Campo Harchelón

To be perfectly honest we haven't been blown away with the Baja so far - there's only one road (and a pretty shabby one at that, sometimes with only a few inches to spare when passing large lorries at crazy speeds), going through mostly scrubby desert with some pretty uninspiring towns, not to mention we woke up to rain! In any case we decided to take a side trip over to Bahia de Los Angeles which gave us a glimpse of why people love the Baja. Once there the sun put his hat on and came out to play.

The drive to town wound its way over hills which were covered in wierd cirios & cardon catci and elephant trees which reminded us of a cross between Dr Zeuss and Day of the Triffids. At the end of the road was a sleepy little fishing village, who are lucky enough to have whale sharks come right into the bay in town, however there didn't seem to be any sign of them... We seem to have continued our luck from Australia 10 years ago where we were a few weeks to early for them, which is gutting as diving with them is top of our bucket list. We had a glorious site at Campo Daggett, right on the beach with a little palapa (palm shelter) to provide some respite from both sun and wind coming off the hills behind. We started the following morning with a short 5k run, as it was too hot to do any more, and cycled into town for a fresh fish lunch, but for the rest of the 3 days there we just lazed around on the beach - bliss!

It was a little too sleepy to hang around for too long so we continued our drive south, through several more military checks points. They aren't as scary as they sound and are more of a deterrent for people using this as a drugs route, and most of the time the soldiers are very polite and a quick nose around someone's RV is probably the highlight of their day! We crossed the border into Baja Sur and stopped off in Guerrero Negro to stock up on dinero, gasolina, agua and tacos before heading on to San Ignacio - a little oasis of lakes and palm trees which made a nice change from the deserts to the north. We camped in a little eco campsite, which you know means it's lacking in anything resembling basic creature comforts but it was fine for resting our heads.

In the morning we explored the town, which took all of 20 minutes, but there was nice old colonial square and a cathedral built in the 1700s (sorry America, but it's nice to see some proper history for a change!). The next town down was Santa Rosalia, which was even nicer. It was built in a small valley which meant it had a proper town feel to it, rather than being stretched along the highway as is the. norm here. It had an iron church designed by Gustav Eiffel, built in Paris before being shipped here and an incredible french panderia (bakery). We spent an hour or so moesing around before a short final drive to Bahia Conception.Read more