Mulegé Meets Blade Runner

It seems I always have to start out with a plan. Then as these reports progress it becomes obvious we are useless at sticking to our plans. So why bother? Because I’m trying to make sense of it all, that’s why. 

We ended up in an actual oasis as far from salt water as you can get and it goes by the name of San Ignacio. This was not the plan! Decidedly not but it happened like this and it ended very well.  

It was Friday afternoon and we were exiled from Playa Armenta when the music cranked up so loud we couldn’t think. We decided to check out the next town called Mulegé ( the emphasis weirdly  is on the last e). This was a sailing area I read about in my youth, places where people traveled to get away from the  25 million California residents then crowding the Golden State. There are 42 million today. 

We weaved along Highway 1 clinging to the cliffs above the Sea of Cortez, lovely views that filled us with hope for a good Sandy place to stop at water’s edge. 

When we happened across a nice quiet beach the plan was we would check it out. There were beaches but they weren’t quiet. Businesses were besieged and we could see restaurants on the beach, tour boats, fishing trips and lines of parked cars and RVs. We could have been in Southern California had the US been endowed with such tropical blue waters and white sands. 

We were a tad grumpy by the time we reached Moo-lay-HAY! a river town up a creek away from tidal waters. They call it Heroica in honor of its role supposedly in advancing one of Mexico’s glorious but inconclusive revolutions. 

Weirdly Mulegé reminded me a bit of Bisbee, the last town in Arizona before our border crossing at Naco. It’s a dusty, potentially pretty little town built on terraced streets that rise up out of the river bed. 

Our first order of business was laundry, a do-it-yourself place recommended on iOverlander. ( If you are planning a road trip I hope it’s obvious by now this is the American app everyone uses). 

You will notice signs in English everywhere. When Rusty and I took a walk I check the realtor’s window. 

Don’t be shy if you are interested. It’s low season so who knows what deals are possible…We’re nomads and certainly not ready to settle down. 

The laundry job set me straight. I had had an unfortunate moment a couple of nights previously when I had thrown open the back doors of the van to take a pee without disturbing Layne and had forgotten I’d set aside my second pillow which fell to the ground and rolled away and got slightly in the way. Enough I wanted to throw it away but Layne swore it could be saved and so it was. Laundry done was a huge relief to me in a sense. I can be an idiot, peeing on a pillow is a spectacular new low. Van life. Sigh. At least it was on the ground at the time and I didn’t wet the bed. 

Mulegé as Bisbee: 

We checked out the nearest RV park but it was really ghastly. Dried dirt, no shade and depressingly empty. We drove through and couldn’t decide if it would have been better if full of life. 

“Something will come up!” We said sounding more hopeful than sensible. We set out for Santa Rosalia with eyes on the beaches. We had bought a few bits of fruit in Mulegé and added five gallons of drinking water to our tank so we were ready for anything. 

We were not ready for Santa Rosalia. 

Oddly enough Layne who was navigating like a demon had not found a single campground in this town, the last spot before Highway 1 turned inland toward San Ignacio. 

The best iOverlander could offer was street parking at the public library. That sounded bogus to us but we would see. Along the way from Mulegé we found nothing worth stopping for along the highway. 

Santa Rosalia it turns out is a 19th century mining town founded by European absentee business owners to exploit the minerals of the area. And it looks like a miner’s nightmare to this day, all steel and soot and the most torn up section of highway I have seen in Mexico. No exaggeration. 

We could not wait to escape this dystopian nightmare of mining wealth. We’re tourists dammit!  

The sun was heading to the horizon and it would be dark in two hours. San Ignacio and it’s campgrounds of unknown quality were  90 minutes away. Nothing else for it but to drive! 

We headed out into the desert hoping to find something halfway decent in San Ignacio. As it happens we found something lovely.

Playa Armenta

It’s hard to make any argument against spending the rest of our time on this rather remarkable beach. I have a habit, reinforced by Rusty, of getting up shortly after dawn and at that hour no one else is afoot whether we are camped alone or in a throng. Usually we sleep with the doors open for ventilation and Rusty’s huge bed fits on the floor behind our seats so he can look out and see what’s what all night long. When he sees the gray of dawn he starts yawning loudly, my signal to get going. 

I put my serape on if it’s cold, hang my FZ1000 Panasonic camera around my neck and off we go, me in Crocs and him barefoot, thorns notwithstanding. 

Usually we mooch around directionless as I wait for the sun to paint some colors while he checks the ground around the van in increasingly large circles. 

Then one of us picks a direction and we head out into a silent world wherever we are. 

The owners son pushed off in his kayak but later told us he found no fish. 

He had pointed me in the direction of a rocky path up to a viewpoint at the top of a small hill. 

Overlooking Bahia Concepcion. 

Rusty got bored and went down the hill. 

I followed him and we meandered back across the sand to our camp. Layne was up and made tea and coffee while we contemplated a day of increasing sunshine and heat and nothing much to do. Books downloaded, word games offline, no news, no texts, no contact. It felt primal. 

Rusty was still energetic so he and I climbed the hill behind the beach. 

It was hot and he took refuge in the shade. I was ready to continue up but I knew the sand would burn his paws when the sun got in its stride so we walked back to the comfort of our palapa. 

We were pondering our first swim of the day in mirror-flat water when the curse began. From across the water out of sight we heard Friday’s entertainment begin.Thump, thump, thump went the big bass sound. It was a music coming out of a speaker more than a mile away, out of sight around the next point. I could hear it over my earbuds that I was using to listen to a radio download. 

It was unbelievably loud. We both knew I would go mad listening to that all day. A motorcyclist also didn’t the night on the beach but I don’t know how he felt about it as he had avoided making eye contact with me and I wasn’t going to intrude on the man from Massachusetts. But he left shortly after the music started. 

Before we left we decided to have a last swim in this otherwise lovely place. 

So there we were up to our necks in water paddling around in a leisurely fashion with nothing on our minds and trying to ignore the noise. 

A pick up pulled into the beach and stopped at the palapa next to ours. We heard English sounding noises as they unloaded the cooler from the bed of the truck. 

They stepped into the water and swam out to us.

They were it turned out two old friends who were taking some time off to cruise around Baja. Dean is from San Diego and Rob is from New Zealand so I got along with his sense of humor very nicely.  

We swam for a while before we made our way back to shore. Rob said he had been missing having tea on this trip so of course Layne offered to brew him one of my Yorkshire Gold teabags and we ended up having a long chat about travel and boats and vans. Rob is selling his sailboat to a German couple. They were interested before Covid and now he is off to Morocco to seal the deal. 

I’d never met the man but o felt this tremendous affinity for him. He really got what we were doing as he had fond of himself. Dean from San Diego was really into the van so I explained it to him at done great length. I have him here buying us all fresh clams out of a visiting pick up truck. 

Layne bought us a pint of ceviche to eat later - delicious - and we sat and ate fresh raw clams with lime juice abs a little hot sauce. It was one of those moments that you don’t want to end. We talked too much and too fast because we all had stories and time was short. It was a wrench to have to drive away from this lovely men. The encounter was a highlight of Baja for us. 

We took the dirt trail over the water when it was about one in the afternoon. Far later than we had intended…

Our plan was to check out Mulegé and stay at an RV park Layne had found on the iOverlander app which works somewhat even offline. 

These chance encounters make travel the greatest fun and we have learned never to turn away when one presents itself. There is nothing more important than making a connection, be it ever so fleeting. 

North To Loreto

We stayed four days on El Quemado Beach around the headland from Puerto Escondido. We braved the submerged rocks twice a day to reach the sandy swimming area beyond, I walked Rusty who hid in the shade during the hottest hours when the sand burned his paws. 

Our plan was to drive north along Highway one to the small coastal town of Loreto 15 miles away on the Sea of Cortez. Once we’d done our shopping we’d carry on north up the only road available and look for a properly sandy beach. 

It was a strange desert drive up the coast. The highway was smooth and well marked, a common feature of driving in Baja we are discovering. And as we got close to town businesses appeared with signs in English and obviously catering to gabachos. Above we came upon Loreto Bay Inn, a golf resort worthy of Palm Springs or Scottsdale and here we are ostensibly in Mexico. 

For lesser mortals the attention to detail is all in English. “Security” they promise as though outside the walls of the RV park it’s the Wild West. We promptly took our life in our hands and bought some sliced fruit from a guy on the street. 

Loreto is a pretty little beach town with clean streets and landscaping. If you don’t speak Spanish don’t worry. Half the population has spent time working in the US and no one here opens a conversation in Spanish with an obvious foreigner. 

We found this a little disconcerting and what was worse the Ley supermarket had a terrible fruit and vegetable selection. We’d seen the delivery trucks coming over on the ferry, dozens of the Ley’s trailers and time didn’t in transit doesn’t do produce any good. Layne was grumbling about missing the fruit stands of the mainland. I was forced to pinto it Baja is a desert and they don’t grow anything to sell in the southern half of the peninsula. 

We had our roast chicken for dinner and we picked up some tortilla rolls filled with a meat and potato mixture when we bought some fresh flour tortillas. With that and the fruit slices we had lunch. Cook’s day off! We took to the road again heading north, the only way out of town for us. I liked the sign warning not to use the cellphone while driving. There wasn’t a hint of a signal anyway so the warning was pointless. I took the picture using my pocket camera which I keep for those occasions. 

North of Loreto the highway cuts inland for a couple of dozen miles and it’s all desert, some of it quite spectacular. 

And then we came to a military checkpoint where the cars that had passed us on the curves were now waiting for one of their number to get his body cavities inspected by a serious military check. My heart sank. 

The dude from Washington State in front of us on the Triumph tourer got waved through and he paid a visit to the useful sanitarios, a civilized touch in this desert inferno. We got to the front of the line eventually and faced two questions: Where are you coming from? -Loreto. And then: Where are you going to? -Mulegé. Pass friend. Not so tough!   

The road took off into the desert driving by colored rock formations and dry river beds, winding around hillsides covered in saguaro cactus and thorn bushes. Occasionally there was a house often turned into a modest truck stop to feed passing drivers but mostly the whole place was empty, as a desert should be. The air temperature measured 96 on the dashboard. 

It’s illogical but as we came through the pass and started our descent to Bahia Concepcion I expected to see signs of life, beaches, stopping places. I had no evidence for such things. 

As we passed the monument marking the beginning of the Mulegé municipal district and the end of Loreto we pulled over to check the scenery. And the smells 

Our plan, such as it was, consisted of finding a sandy beach, no rocks, and room to park. Pretty simple. The iOverlander app showed very little that might meet our modest needs. There were rocky beaches everywhere, some isolated and free and others with modest fees. But sandy swimming beaches seemed out of reach. We were surprised. 

And then we saw Playa Armenta, far nicer than described on the iOverlander app and just right for us. There were two entrance tracks with one approschbsteep rocky and short while the other was longer but sandy and easier. That was the one for us. 

Better believe we paid for the shade. And loved it. 

The swimming was excellent and the salt water was warm. The pit toilets were not a problem as we used our porta potty and I emptied that into the toilets that were not enthusiastically described on the app. 

We had no cell service at all and there was nothing around the beach, no restaurants or shops or even a water faucet. It as waterfront wilderness and best of all Rusty was happy. We settled in.