On the Road in Baja Part 1

This is the first of what I hope will be a series of posts about our Baja travels earlier this year. The blog is best viewed on the website. Just click on the title, if you are an email subscriber. Thanks for checking in!

Many landscape photos that appear in this blog were shot through the windshield with an iPhone7plus. My blue shirt is reflected here. This scene is representative of the dramatic and beautiful northern Baja terrain. Baja scenery overall is outstanding. 

We were 50 days on the road earlier this year driving to the Baja Peninsula and back. Fifty days, most of them in our Class B RV - a Sprinter van all dressed up with camping conveniences crammed into space about a quarter to half the size of a walk-in closet.

I have toured closets that could sleep five or six adults. Believe me, our van can handle only two. And it's good that we're average to small-sized shrinking adults. And that we like each other.

Now that we're home with ridiculous comforts, more room than any human beings need or deserve, and calming predictability, I am entertained by my travel notes.

TRIP STATS

• Nights spent van camping - 35
• Airbnb stays - 8 
• Nights in hotels - 3
• Nights spent with friends - 4
• Miles logged  - 5,185 from Southern Oregon to Todos Santos, Baja CA Sur and back (with a quick side trip to Arizona)

 It all went by with a whoosh.

One of few negatives about travel is that frequent relocations tend to shift time into hyper speed. Every day has its own story, beats with its own rhythm, and glows with its own light. 

Well, honestly, a few of those days were far from glowing. I'll get to those later; I know that the bum-luck bad-decision stories are appreciated.

For now, I'll start with crossing the Mexican border at Tecate, a surprisingly anxiety-free experience despite warnings to the contrary. And then an account of our first days on the Baja Peninsula.


CROSSING INTO MEXICO 
We chose to cross the border at Tecate because it is the smallest and least used of the three ports of entry in San Diego County, CA. The reason? It's out of the way. For us, was, coming from Joshua Tree National Park, it meant navigating narrow twisting mountain roads. Yippee! We like those roads.

This one would have been better without snow, however. The snow was an unwelcome travel surprise about 50 miles north of the Mexican border.

At the border, we were almost lonely; one car was ahead of us and none behind.

No would-be immigrants swarmed the area. It was peaceful and the Mexicans working the crossing were friendly and helpful, performing only a cursory search of the van. Our uneventful crossing took about 15 minutes. In another ten, we were out of town.

RUTA de VINO

Who knew? Northern Baja has a lovely wine region spanning from Tecate to Ensenada and beyond. As we drove the deluxe Highway 3 sixty-seven miles to Ensenada, the vines were dormant and, early in the day, the tasting rooms closed

We also spotted vineyards south of Ensenada before lush greenery and intensive farming transitioned to desert. The Ruta de Vino includes 64 wineries spread over seven different valleys in a Mediterranean micro-climate.

We did our part to ensure the success of Mexican vintners and sampled a fair amount of Baja-produced wine. 

     The scenery along the Ruta de Vino close to Ensenada. 

ESTERO BEACH in ENSENADA 
It was the day after Christmas, and we gave ourselves a gift by booking a room at the Estero Beach Hotel, which, we discovered, no longer operates an RV park listed in our guidebook and where we had planned to stay. 

Darn! Too bad. But after several days camping en route to the border, we were ready for a hotel. It was a good place to practice showering without ingesting any water.

The Estero hotel is a beautiful accommodation, and it was off-season, so we scored a half-price room and enjoyed the view (pictured below) from our balcony. It was an odd but great way to start our Baja camping adventure - lounging around in a luxury hotel!


       

The hotel restaurant served fine Mexican fare. PK ordered a combination plate for lunch not realizing it was crowd-sized. Somehow he polished it off. Because it was so tasty.

Mine was served on a cutting board, each crispy taco stuffed with either shrimp, catch-of-the-day, or octopus.  Hmmm.  Octopus. It was OK, but a bit chewy. I tried not to think about the suction cups. Great cilantro salsa.

                                       ****

We headed south the next morning all cleaned up, well fed and eager to explore.

Oops. A military roadblock. This looks worse than it was.

We knew we'd run into "crime-stopping" roadblocks, and had been advised to remove wallets and purses from the van as it was being searched for guns and drugs. Other than getting the stinkeye for taking photos, this and three or four other roadblocks were no problem. 

Oops! Road construction. Quite a lot of it between Ensenada and our night's destination, Don Eddie's Landing.


We waited in a long line for our turn to pass through the construction area. Food vendors were standing by to ease the pain. Candy or pork rinds anyone? 

DON EDDIE'S LANDING - Nice surprise!
When we travel, PK strongly prefers to drive. Fine with me. It is my job to navigate and ferret out attractions to visit and places to spend the night. Since Mex 1 is the main road going north and south in most of the Baja, navigating isn't that challenging. Even though finding side-trip routes can be tricky. And one never knows about camping. 

Our camp spot at Don Eddie's was, umm, Spartan. And big. And not too far from the restroom, which, unfortunately, was hidden behind a palm tree and unlit. There's a story here, but I decline to tell it.

Don Eddie's Landing, an old-time fishing lodge, turned out to be a bit of a side trip that I found in an indispensable guidebook, Traveler's Guide to Camping Mexico's BAJA by Mike and Terri Church.

It was 3.3 miles off Mex 1 on a paved road, although the short entrance to the "landing" itself was sketchy.  

One wouldn't expect much while bumping along this roadto camp,  but a big juicy surprise awaited. 

Don Eddie's Landing turned out to be a popular stop on the snowbird circuit, and we got lots of "beta" from other travelers, as our son, Chris Korbulic calls information garnered before you commit to something. 

We were still a bit skittish, on day two in Mexico, after friends and relatives questioned our sanity for traveling to such a dangerous place. My auntie Ellen forbid me to go. 

Ironically, the first traveler we talked with, camped next door and headed north to home, was eager to tell us all about the thieving going on in the south. 

His story was one we heard repeated, and that we later witnessed, in the same area he described — Bahia de Conception, on the Sea of Cortez, south of Loreto.

I'll save that story for a later post. The point is, despite the following statement that actually came out of his mouth, we were not deterred by this news.

"With that van, you look like millionaires," he declared. "You will be prime targets!"

Thanks, dude. Would we turn around and go home? No. We would not. But we would take extra care and be a little bit wary.

For the record, we had NO problems whatsoever during our Baja travels and never felt unsafe or threatened.

True, the US State Department has issued "do not travel" warnings for several Mexican states on the mainland, but none for most of the Baja Peninsula. 

The homicide hotspots in Baja are clustered in the north, close to the US border. Tijuana, Ensenada, and Rosarito Beach are cities to hurry through. 

The next person to provide "beta", but with a positive spin, was a woman who frequented Don Eddie's Landing. 

"Where are you going for dinner?" she whispered in a conspiratorial way as I headed into Don Eddie's inviting bar and restaurant to check the menu. 
I didn't know there was a choice, but she sure did. She and her husband led me over some rocks to a path leading to a "hidden" restaurant tucked between buildings. The woman insisted we try it.

"You will not believe it," she promised.

Thus we were introduced to Eucalipto Restaurant, the best place we ate in Baja. With all the great seafood and authentic recipes yet to come, that's saying something.

It was a culinary thrill to happen upon a place such as this that doesn't fit in its surroundings and presents unexpected excellence. For me, at least, although PK is not prone to superlatives.

The chef was blasting something the entire
time we were there. The restaurant was packed.
I'd rename the place House of Fire.

Flames lit a nearby table as the waiter fired up liquor and poured it into a shrimp and pasta-filled Parmesan bowl. The entire kitchen was open-view, and I couldn't keep my eyes off the sauteeing veggies flying around and flames licking fish, meat and even mashed potatoes.

Dinner! Mediterranean swordfish and flamed-finished mashed potatoes topped with done-just-right tossed-in-the-air veggies. We both ordered this and had delicious leftovers for the next two nights of van dining.
Along with local wines, of course. We do our part.

NEXT UP:  We made a bad decision the next day. It will be embarrassing to tell the tale.