About 7 months ago, in April, my husband and I moved him down to his new apartment in Pescadero. We loaded up the trailer with as much as we could and drove from Oakland to Red Rock Canyon for some climbing with a couple friends.
For the last few years, we’ve made it a point to head to this beautiful canyon near my birthday. The weather is perfect in spring for climbing and while it was a little windy the first day, we had a great three days of climbing before heading south.
Since we were moving a bunch of stuff, we had read on the local message boards that they basically wave you through if you cross at Tecate. This is important, because we didn’t want to get taxed on all the supplies we were moving down. The message boards were not wrong. The border town is small and quaint compared to some of the others. If I remember correctly, there was really just one lane and a space to pull off. When we pulled up they checked the registration on the trailer, briefly looked inside and told us to go through and park around the corner and come back for procesing.
We walked up to “immigration” where a border official was kicked back in his chair and frankly seemed a bit surprised to see us. He waved us back into a room where we joked with him and filled out the forms. I stepped out briefly to pay the 500 pesos required for my tourist visa and came back with a receipt. The official was also selling hot sauce, so of course we bought some ($2 per bottle). A little mild extortion never hurt anyone. Funny enough, I’m now kicking myself for not buying more. The salsa was surprisingly good for what felt like a bribe at the time!
Back on the road we wound our way through the mountains toward the Sea of Cortez. Neither of us had been down that side of the peninsula. Plus we have a friend who has family in San Felipe, so I wanted to check it out. Snaking down from the granite bouldered mountains, we were greeted by an arid landscape and eventually the sea. I was a little surprised at how flat and expansive the area was. And HOT! The air immediately thickened and the temp rose to nearly 100 degrees F.
The highway was good here and the landscape meh, so we cruised through as fast as we could stopping once for a pee break at a gas station. We were thinking about staying in San Felipe, but I guess because it was Sunday, the town was crazy packed and it was incredibly windy. So, we just stopped for a bit, picked up a few supplies, got some pesos and headed South.
This stretch of road was our first experience with the legendary Baja roads. Between the sand blowing across the road and potholes you could comfortably hide a human infant in, the driving was definitely more stressful. It was also getting late in the day and driving at night is NOT advised (potholes and cows), so we stopped near Puertecitos for the night.
The first campground we stopped at didn’t have water and was $20 USD a night, so we checked out the other one. They waved us through and we couldn’t find anyone to pay, so we ended up staying free for the night. I don’t feel bad, the accommodations were meager. No water and bathrooms with toilets that didn’t flush – typical – but they usually have buckets and a water barrel to flush them. We did have a nice time sitting on our laybags watching the sunset. All-in-all not a bad first day.
