Arrived in Mulege' last night

We had a long day yesterday but a great one!  We paddled around Punta Chivato from our camp site 12 miles back to be surprised with a very nice community that included a 9-hole golf course in an arroy of sand.  Not your regular course but a course no less.  We met a couple from Riverside, CA that live down here in the winter and they directed us to the Clubhouse/Bar.

After walking across the airplane runway and golf corse we were greated by "Chivato Ron".  He had heard we were the kayakers from San Felipe and he wanted to buy us a beer.  We enjoyed our vistit with Ron and discovered he was a seasonal paver from Oregon that worked on roads 4-6 months out of the year and spent the rest of his time down here.  We also met a couple from Palmer, AK in the restaurant.  Doug's Nanooks shirt was the ice breaker with them, even though it is covered in probably 2 lbs. of salt.

We then started our 12 mile paddle across the entrance of the Bahia de Conception over to the entrance to Mulege, which is marked by a lighthouse- the only problem is that you can't tell from the map we had which side of the lighthouse we were supposed to enter from.  Mulege is an interesting town as it is the only town (we think) in Baja that is located up a river and not on the beach.  So, we rounded the lighthouse and started paddling up the river past pangas and homes on both shores, but it was pretty much right at dusk and we were both pretty whipped from paddling.

We made a decision to paddle up the river on the right side, because it looked deeper, but the campgrounds were probably on the left side- so we paddled right past them all.  We finally came to a stretch of homes with Christmas lights and a nice walkway in front of them, and we pulled over and asked where the nearest campground was.  Mike and Rosalyn, the owners of the place, looked at us all soaking wet with our kayaks way up the river, and said you can camp in our driveway if you want.  We took him up on it, and as we were setting up our tent and unloading our kayaks Rosalyn brought us out an 8 pack of  Pacifico- and then they brought us both a lasagna dinner with garlic bread and salad!  We have sure been making wrong turns turn into perfect times!

This morning we walked into town and found a great coffee shop with internet.  We are going to try and hitch a ride down into Bahia de Conception to check it out.

Mulege has mangroves along the water, palm trees everywhere, and lots of fresh water.

Three hurricanes in the past 3 years have caused lots of damage in this town.  There are broken palm trees and homes that were totally destroyed by a mud slide and high water- Mike said that the water level was 6 feet over his roof.  It is slowly rebuilding, and looks like an interesting town.  We picked our first "wild" orange today.


We visited the second oldest mission in all of Baja here in Mulege as well as the museum that was once a prison, but it was closed. 

Then we were waiting for a ride to get us down into the Bahia de Conception which didn't pan out, but instead Alexander, the guy driving our Explorer down from San Felipe drove by, and we caught a ride with him in our own car down about 30 miles to Coyote Beach down in the bay.  He continued on into Loreto with the old Explorer that is working just fine!  It even still had the Virgin Mary and the Rosary Beads Cheryl and Joni put on the dash for us!!!

At Coyote Beach, which is a big kayaking school area, we ran into Kate and George, our sailing friends from Whitehorse that we first met at San Francisquito's, and have subsequently run into at Santa Rosalia as well.

The Bahia de Conception is a beautiful bay with white sand beaches, protected inlets and coves, and very cool rock islands and islets.  There are homes and camp sites at most every beach, but the water is crystal clear, blue and green and very inviting.  We are glad we made the trip down by car as we probably wouldn't have paddled the 30 miles up only to turn around and paddle another 30 miles back out.  Our plan is to leave here tomorrow if the weather lets us and head the 80 miles to Loreto as the weather looks like it will give us a window to make that kind of distance.