The Bahia Concepcion is touted as having one of the most beautiful stretches of coastline on the Baja peninsula and this was part of the reason we wanted to get to Mulegé so bad. We stocked up on supplies in Mulegé and drove south in search of a good beach camping spot. We weren’t disappointed with the beaches along the highway, and in fact every beach we passed was a nice stretch of white sand fronting the turquoise blue of the Sea of Cortez.  The first one was Santispac, absolutely picture perfect beach, but heavily populated by RV’s and campers so we passed on staying there.  We  eventually stopped at Playa El Requezon. It is a beautiful small stretch of beach with two mini part-time bays… sounds funny, but at high tide there is an island across the beach and at low tide there is a sand bar that connects to the little island creating the two mini bays and you can walk out to check out the island. Just be sure to keep an eye on the tide, because the sand bar is completely covered during high tide, cutting off access to the island.

The wind was blowing pretty hard when we pulled into Requezon, but we found an empty palapa to pull up next to that created a great wind break for us.  This was our first palapa experience, imagine sitting under a palapa while looking out over the white sand and turquoise Sea of Cortez, all we needed was some Corona bottles and we could have been in a TV commercial.

Our Palapa set up

Our palapa and a 4 legged visitor, always reminding us that Tie is not with us

A lot of folks from the US and Canada spend their winters along most of the beaches along this stretch. We met a great group of folks from Canada that spend their winters in Requezon every year, we spent most of our morning there hanging out with these guys, Luis even inherited an old fishing rod from one of these fine folk.

Our neighbor's home for the winter, not to shabby really

Due to the heavy winds we decided to head out in the early afternoon and drove to the town of Loreto. We stopped at Loreto for a few hours and walked around, checked out this cute town, there is an old mission that is worth checking out and some cute shops along a walking street near the mission. There is a really classy looking Italian spa (Italian owned and run) that was tastefully designed, there is even a rooftop lounge with a swimming pool with a glass bottom that you could see from the lobby below (I would think this would be slightly awkward for the bathers). Needless to say, it was a little out of our budget (the prices were listed in Euro), but it was a neat place to check out. On our way out we picked up some great tacos at McLulu’s.  Tacos have pretty much become our diet, they are cheap, you can always find stand anywhere, and they are always pretty tasty, the busier the taco stand the quicker we pull in.

The Church at Loreto

Another view of the Loreto Church

We decided to head south a little bit to a beach we had heard of, El Juncalito. Juncalito is one of the many, many beautiful beaches along this stretch, so we pulled in and found a nice spot to set up camp. Juncalito has its own group of folks running away from winter, we camped next to a very nice couple and the first evening they even shared some of their BBQ’d fresh Wahoo with us… hmm delicious! The next morning we were informed by some of the residents of the beach that the weather forecast said it would be great for the next few days and after many nights of insane amounts of wind this had a nice ring to it, so we decided this great spot deserved a multi-day stay. Besides, Luis had been dying to try out his new rod!  Luis did some fishing and we snorkeled around a point at the end of the beach. It was amazing how much life we saw so close to shore! There were dozens of little rays, luckily not sting rays, all over the beach close to shore making it impossible to get out of the water without stepping on a few. They didn’t sting or hurt or anything, but it was still a little alarming to step down and have something flutter out from under  your foot.

This was the original spot we selected to camp, but it was very windy and we later moved next to a very cool group of temporary expats

Nice view from our campsite

The beautiful mountains behind our campsite at Juncalito Beach

It looks like he is peeing, but Luis is really fishing here... he is surrounded by dozens of non stinging rays.

We found this very cool puffer fish floating on the shore, sadly we see tons of them dead on the shore... we hope this guy made it.

Two little leatherback babies turtles

Luis went looking for clams, but they are so overfished he only found one and it was at 15 feet of depth! He did not share it with Lacey

We got up the morning after our second night very cheery, but to our dismay we realized that we had reached the maximum number of days we can go without recharging our battery. In all honesty we do not know how many days it had been, 4 or maybe 5 days, but the battery was completely dead, this was not a good thing. We decided that we needed to buy a battery charger as a short term fix and it was time to start thinking of a long term fix for our electrical needs. We weren’t too far from La Paz, which has a Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and all the big chains we are used to seeing in the U.S., so we beelined to La Paz, arriving just before dark. The RV park we planned to stay in no longer existed, so we ended up in an over our budget hotel ($25).

We were sitting in the lobby of the hotel catching up on the internet, when to our surprise, Beto, a very interesting and worldly gentleman we had met in Mulegé came walking in yelling at us to disconnect from our computers and come with him…. what the hell?! Small world.  While in Mulegé, he had told us about a young woman who grew up in Mulegé and is a very naturally gifted opera singer was doing a show in La Paz. We of course had kinda forgot about it, and didn’t even know what day it was, but as it turns out he was staying across the street from us and he saw our Landcruiser, and the show was that night!  So we disconnected and hurried out the door with Beto and a few others from Mulegé and were treated to a fantastic night of a great selection of opera classics.  This young woman has an amazing voice and it was quite the show. Sometimes it really is a small, small world!