Santo Tomas pictures

[Jungle Jim]

Last Saturday we counted eleven dead Olive Ridley Sea Turtles on the Salinas Point beach, mostly fresh dead and still bloody red meat. Our first encounter with a new species, the Hawksbill Sea Turtle, found two very fresh, a male and a female, probably no more than a day dead and stranded on the outgoing tide. The Zopilotes were in a frantic feeding frenzy! In the past ten years we have also found two Giant Leatherback Sea Turtles on that beach.

I actually considered taking home one of their huge front flippers for the barbie that night. Did remove the head from the adult male. It now resides in my garden of death in Mirador. The stink on Sunday morning was incredible, attracting a swarm of death flies that will certainly feed our two adult Side-Blotched Lizards for a few months.

Saw more wild burrows at the first salina heading back to the border. Counted thirteen this time. I stopped and walked out with a green apple as bait. They all took off in a wild stampede heading back towards the beach at Adair Bay.

JJ

 

[randy and patty]

Last Saturday we counted eleven dead Olive Ridley Sea Turtles on the Salinas Point beach, mostly fresh dead and still bloody red meat. Our first encounter with a new species, the Hawksbill Sea Turtle, found two very fresh, a male and a female, probably no more than a day dead and stranded on the outgoing tide. The Zopilotes were in a frantic feeding frenzy! In the past ten years we have also found two Giant Leatherback Sea Turtles on that beach.

I actually considered taking home one of their huge front flippers for the barbie that night. Did remove the head from the adult male. It now resides in my garden of death in Mirador. The stink on Sunday morning was incredible, attracting a swarm of death flies that will certainly feed our two adult Side-Blotched Lizards for a few months.

Saw more wild burrows at the first salina heading back to the border. Counted thirteen this time. I stopped and walked out with a green apple as bait. They all took off in a wild stampede heading back towards the beach at Adair Bay.

JJ

 

[randy and patty]

Hey Jungle did you get anyone to meet you and go with you? I would have really considered it if I was there. Sounded like a great day trip. How would my Ram 2500 diesel have done if I lowered my tire pressure?

 

[Jungle Jim]

Hello Randy and Patty,

No, no one had any interest. We did it solo as always. No big deal.

The pangueros drive two wheel drive thirty year old trucks out there all of the time bringing home the loot of the Sea for the Caborca restaurants and the Murex pressure cookers close by. They usually wait till low tide and drive on the compacted wet sand with no problemas. Also usually have eight or ten dudes on board to push the trucks when they do get bogged down as we saw twice on that trip.

I always take a Scuba cylinder to air up my tires when we get back to the highway. The dry sand on the upper parts of the beach there is like fine powder but not a problem when we drop the tires down to ten psi. You will use a LOT of fuel when plowing thru those conditions so we always take at least ten gallons extra. The closest Pemex is twenty miles away towards Caborca or back to PP about sixty miles to home base.

I'll make a note on the forum ahead of our next trip in a few weeks.

JJ

 

[Old55]

Hey Jungle did you get anyone to meet you and go with you? I would have really considered it if I was there. Sounded like a great day trip. How would my Ram 2500 diesel have done if I lowered my tire pressure?

I wouldnt……that is such a heavy truck and sometimes out of nowhere you hit some soft silty sand.Stick a couple atvs in the back , park at the restaurant at Santo Tomas , eat a nice breakfast and blast north on the atvs ( your truck will be safe) , do a lunch at the Agua chili after cutting inland at Jaguey on the way back……then a beer of so on the beach at ST or the roof of the restaurant….then home. Jerry
Note my advice is old as I have been in Idaho the last few years and have not been around much.

 

[Old55]

I wouldnt……that is such a heavy truck and sometimes out of nowhere you hit some soft silty sand.Stick a couple atvs in the back , park at the restaurant at Santo Tomas , eat a nice breakfast and blast north on the atvs ( your truck will be safe) , do a lunch at the Agua chili after cutting inland at Jaguey on the way back……then a beer of so on the beach at ST or the roof of the restaurant….then home. Jerry
Note my advice is old as I have been in Idaho the last few years and have not been around much.

We were fishing at the Spit one year and a similar truck full of Narcos and blue barrels was stuck. We thought about it and helped get them out.They were from Sinaloa and mountain boys unfamiliar with the area…..a scary moment

 

[Mexico Joe]

Hello Randy and Patty,

No, no one had any interest. We did it solo as always. No big deal.

The pangueros drive two wheel drive thirty year old trucks out there all of the time bringing home the loot of the Sea for the Caborca restaurants and the Murex pressure cookers close by. They usually wait till low tide and drive on the compacted wet sand with no problemas. Also usually have eight or ten dudes on board to push the trucks when they do get bogged down as we saw twice on that trip.

I always take a Scuba cylinder to air up my tires when we get back to the highway. The dry sand on the upper parts of the beach there is like fine powder but not a problem when we drop the tires down to ten psi. You will use a LOT of fuel when plowing thru those conditions so we always take at least ten gallons extra. The closest Pemex is twenty miles away towards Caborca or back to PP about sixty miles to home base.

I'll make a note on the forum ahead of our next trip in a few weeks.

JJ

We want in on the next run or one of the next runs with the SEA-QUOIA before late Spring. I've been to the "spit" with Jerry and Kenny but never all the way to Salinas Point. Or even one of your runs you do out to La Pinta... Never been out there either. You saw the Sea-quoia, she's ready to eat all the way up the beach. I already have a rear locker with 4:88 gears in a Toyota 8.4" carrier that I was going to use for the Tacoma "race truck" but I think sooner than later we're going to buy another LOCKRIGHT ratcheting locker for the front Toyota 7.5" clamshell diff and install both in the Seaaaaaaaquoia to insure we never get stuck ever again. To be completely fool proof I'd also want 35" tires but right now we have 33's so pretty close to what is IMHO an absolutely fool proof, never get stuck beach vehicle for Mexico.

We went out past Tossorro last fall with a friend I grew up with. All Toyota gang. He was in his 4th Gen Toyota 4Runner with the 4.7v8, his buddy had a newer Toyota Landcruiser and then of course our Sequoia. All these donkeys were holleran at me to "lower my tire pressure" like it was the first time I'd ever been off roading. My reply, I'm too lazy for that shit. I don't lower the air pressure until the vehicle is stuck lol... then of course 12 pounds and she pulls right out. We have a factory center diff locker that acts similar to a diff lock when you're in 4L1 only though... but that machine is an absolute beast. She needs to eat on the beach SOON!

I can't remember if I already asked you, do you have factory lockers from Ford? With the wheels you have though I've read/seen dudes running 1 or 2lbs of air for sand and snow!!!! WTFFFFFFFFFFFF?! lololol 2PSI?????????????!

PS. I think we'll be down this weekend for a Grouper Hunt if the wind report holds true... let me know if you're in town.

 

[Mexico Joe]

Hey Jungle did you get anyone to meet you and go with you? I would have really considered it if I was there. Sounded like a great day trip. How would my Ram 2500 diesel have done if I lowered my tire pressure?

Kind of pushing it with a 2500 but it's more about how you have the truck set up right now but also the weight is a huge factor as well. What does that thing weigh? We're around 6400 lbs I believe. You definitely need an AT tire. AT tires are less aggressive so you're not going to get that dig down in sand which is good. Mud tires dig down instead of float but that's what a mud tire is designed to do is dig straight down to find hardpack. Also, if you're 2500 dually then we should end the pipe dream here. If not proceed to step 3. Step 3, open diff???????? I don't know Dodge Chrysler that well but a 2500 should have Dana 60????? You have one ton axles so that's a bonus but we're talking about beach combing, not rock crawling. If that thing somehow has LSD diffs front and rear and you have a good off road AT tire it's definitely possible. The problem is going to be that diesel is HEAVY BOY and that's going to plow sand which equals rolling resistance which equals SKINNY PEDAL MAS SENOR MAS!!!! There are certain sections at the top of the beach as Jerry was saying that get POWDERY and deep. Once you make it through that section though, generally most of the beach is fairly compact or comparatively speaking.

It would pry also need at least 2 inches of lift just to give the MEATS a chance to flex and we don't want the pan to belly out on the sand as soon as you hit the gas. Some of those Dodge diesel duallys are llllooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. No chance. Crazy SOB's like me stubbornly run the beach in a 2WD truck but that's for only the most advanced race car drivers this side of the border. I think with your truck you'd want to have some experience in sand before trying a beach run. Hell, go over by Cholla Mountain and see what the vehicle can and can't do. It's really the only way to ever know. We have a super nice kinetic energy YANK EM rope that we still haven't had the pleasure of using so I'd be happy to be your back up if you want to try and BURRY that sucker!! LOL

Watch a few MATTS OFF ROAD RECOVERY on YouTube and you'll see plenty 2500's at Sand Hallow Utah getting stuck on the beach at the lake. Mostly a lot of those are related to stock tires, no lockers, no driver experience, low intelligence, AND THE MOST EVIL corporate of them all THE INFAMOUS 4x4 TRACTION CONTROL SYSTEM. A lot of these new vehicles just can't go off roading anymore. It's sad. As soon as the computer feels tire slip it cuts power at the motor. So you're literally helpless. It's sad really!

 

[Mexico Joe]

Here's an idea of how deep the sand is out where JJ and Jerry are talking. Notice the first 10 seconds that I start moving the truck it looks like I'm just crawling along????????????????? I'm giving her the beans and the crawling and sliding sideways at second 9 in the video is the truck spinning in the back to get momentum. If I had stopped the skinny pedal at any point in those first 9 seconds that truck is sank for good. Boom, stuck.

Think of it almost like planing a boat. At first you're giving the boat the beans but water displacement and physics you're just really not going anywhere and then all of a sudden the boat gets "on plane" and now the same RPM is making the boat feel like a rocket ship. It's pretty much identical. In crucial moments in the sand you press and hold the gas pedal hard until you get that momentum and the vehicle can get "on top" of the sand and then you can slowly start to let out on the gas and judge how much input you need to give it to STAY ON TOP.

Also, in those first 5 seconds of the video look how deep those tire tracks are right there. Also look up to the top of the beach that's where all that FINE POWDER SAND is. All this is 2wd. I think Jerry only helped me get unstuck one time that week if I remember correctly but it's been 7 years! Damn Jerry! Where does the time go?!

 

[Jungle Jim]

Hey Joe..........

Where we went last Saturday was some twenty miles further on up the beach from your video to the point called Salinas Point. It is a sand spit with Isla San Jorge offshore and Bahia San Jorge between the spit and dry land near the highway. Doing that run from Santo Tomas is dangerous if not impossible due to an estero between the beach and the big dunes. When the tide is up there you will have to do a water crossing with depths in the channel that fills and drains the estero that are at least six feet deep with a serious current.

At low tide the channel will still be flooding into the Sea with one or two feet of rushing water and a two feet or more sand drop off then back up the other side. I've done it a few times years ago before I realized that if I did get stuck in that ditch no-one would ever get me out before the tide comes back in.

At Punta Salinas there is a large panga camp with a solid building and some wood shacks. The fleet there will consist of fifty or more boats depending on what they are targeting. They have a full time "security" guard who lives in the building. The place might look abandoned but be aware it is NOT!

Sometimes we do stop there to get a look at the booty being offloaded from the boats to the trucks. For the most part those guys are unusually creepy acting as they are all operating illegally for you know who. If we do raise a smile from one or more of them we can usually score some huge Gulf Blue Shrimp, big by catch crabs and maybe some giant Mantis Shrimp. They like being paid in USA dollars and a few cold TKT's. I always keep the Jeep running just in case we have to do an emergency bail out if things get nasty. They have no vehicles capable of following us over the dunes and I can easily out run them on the beach.

By the way, we counted twenty two sea turtle nests along that beach a year ago in November. The little ones had already emerged and hit the waves. Every nest had been dug up by Coyotes and the empty turtle egg shells were the dead giveaway as to the nest location. We almost always see two or three Vaquitas out there as well.

Both my Ford Raptor and Jeep Rubicon have factory lockers front and rear, but take my word they do very little when you're bogged down to the axles in mud or deep sand. Slow crawling on rocks is what the lockers are designed for.

When we do drive on the beach we usually keep up to the highest tide zone which is where the treasures will be found either from the last high tide or deposited there from past tides. That is where we find nice bagged kilos of mota, dead whales, porpoises, dolphins, sea lions, dozens of species of birds, fish and shells not to mention tons of driftwood for the fire pit back home. It is also where the softest dry sand will be found. Grinding along in 4x4 with low pressure tires and high rpm's really suck fuel and will overheat your engine in a heartbeat. So be prepared! Most times I never shut the engine down for fear of a dead battery and then what ya gonna do??

On our return trip we will use the wet sand from the receding tide for a high speed run back. I still stay as high up the wet beach as possible because you never know when the bottom will drop out and instantly sink your ass. I run my Jeep tire pressures at 10 or 12 psi and carry a Scuba tank to top them back up when we get back to the highway.

We will probably be back in PP the first week of next month. I'll post it a few days in advance.

Later,

JJ

 

[brokenwave]

Here's an idea of how deep the sand is out where JJ and Jerry are talking. Notice the first 10 seconds that I start moving the truck it looks like I'm just crawling along????????????????? I'm giving her the beans and the crawling and sliding sideways at second 9 in the video is the truck spinning in the back to get momentum. If I had stopped the skinny pedal at any point in those first 9 seconds that truck is sank for good. Boom, stuck.

Think of it almost like planing a boat. At first you're giving the boat the beans but water displacement and physics you're just really not going anywhere and then all of a sudden the boat gets "on plane" and now the same RPM is making the boat feel like a rocket ship. It's pretty much identical. In crucial moments in the sand you press and hold the gas pedal hard until you get that momentum and the vehicle can get "on top" of the sand and then you can slowly start to let out on the gas and judge how much input you need to give it to STAY ON TOP.

Also, in those first 5 seconds of the video look how deep those tire tracks are right there. Also look up to the top of the beach that's where all that FINE POWDER SAND is. All this is 2wd. I think Jerry only helped me get unstuck one time that week if I remember correctly but it's been 7 years! Damn Jerry! Where does the time go?!

This is what you need, I have one and it pumps tires up pretty quickly, not scuba tank fast but still does a good job.
It has a 10 ft extension hose too. I keep one in my Jeep.

 

[randy and patty]

Hey thanks Guys for all the info. Maybe the Ram 2500 is better suited to pulling a trailer from Utah with an appropriate beach vehicle. Besides I meet most of Joes criteria for someone getting stuck at sand hollow. Lol

 

[Mexico Joe]

Hey thanks Guys for all the info. Maybe the Ram 2500 is better suited to pulling a trailer from Utah with an appropriate beach vehicle. Besides I meet most of Joes criteria for someone getting stuck at sand hollow. Lol

We went to Sand Hollow in June and I can attest to that sand being the softest, finest sand I've ever seen. It's unreal. I can see why after watching that channel for a couple of years how so many people get stuck. BUT a lot of those people have absolutely no forethought and drive like KIAs and minivans into the sand... soooo... lol

We towed a Can Am RC there with the Sequoia... Poor thing. It was rapped out in 2nd gear the whole way climbing to 7,000 ft or greater twice. Up the hill to Flag and then Kaibab. Thought it was going to throw a rod out of the block it was rapped out so hard. The rear gearing needs changed. It can't rev out in 3rd. The automatic electronic transmission keeps wanting to search for power and constantly downshifts into 2nd gear when towing and trying to go 75mph. The air bags in the rear are also leaking a little so the ass was sitting low that trip as the Can AM with steel trailer weighed twice what our boat does if I had to guess. That's not helping the aero package.... Somehow still got almost 11mpg. Southern Utah is unreal though! Like wow! I thought AZ was pretty but Utah is AZ on steroids.

 

[Mexico Joe]

This is what you need, I have one and it pumps tires up pretty quickly, not scuba tank fast but still does a good job.
It has a 10 ft extension hose too. I keep one in my Jeep.

View attachment 17462

I have a similar set up under the hood in the Tacoma. The key with those cheaper air compressors is to look at the CFM rather than the PSI standard. Viar is the best but they're like $250. I'm cheap so I sift through the China ones and find the best air flow for the price I want to pay. I think the one I have in the truck is called Master Flow. I have it wired with relay and switch. I put a 3/8" 3 foot whip on it so the quick connect is mounted up under my grill. When you need air you don't even need to pop the hood. Just plug in quick connect and flip the switch. That Master Flow compressor I found on a Jeep off road forum as "the best cheap compressor" for filling up 33" tires or bigger. Only down side is that if it's hot out you will hit the duty cycle before you can get all 4 tires filled up and then you have to sit there and wait for the pump to cool down before it will kick back on. Most guys run this type of compressor in conjunction with a 2-4 lb tank and an automatic pressure switch. Or the other way is what JJ says. Lots of guys do that too. Then there's a third way which is the Scuba Tank but with Nitrogen.

 

[Old55]

Joe, Honda Rancher is still working…sort of…always gives you a scare if not used a lot shifting out of 2nd…..a crap system…..the new Bronco looks good!

 

[dirtsurfer]

This is what you need, I have one and it pumps tires up pretty quickly, not scuba tank fast but still does a good job.
It has a 10 ft extension hose too. I keep one in my Jeep.

View attachment 17462

Always leave your motor running when using that compressor otherwise your battery could be used up, especially older batteries.

 

[Tmecke]

Joe. I'm assuming that you are coming up from the north valley area and Google is directing you to go through Jacob Lake. The best route is through Page and Kanab then down to Fredonia. More miles but much flatter and less wear and tear on your rig. Plus the scenery is awesome.

 

[randy and patty]

Looking good Joe! Can I rent your abs out for a weekend?

 

[Mexico Joe]

Joe. I'm assuming that you are coming up from the north valley area and Google is directing you to go through Jacob Lake. The best route is through Page and Kanab then down to Fredonia. More miles but much flatter and less wear and tear on your rig. Plus the scenery is awesome.

I'll look into that next time when we go again. I briefly explored the other alternate route via LV/Mesquite Nevada through St George... Google said it was only a little bit further but I wasn't sure about elevation gain past Vegas. I know from Phx to Kingman you climb to 4,000ft if I remember correctly but all in all I thought it might be a push.

I think the other reason we decided to go that route is because neither one of us had seen Lee's Ferry. Drive there was in the middle of the night. We arrived at our destination just outside of Hurricane at like 3am. Passing through the Kaibab after midnight, we had the moonroof open and I have never in my life seen a clearer sky! It was insane! The amount of starlight was crazy. Clearest night sky I have ever seen in my life. On the way back to Phoenix 4 days later we stopped at Lee's Ferry to investigate. 2 years ago we almost decided to go there with our kayaks for 2 days one night overnight camping on the river but for a cripple it looked pretty intimidating. The scenery was EPIC! Marble Canyon is unreal. The whole thing was like, yea, we're definitely coming back here. The boat ramp at Lee's Ferry is about as shallow as it gets. Not steep whatsoever. Upriver lift is like $75 up to Glenn Canyon and then 3 mile float back down to Lee's Ferry. Pretty sick... We could see BIG Rainbow Trout swimming at the boat ramp. Water is crystal clear and COLD AS SHIT! lolll

 

[Mexico Joe]

Looking good Joe! Can I rent your abs out for a weekend?

Thanks haha It's unfair really. Being cripple gives me an unfair advantage. I haven't been to the gym since Covid started which is sad now thinking about it. But when your upper body is compensating for your lower body everyday activity is the gym. Plus, I never stop moving. Everyday it's something. Work or working on the boat, welding on the truck... always something to keep busy.