Highway 5, between the 3 turnoff and the desert just south of Mexicali, features this spectacular red-rock canyon.

North of that canyon is another one, in the middle of a salt flat. The entire view is very similar to Death Valley.

The fault. Mike stands astride an old alignment of highway 2 that was torn in half by the April, 2010 Mexicali earthquake.

Sunrise. Same beach as the night before.

San Felipe at early dawn, as seen from the beaches to the south.

Pelicans take off and head east.

Looking through a highway 5 bridge over a tide pool.

San Felipe – the last frontier of the real estate bubble. And one day the US economy crashed, and the yuppies stopped coming, and the buildings no longer got built.

Mountains to the west, as we approach downtown from the beach.

This older kilometer posts still stands, off to the side from the modern four-lane expressway.

View of Picacho del Diablo to the west.

Probably the most ironic of all the bubble-yuppie billboards.

This sign just just flat out wrong! 3 does go through this intersection, but it is 5 that goes to Mexicali. As for Ensenada – that’s where 3 goes. 2 neither exists at this intersection, nor goes to Ensenada!

Yep, those are real vultures on top of the pole. They had been standing still when I got there, so I thought they were just scarecrows. Then they took off.

An old dirt trail runs parallel to highway 5.

5 consists of a number of long straight sections. Connecting the two will be a canyon that goes through these red rocks.

Red rocks to our west.

All these red rocks were completely unexpected. The map labels a dry salt lake, and shows a straight section going through there, so we figured this other straight section would be similar. Nope, entirely different!

Here we see why the road isn’t going to go straight for much longer.

Yep, one more view of red rocks.

Mmm… winding. And pointy.

This is what happens when one shoots directly into the sun – every smudge on the lens flares out!

What’s this, a state route shield? They are impossible to find in the western part of Baja California, but here, they suddenly become quite common.

And here’s some stand-alone shields on a gantry, including an END marker! I knew these sorts of things existed in Mexico’s MUTCD but this is the first time I’d seen them used in the field.

And even a BEGIN assembly! Here’s where we turn off of highway 5 to head to Sonora.

Michigan Left, because the entire intersection is being rebuilt. A lot of highway 5 is under construction due to it getting damaged by the earthquake.

Older signs in one of the farming towns along BC-4.

We almost missed this sign, because it was not at a Colorado River crossing. The state line between Baja California and Sonora was the original path of the river, but it has been channeled and rediverted so many times, that now this gantry is in the middle of a town that is split between the two states.

Sonora really likes putting the zeroes in front.

Golfo de Santa Clara is also a popular tourist destination, as is Puerto Penasco, which is just beyond on the same highway. It is rumored that this connecting highway exists and is open, but I cannot verify this fact! Google Maps does not show it to exist – but Google Maps also shows no road past San Felipe down to Puertecitos.

This sign is ambiguous. Two distinct roads branch off 2 – one to Golfo de Santa Clara (and Puerto Penasco?) and another, further down, to Puerto Penasco directly. But the fact that this sign mentions a “shortcut” implies a single road. Maybe.

And here, after a quick pit stop in San Luis Rio Colorado, we return to Baja California.

These shields have a green legend. The signs are all brand new, as highway 2 has only recently been upgraded to a four-lane expressway.

Technically, pedestrians are supposed to cross only along the specially built overpasses, but we saw more than a few people hopping the Jersey barrier and running for glory.

Algodones is a crossing to the US.

If you can parse this sign correctly, you win a prize. Hint: the left turn to get to Tijuana or San Luis Rio Colorado is not a separate ramp – it is the southbound lanes, off of which two ramps exit to get to highway 2D.

Here is where 2D, the Mexicali toll bypass, rejoins the free road through town. Note the extremely slow advisory on the curve – it’s actually perfectly well-built to handle traffic up to 100 km/h or so.

Our first view of the fault. It’s best seen just below the green signs.

Mike studies how the fence moved during the earthquake. Note the patching of the freeway – they fixed that within a couple of days.

The old alignment was left unrepaired. As it is behind a fence, no one actually uses it.

The fence was, at one point, straight.

One more photo of the fault before we head west.

La Rumorosa is the pass off in the distance.

Our final military checkpoint. This is a built-up permanent installation, and its location is well-known. That said, we still saw someone pull up short, turn around, and in the median toss something out his window!

Up we go.

The original road is the eastbound lanes. The westbound lanes, which we are taking, were added in 1996, to create a four-lane freeway.

There are plenty of stopping points on the massive uphill grade. Here is the view from one of them, looking north. In the distance, one can see the Imperial Valley of California. Also note that we are nowhere near the top of the grade yet.

But we’ve certainly climbed a lot of hill. The blue pipes appear to be some sort of aqueduct that carries water over the mountains.

A significantly zoomed-in view. If you look really carefully, you can see Plaster City on old US-80 in the distance, just behind the black hills on the left.

Top of the pass. 3861 feet, which compares favorably to interstate 8′s 4140 foot Devil’s Canyon climb.

After the climb, the road to Tecate is quite uneventful. This sign is somewhere on the Tecate business loop.

Here, Mike has crossed into the United States, without all that hassle of the border patrol. Too bad there’s a fence behind him – a fence covered in Mexican advertisements, it should be noted. The US government has effectively ceded control of a two-foot-wide strip of land at the border to Mexico without any sort of a struggle. And to think how protective of it they claim to be.

The crossing into the US was uneventful, but the border patrol could not answer our question about whether we needed to surrender the FMM card upon our return. (Well, Mexican immigration law really isn’t their area of concern, so it’s not surprising that they don’t know the answer.) Turns out, we probably did have to give back the card.

So now I have an FMM card that’s valid for about five and a half more months, but who knows how much hassle I’ll get the next time I return without an official exit stamp on my passport. I get the distinct idea that my dollars, and my willingness to spend them, will go a long way towards reducing the complexity of the process!

World-famous Oh Shit Dip on highway 5 between San Felipe and Puertecitos. There are many that are much worse, further south along this road. However, that road was washed out by Hurricane Nora in 1997. The road was in terrible shape until – well, so recently that most US tour books and websites still do not know that it has been resurfaced.

The road is paved, and in great condition, past Puertecitos all the way down to El Huerfanito. It does help to remember, however, that any dip that has the orange and black striped marker beside it (like the Oh Shit Dip here) is best slowed down for.

California 905 is the Otay Mesa crossing, east of Tijuana. There is at least one interstate 905 shield left in Tijuana, but we must’ve been half asleep because we didn’t get a good photo.

Baja California state route 201 is the Tijuana bypass.

The bypass is carved dead straight through the mountains.

Conalep is Mexico’s equivalent to the University of Phoenix. The system was founded in 1978 and I’m willing to bet this sign has been there since.

This sign in downtown Ensenada is even older. The green has faded to blue over the years.

This is the only example I know of a federal route marker with padded zeroes. Sonora state routes do this commonly – but this is nowhere near Sonora!

We turn off 1 onto 3 at Ensenada. 3 does not go to San Felipe or Mexicali – it ends at 5, which connects those two.

Augmented cow. This modification was on three or four consecutive signs on 3.

Our first military checkpoint. They did not ask for FMM tourist cards – we went through the trouble of acquiring them, and it turns out no one wanted to see them. First we tried to find the office in Tijuana, and failed, so we decided to say “screw it”, but when we randomly came across an office in Ensenada (well signed from route 1 with blue signs for “migracion”), and paid our $22 each there.

One does not need FMM cards to take 1 down to Ensenada, or 5 down to San Felipe, but to travel 3 between the two, technically one does need such a card.

Typical view on highway 3.

The sign for a dip in the road, that may contain a small stream. We will see a lot more of these on highway 5.

Mexico does not believe in business routes. Both the main road, and the loop into town, are signed simply as “3″.

An overhead halo.

Coming down the hills towards Valle de la Trinidad.

Green trees and mackerel skies.

Distant peaks. The one on the left is Picacho del Diablo, the highest mountain in Baja California.

A long straight shot across the valley. Highway 5 is just before the mountains.

A military checkpoint, about a kilometer before the junction with 5. Here, for sure we thought they’d check our tourist cards. Nope.

We’ve made it to highway 5.

The 3/5 junction is undergoing a complete reconstruction. This sign may have been helpful at one point, as right now there is no signage at all indicating that we are to turn off the main road and onto a temporary dirt road paralleling 5.

Mexico on occasion takes the “one route number everywhere” idea a bit too far. It is 3 that goes to Ensenada; no matter how you slice it, this sign is incorrect.

Another set of one correct and one incorrect sign. Also, note the cones detouring us onto the dirt road.

This will be the new military checkpoint. Looks like they’re moving it from 3 to 5.

The highest speed limit in Mexico on two-lane roads: about 68mph. There are some rare four-laners that go up to 120, but we did not see any. Even on the brand new four-lane road heading into San Felipe (it opens up to four lanes just south of here), the speed limit stays at 110.

Here’s where the road becomes a four-lane expressway.

We are officially here. Well, there’s still another five miles of outskirts, complete with English billboards encouraging the purchase of real estate. They really hyped up this place (impressively excessive, even in the context of a housing bubble) but now nothing is selling. Luckily, the actual downtown was spared from this excess, and you will need a small bit of Spanish to get by.

Golf! Fine dining! And a reminder that it’s a Mexican phone number.

Highway 5 now goes to Puertecitos. Before the repaving, the road was not a federal highway, but it looks like it got the upgrade.

Note how only the word MEXICO has a border on that shield. Mexico takes a page from a 1930s Texas signing manual here.

Now we’re officially in San Felipe. Note that at one point, the arrow was diagonal, but now it is a sharp right turn.

Quite likely the oldest sign we saw. There’s a pair of these, and they are only about 12×18 inches and have the “DTM” (Departmento del Transporte Mexicano) initials at the bottom.

Highway 5 heads out of San Felipe. This is some older paving – maybe even older than 1997. It definitely has a solid white stripe down the middle, as opposed to the modern yellow, but that isn’t all that meaningful. Mexico’s adherence to standards is fairly loose.

Indeed, it’s highway 5 all the way down to El Huerfanito (or “El Hurfanito”, as this sign claims!)

Respect the signs.

A rusty old sign for Emerald Camp. Highway 5 runs very close to the Gulf of California, and there are a series of dirt roads, each about a mile long, that one can take to camp on the beach. We did not stop here; we camped on the beach much closer to San Felipe.

Overcast, as we approach Puertecitos.

Something must’ve gotten lost in translation…

I believe Laguna Chapala is where this road reconnects to highway 1. That’s about 200 kilometers down, and the road stops being highway 5 well before then. If the guide books are to be trusted, it’s a terrible dirt road. Maybe not anymore – no one seems to know!

Puertecitos. Looks like they borked every El Huerfanito sign.

About here is where we turned around. We had no idea how long the road would be paved. In fact, when we left San Felipe, we figured we would be forced to turn around well before Puertecitos!

Back north we go, to eat dinner and get some sleep in San Felipe.

Someone has transplanted this Los Angeles street sign assembly.

Oops, that should be highway 5.

Back in San Felipe, we finally get ourselves down to the water.

Here’s Mike in the water. The bay is about 75 or 80 degrees at this point in the summer. Very pleasant, especially given that the air is rather humid.

This older sign shows about half the population of the modern one at the north end of town.

That’s all for day one – at this point we had dinner in town, and got some sleep in the car in a campground by the water. Ten bucks. Next day – up at dawn, and head north to San Luis Rio Colorado.

These are some photos taken by Lou Corsaro and me on a trip to Baja California, on August 11th of this year. We took federal highway 1 south from Tijuana to Ensenada, and a bit past that to the turnoff to La Bufadora, and then back to Ensenada and up highway 3 to Tecate and back to the United States.

Obligatory teaser picture:

La Bufadora, just south of Ensenada. Waves crash against a rock formation that reflects them straight upwards.

Obligatory teaser picture, highway sign division:

Two old signs to be found here: the green guide sign with the outline shield dates back to the 1960s. The diamond “ruta camiones” (truck route) is similarly old, and is patterned on a 1910s Auto Club of Southern California diamond-shaped sign that very likely hung there for 50 years before getting replaced by a copy that was almost identical, but reflective.

Our first photo of the morning, in Tijuana. Brand new signs point the way to the toll road to Rosarito, and points further south. Alas, the sign is wrong: 1 is the old free road, while the new toll road is numbered 1D.

This sign correctly shows route 2 as going to Tecate; and also demonstrates Mexico’s use of Arial on their signs in recent years.

The toll road and the free route are very close together, and frequent sets of ramps connect them. Here is one possible entrance to the toll road northbound, with the option of continuing south without charge. The sign goes back to when the toll road was opened in the 1980s.

Mexico uses kilometer posts as reassurance shields. Stand-alone shields are very hard to find, having been replaced by these one-piece assemblies starting in the 1970s. On occasion, the route number is omitted. This happens to be on route 1.

At the junction of current route 1, and old route 3. 3 and 1 are multiplexed southward from here to Ensenada, but the route is usually signed just as 1. Here, it is signed just as 3, despite not being the current 3 alignment.

Here is the turnoff to La Bufadora. The access road is Baja California state highway 1, but no signs for it survive. In order to continue south beyond this access road, one must have a tourist pass. There is a checkpoint well before San Quintin (80 miles south). Tourist passes may be obtained at border towns both in the US and in Mexico.

A tope is a particularly vicious form of speed bump, capable of separating man from transmission if crossed at more than about 5 miles per hour.

Hand-painted white guide signs for small villages abound on the access road.

Here, the access road becomes pedestrian-only, and in order to walk down to the water, one must pass through all of these shops.

Get your Cuban rum here!

A seagull watches the proceedings.

Here is the shore, once one gets past all of the shops. A bit further inland (towards the viewer), the shoreline jogs to the right and that inlet features the blowhole.

Red tide and green plankton.

Here, we return from La Bufadora to federal route 1.

More un-numbered shields along federal highway 1.

Nothing to see here. Just a big, murderous ape.

The south end of the 1/3 multiplex. Here, 3 turns southeast and heads towards route 5, which then goes to San Felipe along the Bay of California shore. 1D is incorrect: the toll road does not begin until north of Ensenada, whereas this sign is in the southern part of the city.

The old split between 1 and 3, before the “tourist route” seen above was signed. This is now the truck route for 1, and the old split is denoted with some very old green guide signs in all directions.

White guide signs with shields on them are plenty hard to find. This one is on the truck route (old 1) in Ensenada.

A parhelic circle – the arc-shaped halo passing through the sun is a result of ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. It is similar to the standard halo around the sun, but caused by a different shape and orientation of crystal.

The north end of the 1/3 multiplex. We take 3 inland to Tecate, instead of returning along 1 to Tijuana.

This sign literally says “obey the signs”.

The new 3 alignment is a four-lane expressway from Ensenada until its junction with the old 3.

This very nice new kilometer post not only conforms to an older standard (white background behind the shield), but is also incorrect: we are on route 3, not 2.

This one is correct. The 90 has been patched over another number.

After the new and old alignments rejoin, we pass through this rock cut.

This kilometer post appears to have had its legend cut out from vinyl by hand.

The 2D toll road connects Tijuana to Mexicali, and features a bypass of Tecate. Here we are approaching the bypass, on the south side of Tecate. The northern end of the town is right up against the US border.

The decrepit white guide sign urges pedestrians to use the bridge, instead of attempting to cross six-lane route 3 on a dash.

Several of the cross streets lead to 2D, so they are all trailblazed as such. The old border crossing was straight ahead, but now 3 takes a jog to the east by a block to allow for a new, larger facility on the United States side. Route 3 connects to California state highway 188, which is only about a mile long before it runs into California state highway 94.

This old guide sign gantry has been patched to show the new way to go. Both cars and trucks (“vehiculos pesados”, heavy vehicles) use the same expanded crossing.

A blue California 94 trailblazer. Someone in Mexico must’ve gotten the specs wrong.

The last sign in Mexico.