went south, literally. taking a detour down this road. hey? no? reporter: on a sunday afternoon, oscar s wife carla, with a little bit of help, packs their 2-year-old daughter samantha s suitcase, toys, too. she ll be up early monday. it s a long drive from phoenix to highway 15 in mexico to visit oscar. now tomorrow, we are going to take you down highway 15 with carla and with little samantha and we will explain exactly why oscar vasquez is living now south of the border and it may not be why you re thinking. john? kiran? john, you ve got me hooked. i want to know the answer now! reporter: you re going to have to wait until tomorrow. but let s put it this way. if people out there are thinking
with bp s ruptured well capped for 12 days now, clean-up crews say they can t even find enough crude to skim off of the surface. the animation there shows how the slicks are breaking up. at its height the size of the spill was the size of maryland. now it s smaller than delaware. but the devastation is enormous. 600 miles of gulf coast shoreline have been stained. $22 billion in potential revenue lost. over 2,600 helpless animals rescued in the face of an oily death. but according to a top coast guard official, the worst may now be behind us. i had over 800 skimmers out yesterday and across the entire region they ve only recovered one barrel of recoverable oil so the oil really is in its final life cycle, if you will. it is starting to break down quite rapidly. where it will pose each day less and less of a threat to the environment. because of what we can t see, it could be months, even years before we know the full extent of the damage that s been done to the gulf o