On a recent trip over the holidays to Baja I found this book to be helpful:
Travel Guide to Camping Mexico’s Baja by Mike and Terry Church. I normally don’t travel with guide books like Lonely Planet since they are oriented towards budget backpackers and don’t have much info on camping, secure motorcycle parking or wifi availability.
Motels have gotten quite expensive in Baja in the last 10 years so camping is your best bet if you have limited funds. Because I was traveling with my sister who had never been to Baja I found this book extremely useful for finding a campground with GPS waypoints, a shower, wifi and tent camping. We were traveling in her truck this trip and I brought my tent while she is an avid car camper, so it was nice to see which places had the stuff she would find useful like a toilet and shower.
If you have read my ride reports you know I am basically a hobo and will camp anywhere. But I was glad she brought this book along so we could find something a little more to her liking. It is up to date and it allowed us to find a nice place with wifi just south of Ensenada a few miles at sunset called the Estero Beach hotel and camping. Gated luxury camping is not really my style but when you are winter camping in Baja there are 13 hours of darkness and I can only sleep for 6 hours it means a lot of time to kill in my tent. This place had hot showers, was huge with a nice grassy malecon and wifi in my tent that allowed streaming netflix movies with Spanish subtitles (your netflix home account is now available throughout Mexico, Central and South America as of last year).
The guide also has free beaches to camp at and which places have cell phone service for people who care about that kind of thing. With all the paid ads and SEO driven websites these days on Google search it is more dificult to do a search and find useful info. Especially at night as you are driving into someplace like San Ignacio or San Felipe. This book made finding a place to camp for the night mucho easier without having to stop at an internet café and doing a search which is what I normally do.
Hi John, At last your traveling and writing again, thank goodness!
ReplyDeleteI am stuck here in the Michigan winter snow, (temp. 8 degrees F.) My plan of 6 months in Mexico (Xcalat) starting in November were dashed by the wife using serious threats. She can't travel, so I guess I can't either. So, I really enjoy reading your reports, its the next best thing. My Sherpa sits patiently, napping in the barn, with its new rack and bags all shiny, 700 actual miles, oh well, maybe this summer we can go somewhere?? My clock is ticking down, gotta do something before it stops!. George (gmiles on ADVrider)