Day one Mexico Feb 7

Yuma to San Felipe

About and hour and a half to Mexican border at Mexicali

Highway 8 that does to Dan Diego passes through the Imperial Desert in California. Those sandunes on the right are a play ground for 4 wheelers and ATVs . The desert in Arizona always has some scrub brush or growth in it, this is just pure sand for miles. If there were camels you would think you were in the Sahara Desert.

We crossed at the east gate border, there was no line up at all going to Mexico but the line up to the US must have been well over a mile long. The crossing was perfect, the officer asked in Spanish if I spoke Spanish and I smiled and suggested he should try his English first. He asked where we were coming from, where we were going and for how long. Then he stepped inside , opened a bunch of doors to check the cupboards etc, and politely told us we were ready to go. A second officer then approached and asked for our passports , plus our FMM tourist card, took  a look at them and wished us a good holiday.  We were gone in less than 5 minutes. 

Mexicali is city of about a million people and looks like an industrial city, not very prosperous, and not very tidy. In fairness we only passed through it so may be we only saw the poorer part. We were amazed by the amount of garbage along the road.

There were a few large cattle farms along the highway , but not large by Arizona standards

Typical scene as we traveled along highway 5, mountains in the background and farm land in the valley

Desert landscape similar to Arizona  , the mountains are in the center of the peninsula most of the way south.

Highway 5 from Mexicali to San Felipe is a perfect road, great condition with an 80 klm speed limit. After driving with US speed limits for a month we felt like we were almost stopped. Very relaxing drive.  As we approached the Sea of Cortez we drove through food plains that look like they might be flooded daily with the tide.

The white is salt that has settled out from the high tide. 

You would need an aerial photo to show this properly. The white just below the horizon is salt flats 

The entrance to downtown San Felipe, population 20,000

Our first stop, Kiki's RV campsite . Very rich for our blood at $35 per night with full hookups, but we thought we would just go for it as it was on the beach and walking distance to down town.  We haven't been here long enough to develop a feel for boondocking yet.

This is the beach a hundred feet from our campsite

Fishermen in the bay. Later we saw them selling fresh jumbo shrimp, I mean jumbo, on the street in town

This ship was parked way out in the sea

This church or shrine was built on a high point on the coast near center town

Click on this link to get the history of the shrine

Shrine history 

We climbed the 112 steps to get the view of San Felipe

The view of the beach back to where we were camped

overview of the city, with the old fishing boats 

I tried to find out the story of these boats but no luck. I need to learn more Spanish

the down town board walk

Typical down town tourist city, board walk and stores catering to tourists.

The best was a cold Mexican tecta  beer and a fish Tacos for $2.00 us each

First Mexican Photo

Now you know that San Felipe is a tourist city and not a fishing village