On our way to Mulege, we planned to stop in the port town of Santa Rosalía. This was actually the busiest, most developed and biggest “city” we’ve come across since crossing the border on the east side of the Baja Peninsula. The streets are small, packed with cars, motorcycles, scooters and pedestrians. There is hardly room to move around in a vehicle. Anything you read that says you’re better off parking a little out of town and walking in or taking a tow vehicle in is absolutely correct. Though, I’d really only consider taking in a tow vehicle that is the size of a motorcycle or scooter, not an actual 4 wheeled vehicle. You’ll likely find nowhere to park and it’s frustrating trying to maneuver through the narrow one-way streets. We thought we would find a little café and try to do some homework, however, after trying to maneuver through the streets and finding nowhere to park, we headed just south of town to an RV park that no longer exists. After the failed attempt at finding somewhere to set up camp and find somewhere to get Wi-Fi for homework, we gave up and decided to keep moving south to Mulege.
It was a short drive from Santa Rosalía to Mulege. Maybe 45 minutes. We drove underneath the arch that signifies the entrance to the town. The streets are narrow and mostly one way. It’s a bustling community and they take pride in keeping the town clean. There are parks scattered throughout the community, though the placement of some of these parks leaves more questions than answers. There is this awesome Tortilleria just as you enter the town. We were told by our cousin to check it out. When we got in there we saw a man standing on a table pushing stuff into what looked like an enormously oversized coffee grinder. At the bottom, another man sat in a chair and pulled out fresh tortilla after fresh tortilla. The shelves were bare except for a handful of flour tortilla packages. Of course we bought some, you absolutely cannot pass up fresh tortillas.
We passed through town looking for a specific RV park and realized we were on the wrong side of the inlet and we needed to keep on the outskirts of town. As we were coming to this realization, we happened upon another RV park and looked around. It was such a beautiful and quaint RV park. It had palm trees, banana groves with bananas growing, grass parking pads, water, sewer hook-ups, electricity, clean bathrooms and was located just about half a mile from the town square. All this for $200p per night. The equivalent of $10 usd.
We decided to stay for two nights. We unloaded our things, set up camp and set out on the scooter to explore. We came across a few places. Kaden’s favorite was the Panaderia. Of course, because they sell all sorts of junk food. We went there every day.
I had decided to stop in at a local pharmacy to get some antibiotics because I had been sick since just after Christmas and couldn’t seem to kick it. I had already done a ten-day treatment of Amoxicillin because I self-diagnosed with severe bronchitis, bordering on walking pneumonia. I wasn’t getting better, in fact I was seeming to get worse, so I walked in and requested Azithromycin, but they only had erythromycin, so I settled for that. The woman at the counter told me I needed a prescription for it, so I asked her where I go to get one. She said, “right here.” She explained that if the medicine cost over $125p you needed a prescription. She took my name and wrote that I was a tourist, the cost and name of the medicine and sold me the antibiotics.
I walked out with my 5 day supply of erythromycin and we walked the streets taking in the shops, sights and wonderful smells of all the street food being cooked. We took Kaden back to camp because he wanted some separate time from us. We left him at camp and went into town. Bronson and I found this awesome restaurant. The food was delicious and the Margaritas were even better! We ended up (as we often do) talking to a bunch of people around us and made quick friends. There was another couple who were down there visiting their ex-pat parents. They have an 11-year old daughter. We decided we should get the kids together so they could play.
The following morning, we met with that family and took our paddle boards across the street to the inlet and jumped in the water. We let the kids play for a bit until the other family had to leave. We spent most of the day under the sun on the inlet, soaking in the rays and enjoying these fleeting moments. We ended up liking the area so we extended our stay by 2 days.
We had been invited to an event happening at the Racing Bar by some folks who were also staying at the same RV park. Turns out, it was the owner of the establishment’s birthday. She was turning 60, and the community was putting on a celebration for her. There was live music, free tacos and $10p donations for drinks. Kaden was not enjoying himself because he didn’t recognize some of the music. We ate, had a couple of drinks, left our donation and headed out toward the light house. We couldn’t actually get to the light house because it was on Federal land and had been fenced off. Most locals will go up there anyway, but if anyone would get caught, it would be us and then we’d be suffering the worst of it, so we opted against trespassing.
On our way back, we could see a church steeple from the top of a hill. We took maybe 3 wrong turns before finally finding the dirt road that led us up to this seemingly abandoned church. It’s a church with a 270-degree view of the Sea of Cortez. It’s gorgeous. I was a little baffled by the fact that there were signal boosters in the bell tower of the church. To each, their own. We snapped some pictures and headed out to find this abandoned hotel which at one point in time housed the rich and famous. The views from this hilltop retreat are phenomenal. I’m in utter disbelief that some foreigner hasn’t come in and bought the land to build a monstrous villa or hotel on it. If I had plans to settle down, I may have considered it.
We ended up meeting another caravan of full time RV families passing through. We were invited to their campsite for a campfire and kid time. When we arrived, the kids made themselves comfortable with each other, and before we knew it, they were making short movies. By nearly 10 pm, we were exhausted and still had a 20-minute scooter drive along treacherous dirt roads to get to our campsite across town. Kaden didn’t want to leave and I was starting to feel worse. We made it back to camp, cleaned up and hit the sack.
The following morning, Bronson drove the scooter into town with all of our laundry. When I say all, I mean everything except what I’m currently wearing. This included all of our bedding, floor mats, clothes, towels, throw blankets, etc. I was all but happy to pull out our -20-degree sleeping bags we keep for backpacking. It was already warm and I wasn’t needing to roast to death at night. Nonetheless, our laundry got done. We picked it up the next day and decided to head out of town toward Loreto.
