Baja Transpeninsular: Tijuana to Cabo

Baja California peninsula · Mexico

Moderate14 daysNorth America~£1,600 est.

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Overview

Mexican Federal Highway 1 runs the length of the Baja peninsula — a thousand miles of desert, missions and two coastlines between Tijuana and Cabo San Lucas. It is the great free-range road trip of the Americas: whales one day, taco stands and boulder fields the next, and long silent stretches where cirio trees twist out of the rock like something Dr Seuss drew. The moment is a grey whale calf pushing up against your panga in San Ignacio lagoon between January and March, close enough to touch. Before and after come the Valle de Guadalupe wine country, the boulder dreamscape of Cataviña, the date-palm oasis and mission at San Ignacio, and the string of white coves along Bahía Concepción where you camp feet from the water. Finish among the surf towns of the south — Todos Santos, then the arch at Cabo. The rules that keep it fun: never drive at night (unfenced cattle), treat the narrow, shoulderless tarmac with respect, expect polite military checkpoints, and fill up at every Pemex south of El Rosario. Two weeks southbound with a drop-off in La Paz or Cabo runs about £1,600 per person including whale trips.