Mexico Guide
Baja California and the Pacific Northwest
The Baja California Peninsula
Seventeenth-century Spanish explorers first thought that the peninsula now called Baja California was an island. Even now, it maintains a palpable air of isolation from both the rest of Mexico and the other half of its original territory, just north of the border with the United States. Much of this remoteness can be attributed to geographical factors: the peninsula lies over 1300 kilometres west of Mexico City, and the sheer distances involved in traversing its length – it's over 1700 kilometres long – are not conducive to quick exploration. Though the Tijuana border crossing is the most trafficked port of entry in the world, a comparative few of the 130,000 who pass through the city each day venture further into Baja.
Outside of Tijuana, the peninsula is in many ways still in an embryonic stage. Its two states – Baja California in the north and Baja California Sur in the south – weren't designated until the second half of the twentieth century, and the Transpeninsular Highway – the first paved road connecting the north and south – wasn't completed until 1973. Development has proceeded in earnest since then, though it has largely been restricted to the areas that lie within easy reach of day-trippers from southern California and to Los Cabos, a prime destination for resort aficionados at the peninsula's southernmost point. Though the majority of visitors stick to the big towns in the north and the south, it's worth making a trip into the interior to see some of the peninsula's more interesting attributes – desert landscapes, lush oases and historic mountain treks.
Puerto Nuevo
Once not much more than a dusty roadside settlement between Rosarito and Ensenada at Km 42, Puerto Nuevo is nowadays known the length of the peninsula for its near-fanatical devotion to the local speciality that bears its name: Puerto Nuevo-style grilled Pacific lobster. Found off the coast and throughout the rest of the Pacific Rim, these lobsters don't grow as large as their Atlantic counterparts (actually, they're giant langoustines more closely related to shrimps) and they don't have claws, but they're just as delicious.
Choosing where to sample the revered dish is made easy enough by the town's one-way street plan, which juts to the west from Hwy-1. Though every one of the more than two dozen restaurants serves the lobsters the same basic way – grilled and split in half with beans, rice and warm flour tortillas – Puerto Nuevo #2 ( 
661/614-1454), directly to your south on the second block, and Ortega's Patio at the southwest corner of the grid ( 661/614-1320 or 0345) are consistently good bets. Expect to pay M$120 at the former and up to M$200 at the latter, which will also get you ocean views, low lighting and a wood-beam ceiling.
The Transpeninsular Highway
Towns in Baja California have a tendency to describe their location as "only six hundred miles south of San Diego", as if a twelve-hour drive were a selling point. Elsewhere this might appear as lunacy, but on a peninsula whose furthest points are separated by over 1600km and linked by one paved road, the Transpeninsular Highway, it makes perfect sense.
Completed in 1973, the Transpeninsular Highway stands as one of North America's last great road trips. It's equal parts endurance and beauty, seclusion and camaraderie. What you're driving defines much of the experience: an RVer will encounter some of the peninsula's most long-term visitors; off-roaders will meet locals and visitors who trade tips on fixing flats; sedan drivers will commiserate about that great beach they just can't get to. Part of the thrill comes from the long spaces separating major towns, the narrow segments of highway that snake along precarious cliffsides and the animals and washouts that can block the road. But the biggest draw is the near-constant beauty of the desert, mountain, sea and ocean vistas and their illumination by brilliant blue skies and starry nights.
Before the Transpeninsular, Baja California was best known as the forbidding wilderness of the Baja 1000 auto race. Motorcycle, buggy and truck drivers started racing through the northwest in 1967 and they still flock to Ensenada every June (for the Baja 500) and November with the hope that they'll conquer the all-dirt track. The course isn't easy; it takes racers through the sierras San Pedro Martír, San Felipe and de Juárez, and the Laguna Salada – only half of the entrants make it across the finishing line.