As a traveler, our RV vs. The Worst Road in Baja is challenging. But have you ever been to Baja, Mexico? Have you experienced driving your RV on the worst highway and end up taking a detour? We did. Lots of potholes and all types of holes you can see along the side of the roadway. It’s a bummer if you’re expecting to have the best day of your travel experience down south. It shouldn’t be that bad. Right? Our experience driving south is something memorable and worth sharing. Anyway, you can’t do anything with the roads if you’re 2,000 miles away from home!
As you will see throughout the series, many of the best spots we visit are off-grid. In some places, you can have water brought in but there are no electrical outlets along these beaches. What there are abundant amounts of sunshine. Solar power is hands down the best way to be comfortable in Baja.
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Storing Solar Power
We have been using Battle Born lithium batteries for over two years and they are the absolute best way for us to store our solar power. These batteries offer us twice the capacity of our old batteries. They are also a fraction of the weight plus over maintenance fees allowing us to get out there and stay out there. It’s maintenance-free but it’s still supplying the power that we need.
We had dust and damage everywhere, the dirt bike cover was torn, the RV was caked in this dust and silt and then I discovered our torn power cord. I got my tools and went to work. First, by removing the old, frayed cable section and then splicing the two good pieces of cable back together and taping it all back up. The cable ended up working just fine and lasted for the rest of the trip through Baja Mexico.
Boondocking in Baja
Aside from not driving at night, one of the biggest things we were told before we went down to Baja, was not to boondock in the middle of nowhere. Everyone recommended that you have a safe place. An RV park or a distinguished RV parking spot to go to not just pull over willy-nilly and park. We were stuck with the situation of ‘do we drive at night in order to get to the next town or do we go ahead and pull over and boondock?’ But hey, how ugly could it be if our RV vs. the worst road in Baja meet at some point?
We knew we didn’t want to drive at nighttime because there’s plenty of potholes and hazards and that’s when things get ugly. We would pull the RV into a spot and what I would try to do is to make sure we had a nice easy exit. It’s nice because we didn’t have to get out of the RV. If we needed to exit quickly, all we had to do is turn on the RV, pull up our jacks, pour slides in, and roll out. It was good since we didn’t have to get out of the RV if we felt unsafe.
Furthermore, we actually felt safest out in some of these remote places. The gas stations are a very popular place to overnight when you’re traveling. But a lot of these gas stations were in towns as you had all these people walking around. It’s pretty crowded. And out in the middle of nowhere, there’s almost no traffic at all and we felt very safe.
Our worst experience boondocking in Baja was the coyotes. There are plenty of stories of people who have had bad experiences, but we had all good boondocking experiences. Check out our previous blog post and learn more about the bizarre experience we had during our trip.
Mexican Insurance
Crossing from Baja Norte into Baja Sur has different rules and regulations when it comes to insurance. We did have to go through the checkpoint. Surprisingly, they didn’t come into the RV, but they sprayed some disinfectant under our rig which we had to drive through forward to get that spray. We guessed it’s just for bugs from Norte to Sur.
If you pay a few dollars, you get a little sticker and it’s required if you want to go into Baja Sur. It was a pretty simple drive through there. We don’t know much about the chemicals but it’s probably something very bad, who knows?
Getting Supplies in Guerrero Negro
As we got into Guerrero Negro, our supplies at this point were pretty low we’ve been camped out on the side of the sea of Cortez for about a week. We traveled through the desert for a couple of days, so our fresh water tank was very low. Our water, groceries, and other supplies need to be replenished. Guerrero Negro is kind of the midway point and there’s still a long stretch of nothing quite a while, so we wanted to make sure our water, food, and everything is topped off.
Water Supply in Baja Mexico
Currently, we have a pretty badass water filtration system we got from the RV Water Filter Store. But while we’re there in Baja, we didn’t have that system and so we found a way to get clean water on board. We went to a bottled water supplier called Agua Purificada. There are a lot of water purification plants and almost every town has one. Essentially, we just go pay for this purified water and they’d pump it right into the RV.
Instead of buying five big gallon buckets, they just fill up our whole water tank. Now, treating the water was an option for us, we could have just pulled up to any water source and fill our tanks, but it leaves some sort of taste. Water purification plants like Agua Purificada stations are everywhere. It’s extremely common down there and they are affordable.
Say, it also is very affordable, but it sounds very luxurious to go pump your whole RV part of purified water. We have a 100-gallon water tank and I think the most we ever paid was about $14. It’s very cost-effective and it was also just a piece of mind. We have a baby on board, so we didn’t want any chances of getting pathogens or getting any kinds of illnesses. The one in Guerrero negro is probably one of the most memorable water plants we had to get our water.
And after this, we needed to find a grocery store so guess what we did. ‘we took the truck out the back of the RV!
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