Baja California Mexico Peninsula Road Report San Diego To Cabo UPDATED
September 2, By Monday, September 3, some tropical storm force winds will be offshore of extreme southern Baja. Waves are already reaching the surf spots, with up to 4-5 foot swells.
The offshore waters off of southern Baja are cooler than normal this summer, thus, this storm will be limited in its forward motion and ability to grow into a larger force. BWS forecasts some rain and winds starting late Monday, ending Thursday from Cabo San Lucas north to San Ignacio. Stay tuned…
August 30, By Tuesday, September 4, we may have a tropical storm threatening Baja South.
Sea swells should start bumping this weekend, from Cabo south. Surf for exposed southern beaches will see 4-5 foot swells as early as Sunday.
August 25, Baja Norte, cooler along the northern coasts. Mostly clear throughout, with partly cloudy to cloudy conditions, south.
August 24, Baja Norte: Partly cloudy south, cooler along the coast, north. Rain Reported on the East cape and Los Cabos.
August 22, The Remnants of Hurricane Dean may be able to impact Baja California weather over the next ten days. As the system crosses mainland Mexico, over the Sierra Madre and into the Pacific or Sea of Cortez, which is a very tall order, it may continue to be an organized tropical depression with the capability to push rain, clouds and some winds onto the peninsula. Stay tuned.
August 18, Rain reported throughout southern Baja, from La Paz south to the East Cape. Up to three-quarters of an inch of the liquid gold. Keeping down the dust and promising a lush, green fall season for the cape of the Baja peninsula. Overcast sky conditions and tropical, humid heat from Loreto south to Cabo San Lucas. Some locations received over an inch!
COURTESY BAJA WEATHER SERVICE
The UPDATED Baja Safari Mexico Club Road Conditions Report began at around 8 a.m. and the drive out of La Paz was as usual, a good one. We breezed through the first check point and headed north. La Paz to Constitution About 50 miles north of La Paz we encountered the first road construction. There was a short detour around the building of a bridge. This bridge appears to be almost complete. Another 16 miles and another short detour with another bridge under construction. Right before the little town of Las Pocitas there were maquinas were doing some minor road repairs. We mention this as they were right out in the road.
One hundred miles north of La Paz there was a longer detour. This will be drainage for a large vado. They continue to work on the large bridge between Constitution and Insurgentes. The detour is a short one. Insurgentes to Loreto Nine miles north of Insurgentes there is a major detour with a bridge under construction. Fifty two miles north a short detour, bridge under construction. The bridge just before Loreto is still under construction. This detour is a rough and longer one. Loreto to Mulege Ten miles north of Loreto there is a small bridge under construction with a small detour. Sixteen miles north of Loreto there is a grande bridge under construction with a detour. Another four miles after this there is approximately 3 miles of pretty rough road. There is also a bridge under construction and a rough detour.
Thirty-one miles north of Loreto we drove over the first new and complete bridge! At forty-nine miles north of Loreto there is still a pretty rough arroyo! Coming into Mulege there is a detour and another grande bridge under construction. The town of Mulege appears to have finished the major clean-up after Hurricane John. The road from Mulege to Santa Rosalia is very good. The only bridge under construction is right before Santa Rosalia and there is a small detour. (Picture 10) Santa Rosalia to Guerrero Negro Highway 1 to San Ignacio was good. The major bridge they were building over the huge vado there must be done as neither one of us remember any detours. We made a short stop in San Ignacio, just to look around. The road from there to Guerrero Negro was also good driving.
We spent the night at Los Caracoles. Los Caracoles is a real nice hotel on the right as you enter Guerrero Negro. $42.00 for the night. Guerrero Negro to Tijuana The ride north the next day was pretty uneventful. We noticed lots of California cars heading south, loaded down with surfboards. We also noticed all of the vineyards being planted around the Santo Tomas Valley. The construction of condos and homes from Ensenada north is truly mind boggling! Our happiest moment, arriving at the border and only spending 45 minutes to cross!!! We arrived in San Diego around 6 p.m. We hope this is of some assistance to you heading north from La Paz.
More UPDATES
We are heading toSanta Rosalia having left Los Angeles mid day our first leg only took us as far as San Quentin in daylight. The roadway from TJ to Ensenada was a breeze after skirting the afternoon TJ traffic. Once in the agricultural area south of Ensenada there was a lot of truck traffic and slow busses with the evening’s workers returning home. We avoid driving after sunset as much as we can. We were happy to find a place to pull over and camp by the end of the first day near a hotel in San Quentin were a number of other road campers had decide to spend the night. On day 2 we made great time and the road was in excellent shape. we were surprised at the number of new bridges being constructed through the high desert north of through to Santa Rosalia.
We didn’t keep exact count because none of the construction zones slowed traffic in the least. All the by-passes around the construction areas were well paved and most even striped. Pretty soon there won’t even be any vados to challenge the Baja driver! We camped that night in Santispac, right out on the sand spit in the Sea of Cortez. It was a lovely place to wake up and it reminded us of hw much we had missed the Sea. Day 3 proved as uneventful, taking it at a 6leisurely pace there were virtually problems to report from Loreto to La Paz. The Santa Rita bridge area is STILL being worked on. This was the easiest drive down Baja we have ever made, and by the way, the Pemex station attached to the La Quinta Hotel in Catavina is operational!
Another UPDATE
Looking north over the quiet little town of Santa Rosalia, TJ to La Paz. The transpeninsular highway has never been in better shape! I crossed the border at San Ysidro in the predawn hours and was waved through Customs, despite having tripped a red light. Traffic was light until I was on the south side of Ensenada – it must have been Friday rush hour! From Ensenada to Colnet, truck traffic kept me below the posted limits most of the way. It is incredible how much areas like San Quentin and Colnet have grown! The military check point north of El Rosario was already busy at 11AM, with about 15 cars waiting for northbound Santa Rosita, south of Ensenada has nearly doubled in size in the last few years. inspection. This was the only checkpoint that even bothered to open the rear hatch of my car and take a cursorily look through my belongings. Northbound travelers seemed to be getting a pretty good going over through. The trip through the high desert was lovely, very green and the Boojums are in great spring form. Watch for the speed trap in Catavina. Even the Semi’s were going through the area at a crawl. There is the reoccurring pot hole in the south bound lane in the vado on the south side of Catavina. There was virtually nothing to report the rest of the the first day, in Baja California. we crossed into Baja Sur around sunset and stayed in Guerreo Negro.
At the immigration Station we were asked for our travel papers but the car was neither searched or sprayed. A Columbia Exports truck winds it’s way up the steep grade south of Ensenada We left about 9AM, after the fog lifted in Guerreo Negro and made good time on the long straight-aways toward San Ignacio. There were some rough spots in the road for the fist 80 miles, but nothing drastic. In San Ignacio a truck carrying chicken crates had lost part of it’s load right at the main intersection where you turn off Hwy one to go to town. There were a few chickens running about, but there didn’t seem to be enough to have filled the cages dumped in the road. Perhaps Chicken was on the menu at several additional homes in S. I. that night! As we got closer to Santa Rosalia there were still some warning markers for hurricane road damage. It seemed that most of them were false alarms, as any damage we saw and already been repaired. A bridge is under construction at the canyon north of Cuesta del Infierno Just north of Cuesta del Infierno, (the long steep hill, just north of Santa Rosalia) there is a dramatic vado that the highway has wound through for years.
There are always a few wrecked cars at the bottom, those that failed to negotiate the sharp curves and drop-offs of this road hazard. Now they are building a bridge across it that will make the roadway flat and straight from one side of the canyon to the other. Having driven this road for years, I think it will take away some of the charm though. Mulege still showed debris lining the riverbed, but nothing like we had expected. South bound at Cuesta del Infierno homeward bound travelers get their reassuring first glimpses of the Sea of Cortez Closer to Loreto there was more evidence of road repairs and just one dip about 2km south of Loreto that rattled my teeth a little. Could be much worse pulling a trailer. Just north of the CD Insergents intersection they are rebuilding a bridge. It’s a short detour that slows you down to a crawl for a few hundred yards. It was clear sailing from there to La Paz, with the exception of the traditional road damage near Santa Rita. One vado made the car bottom out at 50mph. In the entire trip we saw 1 Federal Hwy patrol car and one Green Angel (Hwy rescue) which is fewer than I have EVER seen. Looking north along the main boulevard in CD Constitucion We saw quite a few US license plates driving south and met some great people at our rest stops. Truck traffic seemed light, but our second day was a Saturday. We had just one run in with a small caravan of RV’ers headed south. They seemed to feel it was an affront to their manhood to be passed, despite the fact they could barely maintain 40mph on some of the grades. Overall, it was probably one of the smoothest trips I have made in 8 years. Our total ‘on the road time’ was 22hrs and 15 minutes, from the border to our home in La Paz.
La Paz to Cabo San Lucas
The four lane expansion continues between La Paz and Cabo San Lucas along Hwy 1 and Hwy 19 along the Pacific Coast route of the Baja Sur loop. Four nicely paved lanes now are complete from La Paz to the 1/19 Y. The exception is a new bridge over the vado just about 1 mile north of the Y. The bridge construction of the piles has been completed and crews are now working just south of the roadway, prefabricating the beams for the bridge. The pieces will later be moved into place by cranes. A similar process is underway right within the pueblo of San Pedro. San Pedro used to be a series of speed bumps on the road to Todos Santos from La Paz. Pottery shops, roadside tacos, locals selling pitayas or queso are common and little tiendas lined the highway for not much more than a mile.
When the four lane is completed it will alter the face of San Pedro into a place where dust collects from fast passing cars. Another significant challenge to La Paz/Cabo driving is a construction of a new bridge at the Bordo Vado on Calle Forjadores (Hwy 1) just meters south of the cutoff for Pichilingue. They have already paved the by-pass to which traffic will be diverted shortly. The vado is nearly a Km wide and ALL commercial traffic and a majority of all traffic bound for the rest of Baja Sur will have to cross this detour then enter a traffic signal that is already congested. Paving, they are resurfacing Hwy 19 between Cerritos and Cabo San Lucas.
Three years ago this section was resurfaced with what I call the ‘rice krispy cookie’ technique, were aggregate is laid down, then tar applied and the process repeated. That section of highway was under construction for months. It also proved not very durable under the heavy traffic and high heat of that section of roadway. Everything consumed in Los Cabos travels that road. This time a paving machine is laying beautiful asphalt surface at the rate of about a 2 feet a minute. The road crews of closed 1 of two lanes for what seemed to be an inordinate distance of about 3 miles. Traffic is held in one direction for up to 15 minutes. Quite a line can build up in that time ad this can be particularly difficult in the southbound direction in which all the trucks are full. The 30 mph crawl that the pack is reduced to can often be reduced further when there are several heavy trucks in your convoy.
Construction on the 4 lane has begun from Todos Santo northward. Along the south side of the road clearing has begun. Unfortunately, one of the most ill-conceived Pemex stations has been constructed on the outskirts of Todos Santos. The new station is located on the headwaters of the freshwater feed to the city below. All gas stations leak, at very least from their parking apron. To add insult to injury here, the construction company pushed the building trash into the marsh are RIGHT ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD in plain view. That’s OK Pemex, there is lots of clean fresh water here in Baja Sur! In the middle of the stretch from the Y to Todos Santos is a restaurant named Bugunbillia and a cluster of homes. In this area the 4 lane work is in process as well and there is a detour off the road during weekdays of about 2-3km. This is driving over graded desert.
There are places that will become quickly impassable when it rains, even a little Traffic is slow and the dust is high. I have been driving the Baja Sur Loop back and forth to Cabo now for 6 years. There have always been a limited number of places to pass and fewer that many drivers would call safe. Over the years I have memorized al of these places and strategically plan my moves around convoys of trucks. on this last trip, so much traffic is using this road in the other lane, those rare passing locations often have on-coming traffic. Although the 4 lane construction is going to be much more painful before it gets better, it is sorely needed. For years, the 1/19 route was faster for La Paz travelers to get to the San Jose del Cabo Airport. Today, With the increased traffic, construction and that southbound trucks are laden, I found the Hwy 1 route along East Cape, although longer, took exactly the same amount of time as the Pacific route. Northbound, Hwy 1/19 is still a few about 15 minutes shorter.
Checkpoint Tip
The Mexican Military is stepping up efforts to interdict drug traffic, particularly in Baja California (Norte for those who don’t know better) and the checkpoints are the most aggressive I have seen. When at one stop I witnessed one couple make a mistake I highly recommend against. While two young soldiers searched their car these two gringos struck up idle conversation with the officer and turned their backs on their possessions. At checkpoints you can request that only one person search your car while you watch. (you are not afforded this courtesy by US Customs who will intentionally seek to divert your attention during the search) If you can not communicate this to the soldiers, just keep an eye on them. These are young kids, many from poor families a video camera, $20 bill in the dash or other objects could prove a temptation. Coolly explain, if they ask, that if you watch, there is no chance of you falsely accusing them of taking something if ‘we search the car ‘together’ (contigo) If you have delicate objects (as my computer case, which to them might look like a gun case, simple say, ‘permítame, por favor’ (par-mit-a-may) This has never failed for me, they step aside and allow you to open for their inspection the article in question.
Baja Safari Mexico Club Editor
