Huatabampito, Sonora – Isolation and Car Repairs

I thought about changing the entire name of the blog to “Isolation and Car Repairs” because so far that seems to be about all I have to write about. We find ourselves in the tiny little beach town of Huatabampito, Sonora. We are again the only rig in the RV park. Still wondering whether it is the safety situation or it is still to early in the season (mucho calor) that has us so isolated. I’m guessing a little bit of both.

The AC unit is working great. It was really comfortable in the van last night but both of us had trouble sleeping for a variety of reasons…

The van is already acting up again. More electrical issues. Two more cables got changed today once it cooled off a bit. This time the electrical gremlins have manifested themselves in a short to the stereo (ghast) every time we hit a bump (its Mexico, so every 45 seconds or so), the headlights, and the in-dash AC unit.

Something akin to plastic or rubber hit something hot that it shouldn’t have in the engine compartment in the middle of Navojoa sending smoke billowing into the van and forcing an emergency pull-over. Not sure what it was, there were no signs of any problems when I opened the hood and it never happened again. I zip-tied the shit out over everything loose to try to prevent a repeat occurrence.

Also the house battery doesn’t seem to be charging like it should. Opened the dash and all the shaking and rattling seems to have seriously deteriorated a positive battery cable this time and a ground on the house battery. So el mechanico (me) made another appearance today and we’ll hope that solves it. It is beginning to challenge our resolve a bit. We have talked about potentially taking the ferry from Mazatlan to La Paz and driving home up Baja should it continue. Hopefully this repair will be the last of it and we’ll continue on.

We were able to test out our new shade and bug fortress today. The wind made for constant adjustments but it is pretty nice and we’ll get it figured out.

Huatabampito (or little Huatabampo) is a sleepy little spot, there are some locals on the beach today since it is Sunday but there isn’t much going on. We are here for two days, but we’ll be anxious to head to El Fuerte tomorrow morning. Huatambito isn’t somewhere we’d normally stay for two days but we have a new rule of the road: no driving on Sundays, because there are no mechanics open on Sundays!

Oh, and Natalie got stung by a sting ray today and never made it past 8 inches of water.