I Just Took the Greatest Road Trip of My Life

Before the pandemic struck, one felt acutely that the world had gotten smaller—that all the beautiful places like national parks, vibrant cities, and idyllic beaches were overrun. It was that feeling that drove us to create It’s Still a Big World, our series on underrated destinations. And it’s a feeling that has returned full force as travel has picked back up. But there are still places that remain overlooked, and some of those places are so mind-bogglingly vast, so removed from the typical tourist tracks, it’s hard to imagine them ever being overrun.

A sense of wonder inspired by a place like that was the sentiment that permeated my recent road trip up the length of the Baja Peninsula, a road trip that is one of the best I’ve ever taken. Along the way you will be immersed in dramatic desert landscapes, careen around mountains as they plunge into the sea, rest in palm tree-lined oasis towns, and marvel at the marine life so easy to see in the place Jacques Cousteau once called the world’s aquarium. Best of all, at no point will you feel you are the typical tourist on a typical journey.

It’s about a 20-hour drive from Todos Santos, where I’d been living, to the U.S. border on an impeccably maintained two-lane highway that zig-zags back and forth across the peninsula.

But it’s not a drive one wants to do alone—not out of safety concerns but more because there are long stretches and I have found that the disappointment in how photos never capture the full awesomeness of nature is leavened by having somebody who can share your astonishment. So, a couple of friends flew in to join me.

The drive to and from the Cabo airport is one of the few airport pickups you don’t mind doing—you rip along through desert sprinkled with cactus passing empty beach after empty beach save the occasional house that makes you wonder who lives there and how. After the pickup it was a quick 24-hour taste for Todos newbies—lunch at Barracuda Cantina (the best shrimp tacos you’ll ever eat and the sprigs of rosemary on your margarita are such a pleasant twist), followed by a swim at Cerritos Beach, poke bowls from Noah Mis Amores, and cookies and cream ice cream from La Playita (the secret ingredient to the best cookies and cream ice cream ever? Cinnamon). In the morning, breakfast at Jazamango Cafe and picking up pastries for the road from Doce Cuarenta Cafe.

The first leg of the drive was a seven-hour journey to Mulegé, an oasis town on the Sea of Cortez. The road goes northeast from Todos Santos to La Paz, a stretch I’ve traversed numerous times to visit Playa Balandra, swim with whale sharks, or visit the Isla Espirito Santo. This time we were just passing through, and after La Paz the highway hooks back up the central valley before crossing back east again and winding its way through the coastal mountains before emerging onto Loreto Bay and its islands.

The islands of the Sea of Cortez (or Gulf of California) are unlike any I’ve ever seen. They are rugged and inhospitable looking, reddish-brown cliffs contrasting with the blue of the sea. In the world of yachts and charters, this region is one of the inexplicably “affordable” despite its unparalleled beauty and abundant marine life. There are orcas, blue whales, humpback whales, seals, whale sharks, and so on.

Loreto, the jumping off point for blue whale watching, is a lovely town of around 20,000 with plenty of restaurants and big hotels—the final such spot until Ensenada, so if that is more your speed, spend the night. We stopped for lunch and after a mediocre meal (the only mediocre meal of the whole trip) we hit the road to get to the postcard-worthy beaches of the Bahia Concepcion, just south of Mulegé.

Looking at a map of the peninsula, the bay/bahia looks like a hair follicle divot on the coast’s surface, plunging down and right back up. In real life, it’s a series of sandy beaches with clear water broken up by mountains that look out onto more islands. We pulled over for a swim at Playa el Requesin, a spit of beach connected to an island, and I came to one of the handful of epiphanies I had on this trip—people with RVs and campers have got it figured out. A few of them, including one that resembled an Oregon Trail covered wagon, were lined up on the beach here. While I had a ticking clock to get to the next town so that I could make it to the next piece of the journey and so on, these folks were cruising along at their own pace with surroundings that people spend actual fortunes to go to sleep and wake up to. (Another good beach to stop at is Playa el Coyote.)

Mulegé is about another 40 minutes north and straddles the mouth of the Río Santa Rosalía. We booked a suite at Clementine’s, a B&B that’s got everything you need and nothing more (which was perfect). In a region where I was often confronted by places surpassing my descriptive abilities, Mulegé is one of the more unique. Dirt roads drop precipitously off the highway leading to houses and inns interspersed with palm trees on dirt and gravel roads along the river. The architecture ranged from traditional Mexican to a sort of Mexican-Japanese mid century fusion to Colombian finca. The people were no easier to place—retirees, hippies, fishermen, and those just passing through. We grabbed tacos and beers at Jungle Jim’s, a tin-roofed joint redolent of beachtown shacks in the Caribbean, and then, aware of the next day’s early start and feeling the long day behind us, passed out.

We departed in the dark, climbing back into the mountains and then along the coast through the former mining town of Santa Rosalía. The sun was rising over the Gulf—a spectacular shimmering haze—as we exited the town and its industrial outskirts. We were racing to get to the central oasis town of San Ignacio for the 8:30 check-in with Kuyima, the tour operator that would take us out in the coastal Ignacio Lagoon for whale watching. There is something uncanny about the town of San Ignacio. In the states I’m used to palm trees forming orderly rows along boulevards in places like Los Angeles and Miami, but here the roads seemed carved out of a dense and wild palm tree forest. The town is formed around a pristine zocalo dominated by a picturesque 18th century mission church and is a 45-minute drive from the lagoon where the gray whale watching takes place.

There are three main areas to go see the gray whales in Baja: Magdalena, San Ignacio, and Ojo de Liebre. These three coastal areas are the most popular place for these gray and white (the white coming from parasites) wonders to go in the winter months and mate and give birth. What is remarkable about coming here is that these behemoths that grow up to 49 feet become “friendly” and will come up alongside boats and even enjoy being scratched! Most whale watching experiences I’ve had were a lot of sitting, waiting, and straining. Here in the lagoon, not only were you spotting dozens of whales all at once (you eventually stop pointing them out as there are so many) but you get to see as close as possible how majestic they are. You also might even get sprayed in the face by their blowhole as they surface next to you, as my friend did.

After 90 minutes on the water, you head back to shore and then back to San Ignacio. Our next resting place was the Bahia de Los Angeles, about four and half hours away. One thing to note is that every couple hours on this drive there are military checkpoints where they’ll ask you where you are coming from and heading to, and they’ll search your car. Sometimes it will be merely a cursory look around, other times very thorough.

The Bahia de Los Angeles is a detour from the main highway but it’s a scenic halfway point between San Ignacio and our final stop in Mexico, the wine region of the Valle de Guadalupe. The Bahia is back on the Sea of Cortez side and most come here for the fishing or water sports. I thought the sunrises and sunsets were pretty special in Todos Santos, but as we descended into the town splayed out along the shoreline at sunset, I had to concede to what a Mexican friend who sails the Sea of Cortez often told me—that this side has the best of sunrises and sunsets. We spent the night at Los Vientos Hotel, which from the road looks almost like a hacienda but inside is fairly modern and has a pool and restaurant on the beach. (The frozen margaritas were deadly good and the special that night was slipper lobster, which is aptly nicknamed the cockroach of the sea.) The following morning we ate breakfast at Siete Filos Cafe, a spot with a menu and quality that would make it a success in a trendy place like, say, Venice Beach, and yet here it was in what many would consider the middle of nowhere.

After a few days, desert road trips with their long stretches with few major stops run the risk of turning monotonous, and so I feared I was going to have to play the role of cheerleader after we left Bahia de Los Angeles for a nine-hour drive to wine country. But, visually, this was the most engrossing of the segments.

Highway 5 up here is pure drama. There are stretches where the mountains and their legs are so cartoonish they’re right out of a Thomas Hart Benton painting and others where they seem to be made of millions of loose rocks and plummet into the wave-flecked sea. In coves and promontories, lone houses or clusters of concrete villas pop out—places where I imagine I could go to disappear from the world if I were framed for a crime.

The first big town you’ll hit is San Felipe. Though quiet and empty when we passed through, it had plenty of restaurants and the kind of waterfront honky-tonk boardwalk strips a la Tybee Island or Rehoboth.

From San Felipe you head back to the center of the peninsula, and as you get closer to the Valle de Guadalupe the land transforms yet again, this time into verdant pasture with miniature mountains that look like a lollipop with pebbles stuck to it. Perhaps it was all the driving, but I found myself mesmerized by the miles of ranch fences made exclusively with crooked stick posts.

You’ll then skirt by Ensenada, the popular beach town only an hour and change south of San Diego before entering the Valle de Guadalupe. Mexico’s premier wine region is still on the upswing, and so while there are attractive individual vineyards, there are industrial-looking pockets and areas where development has happened without a sort of region-wide planning. We spent the night at Contemplación Hotel Boutique, an eco hotel with villas that look out over the landscape. The two-bedroom villa we got was roughly $450 total for three people, which given the floor to ceiling window views and general comfort of the hotel was well worth it. While the property has its own bar and restaurant, we wanted to end the trip with something special but not too fussy and so booked a table at Bruma Wine Garden, the more laid back companion to the famed restaurant Fauna located within the grounds of the Bruma winery. The setting is is like a woodland fairy tale: outdoor dining room with light-bedecked trees forming a canopy over the long dining tables. You might think you’ve arrived at a wedding. And the menu, with its adventurous pizzas and fresh seafood, lives up to the setting.

The final leg of the journey is the shortest but also the most taxing, as it involves crossing the border back into the U.S. Sometimes you’re lucky and the line moves quickly. In our case, the issue coming through Tijuana wasn’t so much how long the line was, but getting into it as there were confusing signs and temporary caution tapes thrown up to divert traffic. But once across, I’m always amazed at how close San Diego is, and how quickly after crossing I can grab In-N-Out.

Munching my burger, sauce getting everywhere, all I could think was how excited I was to do that drive again next year, because there was so much I didn’t see and do. Maybe I’ll even rent an RV.