David K - 1-28-2023 at 03:59 PM
This is the second year in a row 92-year-old Max (and his lady) were prevented from reaching Shari's Whale Magic tour!
Max is the El Camino Real bell historian you may have seen on TV's Huell Howser show (California Gold) a couple times or have read his books on the
bells or when he and I, co-authored two books, on the missions.
Today, Max emailed me what happened when they tried to drive to Guerrero Negro:
David,
I started this note two days ago and got sidetracked, several times.
Let me tell you about our whale trip. We left Sunday about 8 AM when we got to the border we were flagged thru, YEH.
We were then directed to a off ramp that showed Ensenada and several other places I did not know.
After driving thru TJ on streets sometimes full of reddish mud we finally got onto the highway south, YEH, YEH.
About 20 miles before Ensenada we slowed and got routed onto the north bound lanes---one lane north and one lane south, this lasted several (slow)
miles. We did see part of the south bound lane gone.
Had lunch at Punta Morro, and off we go south,
A few miles after we passed Maneadero, and (after the inspection station) we started to slow again one lane in both direction, road work and bridge
work, very slow and this was Sunday!
We got to El Rosario at 5:45PM, it was cold and damp. We had warm blankets but in the morning it was 38 degrees,
I talked to two truckers one could talk English they said the two vados along the road were 12" or more deep and running fast.
That did it, we turned around and came back thru Tecate, approx 5 min wait thru the gates.
No whales this year.
Live well, keep warm and dry,
Max
Max Kurillo over the years...
On Huell Howser's show about the El Camino Real and its bells, 2005:
We Nomads met Max in 2006, at Antonio's Viva Baja Cactus event, in Tijuana:
In 2012, Max and I were in Tecate, with our new book (The Old Missions of Baja & Alta California) to present to the governor of Baja
California:
In 2018, Edie 'The Mission Walker' author joined with Max and I for this photo at Max's El Camino Real bell-filled home, holding our books:
