Inspiring Baja Travelers

The thing that inspired me to visit Baja was a website. It was pretty simple and has long since been taken down, but it was great, and will always be special to me. Sometimes I think about making one like it to inspire others.

I'm a boater at heart. We spent years boating around the Channel Islands and Santa Barbara. Then started doing trips down to San Diego and eventually Ensenada.

One day I just happened to look at a map and saw the SoC. It instantly intrigued me. And then I stumbled across a site that an experienced sail boater had created. It had an interactive map of the SoC, and you could click on about 10 different places that would take you to a page about that town. It had Mulege, BoLA, San Carlos (Sonora), Puerto Escondido, Gonzaga Bay, Loreto, Santa Rosalia, and several others.

Each page contained several pictures and a brief description of the area. It listed out the facilities in the town (how to get gas, if a mechanic was available, food supplies, etc.). All stuff geared to boaters.

This was the start for me. It really conveyed the remoteness that is Baja. How isolated and extreme Baja is. Think I was about 31-32 at the time, and I really wanted to visit every one of those places. And we did!

The books that most inspired me were Gerry Cunningham's 3-4 boating guide books. He wrote about every single anchorage in the SoC in great detail. Loads of pictures of his boat in different bays, and a lot of aerial photos. I still review the books from time to time.





[Edited on 5-19-2019 by JZ]

Quote: Originally posted by TMW

When I moved to San Diego in 1978 I started going to Baja with my brother. He and his wife were scuba divers and we went to a place called Kennedy's camp across the hills from campo La Jolla on the road to La Bufadora. For several years this was the only place we went besides the various places along the way. We ate fish tacos in Ensenada at the fish market but never stayed in town. In 1987 a friend said he was going to Colonet and asked me and my wife to join him and his family and a few friends. So off we went. We camped at the sand dunes at San Antonio Del Mar. While there we saw various off road vehicles traveling north to south a little inland from where we were. One stopped and appeared to be doing work on the car. So we rode our motorcycles over to it. We asked what they were doing and he said they were pre-running the Baja 500. What is the Baja 500 we asked and he told us it was an off road race of about 500 miles. They were on their way to Mike's Sky Ranch. We asked were is that at. He told us to follow the ribbons and arrows up into the mountains to find it. He also gave us a map The next day 4 of us took off for Mike's. When we got there and in the bar was a distinguished looking gentleman with gray hair and a mustache. I walked over and before I could say anything he introduced himself as Mike Leon the owner. After a brief exchange I asked him what was the Baja 500 race all about. For the next two hours we were schooled on Baja racing. After several margaritas we went back to our camp. We went down to see the race and in the following months we made plans to race the Baja 1000. That was when I read everything I could find on Baja and Baja racing. I was officially hooked on Baja.

Great story Tom!
Have you seen this book by Lyle Engel from 1974? It is primarily about Baja and the NORRA years before SCORE. I got it when I was in high school.