Now, we had two nights to figure out how to spend them. We to go to Aguas Calientes near Santiago Thursday night and then to Cabo San Lucas Friday night to scope out the rental and the area for when his parents would come the next day.
Aguas Calientes was supposed to be a hot springs located down an arroyo in the Sierra de la Laguna. However, as we left Cabo Pulmo, we ran into our first drops of rain in Mexico. They weren’t more than sprinkles though. We maneuvered down Mex-1 and around the historic town of Santiago, then followed the dirt (sand) road along the arroyo. We passed over the dry riverbed and found the hot springs campground. As we parked the for the night, the rain was still coming down in sprinkles. We took a few moments to explore the area to make sure there wasn’t any other place we wanted to park. The hot springs was located at an old dam. The dam was no longer working, but there was a set of pools off to the side that someone had built to hold warm water. They were pretty nasty with algae growth and bugs and such. In the shallow “lake” created by the dam, there were some rocks set around a small “waterfall” that must have been warm water as well. But as we had to cross to the other side of the dam and through the shallow lake to get to it, we didn’t check it out. (Unfortunately no pictures, as it was just to scope it out and I had hoped to explore further in the afternoon after lunch.)
We went back to our van, and the rain started to come down harder. The rest of the day the rain was coming down, whether in sprinkles or showers. This did give me a bit of concern considering that we crossed over the dry riverbed on the way to the campground. I wasn’t sure if it would be dry anymore. The next morning, the rain had mostly stopped. We did see several results of the rain: sections of ruts where the rain had washed through, puddles of water covering the road, wet sand, and mud. We managed to make it through these tribulations not too worse for the wear, minus a dirty window or two from splashing through water. As we topped the hill that overlooked the riverbed, we found the road in good condition, even better than some of the spots we had traversed already.
Soon after, we made it to the town of Santiago and paved roads began again. With ease, we made it to the Los Cabos area. Ironically, some of the worse washouts and roads were on Mex-1 in San Jose del Cabo. There were many road construction crews out dealing with the aftermath of the storm, which had covered some areas in foot-tall sand and removed the underlying sandy foundation in other spots, tearing up the roadway.
In Cabo San Lucas the devastation on Mex-1 was less, but when we turned down the road that would take us to our campground, we discovered that sand had covered the paved road and the sand-dirt road had some nice puddles of water. Despite all that, we made it our camping location safely and didn’t leave until the next morning, hoping most of the roads would be recovered by then.
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