The Wayward Home Podcast
The Wayward Home Podcast
59: Is Baja Safe? Tips and Advice for Touring Baja in a Campervan with Brooke Alexander
We take a deep dive with van lifer Brooke Alexander, who drove Baja in her campervan last winter and is planning another trip this year.
We navigate through the nitty-gritty, like border crossings, military checkpoints, and Mexico's indispensable FMM card. Brooke talks about finding campsites, essential gear, and why she recommends bringing your own toilet!
Links Mentioned in this Podcast:
- Car Insurance for Mexico (Lewis and Lewis) or (BajaBound)
- Air Compressor for Tires
- Go Treads
- iOverlander
Connect with Kristin Hanes and The Wayward Home!
Are you wondering if it's safe to travel to Baja in your campervan? Do you crave sunny beaches, cheap campsites, amazing food and a winter playing in the crystal clear water of the Sea of Cortez? We travel to Baja every year on our sailboat and just love that part of the world, but I was curious just how different it is to travel by campervan. In this episode of the Wayward Home podcast, I interview a woman who did just that last year and she's planning on making the trek to Baja again and staying even longer this time. Hopefully, by the end of this episode, you'll be packing your bags and heading to Baja in your campervan too. Let's go. Welcome to the.
Speaker 2:Wayward Home podcast all about van life, boat life and nomadic living. We'll bring you tips, interviews and stories from the road and on the water.
Speaker 1:Now here's your host, kristen Haynes. Hey there, I'm Kristen Haynes with thewaywardhomecom, and I spend half the year in my sprinter van and half on my sailboat in Mexico, and I hope to inspire you to achieve your nomadic living dreams. So it is November and it's getting close to that time of year when us boaters and van lifers start thinking about the sunny beaches and warm waters of Baja California in Mexico. So we've traveled to Baja, but only on our sailboat, and van lifer Brooke Alexander, our guest today, goes in her campervan. Brooke has been living in her Dodge ProMaster campervan since 2020 and has also traveled extensively over the US and through Baja, so she has some great tips and advice about exploring Baja in a campervan, and I'll talk about the sailboat side of it and we'll talk about some differences between seeing Baja by land and by sea. So, brooke, I'm so excited you're here.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for joining the Wayward Home podcast. Thanks for having me. Yeah, so great. So first of all, let's talk a little bit about Baja. I just love going there on my boat. I think it's such a special place because it has desert and ocean. I don't know any other place really like it. So when did you first go to Baja and what inspired you to go down there.
Speaker 2:So I first went to Baja I guess it's technically still this year, because I went in January of 2023. I spent three months there. It had always been something I thought about when I moved into the van and just didn't know if I was going to be able to make it work. But I found some seasoned Baja travelers and joined a caravan with them. So I kind of got to know the ropes and now I'm planning my own trip this year.
Speaker 1:Oh, fantastic. And when you'd heard about Baja before and going in the van, we've only actually driven to Baja. We haven't even driven to Baja in a van. Actually, we've driven to Puerto Penaesco in a van, but I feel like the van experience is a little bit different than the boat and you have some different concerns to worry about. Driving versus. We're kind of really far removed from land and people. So what were some of your top kind of concerns? At first, about crossing the border and going to Baja.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just in general get anxiety when I cross borders. I've always felt that way, even if I don't have anything to hide. It's just kind of a scary feeling, and especially going into a country where I speak decent Spanish, but sometimes they might use words I'm not familiar with because I don't use an everyday language. So I was really nervous to cross the border, and that was actually very simple. Depending on where you cross that. They do a quick search of your van. I think two officers came in my van, opened my cabinets, asked me a couple of questions, asked me if my dog would bite, and then said go on your way. So it was much simpler than I expected. The thing that kind of surprised me, I would say, is that there are checkpoints throughout Baja, so it's not just at the border. There are, I think, six military checkpoints in between where you cross that and Cabo. So it's kind of like you're crossing the border six times.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we've also gone through those military checkpoints when we've driven the Porto Penaresco in Sonora, which is similar to Baja, in which I don't think you need an import permit for your vehicle to drive to Sonora or Baja. Correct, you didn't need to do an import permit for your car, right.
Speaker 2:Correct. You just have to get your FMM card, which is quite confusing. There's not really any clear signs on where you get that when you cross the border by land, so you kind of have to know ahead of time that you need to ask someone for it and figure out where to get it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's also a really good tip, because we had a hard time finding the immigration and customs office as well and we've done two different border crossings and they're kind of a nondescript random buildings. So where did you cross and how did you figure out that office?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I crossed through Tecate, which is actually a really small border crossing.
Speaker 2:Mexicali and Tijuana are the big ones that a lot of people cross through. Tijuana is really close to San Diego, but Tecate is where I crossed because the group that I went with had crossed so many times and they said this is the best experience that they've had because it's so small. I think we waited maybe five minutes to cross the border, whereas some of the bigger crossings you might wait hours, and so the FMM card was pretty difficult there. Even though my friends had crossed there before, they still didn't really quite know where to find it, and so we wound up kind of crossing, parking and wandering around for a while. I think we technically crossed back into the US on foot and then walked across the foot bridge and got our FMM there. So people were helpful once we asked, but it was kind of like nobody says anything when you go through, and I do know somebody who went quite a far ways down and had to go back to the border and get an FMM. So make sure you get that.
Speaker 1:Oh man, yeah, and for people who don't know what FMM is, that's the visa, the tourist visa, and it lasts for six months, and so that's what you need if you're going by boat or by van, and so I think that's kind of the main thing you have to do. At the border, and with our Sprinter, when we brought it down to Sonora, they did inspect it, like they did with yours, and they looked at our batteries and they said do those go with the van? Because I think if you do bring new things into Baja, they could charge duty. Did you hear anything about duty, or did people warn you about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they asked, I think, when we crossed, if we had, like you know, exorbitant amounts of alcohol or food, or you definitely don't want to bring produce across the border either way going to or from Mexico. So what we did was just kind of empty our refrigerators and just take dry goods and then, as soon as we cross them to a grocery store and fill them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally. There are a lot of grocery stores in Mexico that have lots of food. But if you want specialty items like we eat mostly vegetarian and that's kind of hard to do in Mexico if you don't want to eat just beans and lentils all the time. So I tend to bring in, you know, some tofu and some soy curls and some other like weird products that are hard to find. Did you bring anything in particular that? Oh, and I tend to have a hard time finding really good coffee there. Maybe you have a tip because you're a coffee aficionado like me, but I have the hardest time finding really good coffee in Baja. So I bring tons of coffee from the States. But what are your like specialty items? And if you have any coffee tips, I'd love to know them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm also vegetarian, so I did bring some you know, fake meat options, plant-based protein options, but I did find that the further south you get where, the more vacation hotspots are, like Choros, santos and Cabo. You can find things like that very easily there. Even in La Paz, at Walmart they sell beyond meat products and things like that. So that was good to find out and now this year I won't have to bring so much of that stuff. Trying to think if there was anything else that I brought. I don't think so. Pretty much everything else I was able to find, or I kind of just adapted my diet to what was there. There's lots of like really good fresh fruits and things that are somewhat different than in the States. Bye, guys.
Speaker 1:Yep, yep, I found that too with the jicamas, the papayas, like all kinds of things that you don't typically find, that are fresh and really good, like tropical fruits, that those were my favorite things to get in Mexico. But for me it was harder to find greens, like especially kale and arugula and stuff. La Paz was easier, but as a boater going to La Paz is really complicated because you have to go down a very long narrow channel to get into the marinas. Then you have to figure out how to get to the grocery store, and so often we don't go to La Paz. We're sort of in these small random towns that don't have as good of groceries. But when we did go to La Paz it was fantastic. They do have good stores there, but this year we might not go there. So I'm thinking like what do I have to bring? Yes, I do remember. Do I need to grow my own arugula on the boat?
Speaker 2:I do remember greens being hard to find. Well now I guess I eat more salad than I used to, but I was traveling with a friend who ate spinach every day and he had the hardest time because he couldn't find any greens to go with his breakfast in the morning. And then the coffee thing. Yeah, there's a real lack of good coffee. Instant coffee is a major thing in Baja, so I wound up buying, I think, cheap coffee at the grocery store for the first month, maybe I was there. And then, when you get into the cities, some of them do have more modern style coffeehouses with fancy coffee, and so I bought bags of beans from them. La Paz definitely. Cabo Soda, santos, pescadero. Sometimes the farmers markets in little towns that have expats have little coffee stands, so that's a good place to check for some good coffee.
Speaker 1:Awesome. That's good advice too, and also what's funny is we love IPAs and those are sometimes hard to come by in Baja, so we tend to bring a bunch from Costco and I know we do mostly Corona, but sometimes you just crave that different flavor, and so that's something else we tend to bring down there. I don't know if you also brought that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't bring that, but that is something I will be bringing. That's so funny. We have very similar diets and drinking habits. Yes, IPAs were very scarce. Even I think we went to one or two breweries down there and the IPAs are just not the same. But I think I wound up drinking a lot of different things there, similarly to eating different things. There were a lot of really good like fresh not fresh, I guess canned cocktails or canned like margaritas and things that were actually fairly low alcohol content and taste really great. So I kind of kept those in the fridge instead of having beers in the fridge, and I've actually still got two left. Surprisingly, I kind of stuck the band on the way back because I had been so used to drinking them there that I was like, well, now what am I going to do in the US without these?
Speaker 1:That is great advice. I did see those and I was worried they would be too sweet so I didn't buy them. So I'll have to give that a try this time. So that's fun, let's see. So I'm curious about. So something I get all the time from people and readers of the Wayward Home is do you feel safe in Mexico? Be careful, the banditos are going to get you Like it's not safe down there. I get that all the time and I'm wondering if you also, and for me on the boat and even when we went to towns to get groceries, I always felt safe. I never had any weird experiences in Baja. People were lovely to me and, yeah, I thought it was fantastic. And I'm just wondering, from your perspective, what did you experience and what do people tend to say to you as well?
Speaker 2:I definitely got that from family members when I said I was driving to Mexico, for sure, and sometimes with fellow RVers. If you kind of meet like the retiree crowd, they kind of have that feeling sometimes. But I had a wonderful experience in Mexico. I have told everyone I felt safer there than I ever did in my New York City apartment. It was everyone there was helpful. If you needed anything, everyone was willing to talk to you. I never had a single bad thing happen to me and you know, after a while, since I was there for three months, I did split up from my caravan and I was by myself for quite a while. I was even parked at one point on the beach by myself for an entire week and no one bothered me ever. I felt completely safe.
Speaker 1:That's so good to hear. Yeah, and that's what I've heard from other van lifers who've been down there as well, and that's something I'm happy that my listeners and readers can hear from both of us is that we've always felt very safe down there and in terms of safety, like the roads and like cell phone signal. As someone who drove through Baja, what was that like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the roads are adventurous and so, from what I hear from people who have been going for many years, they are great now and I wouldn't say that they're terrible by any means. But there are spots on the road where it's just like the road is deteriorating and it's just full of potholes and quite a few sections where it's a very narrow two lane highway, like there's not any shoulder whatsoever, so if you were to bump somebody you would probably just fly off the road. So it does take a little more concentration driving through it and there are quite a few stretches of no cell signal. So I would absolutely recommend, if you're driving with anyone, that you take walkie talkies. That was super helpful for us in case anybody needed to stop or needed help with something. We always kept our walkies on on the same channel and we could reach out to anybody, anybody around. So that was that was really helpful.
Speaker 2:There is a new highway connecting, I want to say, cabo and the West Coast, like Tonos from the airport. I think it's a toll road and it's like brand new and super fast and super beautiful, but that is not the case with the roads up North. So probably from the first half of Baja, baja California, as opposed to Baja California, sir, which is below. Those roads are definitely worse. There's only one way down, so you have to take them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and did you spend a lot of time in the North or did you guys kind of drive through the North to get to Baja Sur?
Speaker 2:We went relatively quickly. We stopped in Valle de Guadalupe wine country and stayed a night there, which I'll be staying a lot longer on this trip in wine country, just because I'm interested in that area a little more. And then I was with a surfer and there was a record swell. So we did stop on some beaches in the North for surfing, which I probably wouldn't stop at on my own, but they were really cute little towns. They were very, very tiny towns where all you do there is surf. There's one taco stand and surf. So I would say the North most people blow through it. There are some cute little stops. It's worth it for a day or two. It's probably not where you're gonna spend the most of your time, yeah and it's probably really remote.
Speaker 1:We sailed down the outside of Baja and we stopped at a lot of those small towns and it had a very remote feeling. I think that was 2020 and 2021. And, yeah, there wasn't much going on and I didn't have Starlink at the time, so I basically had no phone signal almost the entire outside of Baja and so it felt I think that contributed to the remoteness. But now that there's Starlink, I think it's a little bit easier to be there. But did you experience that feeling of it seem wild and remote?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, especially with how rugged it is. It's just like these rugged rocks and cliffs and you're like, wow, I'm in the middle of nowhere, like it's just ocean and rocks, and if you're lucky there's a taco stand, but probably not. Yeah, it's very remote and we definitely used Starlink quite a bit. There were times when we didn't wanna to set up the whole Starlink and so you were dependent on if there was one business there that might have Wi-Fi, and then everybody, all the servers are connected to it, everybody who needs to contact home is connected to it.
Speaker 1:So yeah, oh, how funny. And for those long stretches where you didn't really have a lot of phone signal, did you really do anything in particular like download maps and download campsites beforehand?
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely, that's. One of my tips for sure is to download a map. Never rely on Google Maps in Baja, not only for the lack of signal, but just for the lack of clarity in some of the roads. They just it's not always perfect and up to date and so, for example, the main road that we traveled down is newer and on the map it was still taking you on the old road, which is not a road you should be driving on anymore. It's not maintained. So, yes, I definitely had downloaded maps. I would say carry a paper map, just in case, for some reason, you don't have access to your phone anyways, it's good to have a paper map and definitely downloaded a lot of things to listen to. There are big stretches where there's no radio stations or one radio station, and it kind of sounds the same for hours and hours on end.
Speaker 1:That's a good tip to bring something to entertain yourself, because that's a pretty long drive through Northern Baja At least takes maybe a couple days, right, if you're going to just drive straight through.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say probably two days minimum, but probably two or three days.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow. So yeah, let's chat about how to find campsites. Like I know this is very different for you and me, because we have cruising guides and this is what, like, we go to an anchorage and this tells us where to go, which anchorages to go, so we read these extensive books to figure out where to stop along the coast of Baja. But I'm sure you have many different methods, and so I'm curious how you find places to park your van.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I definitely use Ioverlander a ton. I take it with a grain of salt. Some of the posts on there are older and those beaches either don't exist anymore or are private now or you kind of just got to go with the flow. If you're using something like that, I would say I actually paid for a lot more campsites in Baja than I normally do, particularly in the popular areas Like Baja.
Speaker 2:Concepción is a beautiful bay. It has like three main campgrounds. They're like $20, and while I would not usually pay that in the US, it is absolutely worth it. You are right on the sand on the bay in a beautiful place. So I did find it interesting, as far as campgrounds go, that they don't take any reservations like in the US. So you could call ahead of time and say do you have a spot for us tomorrow? And they would say call me back at 9 am tomorrow and I will tell you if there's a spot. And there was one spot, one campground in Loretto that the guy said we don't have room, but I will make room for you. So there were no actual spots but crammed us into a corner together, and so it was just really interesting because you just have to go somewhere, not knowing if you have a spot to stay or not, but the people are so friendly, they don't make it work.
Speaker 1:That sounds very Mexico-style to me, because things don't always run by the book like they do in the US, which tends to be fairly regimented, but when you get to Mexico it's like, oh you know, the rules are just everywhere and you never kind of know what to expect. And that's some of the fun of Baja as well, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, for sure. You just kind of pull up on the beach and set up your camp and then eventually somebody walks around and says they're collecting money and they give you our receipt.
Speaker 1:So that's too funny. So it sounds like you did find some beautiful like beachfront camping. Is there a lot of that in Baja?
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, I would say probably 90% of where I camped was on the beach in Baja and it's really gorgeous and ranges from all different things. So, like I said, bahia Concepcion is on the sea of Cortez side. It is very calm, beautiful place to go out on a kayak or a paddleboard. And then there's on the other side, on the Pacific side, like Pescadero, cerritos, those are big surf beaches, crazy waves, very different sand. It's just totally different. And then Cabo Palmo National Park where a lot of people go diving. That beach is actually all rock, it is not sand. So totally different view there. And yeah, there is just. I mean, it sounds like boring to some people when you say I'm gonna go camp on the beach for three months. Some people are like I can't do that. But they're very different all over the place. So it's different experiences on each side.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really interesting and I'm curious what the campgrounds like. Are they anything like campgrounds in the States where you get like a picnic table and a fire ring and stuff, or what are they like?
Speaker 2:But mostly not. Some of them. I don't even know if I ever had a picnic table. Don't think I did. Some of them on the beach have a Palapa and they're usually like an extra $5 if you have a Palapa as opposed to not having one. They're nice if you have a group of people and you wanna have like a little shady spot or store your paddleboards and things in there when you're not using them. But we did find that they also are magnets for bugs, mosquitoes, sometimes mice, so you kinda gotta watch with black widows. So they look beautiful in pictures because you have this beautiful little palm frond Palapa next to your van. But they're not quite as practical as they look in pictures.
Speaker 1:But interesting. So the bugs live up in the fronds sometimes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's kind of like a tree. So yeah, they live there.
Speaker 1:Just something to watch, if you have pets or things Totally, and do they have bathroom facilities and showers? How does that work?
Speaker 2:Some of them have bathroom facilities and usually they're kind of just like an outhouse, just like a pit toilet. They vary on range of cleanliness. I would say always bring your own toilet paper. I don't expect that to ever be there. Some of the campgrounds that are maybe in towns it might have a shower. It's not probably guaranteed to have warm water. That's just that's kind of like a real luxury in Baja to have a warm shower. First of all, to have a shower and second of all to have a warm shower is a real luxury. So I would say, go in thinking that you're not going to get a warm shower and then when you do, you'll be very pleasantly surprised.
Speaker 1:So do you recommend people bring their own toilet to Baja?
Speaker 2:Absolutely yes, and you don't have to have, like an actual toilet or anything fancy. I take a bucket and kitty litter. It is just easier when you're on the beach. In the middle of nowhere. It's not appropriate to bury waste on the beach, and so it just is much easier to use kitty litter and Bag it up and throw it away when you leave.
Speaker 1:Oh cool. So the way that works is you just, you know, use a bag in in the bucket and then you add kitty litter, go add more, and then you can use it like a couple times and keep Adding that to get rid of the smell, and then when you leave, you just throw it out.
Speaker 2:That's kind of how that works, yeah and I would say that's probably what most people do. It's just easier. Some people that have composting toilets have said it can be difficult to find like coconut core or things for their composting toilets. So if you have that, I would say bring it ahead of time or have enough until you get to somewhere like Cabo that has big enough pet stores that might have right.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. And yeah, and did anybody you know bring like a portable toilet, like that you have to go into a bathroom and empty, or did they not usually do that?
Speaker 2:I don't think so I think we had talked to enough people who had been there before and said that finding gum stations was not as Easy as you would want it to be, and that your life would be much simpler if you just brought a bucket.
Speaker 1:I know totally, if you had like a big RV with the like black tanks, like I don't even know where you would dump that, I'm sure they have it somewhere in Baja. But since I'm not an RVer, I'm not really in tune to that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I would imagine it would have to be at one of in one of the bigger cities. I can't, I don't think there's any Infrastructure for that in in the small towns.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah for sure. And did you ever stay in like an RV park situation? I think I've seen photos of that where people have like a pool and more facilities. Did you try that, or were you mostly doing beach camping?
Speaker 2:I did. I stayed in a campground in Loretto, in the city, which is actually where I found my dog and they had. They had showers and bathrooms and they had a washing machine, but it was broken, which is also like, don't, don't depend on that. And I stayed at another one in La Paz, which was quite interesting. I'll have to send you a picture of it sometime. They was one of those situations where you call ahead and they said we promise will fit you in, but it was like I Mean a jigsaw puzzle like I had to. Three people had to leave and I had to back in and yeah, and they had showers and, I think, a communal kitchen.
Speaker 2:I didn't stay anywhere that had a pool. The only place I even saw a pool at a campground, I want to say was in San Felipe, and Because San Felipe is so close to the US, it's always it's like a, often a first stop for people when they cross the border. It's just a few hours. Because of that, the prices are really high, because some people might only go as far as San Felipe, and so we opted to stay at a very cheap place that didn't have any amenities like that, but the pool campsites where I want to say like 40 or $50 us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I could see that because in Puerto Pena's go you also have a lot of people that cross the border and don't go any further and there's beautiful beach campgrounds there, but I think they're like at least 50 a night and so they're more catering to the people who aren't really going deep into Mexico. And what's funny when you say that similar to the marinas in Baja are insanely expensive. They're, like you know, similar to the US, if not more like. There's one, that Marina that we went to south of Loretto called Porto Escondido Marina, and it's beautiful. But if you want to stay on the docks it's like a hundred bucks a night and I'm like what? Like it is so expensive but you have to book a longer stay for it to be cheaper. But still, I was pretty shocked by you know Just how much the but they're probably gouging me Americans and Canadians that come down just by making those price their audience, you know, so they can get away with it, but I thought that was really interesting.
Speaker 2:I believe it might be that Marina it sounds familiar there's. There was a beach campsite that we stayed at and from there you could hike a couple of miles and and get to the Marina and we had heard a lot of people would Sneak into the showers there because they weren't manned, but there were showers. Some people were saying, if you want to hike that far, yes, get a free shower, yes and I've taken a lot of showers there and they're the nicest showers I've found in Baja.
Speaker 1:They actually use like fancy products, really hot water, like it's really awesome, and there's a restaurant there. That's a beautiful with a view of the huge sear I think they're the Sierra Madres, but these huge mountains back there and you can get a pizza out of the wood fire pizza grill. So it's kind of like a little taste of fanciness in the middle of nowhere, but the prices reflect that. Yeah, yeah, if you're, if you have a chance to check it out, yeah, do the hike. Yeah, what were some of your favorite areas of Baja that you're going to go back again this year?
Speaker 2:Well, like I said before, if I ate, a Guadalupe is wine country. It is just stunning. It's mountainous, beautiful and there are several wineries that will let you park overnight, if you know, if you buy wine from them. We went to one of the biggest wineries which is on harvest host, but you don't have to be on harvest host to stay there and their wine is really good and incredibly cheap. I want to say like six dollars for a really good bottle of wine. Yes, so the tasting was like a normal tasting price. It was like twenty dollars or something to do the tasting, but the bottles were just incredibly cheap.
Speaker 2:I know some people bought cases of them to keep with them for the time they were in Baja and, yeah, that's a really great area. There are some more expensive and more fancy wineries as well. It's kind of just depending on your taste. They also have, like you know, luxury hotels there and you can sleep in wine barrels and do all those kinds of things. If you're interested in that, I think I'm gonna be there actually for Christmas this year, so we might do a hotel or something just for something to splurge on for the holidays.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've heard great things about that place, but I haven't been.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's beautiful. I know I have a friend who lives in San Diego who actually goes down there for just, you know, for weekends and things like that. So another place I wanna go back to for sure is the beaches outside of La Paz. Some of them are just absolutely stunning, and Tagalote is one of the popular ones. It gets incredibly crowded, especially during Escapar, which is a van gathering, and I mean there was probably over 1,000 vehicles there for the event last year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, playa Balandra is one of the has been rated one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. You cannot camp at it, but you can visit and they kind of limit your visit to half a day. I believe you can either go in the morning and then they clear out the beach and bring in the afternoon crew, or vice versa and Pichilingue, which you may have gone to in your sailboat, because we see lots of sailboats anchored out there. It's beautiful and my favorite place probably is somewhere along the East Cape. So between like Cabo Pulmo National Park and San Jose del Cabo, there's a stretch of beach which is starting to be developed, but it's still relatively undeveloped, so there's nothing for several hours.
Speaker 2:So if you stock up your van. You have water and you have everything you need. You can kind of go out there and just plant yourself for a while. So I did that for a while and just. It was an incredible experience to wake up in the morning and there would be whales breaching like right. You could see them right out your door and like things I never thought possible. When I moved into a van I was like this is incredible.
Speaker 1:That's really cool that you could see that from the beach too, because that's one of the joys of being in the sailboat anchored at these places is you just have this front row seat to all this wildlife. And you're right, it does come into the bays, because we've had whales, dolphins, stingrays. I don't know if you've seen the Mobula rays leaping out of the water, but it's just. It's really interesting the wildlife you see down there. It's very populated with wildlife and I know a lot of it's actually gone, because most of the shark population is gone. A lot of it's over fished. We had a hard time even catching a fish last year but there's still a lot of wildlife to see, so it's one of my favorite parts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there was way more wildlife than I had ever expected. I've heard people talk about you know, going on the whale watching boats and things like that, but I didn't realize from the beach how much you could see. Pretty much every night and every morning on the beach you could see whales on both sides. So there were humpback whales and gray whales, because it is migration season and calving season, and so also you could see lots of babies, which was incredible.
Speaker 1:That's so cool. Have you heard of the? There's a little bay that's on the Pacific side, ignacio, maybe, where you can go and take a boat out to be with the humpbacks and their young. Did you do that? Are you thinking of doing that this year?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we because I was with a group that went down in January. We were early, so we stopped just outside of Guerrero Negro. The bay is called Ojo de Libre and we went on a boat and we saw several whales because they were just starting to come in. But the captain said that there were probably somewhere around like I think 30 or 40 whales at that time and there are like 2,500 that come in season. So like we were like right at the beginning of it I know that people who were going back up around end of February-ish kind of got like the best show and I've seen all of their pictures and videos Like the whales come right up to the boat. They're like. They like want to be petted, like puppies, like they are, like I guess they're very, very interactive and, from my experience at least, like the boat tour company was pretty ethical, like they didn't do anything to bring the whales to them. They kind of just exist and come up on their own.
Speaker 1:That's incredible and that's something I would like to do sometime. Which is a little bit harder on the boat, cause you have to find somewhere to dock it and then you got to get a car and drive over there, so it's easier for you in the van, definitely yeah for sure.
Speaker 2:And like that place I want to say it was called Mario's, I can't quite remember, but they have camping. There's a campground on site so you can camp there and then get up and do like the early morning boat tour and go out and see the whales, or I mean you can stay as long as you want, but that's ideally what you would do is, you know, go on the morning one before it gets too crowded and you're fighting for space on a boat. But the camping was also very affordable there I don't want to say it was like maybe $10 or something, and then you can go out right in the morning.
Speaker 1:Very cool, fantastic. There's just so many places to explore in Baja, and you went with a group last year, so are you planning a solo trip this year? Are you meeting people, or how is that working?
Speaker 2:So I'm going to cross the border with two friends Well, right now it's two friends. We don't know, there might be more people that join us and we are going to do the holidays together and then kind of it's up in the air. I'm pretty used to traveling by myself, so once I get to a certain point I kind of feel like we'll probably split up and then meet back up, and that's just kind of how we all travel in general. So it makes sense to do the same in Baja, I think, crossing the border. You can absolutely cross the border by yourself, it's perfectly safe. But I think a lot of us just feel comfortable crossing the border together. You know, in case something happens, like somebody knows where you are. You know we have tabs on each other, and that was the first couple of days through the north part of Baja, where there isn't anything and there isn't cell signal. It just is easier to do with other people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes total sense because, yeah, there's way more in Baja Sur towns and people and cell signals. It feels a little less remote and better to be on your own, I'm sure. So I wanted to ask you about gear, like essential gear you think people should bring, or what you wish you had. You know you didn't have, but what you're bringing this year. Anything you can recommend about gear?
Speaker 2:Yes, definitely so. Walkie-talkies is the number one. So I would say, if you don't get anything else, get walkie-talkies so that you can communicate with people and you don't have cell signal, because that's going to be frequent, that you don't have cell signal. Second, I would say, get some sort of traction boards, something to get yourself out when you get stuck. I got stuck a couple of times, one in the sand, one in the rocks and sand, and actually that time I wound up having to get pulled out by a friend. So that was a little bit ridiculous.
Speaker 2:But the time I got stuck in the sand I was by myself and I have Gotreds, which I highly recommend. They take up hardly any space. They fold up very small. They can also be used as leveling blocks, which is like I love things that work more than one function in the van. So Gotreds are like my absolute favorite gear item I have. I have used them to get out of sand many times. They're easy to use on your own and I would say mud is the only thing they're not great at, and there's not really going to be mud in Baja. So for Baja they are a must and they just take up so much less space than those dry attraction boards when you have such limited room in your van.
Speaker 2:I would say two other things that I would recommend are these are like not must-haves, but nice to have Something to air down your tires with. So if you have like a presets that you can just air down your tires quickly and then a compressor to put air back in your tires, it just makes it so much easier to drive on sand or on some of like the really, really rocky areas. It's just a lot nicer. I had a compressor with me, but not the air down tool, so I was able to borrow that from a friend and I think I will definitely have my own this year and I'll probably have even a better compressor. My compressor took quite a while to air my tires back up, but I mean, if you have time, you don't need anything fancy, and even as slow as mine was, I also liked it to other people. So that's definitely something I would bring?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great tip. Yeah, did you bring like stuff to go in the water with, or are you bringing that this year?
Speaker 2:So I bought a snorkel, which is quite funny because I don't like fish and I probably didn't even really anticipate going snorkeling when I brought one. I would say if you have one, bring one. If you plan on snorkeling, bring that stuff. You can buy it there, but it's going to be at a premium because everyone needs one. And what I didn't know is that if you plan on swimming a lot or surfing or doing anything in the water, you probably want a wetsuit. The water is much colder than I anticipated. It's not very warm and you don't want to be in it very long if you don't have a wetsuit on. So if you plan on swimming or doing anything in the water, definitely bring a wetsuit, because they are more difficult to find there for sure.
Speaker 1:Definitely that's great advice because sometimes when we've been on the boat in the winter, or even in March when we went last year the water was very cold and I did wear a 3-2 wetsuit for a long time but once we reached we were in the water actually way longer than I would recommend. We're there until about mid-June and it was so hot but the water was about 85 by the time we left. So by May and June it's really warm and I was just swimming everywhere with no wetsuit and it was just fantastic for snorkeling and swimming. But I know, if it's not warm water it's definitely May or June or September or October, but in the winter it is cold and we definitely wear wetsuits all the time.
Speaker 1:But yeah, it depends on what time of year you're in the sea, because the water I think in the summer it gets up to like 90 there, because I have some boater friends who stay all summer. I don't know how they do it, but the water gets really warm but the air is also really hot and that makes it hard to sleep, especially if you're in a van even a smaller space in the boat and I imagine it gets even hotter unless you have a way to run an AC unit. So I don't think a lot of van lifers go in summer. I don't want to be there on the boat either.
Speaker 2:No, I was just thinking that. I was thinking that by the time I left at the end of March it was so hot in the van already it was like 90 degrees on the East Cape when I was deciding that I needed to leave. It was just kind of getting to be unbearable already, and it was only March, so I cannot imagine being there in June or some other month that's hotter than that. Yeah, it was a lot.
Speaker 1:I know and that's something we noticed with the boat as well, as when we were out at anchor we got more breezes off the water and the water there was cooler, like maybe 70. But then, when we'd walk to the beach and we'd walk to where some of the vans and the truck campers were, we're like, oh my gosh, it's hot, because the sand gets hot. It just makes you get that land heat coming up, and so it is a warmer experience, I think, if you're in the van and you have to leave a little earlier, something for people to keep in mind. All right, so, brooke, you have some more tips to share with people thinking of making the journey this year. Yeah, what other advice do you have?
Speaker 2:So when you are going to cross the border by land in a vehicle, you have to have Mexican auto insurance. Your US policy does not cover you driving in Mexico, and so you'll need to purchase a policy. You can typically purchase like 10 days a month, three months, six months. I think I did a six month policy for the valuation I put on my van and what I thought I needed. I think it cost me like $300 for six months, something like that. There are definitely higher plans, lower plans.
Speaker 2:Search around. Baja Bound is a company that a lot of people go with. It's very gringo, friendly. You can also, though, search around and find cheaper rates with smaller companies. I used Lewis and Lewis, and that's who I'm going to use again. They had by far the best rate for what I was looking for, so that's what I would recommend there. If you have any pets, you need to have proof of all of their vaccinations, and you need, I would say, print out paper copies to have with you, and you'll also be asked for your vehicle registration when you cross the border, so make sure that you have that with you. So those are my main things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm glad you remembered to mention about insurance, because even when we bring our van to Puerto Penaresco to work on the boat, we still have to have insurance. You know, whether it's our old Astro or the newer Sprinter. Yeah, the US insurance does not work. So that's so important that you brought that up. So thank you for remembering that tip.
Speaker 2:Also depending on how long you're going to go, for I have heard people say that they have been able to freeze their US policy so that they're not making payments on their US policy when they're not using it. So contact your company and see if there is a pause that you can put on it if you're going to be gone for several months.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's also a great advice, so cool. Well, yeah, thanks for sharing all this amazing information. I hope it inspires more people to make the trek, and you're going to be posting about it, I'm sure, on your Instagram account, so let people know where to come. Follow you.
Speaker 2:Sure, my Instagram account is the name of my van. It's named Prime the ProMaster, and you can see my rescue dog that I picked up while I was in Baja last winter. He's going to be going back to his hometown and see if he remembers anything.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, I'll make sure to link to your social media and the show notes and, yeah, and hopefully we'll run into each other at some point down there. You know it's hard to make the boat and the van be at the same place at the same time, but you never know, we'll be in touch and yeah, I hope you have another great season in there and I'm excited to follow your updates. Thanks for having me. Well, you can follow Brooke's adventures on her Instagram account. You'll find that link below in the show notes, and I'll be posting about boat life from my account, which is at the Wayward Home. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Wayward Home podcast. Remember to like, subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcast. It really helps me reach more people who are interested in nomadic living. I'll see you next time and thanks for tuning in.