Back to the US and Week #1 in Baja

After nearly four months in New Zealand, we flew back to the US on March 30th. It was the day that lasted FOREVER! Unlike when you fly to New Zealand and lose an entire day, the return trip is like time travel as you typically arrive back in the US before taking off in New Zealand. ‘Wait a minute, Doc. Are you telling me you built a Time Machine out of a DeLorean?’ It was nice to get back to the US and our global entry cards enabled us to breeze through immigration in less than a minute!

Loved this sign on the bathroom of a cafe in Atwater Village, Los Angeles

Upon arriving in LA, we stayed at my aunt Nina’s and her fiance Mark’s house who were actually getting married the next day! It was a second marriage for both of them so they decided to keep it fairly low key and have a courthouse wedding up in Santa Barbara. Even though it was small, it was still a beautiful wedding and both the bride and the groom were dressed to the nines! After the ceremony, we had an incredible dinner at a restaurant in Santa Barbara and finished the evening dancing in Nina & Mark’s hotel suite. It was an amazing day and I wish the newlyweds a life of love, light and laughter!






After Nina’s wedding, we drove down to San Diego to pick up our van which we had left at our friend Susie’s house while we were in New Zealand. It was great to catch up with Susie and be reunited with our van which had a dead battery but was otherwise in great shape. After two nights at Susie’s house, we hit the road and headed for the Mexican border. We decided to cross at the eastern crossing of Calexico/Mexicali instead of San Ysidro/Tijuana as we had heard that it’s much less crowded and easier to navigate. As advertised, it was a super easy crossing despite the uber-thorough inspection by a border agent. Ginny’s paranoia got the better of her and thought he might have been trying to plant a kilo of cocaine in our van somewhere but there was no foul play whatsoever. From the border, we had about 18 hours of driving to get down to Todos Santos where we were planning to spend four weeks at an Airbnb. 

We took three days to complete the drive and it was fairly uneventful. The road is almost entirely a two lane highway (one lane in each direction) and some sections are very narrow with zero shoulder. We also had some high winds on the first day so there were definitely some white knuckle moments battling the combination of the narrow road, high winds and a steady stream of big rigs. At one point we had to pull off of the highway and take a dirt road detour because a big rig had gone off the side of the road and was being pulled back up onto the highway by a tow truck (see photo below). All in all, it was a nice drive through some beautiful country and the highlight was our brief stop in Bahia Concepcion which we will definitely be spending more time at on our trip back north. 





We pulled into Todos Santos a week ago and headed straight to the Airbnb that we had booked for the month. It’s a small but cute second floor casita with an outdoor patio with ocean views. It’s a perfect home for us for our stay in Todos Santos! The reason that we hightailed it down to Todos Santos was because our old friends Andrew and Isabelle were down here with their family and other friends for a one week vacation. So we caught them for the last couple days of their vacation which included a trip to the beach, lounging by their pool and of course a trip out for some amazing fish/shrimp tacos, ceviche and guac!

This week we’ve fallen into our Todos Santos routine which has me going to Spanish class every day and yoga on some days. Ginny’s taking several online classes on illustration and gardening and is currently off at a dance class so I’m expecting to learn some sweet moves from her when she gets home. She has warned me not to expect her out on the dance floor anytime soon. We bought some fish the other day from a local fisherman who was selling fish out of the back of his pickup truck. It was delicious and super fresh! We’re looking forward to our next few weeks here and if my Spanish gets good enough, maybe I’ll write the next blog post in Spanish!  Hasta luego, amigos!












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