Mike Humfreville
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Alfonsinas at Gonzaga ???
Does Alfonsinas have a phone number yet? Or do you still have to call El Rancho Grande and ask them to relay info to Antonio and Irma at Alfonsinas?
Do you have a current phone number for either or both?
Thanks mucho.
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yankeeirishman
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ring ring
here's what I got from Joaquin last year:
01152-664-6481951 cell 664-6262626 fax or
I sent a email ten days ago, no response so far.....
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Mike Humfreville
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yankeeirishman - Thanks!
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yankeeirishman
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contact
HV if you contact em', we hope to show up there on the 7th or 8th. Please ask them to e_me if you make contact. Txs
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Mike Humfreville
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I asked the poster who asked me for these numbers to get back to me. I'll let you know. Thanks again and have a good trip. I've only seen
Alfonsinas full once and that was in late Spring.
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bufeo
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Mike,
Irma is no longer at Alfonsina's.
The numbers listed above are the ones I have and should be correct.
Allen
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Mike Humfreville
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Thanks Allen
Happy New Year. I'll bet it was really raining up by you.
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bonanza bucko
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Mood: Airport Bum
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Alfonsina's etc
So far Alfonsina's doesn't have a telephone in at the cantina y motel...just in Tijuana and the numbers above are the ones I have. They sometimes
don't answer.
Also it's reported correctly that Irma isn't there. But Antonio is until his contract is up in June, 2005. After that ????. We hope they both come
back because the place will be a wreck without them.
Lotsa people on the beach have Sat phones now soe Rancho Grande's phone and all the trouble with it is diminished......but that doesn't help with
reservations at the cantina y motel....best advice is to go on a non holliday week end and be prepared to camp if you can't get in or to buy a place
down there if you can find one.
Most of us old timers there hope for two main things: 1.)that the road never gets graded/fixed and 2.) that they never get a phone.
It's pretty apparent from recent history that neither of these "upgrades" are needed to make the place more popular than the environment can support.
The latest threat is the salting up of the wells out in the desert where they have been pumping out ancient water for about ten years....using it to
flush tiolets in the motel which is supremely stupid. It now takes them about four hours of slow pumping to fill up the water truck that supplies the
camp andthe hotel each day. That's gonna get worse.
But that's Mexico.
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David K
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Mood: Have Baja Fever
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Agua dulce?
Is Las Palmitas just too far to go for good water or does Punta Final have exclussive rights to it? Maybe time for a new well?
Lot's of water in or under the Santa Maria river bed... Here's a aerial photo (from Doug Bowles' plane) of the giant pool up in Santa Maria canyon
(May, '99).
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Mike Humfreville
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An excerpt from several years back...
Here's part of a story from Alfonsinas related to the use of cell or Sat phones. What an exasperating night.
"We're all in our faces swapping high tales of the outback when Antonio enters with a look of concern. He hands me a note and spurts out an emerging
situation. In Spanish he tells me that the note he has given me has the telephone number where Dooouglas's friend, Sandi, can reach her mother, who
is ill. I relate this in English to Sandi, who looks like she is being absorbed into the floor of Alfonsinas, chair and all. I ask Antonio for more
information. There is none. I ask what I already know the answer to: where can we call out from here? Nowhere. There is a phone at El Rancho
Grande but it only works for outgoing calls. I think for a jaded minute and consider that all telephones in this part of the peninsula must be
satellite phones rather than cell phones. There are no tall poles hanging around this part of the desert.
Neither is there anyone to use them. Except in an emergency, which we are now in the midst of. I know absolutely zero about satellite phones.
Antonio considers for a moment. He needs these moments; he's a considerate person. He tells me to wait a moment and fades to white. A few seconds
later he's back and now he has a magic box in his grips. It turns out to be a satellite telephone. He goes into great detail, instructing me as to
its use.
"Antonio, this is a very complicated device and I don't understand even the most rudimentary aspects of the technology involved." I said.
"No problem, Miguel." He said. "I'll send the boy along with you." Now, I've learned to recognize an insult over my many years of stumbling, blind
drunk or otherwise confused, throughout the central desert of Baja: never send a boy to do a mans job.
So several of us pile into Amo's new 4-door 4WD Ford truck (is there any way to get a kickback from Ford for all this?). In front, Amo is driving,
the boy with the radio, Aram, is in the middle and I'm riding shotgun. Dooouglas and Sandi are in the back seat. The plan is to drive in circles in
the desert until we pick up a signal. My concept is: why don't they tell us where these signals fall to Earth and we can then go there and use them
as necessary. Kinda like a water hose. That works. My logic is considered nonsensical on the plains of Gonzaga and we thus drive in continuously
more erratic patterns across the desert. Every once in awhile Aram utters a youthful grunt and throws a left hand into the roof of Amo's cab while
his right hand rips the documented number for him to call from my left hand and he reads and punches numbers. Tones accurately reflect the numbers
Aram had punched. Dooouglas comments that we are "being rather cavalier" with the paper. He's worried about it flying out the window I guess. So
we record it in several places. Now we have several recordings of the number. Are they identical? We all listen with rapt attention to Aram's phone
tones, having absolutely no concept of how the tones translate into numbers. It might as well have been a John Philips Sousa military march from the
5O's: Dum-Dum-Da-Bump-Bump, Da-Bump-Da-Bump-Bump-Bump. It almost sounds sexy when you try and write it out.
Several times we stumble on a signal and Aram throws his hand into the roof.
"Stop!" I shout, as if they didn't know.
Amo slaps on the binders and we all jostle forward. Aram punches numbers and hands me the phone. Each time there is that funny little
faster-than-a-busy signal the phone company puts out to tell you something's wrong. After a half-hour of this we give up and hightail it over to El
Rancho Grande to see if we can get further info. We all pile out and the store is still open. Standing there on the outside patio is a collection of
local workers, drunk out of their gourds. They are all staggering, swaying to a tape player that was pumping out Mariachi music at full volume,
swaying, joking in uproarious laughter. They grabbed me as I walked by, asked if we could join them.
"On a mission." I said, continuing into the store. "Later." Yet another party.
Inside, the girl running the register told me Pedro was the manager. Soon Pedro appears and we ask him if he's the person that took the stateside
call. He was. Is he sure the number is correct? He produces the original paper on which it was recorded and the two numbers compare. We ask other
questions, trying to provide further insight. All we knew was that Sandi's mom was ill.
"They used the word 'grave'." Pedro tells us.
"Grave as in cemetery or grave as in serious?" I ask. Thank God this is all in Spanish. I'm holding my breath and preparing to catch Sandi if she
passes out with the wrong answer.
"Grave as in serious." I felt a silent sigh of relief.
Having verified the number, we pile back into Amo's HOT new Ford 4WD Truck ($$$???) and head back to the circling routine again. After a few minutes
Aram shrieks and throws his left hand onto the roof. Amo hits the brakes.
"Atras, atras!" Shouts Aram to me.
"Back, Back!" I shout to Amo.
"Adlante, adlante!"
"Forward, forward!" and so on, until we're in the middle of a field of RF (that's Radio Frequency boys, keep it clean). I am basking in its warming
glow. Aram is wildly punching numbers and getting the funny warning tone. He tries again and again. Same results. We click up a mental notch to
ask what we could be doing wrong. We focus on the international identification, the first 3 digits for all inter-country dialing. The number is 011.
I know this number because I work with CNES (Centre Nacional de Etudias Frances) in France. We've been dialing the international code for France.
Or, maybe the 011 is just a number you use from any location to identify the call as international.
Someone in the truck thinks the U.S. code is 001, so we try it a number of times, always with the same funny beeping. Finally, we just give up. By
the time we got unwound from all the circles in the desert and got back to Alfonsinas it was 11:30. Everyone there was long gone. Everyone that
spilled from the truck went immediately to bed. Everyone except one.
Guess who? I went upstairs to our room and poured 12 fingers of raw rum into a ..."
Los Tres Migueles, Part Four
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