Tijuana - San Felipe | Baja trip | Day 1

It's finally time to talk about our first serious camping vacation. I'm talking about a week (give or take) of camping. No visas, no schedule, no hurrying. Camping for the sake of camping, basically.
December 25. Early morning. Big breakfast. Shower.
We were so excited, we practically flew through the doors.

Starting off in Tijuana (naturally) we planned our biggest distance stretch for the first day.
There are a few routes to choose from if you want to get to San Felipe through TJ.

We chose the road that passes through Mexicali. It's the shortest and also insanely beautiful. About 4 hours without stops. 5 to 6 if you have a kid.

That day was very windy and rainy, so there were a few accidents on the road.

And I'm sure I don't have to explain this to you, but if you see something like this, do slow down. An extra hour to your journey is much better than potentially endangering yourself and other people on the road.



La Rumorosa is a tough road even in the best of conditions. Rain only adds up to this.

Bathroom break. Very important for anyone with kids. If you see one, seise the opportunity.

And load up on the snacks. Normally, we go for different types of nuts, apples or tangerines and cookies. I try to go for vegan ones if I spot them, but there are always these locally made cookies that every OXXO will have near the counter. They are soft, recently made and have just a few simple ingredients. The orange ones are my personal favourite.
And, yeah, if you are travelling in Mexico, OXXO is your life. They have bathrooms, a lot of snacks to choose from (from beef burritos and nachos to fruit salads and fresh pastry) and the best coffee.

Getting snacks was tough because my daughter never experienced temperatures below 5C (41F) and was a tiny bit confused. I, however, was way too excited about the cold.

I grew up with winters of -40C (also -40F) and freezing-drop-dead cold is my jam. Maybe, it wasn't wise for me to move to California, where it's literally always summer, but it's not my fault that the man I love happens to be from there.

As you can see, neither one of those two are fond of the freezing temperature (it was only -2C or 28F at most) and I was so excited, it made me hyper.
If you are wondering, what's off about this picture - my husband took it from the car, because apparently, only crazy people can want to stay outside.

La Rumorosa is absolutely stunning, but make sure to be very alert if you're going there. I recommend to avoid it at night, if you're sleepy or - obviously - if you've had something to drink.

Then comes the seismically active zone that doesn't have any signal.

Keep an eye on these red poles with emergency buttons. They have them every now and again. Just in case.

Our daughter - being our daughter - slept about 1/3 of the way.

People have told me that it snows during winter in this place. I found it hard to believe, but actually, there was a layer of frost when we passed through that road. I wouldn't call this snowing. Honestly, I wouldn't even call it cold. But hey, the perception of temperature is subjective.



Driving into the good weather.

San Felipe is a fairly small calm town.

And they do have OXXO, 7-eleven and Tecate stores, which is more than some other towns in Baja can offer.

The place, where we initially wanted to camp, was closed, so we started searching for others.

By the way, we use an app to look for camping places. It's called the Overlander and looks like this. It has a variety of free and paid campgrounds discovered by travellers.

We stayed in Playa Del Sol (31.090957,-114.868922), which was supposed to be paid, but there was literally nobody working there, so we stayed for free. Memo suggested that it's only paid during summer when they have a constant flow of tourists.

The place was gorgeous.

It looked like some sort of Instagram filter.
Whenever you see my husband make silly faces, you can bet I forced him to do that selfie with me. 



You know you're in the right place when you look around and think: "This can't possibly be real".

There were bathrooms there, but the sink was outside and the doors had no locks, so you'd have to hold them the whole time just in case. Watch our vlog if you want to get the visual.

For dinner, we made some pasta with a simple stir-fry.

And then unanimously decided to go to sleep.

That concludes our first day of Baja. I hope it was informative and/or inspiring in any way. Be sure to let me know if you have any questions. Stay tuned for more camping adventures.