The couple that poops together, stays together


Leaving San Diego on Monday morning I tried to imagine what we will experience on this trip. I couldn’t come up with anything specific, just knew that we will have: 1) fun and 2) troubles and 3) even more fun when the troubles are done. That is all I could muster up at the moment. Did I forget to say that we were anxious and worried? Well, we were.

 

DSC00728

 

The first challenge was finding a camping site for the night. Thanks to Hyein’s research we managed to score a sweet spot on the lagoon just south of Ensenada. For $5 a night, with shower and wifi…can’t beat it. As soon as we parked the car, a sense of relief came over me.

We found our first campsite!

 

DSC00734

 

Relaxing, having fun and stalking on some people with binoculars! View from the tent and early morning breakfast.

 

 

For the second day we need to drive all the way down to Baja Sur. Looking at the map, I thought: “this is going to be easy.”

What i forgot is that all the roads are one lane, so in the mountains you are a frequently stuck behind a truck going 20 mph and no way to pass.

Still we made our way south. Photo from Catavina Boulder fields.

DSC00755

Since we did not have a campground decided for the second night, we ended up just going off road to the west and camping in the wild.

By the time we started travelling on the dirt road the sun was setting and we were driving on directions from a local man about a campsite on some hill in the distance.

We probably should have had our first offroading experience during the day, but it was too late to argue and we had to drive.

30 minutes later and we found some abandoned houses and a little hill on which we gladly parked for the night.

 

 

On the way back to town the next day as we were driving on the washboard of a road, with everything rattling inside the car and our stomachs, the “check engine” light came on.

“Shit!”, i thought to myself but did not say anything out loud in fear of scaring Hyein.

“Okay, just make it back to town…then we can deal with it”. But as we drove the car seemed to be doing just fine, unlike my nerves.

In town, as we filled up the gas I was finally able to check the trouble code – “Knock Sensor 1 Circuit Error”.

“Hm….isn’t that the thingy that makes sure the engine doesn’t blow up?”

The car drives fine and this village is to small to make repairs. We have to move cautiously to a bigger town.

 

DSC00797

 

As we continued driving Hodori (apparently thats what we are calling our Land Cruiser), was driving just fine. So we tried to put the worries about the knock sensor out of our heads and enjoy the beauty around us.

The best view of our camping spot for the night.

 

20151030_145757

 

But don’t be jealous yet guys! At night we discovered that the net on our amazing tent is too big, the holes keep out mosquitoes but smaller bugs get in.

Some bullshit little fuckers got in and kept biting us all night, not too itchy, but just enough to not sleep.

At 4 am in a haze of sleep I was notified by Hyein that she urgently needs to use the restroom. Knowing my wife, this is not that unusual. But she did run to the bathroom kinda quickly?!

As i tried to fall back asleep, i was awake again and again by the opening of the car door. Poor Hyein had a stomach bug and instead of climbing back up into the tent, decided to wait it out between bathroom trips in the car to escape the ever present little biting sons of b*tches.

Morning was a mad rush as I packed up the car to drive to La Paz as fast as possible. We made a decision that if she gets worse, we need to be close to a bigger town. So, La Paz it was.

Oh….and the title..i hope its self explanatory 🙂

 

As Hyein was recovering and we are waiting for the ferry, I finally had some time to look into the knock sensor issue. Read the factory service manual (btw bought it last minute, thinking that i will never use it)…boy was i wrong and only on day 4! Found the location of the sensor. Apparently this SOB is located under the air intake manifold.

“lets see if i can find it….okay, there it is….okay i see the problem – the wire is broken…must have broken on the dirt road”.

“great i know how to fix this problem, but how the hell do i get to it?  – BY TAKING HALF THE ENGINE OUT”. DAMN!

6 hours later and everything is back where it is supposed to be….i think?

 

DSC00821

 

Next day, drove around La Paz to make sure the sensor is fixed, some housekeeping.

 

Tomorrow, Mazatlan.

 

5 Comment

  1. Alexander Razinkov says:

    Совсем другое дело! 😉

  2. Шубенцова Ирина Борисовна says:

    Дорогие Ваня и Хейн ! С интересом прочитала ваш дневник и просмотрела фотографии.Может быть я что-то не поняла. Но неужели вы вдвоем снимали и ставили двигатель ? Как и где вы питаетесь ? Как здоровье Хейн ? Ведь у вас на этот случай были лекарства ? Слава богу , текст переводится , но так , что порой можно только догадываться о чем идет речь.С нетерпением буду ждать продолжения вашего дневника. Очень здорово Что вы его пишете и сопровождаете фотографиями. Иногда даже создается эффект присутствия. Желаю вам счастливого пути , Целую вас . Бабушка.

  3. Marty mcfly says:

    Hahaha, last minute repair manual purchase = classic Ivan 😉

    At least your roadside repair skills are 10/10, glad you’re back on the road 🙂

  4. Zhenya says:

    Wow, Im glad you are fine now! Мы отслеживаем на карте ваши передвижения. Вам привет от Поли и Андрея, все прочитали с интересом. Держитесь!

  5. Wow! Merely incredible! Thank you so much for the information discussed! I understand you have placed a bunch of initiative into this as well as I wanted to tell you just how happy I am! There have to be more blogs similar to this on the internet! I will certainly bookmark and subscribe to your superior site! Hope you produced much more remarkable things in the near future as well as I will return and review it! Keep up the great work!

Comments are closed.