Last year, I wrote of my secret getaway spot in the Philippines, a destination I will continue to keep a secret. This year I will be a bit kinder and tell you about my secret getaway spot in Mexico. Not that it will help you. The journey to get there involves some of the most remote terrain I’ve ever crossed. The place is called Bahía Asunción, and I discovered it several years ago on a trip through Baja California.
At the time, I had access to a jeep and decided to circumnavigate a piece of land in central Baja called the Vizcaino peninsula, famous for some of the most intimate whale watching opportunities in the world. I had just visited a lighthouse, the only highlight of the town of Punta Abrejos, when I asked a man at the service station how to get to Bahía Asunción. He told me to drive through town until I got to a big building, where I should turn right and just keep driving.
Having had a few years experience in Mexico, I was willing to accept these mediocre directions and headed through town. There was a church in the center, and that appeared to be the tallest building in town so I took a right. What lay before me was nothing but wide open desert criss-crossed with multiple sets of tire tracks darting into the horizon. Deciding to double check my somewhat vague set of directions, I asked a second person how to get to the next town. He turned to face the desert and made a chopping motion with his hand indicating that I should just keep going straight.
With trepidation, I drove the jeep onto the desert floor and began my journey following the only instructions I had. The soil was hard packed salt flats, but what concerned me was the number of trails going off to either side of the one I was following. To my relief it seemed that there were just as many trails coming back to the main one I was on. At some point I decided the side trails were the ones taken when the flats were made impassable by flash flooding, something I imagine could leave you stranded fairly quickly if your vehicle ended up axle deep in moist soil.
And so the trip continued for about an hour until I came upon a sand pit. Sand pits are kind of like the sand traps you see on golf courses, The narrow alley before me, however, was framed in by thick scrub that I could not drive through to avoid the pit and, even if I did, raised the risk that I might puncture a tire on one the oversized thorns this vegetation used to protect itself from consumption.
I noticed there were some scrub branches laid across the trail by someone before me who had gotten stuck in the pit. At least I had a model for how to get myself out should I get stuck. Having been advised to flatten my tires a bit before heading into deep sand, I released some air. I then backed up a little and gunned the engine to get through as quickly as possible.
The advice on getting through sand is a bit paradoxical. Most importantly, you don’t want to cease forward motion. This is the reason for gunning the engine even when is seems like your vehicle is not responding to the torque you can hear in your engine as the wheels spin through the sand. This is the best way to get through; however, the second you realize the car has ceased forward motion, you must release the gas pedal. Pushing on the accelerator at this point will only dig you deeper into the hole your wheels have already begun to excavate.
At the point of finding yourself stuck, you must employ a series of tactics to get your vehicle out, which may include digging with a shovel, pushing (if you have another person with you), or getting some traction under your wheels in the form of the floor mats, pieces of wood, or in my case, branches from nearby shrubs.
Shortly after my sand pit encounter, I came across the strangest sight. It was a road, with a sidewalk, right in the middle of the desert leading towards the tiny village of Bahía Asunción. That was my first visit to the town, but you’ll be pleased to hear there is now a paved road leading there from the main highway 60 miles away.
Don’t be fooled though; this place is still remote. The closest city is about 500 miles from the junction with the main highway, and I’m being somewhat liberal with my use of the word “city”.
On my first visit, I only had time for one night in Bahía Asunción, but I promised myself I would return one day and make this a destination for some time of solitude. Probably the biggest factor driving my desire to return was not the curving picturesque shoreline of the peninsula, but the inn that sits on the promontory overlooking it. It’s called the La Bufadora, meaning “the blowhole”.
Juan, one of the owners offered me a private room for what I remember was about $25 US dollars. That for a room overlooking the Pacific Ocean with a front row seat to whales migrating along the coast and a blowhole that erupts regularly with the force of the waves pushing through an opening in the rock, mimicking the action of the whales offshore.
The bed was comfortable, with alternative sleeping arrangements available on the hammock strung between the posts outside the front door. The room was made of heavy stone which kept it cool during the hot days and retained enough heat to warm the room into the evening. With WiFi, I was able to write about and research further parts of my trip.
I would have been happy to have simply enjoyed my hermited status were it not for the necessary to eat. For this I had to go into town, and Juan was kind enough to loan me a bike. There are not many options in a town this size. In fact, I only found two that I could count on to be open regularly. There was a great looking place on the waterfront, but every time I went by it, the chain link fence surrounding the place was locked tight. The other place, Restaurante Mari, is where I ended up eating most of my meals
There are a couple of other places where one can get food, but you had to know their limited hours. There is a place that makes seafood tacos, but only at lunchtime on weekends or the place that sells whole cooked chickens only on Saturdays. Despite its small size, the town boasted 5 markets. The trick is to know which market carries which product.
On the day I arrived, Juan’s wife, Shari, offered to drive me to the different stores so I could get the supplies I needed. She was planning to head out that day anyway to hit up the local gas station. Rumor had it that they had just received a shipment of chocolate bars, and chocolate was not something commonly carried at the other stores, so our rounds included a trip to the gas station to peruse the collection of flavors that were available. She was slightly worried since she’d heard about the shipment from another woman in town who’d already bought five of her favorite bars. There was a run on this sweet commodity.
In fact, this was probably the most valuable commodity in town since there were no banks. That, in itself, generated another curiosity. With no banks, you have limited access to money. As a result, I learned of one of my favorite idiosyncrasies of this town. Once a week, someone traveled to the main highway, which was the location of the closest ATM. This person collected all the ATM cards for the people in town who needed cash that week as well as their PIN numbers. He would then go to town and withdraw cash for every person who’d given him a card. One can’t help but imagine a scenario in which this person makes off with everyone’s money, but to date, that hasn’t happened. Shari confided with me that she, too, had participated in this ritual of sending a relative stranger off with her bank card and PIN.
A final curiosity I discovered in this town was the street sign labeled “S/N”. I would have thought it a simple acronym for the name of the street, but there were several streets in town with this designation. I asked Shari about it, and she told me it was an abbreviated version of “Sin nombre” which means “Without name”. She told me that it was even possible to have an address that read “S/N S/N”: without name / without number. Apparently, this is common in the more remote places in Mexico. So while I can tell you the name of this remote town, it may not necessarily help you find the location of La Bufadora Inn where I spent my reclusive holiday.