Gary’s log of his trip is fun to read and keep up with. Half the fun of any road trip is meeting the people along the way. We get to hear accents, see where and how they live, enjoy different scenery and all too often we meet some amazing characters.

One such memory and characters are of a trip I took to the tip of Baja back in 1971. I took my brother, a friend and a translator in my motor home to the tip of Baja and our first stop in Baja to get fuel was in Ensenada on the dusty quite main drag of town. Ensenada is the last big town or village you see until you get to La Paz which is hundreds of very “wild” miles away on roads that are something you have to see to believe. Back in 1971 this was real adventure. Almost nobody spoke English, there were no phones or electricity and if you broke down nobody was going to come and help so you better be ready for whatever happened in any event. I pulled up to the gas pump and sitting in front of the small Pemex station was about 10 very young boys and an old man in a sombrero. Once the old man started the gas pump the boys all began climbing up the side of the motor home on each other’s shoulders so they could wash every single window on the motor home, all the way around. Since their old pumps took so long to fill both tanks of the motor home this took some time. While we were waiting I began slicing and eating some salami and while I was slicing it I noticed the boys all peaking in the window and looking as if they were interested in the salami. So I reached out the door and offered a piece to one of the boys. He just loved it so I gave each of the other boys a piece. It was interesting to me how they would not crowd back in line for a second piece the way most American boys would have and yet they all seemed so excited about something as simple as a piece of salami. You would have thought I had given them a gold coin.
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