San Carlos, Sonora

San Carlos is a prosperous boomtown on the shores of the Sea of Cortez with a population of 2500 Mexicans and a revolving group of Canadians and Americans over wintering.  If you are looking for an authentic Mexican experience this isn’t it. For a vacationer or a winter snowbird San Carlos is ready for you. 

English is spoken here and you will see busy gringos running around town trying to look at ease in a tourist town. It’s a similar attitude to the way some people want to look  cool in Key West and be part of the scene.  

Dining out is a popular hobby along the waterfront.

In the heat of summer we spent a couple of nights at the Totonaka campground to get ready to cross the border.   We stopped here in June last year as  it was desert hot already, too hot for comfort in our van without continuous air conditioning and they have full modern American style outlets. Now the place is packed with RVs hooked up for the winter. I’m told last Saturday they had room for three RVs to be packed in. Not everyone enjoys Mexico as we do. You can do it your way. 

We are wild camping further down the beach behind the little strip of sand you can see below. It’s ten minutes away by car and fifteen by bicycle if you need to come to town for supplies. No hookups. 

The town sprawls around the coast with resorts and marinas and gated communities catering to foreign visitors and investors but the four lane waterfront is the commercial hub. My wife’s hair stylist said she lives in Guaymas, the port city around the bay. It’s too expensive in San Carlos where foreigners are buying property. We’ve heard that story before.  

There is construction underway all the time in San Carlos. Tucson is 300 miles north on a modern four lane highway. To visit San Carlos you need a tourist card and Mexican car insurance both obtainable online. There is no requirement to get a vehicle import permit so the six hour drive requires one quick stop at immigration to get the tourist card stamped and you are on the beach in Mexico. No wonder it’s so popular. 

I read about the murders in Monterey Park and the school kids killed in the mid west. Here campers leave their gear outside, on the beach, overnight, untouched. 

Layne stopped here to buy some medications for her tooth implants. They have a sign in the pharmacy offering a long list of drugs including narcotics, no prescriptions required. 

I got my teeth cleaned at the “American Dental” office. I gave the receptionist who is fluent in English my name and phone number. Dr Juan led me to the chair and did the cleaning. $55 on my American Express no forms to fill and no disclaimers or promises not to sue. You want freedom? Mexico will put that desire to the test. 

In Mexico you are responsible for yourself. There are no guarantees  or armies of lawyers to cater to your sense of injustice. No one owes you anything. You can give it a shot but if it doesn’t work out it’s on you. Whatever it is. Some days it’s scary, others it’s annoying and some  it’s exhilarating. It’s possible to sleepwalk through life in Mexico but as an American tourist it’s not very easy to ignore the possibilities. 

For us the draw is the free camping in the wilderness that could be closed off for development at any time. San Carlos is convenient and Guaymas has Walmart and Sam’s Club and Autozone and Home Depot when you need them. But the beach is the draw. Park where you like. 

It gets muddy in the rain and noisy on Saturdays when families picnic with competing music. You have to accept a certain level of trash along with your isolation. 

At night the town twinkles across the bay. 

At our end of the beach we have one condo development and a few lights. 

I’d rather be here than Quartzsite if I were looking for an inexpensive winter home in my RV but fortunately most snowbirds seem to prefer sitting in the Arizona dust bowl. This wild camp could easily be over filled if they only knew.

On The Beach

Wednesday morning the 18th we left Sierra Vista Arizona amid snow flurries and Friday afternoon I went for a swim in the Sea of Cortez.  It wasn’t a hot tub but I got past the icy stage and I swam and came out fifteen minutes later tingling. Layne stayed with GANNET2 while Rusty trotted between us worried which side of the sand dune he should be guarding. 

Ron from Iowa and his brother Terry led the way into the frigid waters but no one else was swimming, perhaps we all had a point to make, we were glad to be here. I like this wild camp a lot but Layne is looking longingly at Tenacatita Bay south of Mazatlan where the temperatures are ten degrees higher, 80 by day and sixty by night. I suspect a move is in my future. 

It doesn’t much matter I suppose. Ron who is self employed and almost retired has plans to fly to Colombia leaving his van in storage here for a month. His brother has gone home after a two week vacation in a tent here, riding an overnight bus to Phoenix and then a plane to Iowa where it is quite warm he says, two inches of snow and around freezing. He isn’t retired. The two “boys” encouraged their parents to come here a few years back and now every winter starts with an Iowa family campground on the beach in Mexico. Hello neighbor! There are lots of different ways to enjoy the beach. 

They had a spaghetti dinner around the fire our first night. It was perfect timing to get invited to plow into a huge pot of delicious bolognese. 

Is Mexico dangerous? 

Why would that question even come up? Because three people rode by our camp on bicycles from their condo rental and paused to express astonishment that we were wild camping by ourselves. We are not by any means the only people doing that here.  I was slouched in my camp chair reading, the epitome of a victim of violent crime but I tried to reassure them of my safety. A single woman on the beach, unmolested, for example: 

Now that the border entry shambles is behind us we have up to 180 days wandering Mexico ahead of us. In mid April Layne will need to return to Algodones, the border town where she will have her two implants installed. Our plan is to be near Cancun at that point and for her to fly back for the appointment leaving me with Rusty to prepare for our crossing to Belize.  Until then we will zig zag south. Our goal is Panama by June to ship the van to Colombia. 

All that sounds terribly busy. Right now we watch the sun set after another day of not very much. It’s cool enough we haven’t even deployed our Moonshade awning. We are enjoying the winter sun. 

One annoyance has been the number of flies. I may have to get energetic and put up the mosquito netting. That’s the extent of my ambition. 

We have appointments to get my  teeth cleaned and to have Laynes’s hair cut so we will pack up and drive into town one day. Layne also has fish tacos on her mind. It is a torpid sort of life. 

Pete and Shelly from Alberta got stuck briefly in soft sand. They have two energetic dogs and a long handled shovel but I wandered over to their RV with my entrenching tool and helped move a little sand…

…The hole they dug is where Rusty is inspecting the sand. It was more as a gesture of solidarity as they are quite self sufficient. Rusty stayed clear at the time as his presence excited the Canadian dogs inside the RV which shook to their barking.  “RV gets stuck briefly” was the headline that day. I went back to my book.

It’s not a long read, more like a scholarly text written in a rather stilted  style reminiscent occasionally of someone not conversant with idiomatic English, but I am enjoying learning about the stories behind the names -Francisco Madero, Huerta, Carranza, Obrégon and Porfirio Diaz among others- honored on street signs and in city names. It’s an easy read surprisingly. 

Well, that should keep the mind busy as we vegetate in the shrubbery. 

Driving Across Sonora

Rusty got me up out of a comfortable sleep at the truck stop and we went for a walk. There’s a $15 a night campground in town which has hook ups and a rather unpleasant toilet. We need neither but there is a clean toilet here in the truck stop. The big draw of the noisy campground is that it is surrounded by a wall and is considered safe by fearful travelers. No one has bothered us here or at any other truck stop or parking area. and it’s free. 

The “plaza de cobre” -toll plaza- is as modern as anything with a toll schedule up front and a receipt with your change. I don’t yet trust the electronic toll cards so we use “efectivo” - cash- which helps us break 500 peso bills ($25). 

We’ve eaten before at this wrecked looking truckers diner and the food is excellent. Toll booths are often centers of commerce with people selling sandwiches, ice cold drinks  and fruit to travelers. There are also usually spotless “sanitarios” -toilets -nearby. 

This is the relatively new “libramento” -bypass- around Hermosillo and it’s Costco, speeds things up too. 

A smooth two lane cement highway curves out into the desert around the capital city of Sonora State. 

If cars need to pass they use the magic third lane. If you see a car coming toward you just move to the shoulder to let them by. No fuss no road rage necessary. 

Not all traffic is motorized which is why driving at night is not advised in Mexico. 

It’s pretty boring most of it honestly here in the north. It was weird not needing to use Google maps to find out way. Verizon has increased the daily use allowed for US cellphones with unlimited plans. You now get 2 gigabytes of data daily at full speed instead of half a gig last year, which means we don’t need to keep using airplane mode to save data. I think they are trying to compete with Starlink and it works for me. We use our US iPhones as normal here. Very easy. Amazing really. 

We arrived in San Carlos at noon with plans to get ready for a few days beach camping. 

The new hospital is being built very slowly alongside the main four lane highway into town. Almost a mile behind this lies the  beach where we planned to park, separated from here by empty scrubland. One day it may be developed and the free camping may end. But not today. 

The four lane highway into San Carlos, featureless, efficient and ready for new construction, more homes, more business, the local economy is booming. 

Layne got some vegetables and beer at the upscale supermarket in town and then had me stop alongside the roast chicken shop of fond memory, remembered from last year. 

Eleven dollars worth of chicken potatoes onion and chili peppers, enough for three meals. 

Then we stopped to buy 15 gallons of water for $2:30. They fill a five gallon jug, I put it on the bed and siphon it into our thirty gallon tank. It’s a disgrace that utilities can’t provide safe drinking water that Mexicans can trust but for us it’s a convenient way to fill our tank with safe drinking water at a very low dollar cost. 

Google maps will help you find Agua purificada along the road : 

Rusty supervised operations. Some dogs came forward to check him out as he was trespassing on their street. Their owners let them out in the morning and they spend the day playing in gangs. I bent down as if to pick up a stone and they ran off leaving him in peace as you can see. 

San Carlos facing the Sea of Cortez. The weather is perfect, warm by day, t-shirt weather with no mosquitoes and no humidity and cool at night for good sleeping. 

After the shopping we drove back out of town to the beach. There are now two entrances, one for large vehicles at the end of the paved road next to some condominiums overlooking the water. And then there is the dirt road easily driven if dry and our preferred route as it is more discreet. The condo owners  don’t like campers getting freebies where they pay to see open water in safety from behind their guarded walls. Recent rains created some mud puddles around here but they are drying out and the going was easy. 

The cement posts are for the hospital construction but they got dumped here blocking the dirt road entrance to the public beach. The locals protested and the construction company opened the cross pasty he condos which had been closed and the locals created a new entrance around the obstacle.

The beach is always public in Mexico by Federal law and some kind of access cannot be denied. 

We returned to the same spot as last year, a short walk over the sand dune to the beach but mot too desirable as the water is out of sight. A quick trash clean up and we were settled for our first night. 

Looking across the bay to San Carlos note the absence of waves on a great swimming beach. 

And the condos where the paved road ends and the posts in the sand delineate the private section of the beach. The timeline is public but I never walk Rusty down there. 

Inland is the scrub land currently undeveloped. The hospital construction is on the road barely visible. 

The water is cold but tolerable…

…just over the dune behind GANNET2. 

How long shall we stay? A week maybe and then south to a warmer favorite beach at Tenacatita. San Carlos is pretty perfect.