RTG AlMex Daily Dispatch - FINAL - Flipbook - Page 50
27 August to
26 September 2023
Day 29 Loreto to La Paz (382km)
25 September 2023
photos: Gerard Brown - gerardbrown.co.uk
Early seaside starts, broken roads and re-routes were the headline story this morning
The fishing fleet of loreto start their day well before
dawn. As we sat down to the best Mexican breakfast
so far, they’d already cast off from the dockside and
were busy with their nets.
we too soon set sail and, in one of our ports of call, were
reunited with dick Appleton and paul Heal who’d also been
casting their nets wide. our 48-hour car dynamic duo had
been busy fishing us out of a hole - or rather stopping us
falling into them. A number of roads along our route had
been washed away or were blocked by the recent Hurricane
Jova. As today was the last day of competition and everyone
was keen to make the most of it, the pair had got their
maps out and put together a re-route complete with two
regularities through the hills above loreto.
Ahead of this was a very picturesque Time Control in
the abandoned, but still impressive, Misión San francisco
Javier de Viggé-Biaundó, a former religious house of the
Jesuit order. This was rugged terrain without an inch of
either straight or flat road in either direction. Both sections
featured that rarest of Mexican obstacles, a water crossing,
bringing some cool relief to another very hot day on the road.
The final timing point of the rally was where we
encountered dick and paul, who had retraced their steps to
man the lunch Time Control in Ciudad Constitución. lunch
was laid out for us at the family-run Hotel Maria de nadie,
which served up some superb home-cooked food. There was
plenty of time to digest it on the easy run to the night halt,
although a handful encountered hiccups along the way.
Clint Smith and Martin Jones, perhaps had the toughest
day. Their Bentley had developed a fuelling issue which the
capable crew traced to the carburettor and a blocked jet.
They had spare needles and tools on board and by the time
Andy Inskip and Charlie neale arrived on the scene, there
was little else to do than to put it back together. Michael
Kershaw and Christopher Mallet’s range rover had a
different sort of fuelling issue, almost running out of petrol
late in the afternoon. A gas station with no gas is no use to a
thirsty rally car, but thankfully John and nicole whitelock’s
Mercedes had a spare can and the big 4x4 was able to make
it to the next fuel stop, around 95km along the road.
Tonight, we berthed our cars next to the super yachts in
the Marina Costa Baja and dined by the pool at the Hyatt
place in la paz where the realisation that tomorrow really is
the last day began to sink in.
www.rallytheglobe.com