Week One in Baja!

Week 1: Baja California, Mexico

Day 1:
Hey all, greetings from the beautiful beaches of the Baja. We’ve been in Mexico for a week now and have had little to no internet service or phone reception to speak of. We came through the border town of Mexicali with absolutely no problems at all. We were so amazed at how calm and relaxed things were there. There weren’t any kids screaming at your ankles to buy “chickle” like they do in Tijuana. When I told them we had a dog with us they just said “okay”, there was no need for them to see his paperwork. Nice and easy! To get our vehicle permit was a bit of an excursion, but the man at the Migracion was courteous and drew us a map of how to get there. It was about 10 miles on the other side of town. We also stopped at the bank to get pesos and Telcel (phone company) to get a SIM card for our phone… the phone we had didn’t work with their cards so we had to buy a new phone. It was only about 25 dollars, but it will be worth it once we have cell reception! After our relatively easy process of obtaining necessary paperwork for the truck and ourselves and were off to our first camping spot just north of San Felipe at a place called “Pete’s Camp”. The beach was amazing and huge, we practically had the place to ourselves except for a few other campers. All of the campsites have ‘palapas’, which are little hand made structures typically made from wood and palm fronds and they are nice for shade and for hanging a hammock. This was the point where we could take a deep breath and relax… we made it! The tide was really far out, but at night I could hear the waves right outside our door, there must have been a half mile difference.

Day 2 & 3:
The next day we continued on to just outside of Puertecitos. The road there was paved and smooth just like map shows. The Baja is a very rocky, sandy and desolate place, but it has this peace and serenity that keeps you intrigued. The place we camped at was even smaller than the night before and there were even fewer people. Our first encounter with using some of our emergency gear came into play when we had to pull a small sedan out of the sand!! At the same beach there was a family of fisher-people who would go out in the morning in there little dingy and came back just before dusk with their boat full of fish. We made friends with their little boy, Julio, who had fun playing with Wallace and making jewelry with Kindra. John changed the motor oil on the truck at this stop too!! The nights were very windy, so much so that we thought our camper top might collapse. We camped there for two nights at only 100 pesos (about 8 dollars).

Day 4:
The road out of Puertecitos was awful, mountainous and unfinished. We averaged about 12mph for about 50 miles and made it to Punta Willard to camp for a night, where upon arrival we encountered our second use of emergency gear. John mistook the road and ended up getting ½ stuck in a sandy patch. Luckily some helpful and friendly locals came by and pulled us out w/ their truck and our tow ropes…no problem! In Punta Willard we were able to fill our water tank w/ potable filtered water and get diesel, though we still had plenty of veggie oil to get to our next stop.

Day 5, 6, & 7:
The road to Bahia De Los Angeles was unfinished but much nicer than we expected. We’ve been in Bahia De Los Angeles for 3 days now and its absolutely beautiful, magnificent views of Isla Angel De La Guarda. We met a nice group of travelers on their way to Cabo San Lucas, with their 4 dogs! All in all our first week has gone great and we are happy and loving the travel. Wallace is loving the life too and continues to amaze and entertain us. We will go into town today to refill our water, post the blog and get a few other supplies. It has continued to be windy throughout the week, but today it has finally subsided… thank goodness! Once we get better cell phone reception we will be calling home to our families, we are hoping that will be sooner than later!

"You know you are in Mexico when the street signs have mustaches!" (see picture)