RVing to Mulege – 11/20 Update

We ventured back down to Mulege recently in our RV (36ft Class A Winnebago towing a Jeep) from Oregon. If you are planning on or considering RVing down to Baja, this report will hopefully give an idea of what you might expect.

We crossed the border at Mexicali East, an easy drive from Desert Trails RV Park where we stayed the night before in El Centro, California. We had a brief delay in the secondary inspection while my wife Jaime was escorted into the INM office to FMMs that we purchased online stamped. I stayed with the RV and had a couple of officials come on board to do a cursory search which included a dog sniffing around inside. I’m not sure what the dog was trained to find but it probably wasn’t Oregon Pinot Noir and IPA.

Mexicali is a large city, but I find it fairly easy to navigate. We like crossing in Tecate and stopping in the incredible Baja wine country of Valle de Guadalupe but really don’t like dealing with the congestion of Ensenada and farming towns south. Highway 5 down to San Felipe for our first stop was a breeze. Stress always melts away as you drive further into the fun side of the wall.

We stayed a week at Victor’s RV park which is a close walk to town for tacos. Our dog Crosby’s rabies vaccine was expiring soon so we paid a visit to a great local vet who had cleaned his teeth a couple of years ago. Gracias Dr. Solis! We enjoyed the beach and stocked up on supplies in preparation for our next stop in the beautiful off grid area of Bahia San Luis Gonzaga.

The road south of Victor’s is a little rough, but we quickly hit the smooth new pavement, a night and day difference from our first trip in 2017 that was a vado (extreme dips) and pothole nightmare. The vados have been tamed and the drive was a breeze to Gonzaga Bay. We pulled into the store at Rancho Grande and got the bad news that we could only stay two nights instead of a week as planned as all spaces were reserved through the weekend. We enjoyed our palapa, the beach, the beautiful bay, and almost perfect weather for 250 pesos per night. Sometimes you have to punt so we decided to head to Bahia de Los Angeles.

The last 25 or so miles connecting Highway 5 to Highway 1 took a lot of time and effort to finish. The construction was finally completed earlier this year and hats off to the road builders – it is still in excellent condition. Highway 1 was often a minefield of potholes South of Catavina but thankfully is now in very good condition. It’s still very narrow and there are no shoulders to speak of, which can make passing a semi-truck a little nerve racking. Thirty miles later we arrived at the turn off to LA Bay and found more new pavement for about another ten miles. At some point the Mexican government had a plan to truck yachts from the Pacific to Bahia de Los Angeles so the road is actually fairly wide.

We went back to Daggetts Campground a little out of town where we stayed last year and found a good spot overlooking the bay. It’s a little spendy by Baja standards for dry camping with no hookups at $10 US (200 pesos) per person per day, but they have hot showers and a RV dump station so it feels like an OK deal considering the lack of options in the area. We have solar power which is pumping in the almost perfect sunny weather.

A sudden death of our neighbor and good friend altered our plans so instead of lingering in LA Bay, we headed back early to Mulege. Traffic was light on Highway 1 and the road was in good condition so the drive took about seven hours. There were two rocky and unwelcome detours around some bridge work south of Santa Rosalia to note, but after some seemingly endless last few kilometers, we descended back down the hill into Mulege and finally home.

We have more information on our RV travels in Baja on our blog at Away We Winnebago (I still need to update from last year). It’s getting to be a little out of date but we still refer to The Camping Mexico’s Baja book. Benchmark Maps has released a new and very detailed Baja Atlas. The website and app iOverlander is a great resource for camping spots and more. There are also two Facebook Groups for Mulege – Mulege Newsfeed and MULEGE NEWS. For Mexican auto and RV insurance, we use and recommend Baja Bound.

We hope the rest of this site is helpful for planning your visit to our little slice of paradise here in Mexico.