Baja Bash - Turtle Bay - Enrique the "Bandito"
Nimue
Sat 11 Jun 2016 21:21
We didn’t expect to spend 5 days in Turtle Bay, but we decided to wait for a decent weather window to try and made Ensenada, nearly 300 miles away, in one hit. We were anchored in a huge bay which was well protected, although we did initially encounter some disturbance from the long southwesterly swell.
We needed to take on diesel, which we knew by the information of other cruisers, would be an ordeal. Indeed it was, as we could only purchase it from Enrique, the only fuel guy in town (that is unless we wanted to walk a mile to the Pemex station and lug jerry jugs back and forth…which we didn’t). So it began with a Panga coming to Nimue to offer us fuel, but at a price of US4.90 a gallon. Yikes, we had been paying around US3.19 a gallon, so quite a substantial mark up! So once Vicki and Steve arrived on Tango, we gathered on their boat and when the panga with Enrique on board turned up, Vicki and I started negotiations…………2 hours later, we managed to get the price down to US4.00 a gallon. Enrique was quite a character, which not one we particularly liked; but at least we were both happy with the deal. That was until we ordered 90 Gallons for Nimue and they turned up with 80 Gallons. Again Enrique, by now nicknamed the “Bandito” sold the diesel in litres, but charged per US Gallon. For those in the know, a US Gallon is 3.75 of an Imperial Gallon, whereas an Imperial Gallon is 4.2 litres. Basically we were diddled out of 10 US Gallons and paid a hefty price for it too!