Stocking Up in Ciudad Insurgentes

For our trip back North, we decided to circle around the Pacific side of Baja to see some new territory that we hadn’t encountered on the way down. Our first stop was Ciudad Insurgentes to restock groceries, water, and of course, tortillas. The city is named in honor of the insurgent fighters of the Mexican War of Independence and is the heart of Baja’s bread basket. Surrounded by lush fields of vegetables and grain, the city of 9,000 provides much of the produce for Baja. Good, fresh produce can be hard to come by in Baja, but the Ley Express here had a large produce section with great variety and quality. We happily stocked up on fresh spinach, carrots, peppers, and avocados.

We headed to a combination agua purificada and tortilleria hoping to kill two birds with one stone. Unfortunately, the tortilleria portion was closed, but the purificada was open for business.

A word about purificadas and filling RV style water tanks. First of all, it’s necessary to find one that has a hose. It seems most do, but not all. When looking them up on iOverlander, this will usually be mentioned. This can be confirmed by asking the attendant, “hay manguera?”, “is there a hose?” Second, if you have a threaded inlet to your tank like we do, you’ll likely need something like a Water Bandit to be able to hook the hose up. None of the ones we encountered had a threaded end.

After filling our tank, the attendant pointed us to an alternative tortilleria where we restocked our fresh tortilla supply and were on our way North.

The Closed Campground at La Purisma

Our original destination for the night was to be La Purisma, a small riverside oasis town in the interior. When we arrived in town though, we found the gate to the campground we were planning to stay at closed and locked. Using the WhatsApp information on the gate, we were able to contact the proprietor who informed us they were in La Paz for a medical issue and the campground was closed. We haven’t made any camping reservations ahead of time on this trip, preferring to remain flexible, but in this case, where camping options in this small town are limited, it would have probably been good to at least call or text them beforehand. We’ll make sure and do that the next time. Unable to find another option in La Purisma, and running short on daylight, we decided to continue on to San Juanico.

Valentine’s Day in San Juanico

San Juanico is best known as a destination for surfing and wind sports. It’s another tiny coastal village with a single paved boulevard, dirt and sand streets, a few small stores, and a gas station that consists of a guy selling fuel out of jugs. Arriving right at dusk, we made our way to the Scorpion Bay Restaurant and Campground and set up camp near the buildings with their palm thatched roofs among the cactus and Ocotillo. As it was Valentine’s Day, we had dinner in the small open air restaurant where the sea breeze drifted through, and the distant echo of crashing waves could barely be heard over the Norteño music videos playing on the overhead TV. As romantic a Valentine’s Day dinner as we’ve had over the years.

Highway 53: A Lesson in Baja Roads

The next day, we set out to continue or journey North. The plan was to continue on Highway 53 to San Ignacio. The “highway”, it turned out, was 150 kilometers of some of the roughest, rockiest, dirt and washboard road I’ve ever experienced. We bumped along for most of the day through mostly non-descript desert without much interesting to see before it finally turned back to pavement at the San Ignacio Lagoon. We finally arrived in San Ignacio late in the afternoon feeling lucky the truck was still intact and the fillings still in our teeth. The lesson learned here is that in Baja a road may be designated as a highway, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily going to be a good road!

Two More Days in San Ignacio

Jocelyn had to work on Monday before taking the rest of the week off, so we spent the next two days in San Ignacio. We stayed at the same campground, Paraiso Misional, that we stayed at on our way up. We really like this place. It’s tucked into the palm trees, super clean with lovely grounds and hot showers, and it’s full of interesting and fun fellow travelers. There was Ricardo, who gave us three gigantic clams out of a five gallon bucket he’d filled on the beach that day, and the group of bike packers in the middle of their trek down the Baja divide trail. I got a garden tour from the proprietor, Andres, who was obviously used to speaking Spanish with tourists. He spoke simply and slowly as he walked me through, boosting my confidence and giving me some great practice. The campground is also really close to the main square where we met up with some new friends we’d made the previous week, and enjoyed more food including one more helping of tostielotes and date shakes. We hiked the trail that goes up from the campground to a hill above town, went to the little museum near the mission complete with a life size replica of some nearby cave paintings, and got one last pack of fresh tortillas from the tortilleria.

Crossing Back: From Mexicali to the California Coast

We spent our last night in Baja in San Felipe before crossing back over the border at Mexicali East on a Thursday morning. The border crossing back into the U.S. took about an hour and half, mostly spent waiting in line. The remnants of a strong storm were making their way across the desert East of San Diego and LA where we ran into some strong winds and rain coming over the mountains. We spent our first windy night back in the U.S. in Thornhill Broome State Park, a beach campground sandwiched between the crashing waves and Highway 101.

Big Sur

We continued up the California Coast going through the stunningly beautiful Big Sur area where we saw hundreds of Elephant Seals lounging on a beach, took a short hike to a waterfall through the spicy fragrance of the Bay Laurel forest, and generally soaked in the lush, green, rolling hills and oak savanna. After winding up a steep road that climbed straight up from the coast, we spent a night perched 3000 feet above the rugged coast line high up in the Santa Lucia mountains. Snow capped peaks to one side, the vast expanse of the Pacific to the other, all the while surrounded by massive California Black Oaks and Ponderosa Pines. The big trees and green fields were a welcome greeting after more than two months in the desert.

Home

Our final night on the road for this trip was spent in Sycamore Grove Campground just outside of Red Bluff, CA on the Sacramento River. This was a great little spot right off the interstate, but far enough that there’s no noise. For $16, we got a spacious spot, clean bathrooms, and abundant birdsong in the rich riparian environment. This will definitely be a place we’ll stop over again on blasts down the I5 in the future.

After 60 days and 5,400 miles, we arrived home in the late afternoon of Sunday February 22nd. We spent all but one of those nights in our camper in some of the most beautiful places I’ve had the privilege of experiencing. This was indeed the trip of a lifetime and one I hope to repeat annually in the coming years. Baja has left it’s mark on me and I’ll count the days until I can be back with it’s wonderful people and stunning environs bursting with life.