November 22, 2021 – January 17, 2022
I can’t believe our last blog post was from almost two months ago – time does fly!
After leaving Joshua Tree, we spent eleven days in Mesa. Almost my entire family was there for Thanksgiving and to also celebrate my Dad’s 90th birthday. It was a lot of fun to see everyone and we had a great time playing games, catching up, and eating (of course). We had a nice party for my dad’s birthday with my family, friends of my parents from Mesa and friends from their days in Hawaii (many that I hadn’t seen in years).
We spent a few days after all of the celebrations finalizing our plans for Baja, including getting our Mexican car insurance, FMM (Mexico Tourist Card), buying traction boards (in case we got stuck in the sand) and gas can (in case we ran out of gas). We then left on December 3rd for Baja. We stopped and stayed the first night in Yuma, AZ to see Heidi Jones, my good friend and college roommate. It was so nice to see her and as I’ve said before one of the great things about our travels so far is meeting up with family and friends!
After our night stay we headed for Mexicali, and I was a little nervous about crossing the border. You hear stories about getting bribed or having to take your van apart to be inspected, so between that and never having driven my own vehicle into another country I wasn’t sure what to expect.
The border crossing for the most part was uneventful, we drove in the wrong lane and were told next time to go to the truck lane since we were so big and we had some trouble pulling up our FFM form to show the border agent, but eventually the slow internet downloaded our form. After a quick stop in Mexicali to get Pesos we were off for our first destination, San Felipe.
One of the things we first noticed on our drive was the amount of trash all over the sides of the street and how run down the buildings are. It remained that way until we were further south in Baja. We stayed a couple of nights in San Felipe at a Campo on the beach. We paddled and walked around town and while it was a nice enough place, San Felipe would not be on my list of places to go back to.
The most interesting thing of our stay was the first night as the tide went out (and it went out quite a bit), I took a walk out pretty far where the tide had receded and as I was walking back I noticed a truck had driven out pulling an empty boat trailer. I thought it was pretty amazing that it didn’t sink into the wet sand but didn’t think much else of it. However about 30 minutes later I then noticed several trucks with empty boat trailers heading out onto the wet sand. By this time it was getting dark and soon Lee and I watched for at least an hour the headlights of at least a hundred trucks going way out where there was once water and then heading back to shore. We found out later that they were picking up the fishing boats. It’s amazing that the boats knew which truck was theirs and navigating it in the dark would seem to be a challenge, but obviously it’s something they do daily. For us Gringos it was great entertainment.
After a couple nights in San Felipe, we made our way a little further south to the small town of Puertecitos. When we got there it was very eerie, it felt like a ghost town, we saw almost no one and the place felt very run down. We did find our Campo that we would stay at for a couple of nights and then headed to the hot springs which Puertecitos is known for. These hot springs are on the ocean shoreline and when the tide is out they are way too hot to sit in, however as the tide comes in the cold ocean water mixes with the hot water and makes for a nice water temperature for soaking, that is until there is too much ocean water and then it’s too cold. So as the tide comes in you move from pool to pool for a just right temperature. With the exception of the strong sulphur smell, we really enjoyed the hot springs, the ocean scenery was beautiful and it was just a unique experience. We enjoyed the hot springs both days we were there.
We did meet a couple from Spokane, WA the first day at the springs (Lanny and Sue) and we ran into them again a few days later in Bahia de Los Angeles. Another fun part of traveling is getting to meet new friends along the way.
After Puertecitos we made our way to Gonzaga Bay for a night. The Campo we stayed at was a little run down but the beach was beautiful and had tons of really cool shells. I collected a dozen or so to go with my sand dollars that I collected in Morro Bay.
We then made our way to Bahia de Los Angeles. The roads to Bahia de Los Angeles were very narrow with no shoulder and steep drop offs, I was glad Lee was driving but it was a little unnerving!
We stayed at Campo Archelon and loved it so much we stayed longer than we planned. It had a cafe with great food and internet, the showers were hot and clean and the beach and views were beautiful. Within 10 minutes of getting our camp spot we ran into Lanny and Sue (we had no idea they would be there). While we there we also met a couple from Logan and a couple from Park City. The wife worked at Fidelity so we got a good laugh about what a small world it is.
While we were in Bahia de Los Angeles, we attempted to drive out to La Mona, but when the dirt road turned into soft sand and we felt our tires sinking in we high tailed it out of there.
We also took a boat tour in the bay (which has about 28 different islands) with Lanny, Sue and three others from camp that Sue arranged. We saw a ton of sea life, it was incredible. We saw fin whales, humpback whales, flying manta rays, dolphins, sea lions and one whale shark. We did a little snorkeling (it was cold!!) and saw some cool fish and star fish. It was an amazing day that I will not soon forget.
A couple days later we went fishing, Sue and another man we met at camp from Colorado joined us. We again saw fin whales and flying manta rays heading out to our fishing spot. Marcos our guide found a great spot and we had a great time pulling in sea bass after sea bass. The pelicans hovered around the boat just waiting for us to pull up the fish and actually got one off of Sue’s line (I don’t think it was on very good) but they were quite fun to watch. Marcos then took us to one of the islands that we could walk around as he cleaned our catch.
Later that night we hosted dinner at our Palapa grilling the sea bass we caught, and I even made brownies in our Omnia stove top oven. We had Lanny, Sue, Kevin (the man from Colorado) and the couple from Logan. It was a fun evening making new friends!
We did some paddling while we in Bahia de Los Angeles as well. We paddled out to the island right in from of camp that was 2.5 miles away. About half way there I had a little panic attack when I realized there could be whales out here that could easily surface and knock me off my board. I calmed down though and made it out to the island and back without incident.
We loved our stay in Bahia de Los Angeles and would go back again in a heart beat.
We decided it was time to start heading back north so we could be in Mesa in time for Christmas. We stayed one night back in San Felipe and a night on the Pacific ocean outside of Ensenada on our way to Valle de Guadalupe.
Valle de Guadalupe is a beautiful valley about 90 minutes south east of Tijuana. It has really, really good food, lots of vineyards and beautiful scenery. Some of the rock formations reminded me of Joshua Tree. We stayed a couple of nights at a nice RV park and then decided it was time to take a break from the van and we found a great Bed & Breakfast. It had a nice courtyard for relaxing in, a hot tub and the breakfast was soooo good. Fresh squeezed orange juice from the surrounding orange groves, homemade marmalades, olives from the grove, and fresh local cheese and breads. Every place we ate had great food, but Finca Altozano topped it off (if you go better make a reservation). It was such a cool place, two paved roads that enclosed the valley and everything in between were dirt roads. Very rustic but the food was as good as any we’ve had. As you can tell our stop in Valle de Guadalupe revolved around food (although we did manage to run a few times).
When it was time to head back to Mesa, we made a stop in Tijuana to see my former co-worker at Degreed, Carlos Vasquez. We were able to meet his very cute and smart girls and then went to dinner with him and his wife. They took us to a place where they bring out fresh tortillas, rice, beans and then a large plate of lobsters caught right there off the coast. After dinner we decided we better get over the border since we didn’t have a good place to stay for the night. The border crossing was pretty uneventful and we drove for an hour or so and stayed the night at a rest stop along the freeway.
Baja was a great adventure and we want to go back again in a year and make it even further south!
We made it back to Mesa on the 23rd, just in time to spend Christmas with my parents and brother and his family. While we were in Mesa Drew came out to see us, Jack, Carmen and Adam also came to visit and we were able have a celebratory dinner for Adam’s graduation from UVU! I spent some time organizing the van, getting rid of what we don’t use, planning out our next stretch of travels and Lee spent a lot of time helping Grant on building out his van. It was a nice break from the van and I always like being able to spend time with my parents and my brother and his family, but I’m itching to go and see more of the US!!!
