January 27, 2015 - Loreto to La Paz

The one thing Tobey and I both forgot about the Riviera del Mar RV Park was how noisy it is being in town at night! Some of the other RVers were up late in the palapa behind our RV sharing a few drinks, the neighbors behind had music going all night, dogs barking, roosters crowing, and the trash truck making its early morning rounds! Neither of us slept well, so we decided to move on.

Just south of Loreto is the Nopolo Resort area so we took a short detour through to check it out. It is an area that was chosen FONATUR, the government agency created in 1974 to develop sustainable tourism. Cancun was developed by FONATUR, but the Nopolo area will be hard pressed to compete with Cancun. There were lots of beautiful looking homes and condominiums, some restaurants, golf course, tennis courts, but it was still a very quiet area. We continued past several lookout areas where we had good views of the islands in the Sea of Cortez. 

We stopped in Ciudad Insurgentes for lunch where we got three gorditas de Nopal Huevo to go with a salad.

Gorditas are a Mexican flatbread made from cornmeal and ours was stuffed with pork and peppers in a tomato sauce. They were really tasty and filling. ($45 pesos – about $3.25 USD).

We passed through several “geological regions” as we made our way to La Paz. Mountains, plains, plateaus, and flat areas – even an area of “Zona de Neblina” (fog). Fortunately, for us today, there was no fog!

South of Loreto the mountains were shrouded in the clouds. Near Km G-83, the eastern coastline of the peninsula is steep, rocky, and majestic.

This is the Llano de Magdalena – (the plains), which were south of Ciudad Constitucion. Again, the closer to La Paz we got, the coastal mountains changed to a lighter pinkish color with bands of volcanic ash.

We did encounter road construction in the last 15 miles before La Paz. Lots of road construction! Much of this construction was underway before Hurricane Odile, but the hurricane definitely hampered progress and caused further damage. We were careful not to get too close to the right edge of the road – it was quite a drop-off!

Once we hit the gravel, it continued for more than four miles, teased us with a few miles of blacktop, then another four or five miles of gravel!

At Km H-21 we passed through another agricultural inspection station and back onto a wide, paved road the rest of the way into La Paz. This is our first view of the bay and city!

We are dry-camping at Campestre Marantha, on the northwest side of La Paz. Cost is $200 pesos (about $14 USD). We made reservations for an electric site on our return trip because we plan to be here during Carnival and spend a few days.

GPS: 24.09767N, 110.38714W

On a side note:
Yesterday when we left Santispak, we passed these two guys on their bicycles, going up a VERY STEEP grade! We weren’t able to pull over and get their picture, but this was taken by Richard Clarke and he posted it on a forum which I belong. He saw them later in the day on a flat stretch of the road and was able to stop and chat with them.

 
Joff (left) from London is on his second world tour on his penny farthing. He previously cycled from England to eastern Asia. The final destination of this tour will be Argentina.

 
Felix from Austria (right) is on his way through Mexico. His girlfriend mistakenly reported him missing several days earlier to the Mexican Embassy. The police caught up with him that day. Turned out he had no phone signal to contact her.
photo by Richard Clarke