Endgame in San Felipe…

After nearly 3 months in San Felipe, is was getting close to time to head north and cooler weather. It was still comfortable most of the day and night here, but there were portions of the day when it was uncomfortably hot. So I was feeling it was getting to be time to head on north into the mountains for a while to cool off. Maybe wear some long pants for a bit.

Oh, here’s the cocktail guy. Comes around every afternoon. Makes pineapple drinks.

Because the wind is rather fickle this time of year, I pull out my awning early in the morning, around 8, and then retract it in the afternoon when the wind is getting blustery, around 2. Kind of a hassle, but not as bad as having a ruined awning would be.

Workmen working on the upper deck, and it’s coming along. They’re welding things together. The whole building uses metal and cement blocks. Oh, and a ceramic tile floor in the restaurant bar area. I won’t see it finished this trip, but it’ll be done when I come back late this year. Dune buggies are in and out of here all the time… This trailer filled with driftwood showed up one day. Don’t know where they got it, must be some remote bay somewhere down the coast. I’ve been 12 miles up and 12 miles down the coast near San Felipe and I’ve never seen a stick of driftwood on any of the beaches I’ve seen. Miles of beaches too. Well, the staff gets it for the locals for when they start packing the area during their summer vacations. There will soon be many Mexicans camping in this RV park. Getting to be quite the pile of firewood here.

One thing about San Felipe that makes me a little disappointed is the lack of medical specialists. Because the town is still in a ‘bust’ period, many doctors that once had practices here have moved to greener pastures. And since I’m aging, I do need to be sure if I settle anywhere in Mexico, that medical services of various kinds are near. That’s not true at present. There’s no dermatologist here. There’s no cardiac specialist here either…something I found out when the local clinic checked out my friend Dave and wanted to send him by ambulance all the way to El Centro in California, 2 hours away. He ended up talking someone into driving him all the way up to northern California, where he lived summers, so he could see his own specialist. Other than that, San Felipe would be a great place to put down roots.

A couple weeks later, I get this query from a fellow that follows my blog and it turns out that he and his son were planning on visiting San Felipe. And wanted to meet up. Hey, I can always make time for a fan or two!

They came in late a couple nights before my scheduled departure heading north and got a room at the motel here at the RV park. Met them the next morning and we arranged to meet downtown after breakfast. Before I headed over there, I checked out a new batch of dune buggies that showed up in the park…

Met the guys for a meal on the malecon and the son wanted to go fishing here. It’s tightly regulated but the sports fisherman, in the center, guaranteed a catch. The young man on the right there is the son, and is over 6 feet. I offered him a beer later. He politely refused and let me know he’s only 15. Whoops. And San Felipe is getting ready for another event in town.  Traffic picking up. This shot is looking south, my RV park is off in the distance just right of that umbrella shaped palapa on the beach (not the grey one, the one further on).

I was invited to go fishing with them, but I really don’t have the room to store a big fish if I caught one, and I’d have had to get up at 5 am, so I declined the offer.

The next morning those two went fishing while I puttered around getting ready for my upcoming trip north. When they showed up a few hours later, they offered some fish fillets (that looked rather small really) but since I’d be crossing the border in a couple days, had to refuse them. They’d have been confiscated if I still had them at the border crossing.

But, I offered to give them a tour of San Felipe out to the South Beach so here’s a few pics of our trip. This condo was never finished. It’ll be this way for years to come.

This is one of the small condo/rentals/homes on one beach just 5 miles south of San Felipe. It’s one of the older developments. I like the big flowering plants. And a bit further along, more homes and rentals.There’s that big ol’ mountain outside of SF.
Here’s the man made harbor. And another beachside development that really never took off… Heading towards south beach community but we ran out of time…got a late start and I had stuff to do. Couldn’t really find the turn off anyway. Think it was another 3-4 miles further south. But anyway, we turned back.

And that was the end of the visit by my blog fans. Kept working on getting ready to travel, and two days after this happened, I was back on the road heading north.

So, until next time…happy travels!