Baja Trekker
New member
Hi ya'll,
I'm new to the forum - thanks Ursidae69, cool site! - and thought I'd start off with a trip report and photos of our recent March adventures in Baja California, MX. What follows is a cut and paste (I know, I'm lazy) of my report from another site, but I will also add the following:
Bahia Gonzaga has all the amenities you could need, including gas, food, cold beer, great camping, wildlife, desert, and sea; Bring a full-sized spare - the dirt road to get there is terrible; Tread lightly; support the locally-owned business and fight tenatiously the (corporate) development of the wild places you love...
Also, paddling the Colorado River Delta region is not recommended unless you have some decent navigation skills, you like pain, and are maybe a little :wings:
Here's the brief with photos to follow:
With little pre-trip planning we ended up spending two weeks in Baja and the Sea of Cortez. The first week we spent in Bahia San Luis Gonzaga and the second week paddling the ‘crossing’ from San Felipe to El Golfo de Santa Clara.
The drive to Gonzaga was uneventful but beautiful, driving through the amazing lower Sonoran desert subdivision. Cacti and ocotillos and creosote bush flew by our speeding truck and the desert smelled dry. We camped along the way and loved being on the beach. I absolutely had to take that requisite baptismal swim in the Sea after spending such a long cold snowy winter in Colorado. It sure felt like the warm Sea welcomed me as I floated naked and pale in her rolling waters.
Taking the recommendations from others we headed for Campo Beluga, about two or three miles south of Alfonsina’s in Bahia San Luis Gonzaga. It is a great place to stay with fresh water, toilets, and very sturdy palapas. We based our over night kayaking from there.
The coves near Punta Final are largely unvisited, mostly because of access difficulty – the kayak is the perfect way to get there. We camped on typical Baja beaches littered with trash and dead sea creatures like sea turtles, sea lions, pelicans as well as discarded bleach bottles, plastic bags and rope.
We spent an afternoon swimming in a hyper-saline lagoon that featured brine shrimp and hyper-buoyancy. What a kick trying to snorkel to the bottom but being left to pop to the top like a cork! This lagoon has clearly been here for a long long time and is divided from the sea by a steep granite boulder 'beach'.
One day we spent an hour watching a California Grey whale (videos posted on other site) and a pod of dolphins feed in an isolated cove. Judging by the bubbles it appeared that the whale was ‘bubble netting’ prey. Neither the whale nor the dolphins minded our presence and the whale even swam right under my brothers and our friend Ricks’ kayak.
In Baja I love how my senses become hyper-vigilant – my eyes are always searching for movement or patterns in the desert, the sea, the beach. It could simply be a disruption in the pattern of waves that indicates dolphins surfacing in the distance. Or it could mean a coyote standing in the rocky shadows on the shoreline watching us paddle by. As always, things for me feel new and there’s always a sense of anticipation about what lies over the next sand dune, what bones we might find on the beach, what creature might appear at the bow of our kayaks.
This was by far the best Baja trip I've had in years...
I'm new to the forum - thanks Ursidae69, cool site! - and thought I'd start off with a trip report and photos of our recent March adventures in Baja California, MX. What follows is a cut and paste (I know, I'm lazy) of my report from another site, but I will also add the following:
Bahia Gonzaga has all the amenities you could need, including gas, food, cold beer, great camping, wildlife, desert, and sea; Bring a full-sized spare - the dirt road to get there is terrible; Tread lightly; support the locally-owned business and fight tenatiously the (corporate) development of the wild places you love...
Also, paddling the Colorado River Delta region is not recommended unless you have some decent navigation skills, you like pain, and are maybe a little :wings:
Here's the brief with photos to follow:
With little pre-trip planning we ended up spending two weeks in Baja and the Sea of Cortez. The first week we spent in Bahia San Luis Gonzaga and the second week paddling the ‘crossing’ from San Felipe to El Golfo de Santa Clara.
The drive to Gonzaga was uneventful but beautiful, driving through the amazing lower Sonoran desert subdivision. Cacti and ocotillos and creosote bush flew by our speeding truck and the desert smelled dry. We camped along the way and loved being on the beach. I absolutely had to take that requisite baptismal swim in the Sea after spending such a long cold snowy winter in Colorado. It sure felt like the warm Sea welcomed me as I floated naked and pale in her rolling waters.
Taking the recommendations from others we headed for Campo Beluga, about two or three miles south of Alfonsina’s in Bahia San Luis Gonzaga. It is a great place to stay with fresh water, toilets, and very sturdy palapas. We based our over night kayaking from there.
The coves near Punta Final are largely unvisited, mostly because of access difficulty – the kayak is the perfect way to get there. We camped on typical Baja beaches littered with trash and dead sea creatures like sea turtles, sea lions, pelicans as well as discarded bleach bottles, plastic bags and rope.
We spent an afternoon swimming in a hyper-saline lagoon that featured brine shrimp and hyper-buoyancy. What a kick trying to snorkel to the bottom but being left to pop to the top like a cork! This lagoon has clearly been here for a long long time and is divided from the sea by a steep granite boulder 'beach'.
One day we spent an hour watching a California Grey whale (videos posted on other site) and a pod of dolphins feed in an isolated cove. Judging by the bubbles it appeared that the whale was ‘bubble netting’ prey. Neither the whale nor the dolphins minded our presence and the whale even swam right under my brothers and our friend Ricks’ kayak.
In Baja I love how my senses become hyper-vigilant – my eyes are always searching for movement or patterns in the desert, the sea, the beach. It could simply be a disruption in the pattern of waves that indicates dolphins surfacing in the distance. Or it could mean a coyote standing in the rocky shadows on the shoreline watching us paddle by. As always, things for me feel new and there’s always a sense of anticipation about what lies over the next sand dune, what bones we might find on the beach, what creature might appear at the bow of our kayaks.
This was by far the best Baja trip I've had in years...
Last edited:
