The One Place You Must Stop Before Cabo if You Want to Experience the Heartbeat of Mexico

Baja Penin­su­la Trav­el Guide

Tur­tle Bay, Mex­i­co is well-known by boaters as the halfway mark between Ense­na­da and Cabo San Lucas, Mex­i­co. It is a refuge from the San­ta Ana winds and a place to fill up your gas mid­way with­out get­ting off your boat. But it’s much more!!! It’s also the one place you must stop before Cabo if you want to expe­ri­ence the heart­beat of Mexico!

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I’d found lit­tle infor­ma­tion online about the town and its peo­ple before anchor­ing in the lit­tle pro­tect­ed har­bor out­side this super-friend­ly town. This guide will fill in the gaps and hope­ful­ly encour­age you to get off your boat and explore.

After leav­ing Ense­na­da, we spent three days sail­ing south down the Baja Penin­su­la. Winds were pick­ing up, so we stopped and anchored for a few days just off the island of Cedros–right out­side the break­ers on the East side of the island.

Navigating There: Don’t Make an Expensive Mistake

As flat seas became rol­ly, we con­tin­ued north, set­ting sail for Tur­tle Bay. We expect­ed the trip to take 10 hours, but we made it in six at an aver­age of 5 knots. The last part of the trip, we were aid­ed by winds and waves at clos­er to a brisk 7 knot pace. Along the coast­line, be mind­ful of the kelp beds. Once you see what looks like two large rocks next to each oth­er, you’ve arrived. Stay in the mid­dle of the bay, after the coast and before the two rocks from the time you turn into the bay to avoid the kelp and some small­er rocks stick­ing out of the water. 

If you come from the south, be care­ful, espe­cial­ly at night, because you can­not tell there is a strip of land con­nect­ing the rocks and the mountains.

Anchoring Safely

 We crossed the bay toward a small­er cove near town. Although we could have got­ten much clos­er, we anchored in the small cove in about 18 feet of water. We had good hold­ing on a sandy bottom. 

A few days lat­er, tired of row­ing so far, we moved clos­er with about 15 feet beneath us. Although you can feel (and hear) the winds through the val­ley, your boat won’t rock at all, giv­ing you peace­ful nights of rest.

We left our dinghy in two dif­fer­ent places. Some­times, we tied up to the pier, about halfway down, near the lad­der. Oth­er­wise, we beached the dinghy and pulled it up between a pink house and a restau­rant, both owned by our new friends, Roge­lio and his kind father. While we’d not seen any oth­er boaters tying up to the pier, after we’d done it awhile, oth­er boaters did as well.

The very end of the pier is locked, as the fuel guy uses it to fill up boaters who stop here, but the pier itself does not belong to him.

I’m Here: Now What?

From our research, most peo­ple don’t get off their boats here. So, we arrived under the impres­sion that Tur­tle Bay was a lone out­post with “a guy” who could get you some gas. We were told you could either pull up to the dock or have him deliv­er it to your boat for around $10/gallon. (By the way, this quot­ed price was MUCH high­er than what we were offered. See below.) 

Here’s what we found: a charm­ing town with very friend­ly peo­ple. We were met on shore our first day by a local gen­tle­man sell­ing abalone shell neck­laces and ear­rings for $5 (100 pesos). We lat­er found out he is the broth­er of the fuel guy. They call him BB. (By the way, he will quote you a much high­er gas rate, so take your chances with his broth­er, or do what we did and walk a few blocks to Pemex. Also, do your due dili­gence and read the Navion­ics reviews about the only direct gas provider in Tur­tle Bay.) 

Any­way, he walked us around the block to restau­rant Moro­co so we could have a meal and use the WIFI. We spent around $22 for 3 din­ners and drinks. By the way, dur­ing COVID, many of the store­fronts were closed so you must either walk around town or get local knowl­edge. Lat­er, we actu­al­ly had the best Mex­i­can food of our trip here, thanks to Rogelio’s advice. This place is only open after 7 pm and just occasionally.

Let me add, in the evenings, the local small restau­rants (food stands set up out­side of people’s hous­es) open up. So, if you have some pesos, stop for bur­ri­tos, our favorite, from a house on the side street a few blocks in. We paid around 20 pesos each, with all the trim­mings, and got to watch our food pre­pared as we wait­ed. Roge­lio can show you the way (he’s one of our favorite parts of Tur­tle Bay). He is such a nice man to know. More­over, he is a con­ser­va­tion­ist who leads tours of the near­by moun­tains. I have nev­er met any­one who cares more about his town and about tourists. 

And, by the way, take his tour. Rugged rid­ing over the sand and up the moun­tain through wind­ing paths only the locals know about. Whale fos­sils and ancient shark teeth. Med­i­c­i­nal plants. Rem­nants of indige­nous life in the rocky out­crop­pings. A fan­tas­tic way to spend the day!

Find What You Need Here!

Gen­er­al­ly, we like to walk a town to famil­iar­ize our­selves when we first arrive. We’ll walk the beach, find the local church, mark out hik­ing paths, and explore the town. In Tur­tle Bay, we found sev­er­al inex­pen­sive cor­ner stores (for ref­er­ence: a bot­tle of Coke is $1 here) and at the small gro­cery stores, you can restock pro­duce, meat, even Ramen noo­dles, and find small tools, paint brush­es, plumb­ing sup­plies and more. Most of the stores will take deb­it or cred­it cards (tar­je­tas), although some­times the card read­ers will go down if the inter­net has a bad con­nec­tion. We bought lots of sin­gle hot dogs to feed local home­less dogs.

We got lucky and found these mas­sive ice cream sand­wich­es (thick vanil­la ice cream sur­round­ed by choco­late cook­ies or large choco­late chip cook­ies) for $1.50 at one. On that first day, we vis­it­ed the gro­cery store twice for an ice cream fix. It’s fun­ny, the things you miss when you are sail­ing in a dif­fer­ent coun­try. By the way, you can also find can­dy bars like Snick­ers and Milky Way there. So far, we have been unlucky in find­ing hard cheeses. Bring­ing a stock of cheese was advice we should have followed.

Tur­tle Bay has a “bank” (the Pemex gas sta­tion will allow you to buy pesos with your bank card for a small fee, if they have pesos at the time you arrive), a water dis­tillery, a hard­ware store where you can buy sheet ply­wood, a meat mar­ket (car­nice­ria), a park with a play­ground right off the beach, and two hotels. You can get phone cards for var­i­ous car­ri­ers at the phone store and there is an inter­net cafe (closed when we were there). The police sta­tion and the hos­pi­tal are close to the gro­cery store with those deli­cious ice cream sand­wich­es (on the same street).

And yes, there is a “fuel guy” who came out to our boat… if all you’re want­i­ng is to fuel up and get to your next des­ti­na­tion; how­ev­er, the gas was much more rea­son­able than we’d heard. He offered us gas with a markup from the local gas sta­tion of just a few pesos per liter. [Amend­ed (after his broth­er raised the gas price from what was quot­ed, we elect­ed to go to Pemex. Local­ly, they don’t have the best rep­u­ta­tion, harass­ing res­i­dents and even dri­vers from oth­er towns who use Pemex. In the past, they have been known to rob boats they were tasked with watch­ing for absen­tee cruis­ers and then cut­ting the lines so they crash on the rocks and sink accord­ing to locals.) ] 

And by the way, there are two local PEMEX gas sta­tions if you choose to cart your jer­ry cans to town. The first is a very short walk from the beach.

I don’t want to for­get to men­tion one-armed Pedro. You can get him on chan­nel 16. Although we didn’t use his ser­vices, he can take you to get any­thing you need. He’ll take your garbage, get you to the bank, to WIFI, or to the store. He’ll watch your dinghy for you; we rowed to shore and trust­ed our dinghy on land with­out issue.

Be One With Nature!

Along shore, walk along­side the stone out­crop­pings to see small caves and dif­fer­ent rock formations.

Pack a lunch and walk the moun­tain trails. If you’re brave, climb to the top to see panoram­ic views of ocean and desert scenery. 

To cel­e­brate my hus­band’s birth­day, we spent a day climb­ing the moun­tains we had viewed from our boat. Some of the route was almost ver­ti­cal and you must  take care not to slip on the grav­el. Also, if the wind is high, be care­ful on the slim paths between the peaks. It’s a long and unpleas­ant trip down otherwise. 

Just so you know, every­one from town will be watch­ing you; we didn’t real­ize our utter­ly grace­less climb would be how peo­ple would ref­er­ence us. Still, it was nice to have a stranger offer us a drink from his home when we final­ly touched flat ground again. For days after our adven­ture, ran­dom peo­ple asked us if we were the ones on the mountain.

There were sev­er­al times we felt our lives might be in jeop­ardy on that adven­ture. In some areas, there are small rocks you can use as footholds, but some­times the grav­el grabs you and tries to pull you down. There are a cou­ple of slight­ly larg­er rocks if you need a break. My legs were shak­ing so much once I made the mis­take of look­ing down. After that par­tic­u­lar incline (75–80 degrees over 30 feet or so), we’d sealed our fate. We could not take that path back down with­out injury, or worse. At that point, the path we’d ascend­ed looked like a drop off.

Mountain Hiking Necessities

Bring a stick, wear com­fort­able clothes and a large brimmed hat. Wait for a less windy day. Then, stay hydrat­ed. We decid­ed gloves would have been nice after get­ting thorns from bush­es along the trail embed­ded in our fin­gers (and our back­sides). On our way down (we took the path past the cross), my hus­band found the skele­ton of a dog that might have fall­en into a ravine. 

Bring some snacks for the local friend­ly pooches who love to greet (and hang out with) new vis­i­tors. We picked up a cou­ple hot dogs at the local cor­ner store for our new friends.

Dur­ing our time here, we also picked up a mat­ted stray. Once we got him cleaned up, he was such a great sail­ing companion. 🙂

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