Dropping in-Mid-Travel Madness!

Much cleaning to be below

 

Still need to pull front skid

 

Mud

 

wild horses

 

day 2 stage 2 began as normal get up and go!
At this point we were on top of things....however finding that nights camp proved to be most difficult as we had been given to wrong GPS location. We ended up going right past camp and driving into a washed out River bed for a couple hours over ledges boulders, trees and spit until we realized that we were never make it to the gps location we had mapped. This is where we sent the steering out of alignment after hitting a huge rock hiding behind a bush ..ouchy! It was now dark and we had all the lights on and thank goodness we had them because we needed every bit to get back out of the riverbed and to the dirt road. We record our track as we go so we were able to back track our way out.

 

Ended up finding and camping at Pancho's Beach which happened to be one of the race marker points. At this point we were in the the lead as everybody else was back at camp sleeping.

 

its a strange feeling to just pull over in baja and just camp unknown territory. We were exhausted at this point and this would have to do. Tried to get some rest but was too anxious and let baja take controll. A few brews later we were having a good time exploring our new surroundings. Woke up to beautiful scenery.

 

Dropped the front skid to get at the mud.

 

Gave it a bath

 

Day 3 stage 3
During day 1 stage on was the 1st time we encountered mud. On our approach to that's night camp one of the race markers was in the "Dry" lake bed. Just about 500 yards ahead were two stuck raptors I was going to pass right by them and was waved off that course by a guy that ran in front of the truck herding us away from getting stuck as well. Thanks to that guy we did not get stuck that day but we did pick up a lot of mud underneath. The next day was when I noticed the 1st slippage the transmission. Nothing too serious. The pictures you see of us stuck do not happen until day 5.

 

Back to day 3

Waking up at Panchos Beach and feeling refreshed we pushed on to the next campsite. Lasts nights lost in riverbed episode left us with some strange steering issues after slamming the hidden bush rock. It felt like we had lost power steering! More driving was needed at this point and we continued on. The motor felt fine and no slipping we cruised down some dirt roads while staying on track. The new suspension we put in preformed flawlessly and was just eating up all the bumps.

We decided to make a stop at Autozone and pick up a power steering pump just in case that was our steering issue. While doing that we started noticing the Federal government army trucks and national guards taking an interest in us. We still had our race stickers and #'s on at this point but they were covered in mud.

 

All stocked with parts but out of beer we pushed on to that's nights camp ..mind you we haven't seen any other teams for 2 days! We get to camp in 1st place as there is nobody there yet.

 

We have some food and still have some whiskey and start enjoying our selves again. We were then approached by a guy who asks if we have recovery gear lol. We bust out the maxtarxx and get his 9 ton van unstuck and he gave us a 6 pack of brew. BAJA Provides!

 

well just about the time our buzz really starts to kick in a guy pulls up and drops a bomb on us.
The race is canceled, the government is deporting people, impounding cars, and the organizers are being flow to capital of Mexico to answer handcuffs were used. We were told to remove all race stickers, numbers and anything associated with the event and to avoid populus places to avoid being detained! Some teams had been detained and escorted back over the boarder-!!! We were like oh shit maybe that why those army guys were checking us out so hard.

In the AM we burned all our documentation de stickered our truck. Now we were left with a truck with 2 big clean rectangles on the doors were our decals were. I remembered Isaw a car wash guy the night before in Mulege. Got the truck to the spray wash in Mulege guy and had some tacos at Marios tacoe they were delicious. The radios started squaking again and we were able to make contact with our teammates.

 

As it was getting late and our teammates were exhausted we decided to return to last night's camp at Playa requeson

 

Finally reunited with our teams we were able to hear and tell stories.

Well it turns out our teammates were very worried about us and had expressed their concerns for us on FB! Great just what the wives back home needed. This is what he thought happened to us.

 

withe the shifty cell phone coverage we had been unable to update our current status and people were praying 4 us we made contact with our people and the team was back together.. Now a day behind schedule we pressed on to La Paz for a good meal and then would push on to Todos Santos for our two days rest at a sweet hotel in El Cerritos Beach.
To be continued.?.