Big Trip Day 399: Wind World
Hey y’all,
Last you heard, Dory and I were in Loreto, on the Sea of Cortez side of Baja Sur, so that I could prepare for a virtual job interview. The moment my interview was completed, we set out on the road again and headed north towards another remote surf spot called Punta Rosarito, better known to surfers as “The Wall.” As instructed by The Surfer’s Guide to Baja, we turned off the highway onto a faint dirt road at kilometer 23 and drove until we reached the coast. Similar to Punta Conejo, this beach was on the edge of nowhere, devoid of any homes or businesses, and covered in cobblestones.
If you asked me to describe The Wall in one word, the word I would choose is “windy.” The wind is all-powerful and controls this place and the people in it. When the wind is blowing offshore, the waves are groomed into a nice shape, so you go surfing. When the wind is blowing onshore, the waves are terrible, so you hide from the incessant blowing. If you happen to be overly ambitious, you might partake in the one other possible activity, which is building a wall out of rocks to block the wind. Seriously, that’s it. Surf, hide, or build a rock wall (which is really just another form of hiding); those are your options.
Unlike all of the other surfers that come here, we didn’t have a cozy van or camper to relax in. We just had our little car and a tent, but we made it work for a few days. We started referring to our simplified environment as Wind World and Tent World. We existed in Wind World from about 7am to 6pm, and after that it got too cold so we were forced into Tent World until the next day. Needless to say, we spent a lot of time reading while sitting criss-cross applesauce.
Folks that come to The Wall often stay for weeks or months at a time, just waiting for the right conditions to line up to deliver perfect waves. We know the waves must sometimes be truly excellent to make up for the fact that it’s sort of a miserable place to be for a long time. But we also know the waves must often be terrible, because there are a lot of very fancy rock walls around, and you only build those when the waves are bad and you need to kill time until they get better. To be honest, I was quite impressed with some of the rock structures and would be excited to take on a project of my own if we ever come back with a nice camper and a month with nothing to do.
During our short time at The Wall, the waves were small but with a good shape, which made for some enjoyable surfing. Dory began to find her stride on the longboard that we’d picked up in Cerritos. We could imagine staying there for a while, but without a robust shelter, we were starting to feel a little worse for wear. On the third evening, just as Dory began to heat up some dinner, we ran out of fuel for the camp stove. Recognizing that as a sign, we sadly ate our cold quesadillas and prepared to spend one final night in Tent World.
The next morning, as we were preparing to leave The Wall, we were presented with two options: we could backtrack a few miles southeast to the highway on the same dirt road we came in on. Or, we could drive north about 18 miles on the dirt road that hugs the coast and follows a more direct route to our next destination, Santa Rosalillita (ro-sa-lee-yee-ta). As Chief of Driving Operations, I elected the latter option because I liked the idea of cruising along the coast, and I was feeling pretty confident in my abilities to navigate these Baja dirt roads. As it turns out, this decision was a critical error.
Throughout Baja, there are various classes of dirt roads: some are nicely graded, offering a smooth ride; others are slightly uneven, riddled with rocks and potholes, resulting in a bumpier experience; and finally there are some that are more of an obstacle course than a road.
Our 18 mile drive started out in the typical bumpy fashion, but about half way through our journey, when it felt like we’d gone way too far to turn around, the road turned into an obstacle course. Keep in mind, we are driving a 2012 Subaru Impreza. This is not the ultimate adventure vehicle type of Subaru that you are likely thinking of. No, this rig has less clearance than a Toyota Prius.
So there we were, cruising in our lowrider, strategically lining up the wheels to straddle washouts, and expertly weaving around any tall rocks and high centers. We stopped about every 100 yards so that Dory could exit the vehicle with the collapsible shovel in hand, ready to clear the road of any threatening boulders or fill in any massive holes to create a passable pathway. It was slow going, and there was a nonzero chance of doing catastrophic damage to the car, so we started discussing how prepared we were to stay the night (keeping in mind that with no gas for the stove, we were on cold quesadilla rations.) Our pleasant drive up the coast had turned utterly dreadful, but we pushed on.
After a few hours of white-knuckled concentration, several scrapes and bonks to the undercarriage of the vehicle, and a temporary detachment of the front bumper, we arrived just a stone's throw away from our destination, Santa Rosalillita. Tragically, the final stretch required us to cross a sandy beach where we were guaranteed to get stuck.
After taking a moment to master our emotions (we both wanted to cry,) we backtracked, and managed to find an alternate road up and around to the other side of the beach. After almost four hours, we were at last — at last! — in Santa Rosalillita, with the car in more or less the same condition it started in. Immediately after parking the car outside the motel, we cracked open a couple Tecates and congratulated each other for surviving the journey. We had put my little Subaru to the ultimate test, and it passed, barely. But this experience confirmed that next time we come to Baja, it will be in a big ol’ truck.
Santa Rosalillita is a peculiar place. We decided to go there simply because it was another spot mentioned in the surf guidebook, and we thought (erroneously) that it would be pretty easy to stop by on our way north. Rosalillita, just like all the fishing villages scattered along the coast, has almost nothing going on, with just a couple places to eat, a few little stores to buy basic groceries, and a fishing cooperative that employs every man in town.
What sets Rosalillita apart from other fishing villages is that rather than a bumpy dirt road connecting the town to the main Baja highway, there is a perfectly paved asphalt road (we came into town from The Wall via the coast, so didn’t enjoy the pavement on our way in.) Additionally, there is a giant abandoned marina built on the northside of the village. Both of these construction works were part of a $2 billion plan from the early 2000’s to create a “Nautical Ladder” to attract tourism from wealthy American yachters. According to the project concept, 22 marinas were to be built all around the west and east side of the Baja peninsula for the yachts to anchor. From there, these affluent tourists would disembark, stay at luxury hotels, and pass the time at golf courses and restaurants that were to be developed all around the marinas.
The Mexican government and their developer buddies imagined that many yachters would want to visit the beautiful and calm Sea of Cortez, but wouldn’t want to sail all the way around the peninsula to get there. So, some genius came up with the bright idea of installing a hydraulic lift at the marinas in Santa Rosalillita and at the Bay of Los Angeles, on the Sea of Cortez side. The idea was that these tourists would sail their yacht 300 miles south from San Diego to Santa Rosalillita, pull their massive boat out of the water with the hydraulic lift, put it on a truck, drive it 45 minutes across the peninsula on the brand new road (which is extra wide to allow for two yachts to pass in opposing directions), and drop it into the Sea of Cortez at the Bay of Los Angeles.
Unsurprisingly, the project was doomed from the start. The predicted uptick in affluent tourists who would buy a yacht in order to visit Mexico was wildly overestimated. That, combined with a change in the federal administration and a recession, ultimately caused the investors to back out and for the project to fail miserably. In the end, Santa Rosalillita was left with an abandoned marina that’s completely filled in with sand because there’s nobody around to dredge it. On the plus side, the residents have the best road in all of Baja connecting them to the highway. The other silver lining is that the jetty, which was installed as the perimeter of the marina, has modified the sand in such a way that there is now a really nice peeling wave that breaks off the end of it, and that wave now attracts a tiny bit of surf tourism. While we were there, the waves were only about a foot tall, but we still got out and caught a couple just to say we surfed it.
After two nights in Rosalillita, we enjoyed the perfectly paved road out to the highway, and headed north towards Camalú. About halfway there, I noticed that a police vehicle with its lights on was slowly gaining on us. To play it safe, I pulled over at the next turnoff. As we waited for the police car to pass, I noticed that we happened to stop at the entrance to a beachfront campground called Quinta Cristina. For kicks, we decided to drive in and take a look. There was nobody in sight, but the camping area seemed nice and the waves out front looked pretty decent. Without hesitation, we concluded that fate must have brought us there and we needed to stay. While I was out surfing, Dory found the friendly campground attendant who told her the camping fee was “lo que ustedes gusten” (whatever you’d like to pay). With access to water, a bathroom, and a picnic table, this campsite was quite luxurious compared to windy Punta Rosarito. We stayed two nights before completing our journey north to Camalú, another spot we picked from the surf guidebook.
Upon arriving in Camalú, we stayed at the one and only beachside hotel called La Cueva del Pirata (The Pirate’s Cave). Once again, we were the only guests, asking ourselves a question that’s come up a lot over the course of Big Trip: “where in the heck is everybody?” We opted for the simple hotel room, which came with an excess of mold and a front door that didn’t lock. On the plus side, the showers were very hot and we could see the surf break from our window. Given the state of the room and the general emptiness of the hotel, we correctly assumed that it would be appropriate to bust out the Coleman stove (with newly replenished fuel!) and cook our meals on the table just outside of our hotel room. We are not the yacht people that the Office of Tourism was hoping for.
On one Saturday night around 2 AM, we were startled awake when some guests showed up and started blasting mariachi music. Dory dutifully gave them a stern talking to, but the drunkards continued to yell obnoxiously into the early hours of the morning. The next day, we learned that our new neighbors were staying one more night. Once again, Dory, as Chief Conflict Officer, took care of business. She spoke to the hotel staff to see if they could resolve the situation, and the solution that was offered demonstrated a stark difference between the US and Mexico. In the US, there would be clearly stated quiet hours, and anyone breaking the rules would be reprimanded by hotel security. In Mexico, however, it seems as though everyone has a right to party on the weekend, so instead of shutting down the party, they told us we could sleep in a deluxe room on the opposite side of the hotel. This turned out to be the perfect solution. The partiers raged all night and we got a great night sleep in a quiet upgraded room. Everybody wins! I realize that this story makes us sound like grumpy old people, but in our defense, we regularly wake up at 6am to go to work as professional surfers — and their music was exceptionally loud!
There were a handful of mornings where we could walk straight out of our hotel room to surf the slow peeling waves beneath the cliff. When the swell picked up, we drove 20 minutes to Punta San Jacinto, a point break also known as Shipwrecks, due to the sunken ship that rests right in the path of the wave, slowly becoming a progressively sharper, more alarming hazard as the salt water erodes the metal.
Shipwrecks is often too small to surf, but we caught it at the perfect time, when big, slow, waves were wrapping around the point and gently peeling for 100 yards all the way to the other end of the beach. The downside of riding a really long wave is that when the ride is over, you have a really long paddle back to the line up. As an alternative, in order to conserve energy in your arms, it is often preferable to get out of the water where the wave ends and walk back on foot to the starting point. With only a couple other surfers out, we caught wave after wave until an unbearable hunger forced us to take a break. Since perfect conditions like this don’t come around very often, these are the days that stick in your mind, fueling your stoke and inspiring you to plan your next surf trip.
When we weren’t surfing or cooking on the hotel porch, we were visiting Taqueria El Perico, where we were blessed with the most delicious tacos de suadero and vampiros de adobada, topped with a tomatillo salsa studded with chunks of mango, avocado, roasted garlic, and spicy dried chiles. This is where we learned that “adobada” is just another word for “al pastor”, meaning delicious marinated pork fired on a spit. Complemented with a fresh guava juice or horchata and a slice of chocoflan for dessert, these may have been our absolute favorite meals in all of Mexico, and one of the greatest of all of Big Trip. We went back five times.
After a good run of enjoying the professional surfer lifestyle, we had to take a short interlude. If you recall, back in Loreto, I had a virtual job interview. A few weeks later, I was scheduled for a followup interview with a panel of seven people. To ensure I had super reliable wifi, we decided to depart our crummy hotel on the beach and take a trip to the big city, Ensenada, where we discovered the outer limits of how many IPAs a human being can consume, and took a Big Trip vacation to Baja wine country.
We’ll send another newsletter with the scoop on that era soon — thanks for following along!
Much Love,
Justin & Dory