We woke up to a sweet sunrise with a partial moon.

The weather was again nice with sunny skies.  For two weeks prior to our arrival, Baja was inundated with major wind and inclement weather, but so far on our trip everything was clear sailing! 

We took off north and then took the turn-off to the west. 

This road would take us up and over the range and into the desert.  The grade was pretty steep in places and even though it didn’t really require 4wd, we still used low range in places to keep the stress on the vehicles down. 

Once we got inland, we were pretty amazed at the number of springs we passed.  Many of the canyons had natural springs and the areas with water usually had small ranches on them. Everyone would always wave to us as we drove through their ranch. 

After about 3.5 hours we reached the Mission San Luis Gonzaga.  This mission is really old, but in good shape.  We toured it quickly and got on the road.  We still had some miles to cover. 

Once back to highway 1, we aired up and turned north.  We filled up at Cuidad Insurgentes. There was saw a cool Uni-mog outfitted for expedition travel.

We continued north to La Poza Grande.  The road north from Cuidad Insurgentes deteriorated quickly. It became a road test trying to miss the large potholes.

Once at La Poza Grande we drove west out to the mangroves.  There was a myriad of small roads in the area and we simply followed the best looking one.  I had researched the area on Google Earth before the trip, selecting several breaks in the mangroves as potential camping spots and had them as waypoints in my GPS. 

Along the way we saw several Crested Caracaras on the ground.  I couldn’t tell what they were doing exactly, maybe picking through fish remains.  They are a very regal looking bird and Baja Sur is about as far north as they range. Brian and I saw hundreds of these guys in Brazil last year.

The best location had a large fishcamp with many fishermen, so we kept going.  The next spot was decent, but really exposed being adjacent to the main road.  The last spot I had marked in my GPS already had someone there camping.  It was a super nice Sportsmobile 4wd van conversion.  We stopped to chat with the people there, Ron and Terry.  They were from central California and had been camped there a few days exploring the mangroves on foot and by kayak. We chatted for a while about the area and about their cool van.  They knew of a nice camping spot about 15 minutes away and we headed there before the sun set.  I wish I had gotten a photo of thier cool van. Dang...

The spot was great and we looked forward to kayaking the mangroves in the morning. 

Brian cooked us up some vegetarian burritos for dinner. Good stuff!