Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Bahia Kino - or "Little Colorado"

I should feel right at home here -- I've seen more Colorado license plates in one day here than I've seen since we left that state last summer. We spoke briefly with a woman from Durango this morning, she said there are a lot of people here who've migrated from Colorado.


Yesterday was not an especially relaxed or easy travel day from my perspective. We needed to drive north to the city of Hermosillo and then back southwest to get to Bahia Kino. The road was quite rough for much of the distance from San Carlos north. We had to navigate around Hermosillo to find the turn off to the road to Bahia Kino. Once again, Jim & I were in the lead position, only this time I didn't have the detailed, turn-by-turn instructions I had on the way down to San Carlos.

Luckily, I was able to establish an internet connection as we approached Hermosillo and found a website with some directions and a landmark I could use to find the correct road to turn onto. Then, to make things a little more exciting, we had a detour! We had a few tense moments when the detour seemed to end, but we had no idea where we were. Luckily, the detour took us right to the road we needed to be on, and all was well.


We stopped in the town of Miguel Alemon between Hermosillo and Bahia Kino to rest. We shopped at a grocery store across the street from the Pemex. Then, Jo decided it would be a good idea to get something to eat. We ended up at Pollo Feliz, which is a large Mexican chicken chain. We thought we ordered chicken sandwiches - ha! Fooled us. When we got back to our rigs and were eating, we discovered we'd actually ordered ham and cheese sandwiches. They were tasty, but not exactly what we'd expected!

This is the Pemex station where we stopped.



When we arrived in a dust storm in Bahia Kino, we wondered what in the world we'd gotten ourselves into. This certainly didn't look like a beautiful little town by the sea. We parked the rigs in the first area off the road that all three would fit. We unhooked the Saturn so Jo, JoAnn and I could go scout out the rv parks for a likely place. Jo had starred three parks to check out. These were a combination of recommendations from other people and the write-ups from the Mike and Terri Church book. The first one we looked at is in the older section of Bahia Kino. We didn't see 3 spaces near each other that we could fit into, so off we went to the second possibility, in the section known as Nuevo Kino. This one did have 3 spaces fairly close to each other. But, the 5th wheels would have been parked with a view of a cement wall, and it looked extremely tight to get the rigs in, with no place to park our vehicles. Off to the third choice, about 5 miles up the road, almost to the end of Nuevo Kino. There were plenty of spots available at the Kino Bay Trailer RV Park with 3 together in several different sections. We made the decision this would be it. By the time we got back to the rigs and drove back to the park with them, everyone was pretty tired.


We got our motor home into the small space without too much difficulty. It was a bit more challenging for the 5th wheels.


We're on the back row, so at least we didn't have to maneuver around other rigs, just those quaint covered patios!


A group of six tired and dusty travelers finally had a relaxing moment at Jorge's restaurant across the street from the rv park! We called it a night soon after dinner.



This morning dawned calm and sunny. We took the camera to get a few pictures when we walked over to pay for a two-day stay. Many people in the park appear to have settled in for good. They've fancied up the covered patios, painted murals and planted flowers. Can you see the rv in this picture?



Here's a view down one of the rows in the park.

We took a drive to explore the area. Jo and JoAnn brought us a little map of the area so we could find our way around. Here's a view of the rv park from the road behind it.

We also saw a couple of telephone poles with bird nests built right on top.

A view of the shore at Estela Bay which is kind of around the corner from us.

This view is from the main street of Nuevo Kino looking towards the end of the road, where our rv park is situated. At the base of the large hill in the lower center of the picture, you might be able to see some white dots. That's the area where we're staying. It's about 6 miles from one end of the town to the other, all along a single main road.

Here's a street view of the road. The garages and driveways face the street. The front of the houses face the shore, of course.

We noticed at the most attractive houses along this road, the cars in the driveways have American license plates - especially Colorado!

Jo mentioned this morning that someone told her there is a cafe in the older section of town that has phones where you can call anywhere in the US for 30 minutes for $5.00. We found it, Roberto's Cafe and Lucy's Kitchen, but the lines are down today, so no phone calls.

The wind started blowing pretty hard again around noon today, maybe tomorrow it will be calmer!

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