Thursday, December 23, 2010

Driving Baja: Let's fill in the blanks

A few days ago when we began this trip I posted that I'd "fill in the blanks" about the drive and general Baja travel once I'd found a place with reliable wi-fi. Well I'm here and it's time (and I've got to come up with a hundred posts in ten days... wow). So let's call this Part I and get started.

There's a few things that you can do and a little bit of information that you can know ahead of time that will make a trip down to the tip of Baja a lot more fun and safe. I'll be giving you a play-by-play of our most recent trip down, some of the posts will be travelouge-ish type posts, others will offer some of my hard won tips for Baja travel. Hope you enjoy them.

The rally point. We always pick one person's home to act as the meeting point for the morning departure. We all agreed to meet at 9am on Saturday. This is a huge tip: Everybody should agree to meet at the assigned place and time and understand that if you're even a minute late, you'll be left behind. Definitely do not drive around rounding everybody up- if you're not there, you're not going. The only person missing from our group was Wally but he gave us a heads up and we were ready to roll at the assigned departure time of 9:30 am.
Baja Tip: Assign a rally point and time. If you're late, you're on your own. Everybody should understand that from the rally point you are heading directly to the border. That means that each vehicle should be fully fueled and every other detail taken care of. There'll be no stopping for additional groceries or snacks. This keeps you on schedule and saves you a lot of frustration when one person in your group isn't totally organized (that's not you, right?).

No comments: