Loreto has a claim that no other town on the peninsula can match: in 1697 the Jesuit Juan María de Salvatierra founded the mission here, Nuestra Señora de Loreto, and it became the first permanent European settlement in the Californias. The town served as the capital of the whole region for decades, until the seat of government moved north, and the old mission church with its stone front still stands on a quiet street in the centre. Today it is a laid-back place of fourteen thousand people with a seafront promenade, a small harbour and a lot of fishing boats.
The setting does the rest of the work. Loreto looks east over the Sea of Cortez, and the islands of Isla Coronado and Carmen sit offshore inside a national marine park, so the water in front of town is flat and a deep blue in the mornings. Behind the town the Sierra de la Giganta rises in dry, jagged ridges, and a road leads up into the mountains to the old mission at San Javier, a stone church built in the eighteenth century, a good half-day detour if the bike and your nerves are up to the gravel.
On Highway 1 the stretch to reach Loreto from the north is memorable, running along the shore of Bahía Concepción with beaches below the road, then crossing dry hills and cactus flats. South of Loreto the road climbs through the mountains and descends toward Ciudad Constitución. Traffic is light, but lorries are slow and the shoulders are narrow, and animals do sometimes wander onto the tarmac, particularly at dusk. Ride in daylight.
Loreto has fuel at a Pemex in town and enough restaurants for any appetite, with seafood and tacos as the obvious choices. From June to October it is very hot and humid, and this is also hurricane season, so check the forecast. The cooler months from November to April are the best time, with warm days and pleasantly cool evenings, and an evening beer on the waterfront is the kind of thing that makes the long Baja miles feel entirely reasonable.