As per usual, up with the sunrise at 6:30, it was time to head to Loreto for a few days. Had heard good things about this little town and it wasn’t a long travel day, about 3 hours. About an hour into the drive, along the coastal highway, there is this amazing area called Bahia Concepcion – there are unending beaches and boondocking! There are 12 different beaches, each one with its own uniqueness. We decided that we would pit stop at them all on the way back home – so stay tuned for a blogpost on those badboys!

In Loreto, there were not a lot of options for a. places to stay and b. places for a big rig. We were limited to Loreto Shores. It was a cool little spot, with a pool and very good potable water. This is a small RV park, basically on a rock parking lot. It was not our best find, but we needed to dump and load somewhere. Here we met Carole and Doug from Whiterock and ran in to Ryan and Cindy from Port Alberni. We are learning that the Baja is a very small place and will most likely see them all again a few more times over the next couple months. Over the next couple days we were asked these questions quite a bit: “how old are you guys? And “are you full-timers”? We are definitely younger than the majority of people RV’ing through the Baja!   One of the best parts of Loreto are the sunrises…

Our first order of business the first day was groceries, so we headed to the El Pescadoro. The cost of groceries in Mexico has been surprising to us. We really thought that food was going to be cheap or cheaper than what we pay at home and also thought that the produce would be better – no, we were wrong! The produce is not great in smaller areas and of course, options are limited. It was also a mystery to us – how do the local people afford to buy food for their families, since they pay the same prices at the grocery store, but make so little money? We did find a local market, where almost all the produce looked to be from the mainland or from a distribution company and also found a tortilla shop (with fresh corn tortilla’s off the press!) where the prices were a bit cheaper, so possibly the locals just shop at those places.

We toured around to a little village in the hills called San Javier. There was a monastery up there that was built in the 1600’s and it was cool, also there was a museum in the back that was also very cool (Sisters – did you notice that we went to a museum, including Todd – the same guy that says he doesn’t do museums!). This place was very cool.

The next day we toured down to Puerto Escondido – which is a fairly new marina for fancy expensive yachts and boats. This place was kind of bizarre – as the marina was filled with boats both in water and dry dock – but the area was pretty empty. As we drove around, there were concrete roads and side roads and utilities piped, but there were no houses or businesses anywhere. It was like an empty town, that didn’t get built. We googled it, and apparently the marina is leased to a private company, and this was built in 2013, with the plan to sell marina lots (for people to live in the house and park their boat in the back inlet) and non-marina lots. Again, so bizarre that in 6 years the entire community is just empty. But we did see a National Geographic boat in the harbour.

After 3 days in the rock parking lot, we ventured an entire 25 km south to Juncalito to boondock on the beach for a few days. The town is barely a town, mostly leased lots to ex-pats with makeshift houses that consist of an RV (as the bedroom) and then a sunroom built all around it. We got a great spot on the beach, met our new neighbors Todd & Nadine from West of Edmonton and Mike and Susan from St. George, Utah. It took Todd an entire 15 minutes before he pulled out his chainsaw and cut up a palm tree and mesquite tree for the beach campfire that night. This is what the inside of a palm tree looks like:

The inside of a palm tree.

There was a very cool hike we found out about called Steinback Gorge! It was a rocky hike up with a waterfall at the end, of course. We love a waterfall. The crazy thing about this, was that there were lots of small pools to go for a dip, but at the bottom of the waterfall, the water disappeared and went under ground this gravel pit.

We really loved this boondocking beach, and the people we met. This is a beautiful place to boondock – oceanfront property, scenery is gorgeous and on the morning of both days, we saw dolphins playing in the bay right in front of us! This is truly living the life!

Our last day in the area, we toured a few KM ahead to another beach, cause there are so many to checkout. We drove down a small sandy road to a completely empty beach, that was amazing. I forgot to take a picture of it, because we drove in too far and got the car stuck in the sand! Within 2 minutes a local guy came out to give us a shovel and about 1 minute later, 2 VW vans pull up, and offered to help us using their “maxxtracks” to get us unstuck. These things were cool AND I, again forgot to take a picture. But we are thankful that Doug, Tom & Christine from Seattle came by to save our day! (You can check them out at Noahadventures.com)

Thanks Guys!

Next stop… La Paz!