BajaGypsy Trip Report

I always say that I’m going to do a trip report, and never do, so in the spirit of the New Year, I have decided to stop being such a lazy bum and get a trip report done!

We left Saskatoon, at around 2:30 pm on Friday, December 21, 2012. The temperature had warmed up since the morning and it was a balmy -15 degrees!

We arrived at the US border at around 8:15 pm the same day, and the wait was only around 15 minutes. Every time we go through this border crossing, the border guards feel the need to let us know how absolutely stupid and retarded we are for going to Baja. Don’t we know how dangerous it is? Don’t we know that Mrs. Gypsy will be kidnapped, and raped? That the little Gypsy’s will be kidnapped and kept for child labour, and that Mr. Gypsy will be beaten and killed? We have given up on the arguing of these facts and now just smile, hand our passports over and say have a nice day.

I will spare you the details of our uneventful drive. We made it to National City to our favorite hotel The Clarion, at 8:30 pm on Saturday, December 22, 2012. Our first hotel stop! The beds were heavenly, the showers are hot, and the best thing? It was +12 degrees!

We were up with the birds, and ready to get to Baja. We left our hotel on Sunday, December 23, 2012 at 7:15 am, hoping and praying that our crossing would be easy, as we had a truck load of stuff that we were bringing down, for our place in Bahia Asuncion.

We got to the border at 7:30 am and found the new border crossing very easy. That was until we declared we needed to get our visa’s, so off we went to park in what I think was secondary, to go get our visa’s and we would be on our way! Unfortunately, it was not so easy. The guard need to look in our truck, no problem, we have nothing to hide. She sees our air compressor for filling scuba tanks at the back of our truck, and this is where it goes into the toilet.

Apparently we can’t bring the compressor through this border we must go to the Otay border crossing. We are arguing that we will never get back over there, but she tells us no problem! We will give you a police escort back to the US border and from their it is very simple to find the crossing.
So with our police escort, and every person in the vicinity looking at the very bad Canadians, that must have been smuggling drugs or weapons we get to the US border crossing, where, we are immediately sent to secondary, at this point it is 8:30 am.

We sit and wait for ever at secondary, as our truck is so full, that nobody wants to look at us. Finally a guard takes pity on us, and Mr. Gypsy explains our situation. The guard asks a few questions, takes our passports, and by 9:15 am we are done and on our way to Otay.

The Otay border was pretty uneventful, Mr. Gypsy found a lady, who gave us a piece of paper to fill out, Mr. Gypsy stated what we were bringing in and the costs involved, she came and had a brief look, gave us a green piece of paper and we were on our way, it is now 9:50 am.

We arrived to have coffee with Sirena at 12:00, had a brief visit and gave Izzak his Christmas present. We stopped at Home Depot, and then I went to the bank to get some money out except, my bank FROZE my account. After almost an hour of trying very hard not to lose my mind on the gentleman on the other end of the line, they unfroze my account; we got our money and were on our way!

For the first time ever in Gypsy Baja travel, we had to spend the night at Baja Cactus, as by the time we got there, it was starting to get dark, and Mr. Gypsy was not comfortable traveling, the distance between there and Bahia Asuncion in the dark. I have to say that it was a wonderful Hotel, and the showers, are probably, the best in Baja.

We finally got to our place on December 24, 2012 at around noon. It was sooooooooo, good to be back, and had a wonderful welcoming committee! We were also invited to Juan’s uncle Javier’s place for Christmas Eve. As always, we were warmly welcomed, and had a wonderful time. We even brought some snow from Saskatchewan for them to play with!

The rest of our time was spent doing what we do in Baja, working on the Guest house, playing at the beach, visiting with friends, making new friends, and most importantly making memories.







We would like to give a very special thank you to Juan, and Iflyfish, for helping make the littlest Gypsy, a very happy boy on his first ever Yellow Tail fishing trip! Without their help, little Gypsy probably wouldn’t have landed his monster fish!







We also went to go visit SurfDoc's resting place, and I felt it was missing a little something. I decided to go all Martha Stewart on his ass, and made him a final resting place wreath.

Nice!

Fun, fun!!! Outstanding report & pics, Gypsy. Sounds like a good Christmas was had by all, and most important you were WARM!!!

barry

Talk about stupid US border guards!

The last time we crossed into the US from Alberta we were sent to secodary where they did a thorough search of my Yukon. In the center console they found 2 deposit slips from my Mexican bank account; one for $35,000 pesos and the other for $50,000 pesos. They then took me into a room and brought in 2 high ranking ICE guys who accused me of money laundering for taken that much money into Mexico. After almost an hour questioning and them calling Homeland Security, I finally convinced them that those 2 deposits were less than $350US and $500Us respectively.

It was a great visit...albeit far too short...wooo hoooo....finally we have the compressor for filling dive tanks!!!!

you forgot to mention Mr.Gypsy's penchant for loud banging noises...thanks for the fireworks and fun company throughout the holidays.



[Edited on 1-12-2013 by shari]

Gotta love those Gypsies!

Iflyfishconmiamigos

Hey Durrell I have $350.00usd. Wonder if you could change it in to pesos for me

Nice report

Quote:

Originally posted by UnoMas Hey Durrell I have $350.00usd. Wonder if you could change it in to pesos for me

just because I was able to convince them doesn't mean that you can convince me.

Quote:

Originally posted by durrelllrobert The last time we crossed into the US from Alberta we were sent to secodary where they did a thorough search of my Yukon. In the center console they found 2 deposit slips from my Mexican bank account; one for $35,000 pesos and the other for $50,000 pesos. They then took me into a room and brought in 2 high ranking ICE guys who accused me of money laundering for taken that much money into Mexico. After almost an hour questioning and them calling Homeland Security, I finally convinced them that those 2 deposits were less than $350US and $500Us respectively.