After a last great night in northern baja, it was time to hit the road and enter Baja Sur or Southern Baja. It has been more than a week that we were in Baja and we’ve started to feel comfortable in Baja. Trying random stretch of roads which leads to nowhere with epic views! Trying street foods without the fear of food poisoning and a lot more.Â
Baja is one of those places that is even better in real than its epic photos on Instagram! Honestly we were thinking that with all the Americans and Canadians travel to Baja every year, it probably is spoiled and it is not as cool as it looks in the photos. Well it is true to some degrees and we will experience it soon but the Whole Baja Peninsula is so vast and undeveloped that apart from few hot spots, you won’t see anyone.
As soon as highway 1 turned inland and crossed into Baja Sur, we turned right from Villa Alberto Andress to have a scenic drive for few days. This stretch of the road, took us inland toward the ocean and to a small fishing village called Bahia Asuncion. It’s a famous place for Whale watching when they come later in the season. the whole coastal area from Guerrero Negro where we camped a night before to Bahia Asuncion is part of the reserved marine life area called Ojo de Libre.
From here, there is a rough but beautiful coastal dirt track that took us to the next spot on our detour called Punta Abreojas.
Â
In Punta Abreojas, there is a unique piece of land. An stretch of sandy dunes sandwiched between ocean and the wetlands so you will be spoiled with the options to camp. It is one of those places that you can stay for days and every day try a differnet spot with a unique view to camp and of course get yourself stuck few times in the deep sand.
There is something temping about Baja that makes you want to get deeper into sandy tracks to have a best view or better camp spot or better sunrise or sunset view and get stuck. But at the end of the day the camp site views are always out of this world.Â
We had a great night next to the ocean with good shelter from the wind, thanks to the massive sand dunes. The next morning, we decided to head back to highway 1 and get to our highly anticipated next destination, in the heart of Baja inland.
After being in desert for almost 10 days, we arrived at San Ignacio. A real oasis in the desert with high palm trees and lush green orchards. It was such a welcoming surprise after 10 days of being in salt and sand. It is a cute little town with a beautiful church and our first encounter with colonial style plazas in Mexico.Â
We found one of the best camp spots of our trip so far with all the amenities and a great spot to camp under the palm trees and called it home for few days. It was nice and quiet and only 5 minutes walk to the town small plaza.
After spending few days in San Ignacio, eating fresh dates, having great food and drinks and chilling out under the palm trees, it was time to hit the road again and explore deeper into Baja Sur. We carried on driving on Highway 1 and reached the coast of sea of Cortez on the east side of Baja, where the famous turquoise water and white sandy beaches of Baja are. The area is called Bahia Concepcion and it does have white sandy beaches and turquoise pristine waters but it also has the rows of Canadian and American campers lined up on the beach camps and all the prices are in US dollars for almost no facilities. We drove by few camping spots and decided to carry on to Mulege. A beautiful chilled small town on the coast with great vibes and also great spots to stay and camp on the beach but we decided to get out of town and find a nice camp somewhere out of reach and remote after the town.
We found an epic camp site by an isolated beach with great views but we had an accident before reaching camp. we managed to lose our drone somewhere in between cacti on our way and we couldn’t retrieve it. After long hours of searching and no luck we got to our camp site so gutted. We lost the drone and all the footage we had on it from our epic drives and camp sites in the past week. We were so sad that we couldn’t enjoy all the beauty surrounding us. We made a simple dinner and started to refocus on how we lost the drone and started searching on how we might possibly find it and we came up with a plan with the help of google of course.
So we had a plan for the morning. We went to the spot that we send off the drone the day before. Hid the car in the bushes and started to walk in the direction that the last position of the drone was recorded. We knew that it didn’t hit anything when we lost communication with the drone and the area was flat with lots of short shrubs and Cacti. We kept walking and looking for quite sometime and guess what!!! We found it. It obviously stayed in the air for a while till the battery ran out and fell in the brunches of a short tree. So it wasn’t even damaged. We were feeling great! Had the drone and the footage back, we headed toward a town by the beach called Loreto. It was Halloween and with the large population of Americans living in this town, it looked like it is going to be a real Halloween, Mexican style in town.Â
We were lucky and found a nice and safe spot to park our car and camp in town. So we had a nice evening having nice meal, drinks and experience Halloween for the first time. What we learned was the fact that Mexicans know how to party and celebrate!
After spending two days in Loreto, we were on the move again. This time, we have a short detour inland to somewhere called San Javier to see the Mision San Francisco Javier which is called the Jewel of the misions of Baja California because of its beauty.
After a dusty drive in the dry windy mountain roads we arrived at lush green San Javier where you can find the 300 years old olive tree in the lush orchard behind the mision.
From San Javier, we drove back to Loreto and carried on Highway one south by the coast. Just when highway 1 is turning inland again, we took a dirt road to an iconic camp spot in Baja Sur, Aqua Verde. This camp spot is famous for differnet reasons, first for its sketchy windy road to get there and the most important for the prime location it has. It is on a narrow stretch of white sand bank and you basically have two beaches on both sides of your camp. In recent years it became really famous and if you are there at the wrong time, you end up spending this tiny sandy beach with so many others. We were lucky and we had only two other cars on the far end of the beach.
We had a peaceful night there and the best thing about this spot is its prime location for snorkelling. We saw so many different species of fish snorkelling there. After a great stay in Aqua Verde, we drove back to the only road going south, highway 1.
After a quick stop at Ciudad Constitucion to refuel and restock, we started our hunt for our next wild camp in Baja and found another epic spot in the middle of nowhere.
From here we started to get closer to La Paz the capital of Baja and where it starts to get more busy and touristy. But that is the story for the next time. Till then take care and have fun.
