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Up the Baja

Thursday, July 5th, 2007

It was tough to leave Ajijic – we had a great apartment, kids in a good school, a lot of free time and met some nice people to hang out with.  But our next stop was the Baja peninsula and Matthias and I were both looking forward to it very much.  We had heard great things from a lot of different travelers and couldn’t wait to get there.  What a huge disappointment we had awaiting us.

First we had a long drive to Mazatlan.  Mazatlan has the reputation of being another Mexican resort town.  It is true that there is a section of Mazatlan full of tourists and big resorts, but the old part of town is really quite nice and the view from the waterfront is spectacular.  The hardest part of being in Mazatlan was the heat and humidity.  The temperature was in the low 90’s, and the “feels like” temperature was just under 100, but after being in the cool mountains with a great climate, it took me a couple of days to adjust.  We signed up for the car ferry from Mazatlan to La Paz (which is on the southern end of the Baja, about 1500 km from Tijuana).  The ride was 19 hours, and we spent the night in a cabin with 4 beds.  The ferry was brutally expensive (around $400) but I was kind of excited when we first boarded.  There was a lot to explore, and it kind of had a Love Boat feeling with the narrow hallways, dining area, lounge and cabin areas.  After just a bit of exploring we realized that this boat had seen better days (big on the Boat, low on Love) and there wasn’t really anything to do except start out into the Sea of Cortez.  Never the less, we did have a good time and between nap time, dinner, breakfast and movie hour, we found enough stuff to do to keep ourselves busy. 

Sea of Cortes

 

 

We got to La Paz in the morning and everything seemed good.  We’d heard good things about a small town called Todos Santos, so we decided to head out that way.  We thought we’d try a hotel room since it was quite hot, but all the hotels we found were really expensive.  We decided to check out a few camping spots, but the only one in that area was bankrupt and closed down.  Then we noticed we had a flat tire.  At that point Matthias changed the tire and we headed back to La Paz, a friend had given us the names of some good cheap hotel rooms.  When we got back to La Paz the temperature was 42 C, (107 F). 

After 2 nights in La Paz we headed towards Loreto.  At least it was cool enough to camp there, but the beach and town were very disappointing.  Next was Bahia Concepcion, which is supposed to be one of the highlights of the entire Baja.  When we pulled in around 11:00 AM, it was already 102 degrees, and the hottest part of the day had yet to come.  So on we went to the Pacific side, where it was nice and chilly – much better camping weather.  This town was a prime whale watching area, but of course that is only in the right months.  No whales in July.  We continued north, but everything we saw was just not interesting to us or too hot to camp.  We ended up just heading up the peninsula in 3 days. 

I can honestly say that this is the biggest disappointment of our entire trip and an unfortunate end to our time in Mexico.  We’d heard great stories of perfect beaches, great camping spots, wonderful snorkeling.  There were a few sections of the 1000 mile drive that were interesting, but generally it was just mile after mile of dry fields of millions of cardon cacti.  On the other hand we have seen so much amazing stuff in the last 3 years that it really would have been hard to top what we have seen so far.  Maybe it would have been a better idea to start off in Baja when the weather was milder and return on a different route.  In any event, we have made it through the Baja and t is a good thing that we are close to the border now because after all those cacti I’ve got a real hankering for some Taco Time. 

Cardon Cacti on the Baja     At the scorchingly hot Sea of Cortes