Baja California Highway 1

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Tijuana

   It is a sprawling, energetic place, built across hills and canyons, with a reputation that does not match its character. It has an excellent food scene, a lively craft beer culture and a large community of artists.

   Read the complete Tijuana write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Tijuana is where the day begins. Next is Ensenada.

2. 2. Ensenada

   Ensenada is where most riders meet Baja for the first time properly, a port of nearly three hundred thousand people on the Bahía de Todos Santos, about an hour and a half south of the Tijuana border crossing. The bay got its name from the explorer Sebastián Vizcaíno, who sailed in early in the seventeenth century and named it for All Saints. Today the town is a working harbour first, with fish markets, shipyards and a busy cruise terminal, and a tourist town second, with a famous old cantina and plenty of seafood on the waterfront.

   Read the complete Ensenada write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Ensenada comes up about 104 km into the recorded legs. Next is Catavina.

3. 3. Cataviña

   Cataviña is a landscape from another planet, and it happens to have a road through it. Cirio trees, known in English as boojum, rise like upside-down carrots up to ten metres tall, with a few spiny branches at the top, and the cardón cactus, the world's tallest, stands in forests of its own. The whole area is protected as the Valle de los Cirios reserve.

   Read the complete Catavina write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 474 km into the recorded legs you reach Catavina. Next is Guerrero Negro.

4. 4. Guerrero Negro

   Guerrero Negro is a town built on salt and whales, in that order. Clocks change here too, with Baja California Sur an hour ahead. Beyond the town, the lagoon of Ojo de Liebre stretches out in a flat, glittering sheet.

   Read the complete Guerrero Negro write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Guerrero Negro, about halfway. Next is Mulege.

5. 5. Mulegé

   Mulegé is a green surprise in a very brown country. The town sits where a small river reaches the Gulf of California, and a belt of date palms follows the valley inland, so that after hours on dry, spiny desert road you drop through a gap in the hills and find yourself among palms, orchards and the scent of water. The old mission church, founded by the Jesuits in the early eighteenth century, stands on a rise above the river and looks out across the palms.

   Read the complete Mulege write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Mulegé sits at 1703 km, about halfway. Next is Loreto.

6. 6. Loreto

   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.

   Read the complete Loreto write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Loreto comes up about 1131 km into the recorded legs. Next is La Paz.

7. 7. La Paz

   La Paz is the capital of Baja California Sur, a city of over two hundred thousand people on the shore of a wide bay that gave it a pearl fishing industry for centuries. Cortés landed here in 1535, the pearl oysters made the place famous, and John Steinbeck set his novella The Pearl on this coast after sailing the Sea of Cortez with his friend Ed Ricketts in 1940. The oyster beds failed in the early twentieth century, but the city has kept its easy, coastal character, and the seafront walk, the malecón, is where everybody goes in the evening to eat ice cream and look at the sunset.

   Read the complete La Paz write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 1487 km into the recorded legs you reach La Paz. Next is Cabo San Lucas.

8. 8. Cabo San Lucas

   Cabo San Lucas sits at the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula, where the Pacific meets the Gulf of California, and it announces itself with a curving rock arch called El Arco at the very end of the land. The town has about sixty-eight thousand people, many of them working in tourism, and it is loud, bright and busy, with marinas full of sport-fishing boats, bars and resort hotels. In the nineteenth century it was a modest fishing and canning village, and the transformation into a major resort took place from the 1970s, when the Transpeninsular Highway was completed, finally linking the tip of Baja with the border.

   Read the complete Cabo San Lucas write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Finish at Cabo San Lucas. That is the ride.