Well after a long absence, I’m back with the Baja stories. Let’s get into this.Â
It has been more than two weeks that we were in Baja and we were feeling more comfortable trying off the beaten tracks and finding epic camp spots but we were getting closer to the bottom of the peninsula and had to prepare for crossing into the mainland.
But before that, we had to reach to La Paz the capital of Baja and do a round trip to the southern tip of Baja.
We decided to go around La Paz and head south and leave La Paz for the last days in Baja. The first stop on the way was a reserved Biosphere called La sierra de Laguna. A beautiful green area where we stayed for one night in a beautiful ranch to do some maintenance on Chaapaar before heading to mainland. Camping on the sand for the last few nights didn’t provide a solid and clean platform for the maintenance.Â
After having a peaceful day and ticking off few maintenance job, we headed toward a national park called El Cabo Pulmo. It is a long stretch of the beach which is protected and is a perfect spot for snorkelling and whale watching. Just seeing all the fancy villas built all around the protected area, it is good to see that a tiny stretch of these sandy beaches are left alone. We found an epic camp spot by the beach and stayed for two days. It was a bit windy for snorkelling but the views were stunning. It’s completely differnet from the rest of the beaches on the sea of cortez side because it was surrounded with lush green hills. The whole area was almost empty and we had it to ourselves
From there, we headed to Los Cabos!! With direct flights to and from United States and Canada, this southern tip of Baja is packed with 5 star hotels, shopping malls and a lot tourists. We managed to drive past them pretty quickly and reached the beautiful magic town called Todos Santos. After finding a camp spot in town, we’ve spent two days enjoying this charming little town and spoiled ourselves with fancy coffee and food.
From Todos Santos, we headed back toward La Paz and finished the southern round trip of Baja. We skipped La Paz again and headed north of it to camp at the beach called El Tecolote. It was extremely windy but the views didn’t disappoint.
The following morning we woke up early to do a hike with great views over Playa Balandra, a famous beach north of La Paz which is only accessible for a limited number of people per day due to conservation reasons. It is a popular hike and it also gets hot very soon so we started at 7:00 am. The views throughout the hike were amazing and we were glad that we did it on our way back to La Paz.
After doing a hike, it was around 10:00 am and we finally headed toward La Paz. On our way, I’ve showed the ferry terminal which is north of La Paz to Amir and told him that there’s the spot for taking the ferry to the mainland and he looked at me and said, why don’t we go now? We don’t have to go to La Paz,do we? Let’s go and check if there’s a sot available for today! He was right! We really didn’t have to go to a big busy city so we turned around and entered the ferry terminal.
Right away they sent us up to the weight station and then to the ticket office. The lady at the ticket office checked our documents (TIP and visa) and confirmed that there is a spot available on the ferry that afternoon and we got our ticket.
We thought we will have it sorted and then head out to a nearby town to have lunch and do some grocery shopping before leaving but as soon we got our ticket, she told us that we are not allowed to leave the terminal till loading so we had few hours to kill.
Late afternoon, they started the loading and after few hours of fun watching how all these massive trucks are packed up next to each other, we left Baja toward Mazatlan in Sinaloa.
It was only few weeks ago that our anxiety level was through the roof when we wanted to cross the border into Baja, Mexico. Three weeks later, we felt at home in Baja. And just when we started to feel comfortable there, we had to leave again. Even though we were moving just in Mexico but everyone were saying Baja is nothing like mainland Mexico and be prepared for the mainland, that’s the real Mexico!
Apart from that, we were landing in a massive city called Mazatlan in the state of the Sinaloa which doesn’t have the best reputation. We had to drive for few hundreds kilometers to reach the safety at least based on the online reviews and forums for travelling in Mexico.
We are about to find out how unsafe it is to drive around Sinaloa and mainland Mexico. In the next post, we ‘ll see how it goes. Till then take care and have fun.
