March 15, 2023
A Tale of Sand, Rattlesnakes and the Search for the Ultimate Fish Taco Continued…
Our story continues on our last day in Mulege. Gene and I decided to take up our new friend Tim’s offer to use his kayaks for a paddle around Bahia Concepcion. The weather was still cool, but the wind had died down some.
After a long paddle in the bay, we rode to Playa Santispac for lunch on the beach. I ordered the ceviche as an appetizer and ended up getting enough to feed 5 people as a meal.
The next morning, we left Mulege to take the beautiful 2 hour drive down the coast to Loreto. Loreto is a nice mission town with a great town square and sidewalks lined with cafes and shops.
From Loreto, we headed inland along a great twisty road to the San Javier Mission.
From San Javier, we continued south along the “road less traveled”. It was a sandy dirt road with several water crossings that followed the river southwest across the peninsula back to Hwy 1.
Back at the highway, we stopped for a quick map check and snack. It was only then that I discovered tragedy had struck…my banana got smashed in my backpack!
After a quick stop for gas, we headed north toward La Purisima. We were excited to once again take the road less traveled (not traveled at all it turned out).
Our road less traveled began with a beautiful long water crossing.
After the water crossing, the going got rough. Deep sand…and…rattlesnakes! My 80/20 stock tires on the Tenere didn’t turn out to work very well in deep sand. As I struggled at times to keep the bike going without falling over, there would be a rattlesnake sunning in the road. As I passed them, I imagined myself tipping over and falling right on the snake. Wouldn’t that be fun! Well, I didn’t stop to take any pics of the rattlesnakes (wish I had), but Rebecca did end up stopping to take a photo of this one that we determined was a Baja gopher snake (nonvenomous).
Well, after battling the sand and snakes and water crossings for 10 or 12 miles, we got the the end of the road. The road ended at a deep water crossing with no good way around, so back through the sand we went. We jumped back on the highway down to a secondary road that led north toward Scorpion Bay. This ended up being an interesting ride. It was a two lane road, but several times, you would come around a corner and there would be 8 inches of sand completely blocking your lane or the other lane. Or the asphalt would just disappear. Toward the end of the ride, the road got nice…for a minute. If you look closely at this picture, you will see that there is no road on the bridge. Thankfully, someone put some small rocks in the road and some orange plastic fencing to warn the motorists that they might not want to go this way.
We arrived in San Juanico on Scorpion Bay and found a great place to stay. It was a nice little hotel with a restaurant and bar call Scorpion Bay Hotel. Great fish tacos here!
The road heading north out of Scorpion Bay was all sand, and a little deep at times. I was having a lot of trouble keeping the bike going straight. Checking the tires, I found that somehow I was riding on over 40psi on the back tire and almost that much on the front. Dropping about 12psi made a huge difference.
Eventually, we made it to the San Ignacio Lagoon, where we ate lunch at Pachico’s EcoTours. They weren’t technically open for lunch, but they made us some fish tacos. We took a break here and waited out some rain as one of their whale watching tours was returning. We spoke to several of the guests who had gotten up close and personal with the whales, even getting to pet them from the small boat. Unfortunately, there were not any more tours until the next day. If I wanted to do a whale tour, this would definitely be a great place to do it.
The ride along the San Ignacio Lagoon heading back toward San Ignacio was beautiful. We made our way back into San Ignacio and had to make a few stops to find a place to stay for the night. We ended up staying at the Hotel Desert Inn, which was just a short walk outside of town. It was a little wet, but we walked into town for some drinks and dinner.
As were were sitting inside the restaurant, all of the power in the town went out. Luckily, the beer was still cold. We had a great dinner at a small restaurant on the square and walked back to the hotel.
In the morning, we rode north. We were looking forward to taking a side trip to the San Borja Mission. We didn’t ride there on way down since it had been raining pretty hard. We made it up to the turnoff and started riding toward the mission. The scenery was spectacular, but the road went from dirt to sand to mud and was extremely slippery, so we decided it wasn’t worth it. Have to check it out next time.
We rode back north to Punta Prieta and then east across the peninsula to Bahia Los Angeles where we stopped for 2 nights.
Bahia Los Angeles is a very small town. It has a couple of good restaurants, including Liz’s Seafood and Alejandrina’s. There is also a nice volunteer-run natural history museum. We booked a small 2 bedroom AirBnB on a hill overlooking town. There is no cell service in town. As we found our lodging and were starting to unpack the bikes, I couldn’t believe it…the people staying in the unit next to us (the only other unit around) were from Leadville.
It got so windy while we were in BOLA (Bay of Los Angeles) that the entire patio roof blew off the neighbor’s house and broke their water cistern. One of the roof panels blew off another neighbor’s house as well. The wind howled all night the first night. Glad we had decided to take a day off riding!
On our last full day in Mexico, we left BOLA and headed back to Hwy 5 north toward San Felipe. We made a stop in Puertecitos along the cost to check out some hot springs we had heard about. The hot springs ran right into the ocean. We had a great soak and even saw some dolphins just off the beach.
After our soak we headed on toward San Felipe and our last night in Mexico. We rented another AirBnB here which was within walking distance to the malecon and downtown restaurants. We toasted a great trip with some mezcal and a seafood tower.
The next morning we headed north back through the salt flats and crossed the border again at Algodones. We loaded the bikes back in the trailer and started the drive back to Colorado. Overall, this was a great trip. Despite the wind, rain and cold, the riding was great, the people were nice and the food was delicious. Can’t wait to get back down and ride in Mexico again!
BONUS: What makes a great fish taco
So…while I don’t claim to be an expert in Mexican cuisine or fish tacos, I can tell you what I really liked on this trip. The best fish tacos we had were either grilled fish (a la plancha) or lightly pan fried with seasoning. Many places served the fish battered and fried, which resulted in a fairly thick breading. All of us on the trip definitely preferred the fish without the thick breading. Most everywhere offers the choice of flour or corn tortillas. Personally, I prefer the flour. Also, the best fish tacos are generally served with a tray of condiments and several different sauces. The condiments included things like pickled onions, slaw, peppers, tomatoes, etc. There were usually several different salsas, as well as some cream sauce, which was really good. And…while I really liked the fish tacos, some of the best tacos I had on the trip were beef or pork, so I definitely wouldn’t recommend skipping those! Bon Appetit!