Day 5: Spring Break in Baja California, México

Day 4: Bahia de Los Angeles to San Felipe

  • After a less eventful night (our dogs slept in the truck, unmolested by coyotes), we packed up camp and left Punta Gringa.  We drive though the town of Bahia de Los Angeles and were glad that we had stayed off in the boonies.  For some reason, I am happier in relative isolation.



Coyote on the shoreline

Wells chases the coyote away.
Looking inland from Punta Gringa


  • We drove back to the main highway, turned north and then east toward San Felipe.  The road is rough, no doubt, but gave a good sense of what driving in Baja was like not long very ago.  Like all good Baja tourists, we stopped in at Coco's Corner and admired the history and funk-itude of the place.  Baja is really the domain of American off-roaders and makes a surprisingly large impact on its culture and economy.



Lunch-stop beach.  It was littered with pumice which we happily threw into the sea.
Floating rocks!  Now we can say that we have swum among stones.



  • Our goal was to get to a small barrier island south of San Felipe that folks call 'Shell Island' but when we got to the spot the tide was too high for us to drive over.  Instead we ventured into San Felipe like the ignorantly blissful tourists we were.  Oh yeah...Semana Santa is one of the largest vacation holidays in the Spanish speaking world. The town was overflowing with people, mostly Mexican tourists.  They swarmed around the beach, pitching tents wall-to-wall and right down to the high tide line.  They camped in vacant, dusty lots, driveways, sidewalks and on the concrete floors of abandoned or in progress construction projects.  I have never seen so much humanity sprawled out across a city.  The malecon (beachfront boardwalk) was the epicenter of activity full of vendors and musicians seeking to grab your attention.  After 4 days of rural camping and relative isolation, this was sensory overload.  The amplified banda groups played side-by-side, amps at 11 and crooning to the audience.  We walke through it all with dumbstruck expressions on our faces, overwhelmed and stunned.  We ate a dinner of tacos, bought a poncho and custom bracelets and retreated to a sandy, bushy hide-away far south of town near Percebu.  We had seen enough.
Not my photo, but gives a sense of the scene.

Bracelets for Shaeffer kids