Surviving Baja With Daring Feet : Adventure: Nearly broke but with spirits unbroken, high school buddies walk, wade home after being stranded by storm.

Two young Orange County men who set off for a vacation in Cabo San Lucas managed to surf some waves in the warm Pacific, hook a couple of mahi-mahi, get respectable tans--and find themselves in the middle of a natural disaster.

Jeff Ronnow, 22, and Sven Rusch, 24, who returned home to Newport Beach on Friday, said they had spent two weeks at the tip of Baja California, unaware of the devastation that continuous storms were wreaking north of them, and of the 180-mile trek back through rain-swollen rivers and muddy roads that awaited them.

On the last day of vacation, the two men got into their pickup truck and started back for the States. The first leg of the trip was typical enough.

Once they got to the small fishing community of El Soccorro though, things changed. They began feeling the wrath of last weekend’s storms.

“We didn’t have any idea how bad things were,” said the 24-year-old Rusch. “Everything was washed out. Lots of the little towns, houses and cars were under water and totally flooded.”

Three bridges on Highway 1 in the San Quintin area had washed away, leaving the pair marooned for about a week along with hundreds of other Americans.

The two high school buddies camped out while waiting for the bridges to be fixed and the rains to subside. At first, it was all right.

They celebrated Ronnow’s 22nd birthday on Monday by driving to town and picking up a case of Pacifico beer and a couple of bottles of tequila. They even caught a few waves at the mouth of the muddy rivers, they said.

On Thursday, about 30 cars were able to get around the bridges through the shallow stream beds and were on their way back to the border, said Peter Sampson, a spokesman for the American consulate in Tijuana.

Two consulate officials were dispatched to the San Quintin area Wednesday to assess the situation, said Sampson, who estimated that 300 to 400 Americans were stranded there.

Sampson said he had heard that a couple of marooned tourists had gone north, but said that those who remained behind are safe.

“We feel that no one is in any immediate danger right now,” Sampson said. “Everyone seems to have adequate food and water. Of course, it’s a great inconvenience (but) we don’t feel that it’s an emergency situation.”

It sure seemed like an emergency to Ronnow and Rusch. Their funds, food and bottled water were dwindling.

The Mexican army sent soldiers to San Quintin, but they had little to offer except animal crackers and cold coffee.

“Every day we were envisioning all these tasty foods we could be eating,” Rusch said. “We had canned vegetables and refried beans for seven days.”

Bunking in their truck camper and burning wood to keep warm, the two watched and waited. Seeing that the bridges weren’t going to be fixed anytime soon and that the unseasonal rains weren’t going to cease, the two on Thursday morning began a run for the border on foot.

“It wasn’t a vacation after we got stranded,” Rusch said.

They left Ronnow’s 1992 Toyota pickup with a retired American couple there and began their trek that ultimately involved wading through three rivers and thumbing 12 rides as hitchhikers.

With only $200 in their pockets, they couldn’t afford the $50-a-pop plane fare just to get across the bridges. So they did the next best thing. They walked across the raging waters.

“At times, I was swimming with my bag on top of my head,” Rusch said. “The adrenaline was pumping.”

They were especially nervous, they said, because they had seen a news report that a local man had been swept away by the currents a few days earlier.

Ronnow and Rusch often found themselves knee-deep in mud and chest-high in water, and, at one time, even in the bed of a pickup truck that was negotiating a narrow strip of winding, mountainous road at a hair-raising 80 m.p.h.

“We were just holding on for our lives,” Ronnow said.

They finally got their first hot food in days in a small town about 100 miles from the border. They spent $5 on cheese quesadillas, rice, french fries and a bottle of Tecate.

Then two bus rides, a couple of taxi trips and a few more hitchhikes and they ended up in Tijuana. They walked across the border.

Reaching American soil was like scoring a touchdown.

“Once we got across to the other side, we went, ‘Yes! We made it!’ ” Rusch said.

Natural disasters seem to follow Rusch, who lost his job as a sous chef in Kauai when Hurricane Iniki swept across the Hawaiian islands in September.

Both said their arduous trek won’t deter them from hitting the road again in the future. For one, Ronnow has to go back across the border to retrieve his truck.

There are a few things they would do differently. They’ll pay closer attention to the weather channel.

And they’ll carry more cash.

“I could have used an extra $100,” Rusch said.