For the most part, Totonaka RV Park in San Carlos has treated us well. We’ve been here for one week, and with the exception of a rough start on a three-day holiday weekend, things have been pretty quiet in our little corner of this otherwise surprisingly active trailer park in northern Mexico.
But there have been signs all week that the season is winding down. Most of the snowbirds who have called this place home for the past five or six months have already headed north. And the caravans coming through now are all headed in the same direction.
At the same time, the party here in Mexico is just getting started. Today is the Friday before Semana Santa and Semana Pascua (Holy Week and Easter Week). These couple of weeks are the holy grail of vacation time in Mexico, when entire extended families ditch their inland cities for the coast and the debauchery and hedonism that comes with it. Not in the vane of spring break in Cancun, but rather all-night festivities, loud music, and lots and lots of trash.
It’s our first Semana Santa here in San Carlos, but our fourth living in a Mexican beach town, so we think we have a pretty good idea of what to expect.
With that in mind, we bid farewell to one last Totonaka sunrise and migrate inland a mile to a quiet rancho at the foot of the surrounding hills.
Since we’re packing up and moving the beast anyway, we thought we’d spend some time driving around and seeing some of the area’s more far flung attractions before the crowds descend.
Good news on the microwave front: With the help of a friend, we’ve found a guy here in town that fixes appliances, so we also took this opportunity to drop the microwave off. It took some work maneuvering the RV through the narrow roads of the gated neighborhood, but we found his house and are hopeful he’ll be able to work some magic.
Mirador San Carlos
Our first stop of the day is Mirador San Carlos. There’s not much to say about this place, other than the fact that they were in the process of resurfacing the parking lot, forcing us to get a little creative parking the RV on a narrow ridge.
It’s a short drive out of town, and easily accessible from wherever you end up parking. The viewing platform is surprisingly legit for a mirador in Mexico—a large concrete plaza surrounded by steel rails. The whole thing looks only a few years old.
Pretty nice views, too.
Playa Los Algodones
A little farther down the road from the mirador is Playa Los Algodones (Cotton Beach). With a name like that (and given the hype), I was expecting a bit more. I’ll chalk that up to having spent the last year and half in La Paz, which is home to some truly stunning white sands beaches.
Algodones is quiet today, but I can only imagine what this place will look like in a matter of days.
All in all, some nice stops. But we’re looking forward to heading up to the ranch and getting settled.
Emerald Ranch
Emerald Ranch isn’t what gringos would typically consider a ranch. But, hey, everything is a ranch in Mexico. Fortunately, we had no delusions of finding horses and livestock here. It’s a fully-equipped, family-run RV park tucked into a quiet corner of San Carlos, which is exactly what we’re after.
The plan is to spend a week here. But we could easily see ourselves being here longer.
The standard by which all pedestals in Mexico shall be measured from here on out—a well-designed and constructed 30 amp power outlet (with circuit breaker!) consistently delivering 125 volts AND a 40 psi city water hookup facing AWAY from the electrical outlet—with a gravel surface for drainage. Soak it up, we may not see anything like this for a while.
And because of the gravel surface, I’m excited to be able to cross some long overdue projects off my list, and be able to do them without get me and all my tools covered in sand and dust.
Plus, there’s a free onsite washing machine and we’re far enough away from the water (and accompanying wind) where we might even be able to bring out the awning!
And if that weren’t enough, Noe and Riley are excited to discover that the family that runs the place and lives on premises has a girl around Noe’s age.
The biggest draw to this place initially was that it is a mile removed from town. That’s also its biggest downside. We’ll be mostly hunkered down or doing some long walks to the beach, the store, or civilization in general.
But that also means that we’re about a block away from the picturesque foothills that surround San Carlos—and some of the best hiking trails in the area.
This morning, I was itching to explore the hills, and I was lucky enough to rope one of my hiking buddies into doing so as well.
Noe’s really into rocks lately. He’ll see something unusual and immediately try to identify it. If it were up to him, he’d have a rock collection the size of his bunk. We have to set some limits on that sort of thing, but we let him keep a few of the very best ones.
We hit the trail by nine, but it was already warming up—more signs that the end of the Canadian Snowbird season is upon us. The trail passes a surface mine that’s hard to tell whether it’s active or not, before joining up with a dirt road.
A nice view of this part of town (and Guaymas across the bay) and a short walk back to the RV park.
Independent reading time at the ranch.
Reading and writing with mommy.
Helping out.
Afternoon quiet time.
We’ve been really pleased with our decision to move up the road so far. We went into town yesterday to hit up a hardware store and take a look at how things are shaping up around town and it’s definitely pretty hectic.
The RV park has room for up to eight RVs, but at the moment, there’s just one other couple from Canada on the opposite end of the property. The family that owns the property are in a unit on the other side of the large Class A motorhome parked next to us (which the owner uses as his man cave/ studio/ office).
One thing here that’s a bit of a challenge we’ve discovered is that the placement of the sewage dump pipe is towards the front of the RV and too far for our hose to stretch.
We can’t park any farther forward because there’s a large cactus that will block the awning.
Not the end of the world, but it does mean that every few days I’m going to have to disconnect the vehicle and pull it forward to dump the grey water, then move it back again and re-hookup everything.
Our grey water tank is maxed out at the moment, but tomorrow we’ll be able to dump on our way out of town. We’re headed to Guaymas for the day to meet up with friends we met in La Paz last year. We’ll see how it goes driving an RV around two popular beach towns in Mexico on Palm Sunday.
Really enjoying your trip – thanks for taking us along 🙂 Tell Noe and Riley hi from us. The pics of them are really cute.