The baja commute

on FEBRUARY 18, 2019

Lately, my room in my quaint San Francisco apartment has been looking like a small warehouse. We’re starting to settle in and decorate the house and so boxes have started piling up. I take items down with me every time I fly, but I can’t take a 4′ x 6′ mirror and shipping would be risky and cost prohibitive. So Switch offered to drive up and I was able to get the time off work to drive back down with him.

From San Francisco, driving to El Pescadero is about 1,500 miles. When we were roadtripping back in the day, we would easily do 500 miles in a day, but that was on smooth, multi-lane US freeways. With the Baja drive, you have to account for traffic (grapevine) and the slower Mexican highway speeds, plus there’s that whole thing about not driving in the dark – which is no joke.

The last time I chronicled the drive down we went down the East side – Highway 5 to Highway 1. This time, we took the western route – Highway 1 all the way. It was a long day, but we made it to just above the border on the first day and camped at Potrero Campground.

rain on the drive down made for some nice cloud action

We crossed at Tecate (our favorite border crossing). Something about early Sunday morning must make the border officials lazy because they barely looked at all our stuff (some things still in the original boxes!) and didn’t even make me pay the $500 peso fee. Score! For those of you keeping track of the logistics, any new items you take into Mexico require a fee. To prepare for that possibility, we had invoices printed and a manifest of the items in Spanish and English, but ended up not having to use them.

Pro tip: This may seem logical to most of you, but the best policy when crossing the border or dealing with military checkpoints is to be pleasant and honest. A smile and relaxed demeanor goes a long way.

We were eager to get to to the warm South so pushed to one of Switch’s typical stopping points – Cataviña about 1/3 of the way down the peninsula. For those of you geology nerds, this layer of rock is the same layer as Joshua Tree, so filled with beautiful granite boulders contrasted by a huge variety of desert vegetation. We just pulled off the highway at a dirt road and drove back enough so we weren’t visible from the highway. It was a chilly 50 degrees and starting to rain, so we ate a quick dinner (sandwich) in the car and retreated to the trailer to snuggle under the blankets for the night.

the cataviña landscape

Morning gave us a beautiful sunrise over the mountains and rocks and a chance for some arty cactus photos.

our “campsite”

cholla in the morning sun

due to the recent rain the boojum trees were loaded with leaves

pretty little barrel cactus

morning glow on the mountains

The next day took us back to the part of Hwy 1 that I’d been on before; through San Ignacio, Santa Rosalia and Mulegue to our next stop – Bahia de Concepción. We’d stopped here before – a picture perfect bay about 20 miles long and 4 miles wide – but were delighted to find the tide super low exposing the mangrove roots and some cool sea life.

After paying the 100 pesos for the camping (this campsite is very primitive – basically pit toilets and not much else) and parking the car, I kicked off my shoes and explored the spit of sand that connects the west shore to a small island on Playa el Requeson.

mangroves exposed by the low tide

sponge-like creature

i have no idea what these sea creatures were, but they were numerous and like a piece of rubber made with sand

The next day would take us all the way home. In summary, we had a beautiful 4-day trip with mostly 8-hour driving days speckled with carefully timed stops for gas, oodles of podcasts and views like this one.