Ursidae69
Traveller
Part I
This trip was meant to be a short “sit on the beach and relax” sort of trip. I went with my brother Jess and that turned out to be very cool. We have not gotten to hang out this much since he stayed with me for a summer in 2004. We also met ExPo member “Eurorom” (J.R.) and his wife from El Paso Texas. They came down on the 26th and stayed through the 29th with us. It was great to finally meet J.R. because we’ve been emailing about Mexico trips since 2005.
I chose San Carlos because it is an easy drive from southern Arizona. This fancy resort town is really booming, but camping on the beach is still okay north of town. I also didn’t want to deal with all the recent drama that has been going on in Baja. The mainland is a lot more developed with fewer of the types of problems that Baja has been having lately.
25 DEC 2007
We left Phoenix at 6am. We had to make a quick stop in Tucson at Brian’s house to pick up his inflatable kayak that he was loaning us for the trip. As I suspected, traveling on Christmas day was easy with very light traffic. It only took twenty minutes to get our free (less than seven day) tourist cards at KM 21. The road down to Hermosillo and on to San Carlos and Guaymas is great. It’s a typical 4-lane interstate type road like you find in the USA. There are two tolls on the way down, one for 19 pesos and one for 59 pesos.
We rolled into San Carlos around 3pm. It’s an easy 5 hour drive from Tucson to San Carlos not counting lunch in Hermosillo. We got some provisions at Izzy’s Mercado and went north of town. Much of the beach access is from cliffs along shore with no vehicle access on the beach itself, but I did find one small arroyo that went down to the water and it turned out to be a great camp site. The camp’s aspect gave us some respite from the wind.
San Carlos Camp
Jess and I made up camped and relaxed after dinner enjoying the sounds of the waves and the sunset. I made a quick call to J.R. to give him the camp’s coordinates since my Verizon phone had decent coverage in the area.
The moon was full and when it rose it happened to be right over a large Cardon cactus. The pictures didn’t turn out great, but it sure was cool to see.
26 DEC 2007
The winds were not right for kayaking. My brother had never kayaked before so I wanted the conditions to be easy for him. We decided to spend the day doing hikes into the desert an along the beaches. The tide-pools are always fun. J.R. was expected around 5pm, but by 7pm he had not yet arrived. I figured he must have stopped with family in Hermosillo. My brother and I were enjoying the campfire when J.R. appeared on the bluff above us at 9:30pm. His GPS got him right above us and we directed him to the obscure arroyo that led to camp.
Tide Pools
27 DEC 2007
We broke camp this morning because J.R. and I had decided previously that we wanted to make a side trip to try to get to a bay north of us called Bahia San Pedro. I had researched it extensively on Google Earth as well as on various websites about Sonora. As far as I could find out from others, nobody had driven the road in many years and it was in bad disrepair. Those can be some of the best roads to drive! I programmed my GPS before the trip will all the potential waypoints to get us there using Google Earth. We had to go back to the main highway and head north about 30 minutes, then turn inland on the road to Bahia Kino. Once we crossed the first mountain range we turned back south and travelled along miles and miles of agriculture. There was one ranch house I could clearly see on Google Earth that stood right on the two-track leading to Bahia San Pedro. When we arrived at the large ranch house, we were met with locked gates, locked really well. Maybe the person actually owns the land, the mountains, and finally the bay, that lie beyond this fence, or maybe they are taking advantage a little, limiting access for themselves. It’s not like here, trying to find out who owns what is not an easy task. Regardless, there was no way we could find out and we were not going to violate anybody’s marked no trespassing signs. Since nobody came out of the house to talk to us, we turned around.
The backup plan was to head a little further north to Ensenada Chica. This small remote fishcamp was recommended to me by one of my friends who takes his classes there for fieldtrips each year. The location was gorgeous, but the beaches were a little bit trashed. The beaches were also facing right into the wind and it happened to have been howling while we were there. I really wanted to kayak around Ensenada Chica because the coastline is breathtaking, but the thought of camping in this cold nasty wind was not too appealing. I decided that kayaking this area will be a future trip. Knowing that our camp spot at San Carlos did pretty well at blocking the wind, we opted to head back there.
Ensenada Chica
Explorers
The nice little day trip ended back at our same beautiful beach, which as just fine!
Part II coming shortly...
This trip was meant to be a short “sit on the beach and relax” sort of trip. I went with my brother Jess and that turned out to be very cool. We have not gotten to hang out this much since he stayed with me for a summer in 2004. We also met ExPo member “Eurorom” (J.R.) and his wife from El Paso Texas. They came down on the 26th and stayed through the 29th with us. It was great to finally meet J.R. because we’ve been emailing about Mexico trips since 2005.
I chose San Carlos because it is an easy drive from southern Arizona. This fancy resort town is really booming, but camping on the beach is still okay north of town. I also didn’t want to deal with all the recent drama that has been going on in Baja. The mainland is a lot more developed with fewer of the types of problems that Baja has been having lately.
25 DEC 2007
We left Phoenix at 6am. We had to make a quick stop in Tucson at Brian’s house to pick up his inflatable kayak that he was loaning us for the trip. As I suspected, traveling on Christmas day was easy with very light traffic. It only took twenty minutes to get our free (less than seven day) tourist cards at KM 21. The road down to Hermosillo and on to San Carlos and Guaymas is great. It’s a typical 4-lane interstate type road like you find in the USA. There are two tolls on the way down, one for 19 pesos and one for 59 pesos.
We rolled into San Carlos around 3pm. It’s an easy 5 hour drive from Tucson to San Carlos not counting lunch in Hermosillo. We got some provisions at Izzy’s Mercado and went north of town. Much of the beach access is from cliffs along shore with no vehicle access on the beach itself, but I did find one small arroyo that went down to the water and it turned out to be a great camp site. The camp’s aspect gave us some respite from the wind.
San Carlos Camp
Jess and I made up camped and relaxed after dinner enjoying the sounds of the waves and the sunset. I made a quick call to J.R. to give him the camp’s coordinates since my Verizon phone had decent coverage in the area.
The moon was full and when it rose it happened to be right over a large Cardon cactus. The pictures didn’t turn out great, but it sure was cool to see.
26 DEC 2007
The winds were not right for kayaking. My brother had never kayaked before so I wanted the conditions to be easy for him. We decided to spend the day doing hikes into the desert an along the beaches. The tide-pools are always fun. J.R. was expected around 5pm, but by 7pm he had not yet arrived. I figured he must have stopped with family in Hermosillo. My brother and I were enjoying the campfire when J.R. appeared on the bluff above us at 9:30pm. His GPS got him right above us and we directed him to the obscure arroyo that led to camp.
Tide Pools
27 DEC 2007
We broke camp this morning because J.R. and I had decided previously that we wanted to make a side trip to try to get to a bay north of us called Bahia San Pedro. I had researched it extensively on Google Earth as well as on various websites about Sonora. As far as I could find out from others, nobody had driven the road in many years and it was in bad disrepair. Those can be some of the best roads to drive! I programmed my GPS before the trip will all the potential waypoints to get us there using Google Earth. We had to go back to the main highway and head north about 30 minutes, then turn inland on the road to Bahia Kino. Once we crossed the first mountain range we turned back south and travelled along miles and miles of agriculture. There was one ranch house I could clearly see on Google Earth that stood right on the two-track leading to Bahia San Pedro. When we arrived at the large ranch house, we were met with locked gates, locked really well. Maybe the person actually owns the land, the mountains, and finally the bay, that lie beyond this fence, or maybe they are taking advantage a little, limiting access for themselves. It’s not like here, trying to find out who owns what is not an easy task. Regardless, there was no way we could find out and we were not going to violate anybody’s marked no trespassing signs. Since nobody came out of the house to talk to us, we turned around.
The backup plan was to head a little further north to Ensenada Chica. This small remote fishcamp was recommended to me by one of my friends who takes his classes there for fieldtrips each year. The location was gorgeous, but the beaches were a little bit trashed. The beaches were also facing right into the wind and it happened to have been howling while we were there. I really wanted to kayak around Ensenada Chica because the coastline is breathtaking, but the thought of camping in this cold nasty wind was not too appealing. I decided that kayaking this area will be a future trip. Knowing that our camp spot at San Carlos did pretty well at blocking the wind, we opted to head back there.
Ensenada Chica
Explorers
The nice little day trip ended back at our same beautiful beach, which as just fine!
Part II coming shortly...
). Smart idea with the roman-style bee gathering (LOL). And that pic of you next to them... I can just smell the Tecate... 
