Brian's SUV. And you won't believe how difficult it is to eat hot dogs on flat bread. I couldn't get sufficient ketchup to hotdog ratio.. SADNESS!!!


Once at camp we setup our tents and ez-ups.. Here's my home-away-from-home.. placed strategically between two cars to protect from dust, wind and any potential mis-guided automobile.



And what would Mexico be, without the possibility of mixing beer and fire crackers... luckily nobody was hurt.







And here's Pat, trying to throw M80's across the road at me, the camera man!!! c'mon! Luckily for me, he has an arm of a blind 10 year-old girl. Meaning, he never came close.. :)



anyway, enough of this stuff, let's see the motorcycles, cars and trophy trucks!!















































Here's our buddy Pat, who was intent to putting stickers on any vehicle that would slow down enough around this corner. It was funny, cause he actually got some of the cars to stop.






Overall, a wonderful and fun filled weekend. and it was my first time being that far into Mexico. Thank you to Brian for driving and everybody whom i met on the trip.. You guys are all crazy, but cool!!

Thanks,
Michael