A Baja Moment Of Madness

 After our appalling fly encounter we decided to leave the area of La Paz. First because we are explorers we drove up the coast road to the village of San Juan where the asphalt ends.

We might just as easily have been in Big Bend National park it was such a beautiful drive, with the bonus of flat tidal salt water alongside.

Above you see the ultra modern desalinization plant turning seawater into drinking water, all our futures probably as fresh water runs out. 

The town is a bunch of identical breeze block homes clinging to a hillside for the convenience of the mine. Busloads of workers drive up the road in the morning and go home at night  along the beautifully paved road.

Beyond the town the road turns to gravel and washboard and eventually sand and rocks apparently if you are determined to reach the fishing village of San Evaristo miles from anywhere. Then you have to drive back. Until I realized it was an out-and-back proposition I had half an idea to give it a try for the experience. I gave that up after one look at the Admiral.

We drove back to the main road, filled up with Pemex gas and took off up Highway One the main road up the spine of Baja California. 

I'm not sure why we decided to leave La Paz after such brief acquaintance and sometimes things are just like that in your head. I think we both wanted to get on with exploring Baja and finding the good and that involves swimming so off we went.

The irony was we had to go away from the water to get to a beach. The road is in excellent shape and it is being repaved a bit at a time. The shoulder comes and goes and some stretches are narrow which freak out frequent posters on travel forums about this place. I found it easy and fast, 60 miles per hour was a comfortable speed.

The countryside was high plains desert, hills in the distance, saguaro as far as the eye can see and a continuous fence along the highway reminding me of Texas' obsession with keeping open space private.

There were almost no topes (yay!) but that's because there is very little human habitation along the highway.

We saw camper vans, RVs and expensive CanAm trikes on the highway, not the usual mainland 150cc utility motorcycles of the locals. We saw this guy coasting downhill in 104 degree heat. I prefer Van living thanks.

Eventually we arrived at Ciudad Constitucion, about 100 miles north of La Paz. It was around five o'clock and we could have gone further but there was a campground listed on iOverlander with a swimming pool so we pulled in. There was no on there. We wandered around, chose a spot and parked. We had arrived.

We had seen one operational Pemex gas station already between the two cities so I doubt we drove fifty miles without gas. In the US you will see Awful Warning signs "No Services Next City Miles" and these kinds of warnings persist on travel forums about Baja where newbies are advised to bring gas cans and two spare wheels and I don't know what.

I suppose if you are going to disappear up arroyos and cross the peninsula on barely discernible rocky tracks its all good advice.

But my point is if you are going off-roading you already should know what precautions to take in the event you get stuck or break down. For people like us sticking to asphalt with occasional forays onto well traveled hard packed trails the idea that Baja travel is some kind of wild frontier is absurd.

We spent a night at Misiones RV Park in Ciudad Constitucion, a dusty slightly run down place with a lovely pool and irritatingly weak WiFi. We met Glen a resident of a surfing town on the Pacific Coast these past 17 years. He was taking his travel trailer home after a vacation in the south and we talked about life in Mexico as we sat in cool water up to our necks.  Gannet 2 with the overly friendly campground dog:

Layne got a message from a friendly American resident we'd met on the beach at El Califin. She looked gloomy saying she was sorry we'd missed him.

"Why don't we go back?" I said brightly. Why not? It's only a hundred miles and we'd do more than that to go to Miami from home.

So after just one night "on the road" we piled aboard Gannet 2 on a whim at lunch time and drove back to La Paz for a lunch date Friday with Bard and his Mexican girlfriend. This should be interesting.