Robin & Karen Living the Dream: February 2024

We headed south on highway 5 to San Felipe - we walked the beach, had lunch & cervesas and ended up parking for the night at an Arco gas station ( in the back lot inside of concrete wall.)

parking for the night

Next stop on our way south was Gonzaga Bay and the Rancho Grande camping area. We paid 1000 pesos for three nights where we got a concrete pad and plywood palapa right on the beach. We tried to set up our Starlink but realized our inverter wasn't working - something to figure out down the road with someone more technical than us. We did get a cellphone plan thru Rogers back in Canada that worked for Canada, US & Mexico with 150 Gb of data - so no problems except in areas with no cell service. We enjoyed a couple of lovely lazy days, reading, walking the beach & collecting shells.

no snowdrifts for us, now it's sand drifts!

We continued south on hiway 5, happy that the highway has now been completely finished - and it was a beautiful drive. When we hit hiway 1 it became very narrow - not liking it at all. But the roads have gotten better every time we have come, slightly wider & less potholes! Lots of Cardon cactus and Boojum trees, everything very green. We headed to Bahia de Los Angeles where we had to go" off roading" 3 times for road washouts and detours. We had hoped to stay in a campground, but they were full so we headed to La Gringa - the free beach at the end of the bay. We parked very close to the water on a gravel beach right above the water. We lucked into chatting with a fellow from Alberta, who said he was an RV tech. He came to check out our inverter but was not able to fix it but we did find one plug that does work, so we could set up our Starlink for internet access.

boojum cactus with orange top

one of many road detours

driving into Bahia de Los Angeles

When it was nearly dark we heard strange, splashing noises coming from the ocean 30 feet away. We went down with a flashlight and realized there were thousands of all sizes of fish, clumping and splashing at the edge of the water with bigger fish jumping a bit deeper. We walked along the shore towards a group of Mexican campers, who were scooping them up with a net and they had over 2 5 gallon pails full. They gave us four and we later found out that they were mackerel and tasted quite good.

We finally got out in the kayak for a paddle in the bay - we got out and found several dried sea stars, gave 2 to the Mexican family and kept 4 - trying not to pick shells as we have so many at home. We were happy to see two sea lions and a bunch of dolphins. Later our Mexican neighbours (a family group from San Quintin staying in tents) invited us over for supper, only one of them was able to speak English but we had a fun time & were well fed!

Great place to watch the stars, very dark with no light pollution and an open view of the sky. And quite a few shooting stars!

We did some fishing and we both caught from the kayak and we shared our catch with a family from France. Robin offered kayak rides to the Mexican family and he took out several of them and everyone was happy.

a French family (from France), one of many unique RV's

good fishing for the birds as well!

Robin giving rides

After four nights at La Gringa we continued on, including an off-road detour of 3 to 4 km where we could go only 20 km an hour. We went thru our first military checkpoint - where the guy actually came in and looked around - near Guerrero Negro. We stopped for the night at La Espinita Motel and RV, where we paid 100 pesos for dry camping and another hundred pesos so we could each have a shower in one of the hotel rooms. Quite a nice set up. We continue to use iOverlander and found a place to fill our water tank for free and got fuel at for 22.2 pesos a liter.

the room we were given to use for showers

whale skeleton

entering one of the military check points

As we passed through Guerrero Negro, we paid the usual 20 pesos so they could spray a disinfectant spray on our tires. We did some grocery shopping in Guerrero Negro, bought Robin a used webbed lawn chair as his fell apart for a grand total of 150 pesos ($12), finally found a bank where we could get cash out of an ATM and then a late lunch at Mario’s restaurant.

local ambulance asking for donations, stopping all traffic

The plan for this trip was to revisit all the places that we had been in the four winters prior that we had spent on Baja starting in 2012. Unfortunately we realized on iOverlander that one of our favourite spots on Punta Abreojos called Campo Rene had been destroyed in the last hurricane - so we had to come up with a new plan - on to San Ignacio. (And happy to see there was no fog in the morning).

Our first night in San Ignacio we camped in the Don Chon park under the palm trees where we last brought our 42 foot Class A - we fit much better this time - cost of 200 pesos a night ($16). We moved the next day to los Petatas campground on the right side of the road along the water and negotiated a deal for 200 pesos a night if we stayed one week. The Baja 1000 runs right through San Ignacio along in front of the campground and the pre-running had already started so we decided to stay until the race was over (the roads get pretty dangerous with all the support trucks racing from place to place). A lovely unserviced campground complete with toilets, toilet paper and hot showers. We walked into town every day (took about 20 minutes), sat in the square, admiring the church, watching people, drinking cervesas and occasionally having lunch - looking forward to the race.

Don Chon park

Las Petatas

lots of Baja 1000 vehicles around, doing pre-running of the course

Baja 1000 memorabelia

San Ignacio mission

inside the mission

a favorite lunch spot on the square

strange to see Starlink receivers on every race related vehicle

Every day we added to our birds seen list - just here there were coots, black Phoebe, green heron, egrets, kingfisher, ducks, white wing doves, Says Phoebe, hummingbirds, Osprey, great blue heron, vermillion flycatcher, woodpeckers, black crown night herons & hooded orioles. In our downtime, I was slowly starting to work on the blog of our Newfoundland trip.

coots

local wildlife, complete with bell

Robin, hanging out with the locals

lunch on the square

cervesas on the square

another unique RV

We were camped under many many date palms, which had dates falling on the ground, and Robin decided that they were good to eat. The Baja 1000 racers continue to pre-run the race giving us something to look at and creating lots of noise. We had our first experience of using a laundry service this trip - laundry picked up, washed, dried, folded & returned for about $8/load!

Happy to have a well stocked grocery store in town - when you buy eggs you put how many you want in a plastic bag, also not refrigerated & carry them home carefully! We’ve run out of US beer and are now drinking Tecate light at a cost of 155 pesos for 10. A truck came into the campground just before dark one night selling shrimp - large ones - 200 pesos for a kilogram, quite a deal.

November 16 Baja 1000 race day, started in La Paz & will end in Ensenada, over 1000 miles. The first motorcycles through town at 11 complete with the helicopters overhead. Areas were cordoned off to keep the spectators back as the route goes right through town between the square & the historic church and then towards our campground - a very festive atmosphere. Lots of people, food wagons, big TV with race highlights playing. We discovered the tracking website so we could see when the next racer would be coming our way. In the afternoon we walked towards the highway where there were lots of pits set up for the various racers. It was fun, watching them quickly refuel, do oil changes, tire changes & sometimes switch drivers. The trophy trucks came through later in the afternoon, including the helicopters filming. We got to see quite a few trucks in daylight as we ate supper out by the road. Later we took our chairs and beer and sat across from the BF Goodrich pit till after 8 o’clock - very noisy, lots of trucks & big UTV’s. We got more sleep than we thought we would, and in the morning there were still trucks and some VW bugs going through.

one of the first motorcycles

passing by the pits

a trophy truck stopping at a pit, surprising how close we could get

tracking app

sad to leave this amazing spot

We stayed one more night to avoid running into any of the chase trucks on the highway and continued on south to Santa Rosalia. We stopped along the highway before the mine and the mine pier to look for seaglass as we’ve been lucky in finding good pieces there before and today our luck continued. We wandered around town to see the church that was designed by the same man who did the Eiffel Tower, and checked out the infamous bakery. We boondocked for the night on a dead-end street near the Port Authority but needed to move ahead a couple hundred feet partway through the night as we had a bunch of locals behind us, leaning on our box and blaring loud music. But we felt safe and a enjoyed a beautiful sunset watching the pelicans.