Our Travel Blog
Our last ferry took us from Alaska to the lower 48. We just purchased tickets from La Paz, Baja to Mazatlan! We are heading to mainland Mexico!
It’s a 14 hour overnight trip across the Bay of Cortez. Our very rough, no plan plan, is to scoot across to the Yucatan Peninsula, Guatemala, and Belize to check out the Aztec and Mayan ruins, and perhaps do a bit more snorkeling in warmer waters.
Now where did we put that Dramamine!
Many people told us we shouldn’t go to Mexico. It is scary. It is dangerous. The people are unfriendly, or will rob you. We heard all of the stereotypical phrases you can imagine.
We crossed into Baja excited, but with a bit of trepidation. Were these people correct? Were we making a huge mistake? We couldn’t help thinking about the things we had been told (even though a fair number of people told us the exact opposite). Who should we have listened to?
After almost a month in Baja, we are glad we didn’t listen to the nay sayers. We have found the people to be incredibly friendly, kind and welcoming. One example is Christmas Eve.
We are in Agua Verde sitting in our little screen room making dinner when two of the local young people we say hello to every day on the beach walk up to the Wee Rover. They wanted to wish us a Merry Christmas and to invite us to their family’s Christmas Dinner later that evening. Well, it wasn’t quite as simple as that! We used our simple Spanish, and Google translate, and 15 minutes later we figured out they were inviting us to the family dinner. We didn’t want to impose on their family time, but it seemed like they really wanted us to come, so we said we would stop by to say hello.
Well, a few hours later we had eaten a second dinner, played with the kids and the dogs, showed everyone photos of Vermont and our travel route map, and taken photos together. All with very little actual communication! They even invited us to come back in the morning to open presents with them.
Such a welcoming family and place…we felt lucky to be a part of their family, if only for a short while. We are extremely glad we didn’t let the fear dampen our adventure! Onward and upward…well actually onward and southward. On to the next adventure!
Tidbit: We have not only met amazing locals during our time in Baja, we have met many other travelers. Most we only spend a few days with and say adiós, but a few turn into good friends we hope we will meet again somewhere down the road.
Agua Verde is a tiny little town in a cove on the Bay of Cortez, far from the main route south. It is accessed by a 25 mile twisty steep dirt road, or by boat.
We aren’t really beach people, but we decided it was far enough away from the beaten path, and the hordes of RVs lining the easily accessible beaches, to be just our kind of place. It took a couple of hours down the rough dirt track to get there, but wow was it worth it!
Swimming, snorkeling, stars at night and a siesta during the day, fresh fish tacos at Maria’s tiny little restaurant, Brisa del Mar, just down the beach, and a great little general store that supplies the 200 or so residents of the village, and us, with everything we needed, or all the junk food we didn’t need.
I think we may be turning into beach bums!
Tidbit: We are from Vermont, which is French for Green Mountain (vert mont), and since we were far from home we thought it was serendipitous that we ended up in Agua Verde, or Green Water, Baja
While in Utah, we found our secret canyon. On the Bay of Cortez, we found our secret lagoon.
We were looking for a spot to pull in for the night, when we saw a couple of faint tracks in the sand leading off into the bush near a small rock cairn.
As usual, we turned in…
Shortly, the tracks dumped us in the front yard of a tiny cinder block house. In front of the house, a woman was hanging up her wash as a little boy played peekaboo through the slat fence. We hopped out, said hello and pantomined falling asleep while pointing toward the beach. She noded that it was ok to sleep futher down the track…and that is where we found our Secret Lagoon with our own little tiki bar right out of Robinson Crusoe!
We ended up spending 5 days walking the beach, looking for hermit crabs and collecting sea shells. Beach life isn’t too bad.
A bit more Cabo. A bit more trendy. A lot more touristy. A bit more city than we usually do, but everyone said we should go, so in we went to a campground right in town. It ended up being a really nice stop. We met up with other travellers, made a few new friends, saw a wedding in the old mission, ate great food, visited a street fair, and enjoyed the constant live music. We had a really nice couple of days…and we got to meet Santa!!!!
So, we are walking around Mulege, Baja, a town day of running errands. We need to find a local sim data card for our Wi-Fi box, a stomach antibiotic for when, or if, we get ‘Montezuma’s Revenge’ and some groceries. Along the way to get the sim card, we pass the local bakery. We drool over the pastries but decide to wait for the goodies until after we find a card. An hour or so later, sim card in hand, we are back at the bakery and ordering up sweets. We plan to sit at the street side counter so we can watch the world go by, but the young lady motions us inside to a table. We walk in and a woman sitting at another table gives us a funny look while her husband chats on the phone. I look at her and we both realize that we know each other! It’s overlanding friends, Marilee and Rob. Over a year ago, we camped next to each other at Boice-Cope County Park in Oregon and struck up a friendship. What a strange world…Who would have thought, that we would have met up in a small bakery in Baja over a year later. If we hadn’t waited for our cookie, or the owner hadn’t motioned for us to have a seat inside we would have passed right by each other.
Another small oasis amid the desert.
An old copper mining town, Santa Rosalia has the feel of a hardscrabble industrial town not meant for the prying eyes of tourists. The narrow roads, minimal parking and lack of campgrounds keeps tourists in RVs or even large vans away, but not the Wee Rover. The small town reminded us of many we have passed through on this adventure, just everyday people living their lives, raising families, going to work and buying bags or boxes of tomatoes.
Two stops drew us to Santa Rosalia. The first was a prefabricated church designed by A.G. Eiffel (the same guy who built that big tower in Paris) made entirely of stamped metal squares painted white. It was constructed at Paris’ 1889 World’s Fair, after which it was taken apart and put on a ship for Africa. Instead, it found its way around Cape Horn and to the east side of Baja and Santa Rosalia where it is still in use today. The second stop was a French style bakery with homemade bread, cookies and donuts. How could we pass that up?
We have made it to San Ignacio, population 700! It is pretty much the dead center of Baja and it a great spot to rest and recuperate from our trip south, so far. The village is centered around a mission and a spring fed lagoon that is surrounded by date palms.
An oasis in the middle of the desert.
The little town square and mission from the 1700’s is just what one would picture of a small Mexican village, at least the one we grew up seeing in westerns. The people here have been friendly and welcoming and very understanding of our broken Spanish. We have been swimming in the lagoon just steps from our campsite (for $5 US per night we have a spot right on the lagoon with pit toilets and a short walk to town). We have been eating fresh dates from the trees, and homemade Mexican food from the street vendors near by. We have also made new traveling friends from the US, Canada and oversees. We may not leave for a while.
