Baja racing

Oh, here's one last shot from Carnival with friends Don and Susie from mv Neshama.





Our marina is owned and operated by the Abaroa family, as is the marina next to us. This family is involved in other activities in addition to their marinas and boatyards. Some, are only rumors, while others, like the racing, are totally for real.



The man in this photo with his son is Louis, the manager of our marina, and winning driver of the number 21 car. At least twice a week, they bring this car out of the garage (in the marina next to us) and run the engine. All I can say is wow! this is the real deal. I've always loved the sound of big horsepower revving, and we get to hear it on a regular basis. Scott, I'll try to get a photo of this rig with the body panels off - at an estimated 400K, it is impressive.




I just assumed that these cars (there are two brothers, two cars) ran in races like the Baja 1000 and that there was nothing to go and watch. But one day, I asked Louis about that and he lit up and told me about a race that was being run just outside of La Paz on the coming Sunday.

(Check out Claudia's hair)

So, we loaded the van with folks and beer and were off to the races. We drove just a couple miles out of the City and then about three more miles into the desert on sand through a ranch to the staging area you see in the photos.


Once again, the camera can only do so much, but the sight was really impressive. Thousands of people had gathered in the dusty sand. If you can imagine a bowl, maybe 3/4 of a mile across, with tents, trailers, and motorhomes lining about 1/2 of the perimeter two tiers high, I think it would be close. The cars run in the bowl on a track sort of like a motocross, then they run out into the desert for six or eight miles before returning to the bowl. That makes one lap of a five lap race. We could only see the dust once they were outside the bowl, but it was still pretty exciting.

A good time was had by all!