San Felipe to San Jose del Cabo

Jim writing. We left San Felipe on Wednesday Feb 6, headed south on Hwy 5, planning to take two days to connect up with the main Hwy 1 to continue to the tip of the peninsula. You can follow the “Live Map” link from the home page to see exactly what that route looks like – but you need to know that I do research these things! And so I had read, in a very recently updated post, that the Hwy 5 had sustained damage from Hurricane Willa and was under repair, with “10 to 15 miles of dirt road”. Wish it had been so!

We had driven south a bit on this road before, in 2016, so we knew it was not a “good road” and was a bit rough, with sections of dirt. But the reality today was much worse than I had expected and certainly worse than the report I read. We drove over 30 miles continuously on dirt the second day alone! In any case, this turned into an a much more adventurous ride than I had planned. Poor Carol! She dropped her bike several times – but felt a bit better about it when we were comparing notes and commiserating with some other riders a few nights later, who reportedly had done the same! She wasn’t alone. The worse sections where at the many bridge wash-outs, where the road was diverted down into the dry river bed. This was usually a steep down and out with very bumpy and sometimes sandy road. There were many sections of “deviacion” (detour) of wash-boarded road graded roughly through the desert. On the longest of these detours, it was disconcerting to look at my GPS and have it tell me we were in the middle of no-where far from any road! On some of the particularly steep and difficult sections, I rode my motorcycle through and then walked back and rode Carol’s through for her. Since I was in the lead I was having to make the judgement call – radioing back to her on our helmet coms, saying “stop” or “you can do this”. Unfortunately on one nasty section (and ironically near the end of the gravel on day 2) I erred on the “you can do this” side and she went down pretty hard – bent her crash bars a bit, and got a bruise on her arm. I felt bad because I had a notion that I should tell her “stop ” and ride that section for her, but I didn’t follow that instinct. She’s forgiven me 🙂 Of course we were too busy just riding to take pictures of the worse of it – but below are a few shots from the better sections, on day two.

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In retrospect, the first day was not to bad! Our goal was to reach Punta Final, and we were planning to camp, but the wind was blowing really hard, it was cool (mid 60’s) and it took us longer than planned – so we opted for a hotel. I mentioned that the road was lonely – we were the only guests in the hotel! But they still were willing to cook us dinner, and it was a nice stop after a long day.

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We left Punta Final thinking we had seen the worse of Hwy 5 – but in fact it was just the opposite – the majority of the road the second day was dirt, with many bridges washed out, and it was a LONG day (over 30 miles of continuous dirt, and aforementioned fall Carol had due to my bad judgement) but we finally got to Hwy 1, and from there it was all tarmac to Guerrero Negro.

We spent two nights in Guerrero Negro, a small town with two main economic drivers – salt and whales. The salt harvesting operation, owned by Mitsubishi, is one of the largest in the world, producing over 5% of the total world supply of salt. Grey whales produce tourist income; in winter, they migrate from the Arctic Ocean, down the Pacific coast (we used to watch them from the coast near San Jose, CA) and winter over in bays and lagoons along the Baja peninsula, one of these being at Guerrero Negro. We stayed at the hotel Malarimo, which also operates whale tour boats, and as soon as we checked in we signed up for the 8:00AM tour for the next day. It was just awesome! We also met another rider, Seth Tyson ( from Tasmania), who is on his way by motorcycle to South America same as we are. Seth left a day ahead of us, and as we parted I said “we may see each other again along the way” Small world and gets smaller as we go, you’ll see.

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The morning after the whale encounter, we continued on south to San Ignacio, to a B&B place called Ignacio Springs that I had read about. San Ignacio is on a river that runs through the desert, and Ignacio Springs property is right on the river. It looked interesting enough that we decided to book two nights – and it exceeded expectations! And as we pulled in, I looked down the driveway and said to Carol “I think that is Seth’s motorcycle!” And it was – a resourceful fellow, he had bartered some work updating their web page for a room. While we were there we walked into the village of San Ignacio and toured the old church building, town square and a small archeological museum. We also took some kayaks and explored the river, and had two great group suppers with the hosts and guests of Ignacio Springs. We greatly enjoyed our time there, it was a great place to rest up, and we met so many interesting people, including Joe, a retired pilot, who has traveled extensively in Mexico. Joe was on his way back to Washington after having completed a Spanish language immersion course near Mexico city – something Carol and I still hope to do – and he gave us a lot of useful tips and bits of advice.

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Leaving Ignacio Springs, our eventual destination was San Jose del Cabo, at the southern-most extend of the peninsula. We had three nights reserved at the Westin resort – our biggest “traditional” tourist stop so far this trip. It was three days of riding to get to the Westin from San Ignacio. We made it the first night to Loreto (where we would later return to meet up with friends – future post), then the second night to La Paz. La Paz is where we will eventually take the ferry to mainland Mexico, and while we were there, Carol had the brilliant idea to take the time to stop by the ferry office at the port and take care of our TVIP’s (Temporary Vehicle Import Permit – see earlier posts) and our ferry tickets. This turned out to be a fantastic idea as it took us around three hours to get those taken care of, and doing that the day of the ferry departure would have been extremely stressful!

From La Paz to the Westin in San Jose del Cabo was a relatively short ride – but we took the the whole morning getting the TVIP/Ferry tickets secured, so it was around 6:00 PM when we pulled into the Westin. They do not get a lot of people showing up on motorcycles, I gathered. They could not valet park our motorcycles, but they let us park our bikes right in front of the reception area, behind some pillars (see pictures).

At the Westin, we enjoyed laying around the pool, walking on the beach, and spending and evening in downtown San Jose del Cabo – a very delightful town. If we were to come back, I think I’d rent something through Air B&B in the town rather than do the resort thing – but for sure “the resort thing” was really nice!

From San Jose del Cabo, we headed back to Loreto to meet up with our friend Dave Adler and his wife Wenjiang, and from there back to La Paz to take the ferry (where we are as I write this) – but that will be covered in a future post!

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