Kobus mans's Blog (96)

To get from Baja to mainland Mexico you have two choices, drive back up the way you came or fork over a couple hundred bucks to take a ferry across the Sea of Cortez. We chose to take the ferry. It was expensive, but we had no desire to drive an extra two thousand miles.

This article details our sixteen hour ferry adventure. We went into it not really knowing what to expect aside from the ferry schedule and ticket costs. That information is available online on the…

Start: November 24, Cabo San Lucas

Finish: December 4, Pichilingue

Days Spent in Fancy Resort: 7

Songs Performed by Mariachis: 2

Forbidden Fish Caught and Eaten: 1

Number of Tents Replaced: 1

We broke the mold this week. Instead of camping on sand, cooking on tiny backpacking stoves and living out of our car we enjoyed a sunny week at Club Cascadas de Baja in sunny Cabo San…

Start: Saturday November 12, Playa Santispec

Finish: Wednesday November 23, Los Barriles

White Sandy Beaches: 3

Crazy Three-Day Mexican Festivals: 1

Rainy Days: 1

Fish Caught and Eaten: 3

It's been a while since our last trip update, apologies to friends, family and those living vicariously through our travels. We've been hopping from beach to beach, enjoying the sun, a bit of fishing and a few surprises.…

“This fucking road will kill ya!”

So starts the drunken campfire conversation with BajaBuda also known as Dave. A retired Vietnam veteran, now living in a RV Park just north of Mulege in Baja, Mexico.  “I have been in some stupid and scary situations in my day, but few things as dangerous as this Mex 1 highway.

“Every day you see idiots do things that make it easier for this road to claim another. You,” he said pointing at me, “should not be one of them. You should be on your…

Start: Saturday November 12, Playa Santispec

Finish: Wednesday November 23, Los Barriles

White Sandy Beaches: 3

Crazy Three-Day Mexican Festivals: 1

Rainy Days: 1

Fish Caught and Eaten: 3

It's been a while since our last trip update, apologies to friends, family and those living vicariously through our travels. We've been hopping from beach to beach, enjoying the sun, a bit of fishing and a few surprises.…

We three each have the pleasure of living out of one 35 liter bin and a small backpack for the next fifteen months. All of our personal effects; clothes, electronics, toiletries, and shoes must fit in that space. This includes cold weather, rain, and hiking gear. It's a lot of stuff to cram in a small space. We've done backpacking trips in the past so this is familiar territory, but that doesn't seem to make it much easier.

Our limit was 5-6 days worth of…

Border name: San Ysidro

Between cities: Chula Vista, USA and Tijuana, Mexico

Cost for visas: $20 USD per tourist card

Cost for vehicle: $48 plus $200 USD refundable deposit

Total time: 1 hour 15 minutes

The steps:

1. Drive through the border
2. Clear Mexican customs (red light, green light)
3. Find the Banjercito / Migración office
4. Go to the Migración office and fill out the tourist card paper.
5. Go to the Banco…

General Availability: Very High

Quality of Bandwidth: Excellent if signal strength is high

Frequency of internet in hotels: Very High

Frequency of internet in campgrounds: Very High in RV parks, Medium in other campsites, Low in national parks

Average cost to connect: Usually free. Places with fee usually charge $1/hour or $5/day. But cost can go as high as $10/hour.

Compared to the rest of the world, finding free wifi in the USA is easy. However, it does help to know…

Start: Tuesday November 8, Guerrero Negro

Finish: Friday November 11, Santa Rosalia

Fish Caught and Eaten: 1

Seagulls Caught and Released: 1

Street Tacos Consumed: 6

Routine Military Checkpoints Crossed: 3

Rainy Days: 0!!!

After a long day of driving we've crossed into Baja California Sur, the southern half of the Baja peninsula. Rumors of white sandy beaches, good fishing and beautiful weather has convinced us to move south as quickly as…

This is part one of a series of articles that aim to provide fellow travelers with an overview of our expenses as we continue our journey through the Americas. This article covers the 30 days we spent along the west coast and southwestern states of the U.S.

Why go to all this trouble, you my ask? And why should you care? First, if we had more resources such as this as we planned our trip it would have taken us a lot less time to come up with a budget had faith in. And second, if you…

Start: Tuesday October 30, Lake Havasu, AZ

Finish: Monday November 7, Ensenada, Mexico

Borders Crossed: 1

Rainy Days: 3

Street Tacos Consumed: 3

Cameras Broken & Repaired: 2

Most Spent in One Day: $325.81



Since our whirlwind tour of the Grand Canyon we've survived a night camping in sand with 40 mile per hour wind, a beer brewery tour, two broken cameras and the world's busiest land border crossing.

We're currently driving down the Baja…

One of the most common questions we are asked is, "How can you afford to spend so much time traveling?" People tend to confuse what we are doing with what most Americans do two or three weeks a year - go on vacation. Long-term travel is more like daily life than a vacation. It can even be cheaper than living at home.

We spent a year and a half planning and saving for this 16-month adventure. There's no magic involved, just a lot of research, spreadsheets and number…

After five nights of freezing cold in Moab, we are ready for some warmth. Good thing I checked the weather at the Grand Canyon...overnight low of 18 frigid degrees. Our consensus: screw that. The result? Cut two days from our tour of the canyon, spend one expensive night in a hotel room, and move on to warm, sunny Lake Havasu as soon as humanly possible.

Did I mention we spent the night in a hotel room? That's the third night we've spent indoors since our trip began and the…

Canyonlands is the second national park we planned to visit from our base camp in Moab. Little did we know, mother nature would have a few nasty surprises in store for us following our near-miss while hiking in Arches National Park.

Regardless of the rainy, frigid weather, we were able to visit the northern part of Canyonlands, named Island in the Sky. Our third day in Moab brought rain, more rain, and cold. Luckily the sky cleared around noon and after warming up in…

Start: Sunday October 23, Zion National Park,  UT

Finish: Tuesday October 25, Moab, UT

Days on the Road: 21

Miles Driven: 1870

Miles Hiked: 13.2

The drive from Zion to Moab took us about five hours, three or four Spanish lessons, a couple scenic viewpoints and a stop for lunch on the side of the freeway after missing the last turnoff for 40 miles.

We've been camped in Moab for the past six days, the longest we've spent in one place since our…

Start: Thursday October 20, Death Valley, UT

Finish: Sunday October 23, Zion National Park, UT

Days on the Road: 15

Days for wet boots to dry: 3

Three days in Zion National Park brought a never-ending highway of tourists, not-so-emerald pools, six wet boots and one amazing hike in a canyon.

If you're headed to Zion, The Narrows is not to be missed. Don't get me wrong, the rest of the park is spectacular, but hiking in a river through a slot canyon that…

I love the desert. I love everything about it. Some can’t stand it, these God-forsaken places. I worship them, like a lizard worships hot asphalt. We spent less than 24 hours in Death Valley National Park. It was barely long enough to remember what I love so much about the desert. READ…

After a long day of driving we made it to San Francisco by dinner time. The plan was to meet up with Marcell, a friend of Jessica and Kobus' from back in the cruise ship days, and crash on his floor for a couple nights. The weather was amazing, 80 degrees and sunny both days, we couldn't have picked a better time to visit San Francisco. READ…

Start: October 10 - Jedidiah Smith Redwoods State Park

End: October 13 - San Francisco

Miles Driven: 362

Number of Salmon Not Caught: All of them

Days of Rain: 0!

Gigantic Trees: Lots

Week two brought us better weather and some awesome scenery. We spent three nights camping in Jedidiah Smith Redwoods State Park on the Smith River. King salmon were running and Kobus and I spent most of our time flailing about on the water.…

In our article Blue Gets a Bit More Junk in the Trunk we covered the modifications we made to the rear storage area of our Toyota 4Runner. After a dozen test packs and three trial runs we've finally (with one week to spare) figured out how to make the most of that space.

The whole point in adding a two-tiered storage system in the back of Blue was to fit all…