Mexico Guide
Baja California and the Pacific Northwest
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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.