TKZRacing: March 2013

Cabo to Todos Santos day trip was the plan in the Baja Challenge cars.

Our day started at 8:00am at the Cabo San Lucas race shop for WideOpen. We started with a helmet fitting and short video before our guide Darrin gave us some needed safety tips. Safety tips were followed with some critical radio communication and GPS instructions. Navigation was going to be a very important portion of the day....mostly because we would be far enough away from the other cars that we would not be in sight, and also the fact that we did not want to be lost riding the Baja peninsula of Mexico!

Safety gear, video, GPS instructions all finished....lets ROLL (or 'move' as I was corrected later in the day. It seems there are some customers that take the ROLL term literally!). A fellow driver asked if we were going to be on public or private roads for the trip....our guide said "we're in Mexico brah, there's no such thing as PRIVATE!"

We were quickly outside and fitted into 'Mr. and Mrs. Smith' (for any movie buffs, that was the name of our car) 5-point safety harness, helmet air ventilation hooked up, and communication wires plugged in, engines fired....and we were OFF.

The cars drove kinda like a bull in a china store through the Cabo city streets as we worked our way out of town, but they definitely attracted plenty of attention. We made our way out into the dusty Baja roads and Darrin instructed us to leave enough room for the dust to settle in between cars and - HAVE FUN!

I will say I was putzing along for the first half of the morning....not knowing what type of terrain lay ahead, and just how much abuse these cars would take. I had a fair learning curve for an offroad racing novice. It didn't take long to learn the cars could take WAY more abuse than we could dish out pounding through the Mexican trails.

The landscape was full of desert flowers and trees in bloom, and actually quite colorful for the desert. Definitely the best time to be touring the Baja peninsula. Wildlife, working ranches, horses, dogs, cows, snakes, roadrunners, were just a few of the excitement we encountered racing through the trails. Did I mention we saw a ROADRUNNER! We saw beautiful endless blue skies, views of the pacific from high mountain bluffs, and even had to make a few creek crossings along the journey. Our morning journey ended in Todos Santos, with a stop there for lunch at the famous Hotel California. We were treated to an awesome authentic lunch and some history of the hotel, the city and the Baja1000. We traveled roads used in the Baja1000, and were driving cars used in the race!

After lunch and a short walking tour of Todos Santos, we loaded up and headed back to Cabo. We made quick time through the trails...as myself and our other driver for the day had learned much on our morning in the cars. We stopped off at a bluff overlooking the pacific for a few photo's and we were able to see a few wales in the distance making their way south in the pacific. BEAUTIFUL views!

Mel was flawless all day with her navigation skills, and 'CAR2 COPY' was a familiar phrase by the end of the day. All things were going flawless and I thought the lost cooler by our support car was going to be the funny moment of the day.....until I made a wrong turn during the last hour of the drive. It didn't take long for Mel and I to realize I had made a wrong turn. Where was our 'CAR1 going LEFT' instruction when we needed it! SO....we ended up in a little area outside of Cabo known as 'shanty town'....lets just say it's not on any tourist map! Mel quickly keyed the radio with "I think Car2 took a wrong turn". Luckily, but hesitantly, our guide knew where we were and told us to "sit tight" while he circled back to get us. Not after he joking asked "how's the scenery over there?" A short stay in 'shanty town' and we were the hit of the day in that neighborhood - FOR SURE!

A short drive back and we were back onto the Cabo city streets and pulling into the Wide Open Baja race shop. We couldn't even get our belts unbuckled or the helmets off before the mechanics were handing us cold beers! Well deserved I will add.