Going Abajo to the Baja

We rolled out of Calgary into the teeth of an atmospheric river, and promptly started blowing windshield wiper fuses… An inauspicious start

I prefer to believe that the sheep have “treed” Ted

Tim and Joanne had an L300 years ago, and I guilted them into rejoining the “Right Side”

We made it through the Olympic peninsula without falling afoul of werewolves, vampires, moody teenagers.

The trees in NW washington seem to have forgotten who’s really in charge here

Long Beach, Oregon. You get the best camping spots with a Delica.

There is lots of coast between Vancouver Island and San Diego

Everything you need to know about the coast of Oregon & Washington

Lighthouses make interesting places to stop. Always have a good view, which may not be a coincidence

Lompoc, CA. Marta tries to steal this guy’s sled

The SpaceX launch at Vandenburg was called off, but we seen something even weirder – a passenger train, in North America! Can you imagine?

Elon wasn’t in LA to give us a tour of the spaceX factory, so we had to be content with this photo

San Diego (Torrey Pines) is awesome, but I’m so ready for Mexico.

We cross at Tijuana, which has an excellent road from the border bypassing the city. The border crossing is so smooth – nobody stops us, we keep driving, and manage to clear the border without getting our tourist visa stamped. So we are in Mexico illegally…

This gets sorted by visiting immigration at the Tijuana airport, also not totally smooth. But it’s over, and we escape the big city.

Our first campsite in Mexico, just south of Ensanada

Marta makes friends with a local fisherman, who takes a swig of Tequila with every sentence. And, weirdly, he has “Marta” written on the floor. Not the first Marta to pass through these parts, apparently.

Opuntia fruit. Tasty, but awful needles. Lots more unpleasant vegetation ahead of us

Choice at the mexican supermarkets is very different from here. Looks like some Chorizo fried up with mushrooms, garnished with spinach and salad dressing. Pretty fancy for van scum like us.

Living out of a van for 7 weeks has made us much more organized than at home.

The Agave lives it’s whole life to produce this one massive stalk and flower. And then some donkey comes along and bites off the top.

Hardworking Mexicans collecting rocks. Probably selling for landscaping?

The Pacific is scary. I don’t know much about water, but this doesn’t look like a place to snorkel

With a huge storm barreling in from the Pacific, we go east to the Sea of Cortez, but decide to go over a high mountain pass. Fortunately, it goes, and Marta gets a mountain.

Cactuses are still rare enough to stop and look at them

Picacho del Diablo, the highest peak in the Baja. 2500 meters above us

We took San Felipe for granted. Just another town, right? They must sell wetsuits everywhere here. Nevermind that – We didn’t even have cell signal for 500km as we headed south.

The back axle is operable – not just for show

Took advantage of a rainy day to do an oil change. I’m not used to have mechanics work on my vehicles

Burritos dished up on the side of the road. Food was not cheap in the Baja, about the same as Canada.

The first appearance of the miserable Ocotillo

Lots of interesting rocks in the Baja. All 100% volcanic

Lots of old ranching infrastructure. Mostly abandoned. There must have been a big government push at one point.

Every bit of running water gets your attention in the desert.

Picacho Del Diablo to the north. If you go high enough up these canyons, there are pine forests. The mountains aren’t crazy high (3000m), but the starting point is almost at sea level.

Where to get water? From the purificadora, of course! We normally carried 25 liters. Every pickup truck we see had a destroyed rear suspension from hauling 1200L totes of water

Why refry your own beans when you can get the final product from Walmart? Only tried this once, the mujer was not impressed.

Took us a while to figure out the “Added Calories” / “Added Sugars” labels on everything. Why are they advertising this?

These guys should sue Matts Off Road Recovery for stealing their Off Road Wrecker design

The gringos seem to cluster together at the beaches. At Bahia de Los Angeles (coming up), we stayed at one of these “free” beaches, and paid $7 for the privilege, the only time we paid for camping on during 7 weeks

Lots of empty beach resorts on the road south of San Felipe. Not sure when the high season is.

Sulphur mine. Pretty hard to compete against sulphur extracted from natural gas.

This would be a stupid place to get stuck

Cocos corner. This shack is wallpapered with hundreds of panties.

Must have been a classy guy, Mr. Coco! Everyone just thinks it’s creepy if I do something like this

I don’t remember this photo, and I have no idea what’s going on here

The vegetation is getting stranger as we go south, and rainfall decreases

And then it gets sci-fi, with the addition of the Cirio trees

Baja gets empty all of a sudden. No cell signal for a week. Bring it on

We charter a boat with two Americans and their dog.

We met this Youtuber in Bahia de Los Angeles, and I recognized him from this video. And then, unbelievably, a few days later, we met the rancher who welded up his van. Small world

We head south from Bahia de Los Angeles, into an incredibly empty corner of the Baja. 260km of gravel.

This is a great road for Baja, but the isolation adds a bit of stress. Fortunately, every car stops to check if you are ok.

Here are some asses we seen along the road. Just joking, it’s a burro.

You might think these are saguaro cactuses. In fact, these are cardons, the biggest cactuses

What do you think the skeleton of a cardon looks like? Handy little sticks

Ridiculously huge country. We see 2-3 cars per day.

The road is easily passable, but any possibility of getting stuck while this isolated really gets your attention

Some Americans in side-by-sides driving from San Diego to Cabo. They shared their beer.

The advantage of taking the road less traveled is you don’t have to worry about where to camp. 😛 Interestingly, we are on the Baja 1000, which explains all the signs that say “Wrong Way”

Ruts left by the Baja 1000. The race organizers are pretty good about having the road regraded afterwards

This plant makes me nervous. It clearly has water, and it doesn’t need a billion needles to keep thirsty animals at bay.

Any flowers out here really catch your attention

We camp at a crazy confusing intersection of four roads. A mexican on a motorbike rolls up at 8pm, and wants to know if we have wifi. We haven’t even seen cell signal for a week…

We climb a little mountain, about 300 meters. The combination of granite sloughing crystals and murderous vegetation makes for slow climbing

A common sight on our journey – a tire thrown over a cardon. Which means that Mexicans are taking the tire off the rim when they get a flat – quite an impressive feat.

We stop at a beautiful ranch, Rancho Escondido, where you can rent cabins. This is the rancher who welded up the volkswagen mentioned above.

We meet cows every now and then. What do they eat?

Cactuses are now so thick that it’s nearly impossible to move through the terrain

New Years Eve beside Mesa Del Carmen. We go for a walk on side road, not realizing the road goes to a stunning prehistoric cave painting. And we miss it.

Some kind of parasitic plant on these trees?

Marta climbs Mesa Del Carmen. I tag along, but mostly look for cactus fruits. So cool to find anything edible anything from this land.

Remains of a copper mining crushing and flotation line in El Arco. There is a lot of copper left here, but the mine didn’t get approval.

I like old machines. Pretty cool that someone had the expertise to keep this steam engine going.

Most of the tourists we met were Mexicans touring their own country. Pretty cool. These folks shared their chips & dip, and then gave us a can of sea snails to make our own dip with. We later learned the can of sea snails cost $15!

Tesla took two cybertrucks on the same gravel road south of Bahia De Los Angeles. It’s fun to see our route driven by others. Our friends Ken and Angie drove their sprinter through here a few weeks later, we meet up with them a little further south.

Going Abajo to the Baja

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