After leaving Santa Rosalia and then Punta Chivato, we sailed (YES! SAILED!) down to Playa Santispac. After much waiting and with great anticipation, we finally had our chance for cruising in Bahia Concepcion!
We had a great sail! We sailed all the way down the bay from Punta Chivato to the opening at Playa Santispac. Coming in, we were greeted by these amazing rocky islands.
When we arrived, there were only a handful of boats anchored in the bay. As the days wore on, and a bit of a norther began to develop in the wind forecast, many more boats squeezed into the large bay. Thankfully, there was room for all.
This is a very popular RB and vanlife spot and the beach was lined with many, many land-based nomads. Some were setup for longterm life on the shores of Playa Santispac, and some were just visiting on larger road trips up or down Baja.
On our second day, we walked the shoreline to the west and found a cool lagoon area with mangroves.
Unfortunately, by the night of the second day, Evan was showing symptoms of an upset tummy and we were launched into a couple days of Evan being really sick. He hung out on the boat on Day 3 while the rest of us went for a walk.
We went ashore in Santispac and then walked along the east shore until we got to an isthmus area where we could walk across to the wider Bahia Concepcion.
The rest of us remained steadfast against the sickness for another 2-3 days, and we thought Evan must have simply eaten something that didn’t agree with him. But just when we thought we were in the clear, Kali and I were knocked down with the same issues.
Brenden developed a completely different set of head cold symptoms. Scott was to be the only one of us that didn’t fall ill in some capacity in Santispac. Thankfully, we were in a good (and safe!) spot to be invalid and isolated on the boat for nearly a week.
It knocked us down pretty good for a while there.
But, eventually, we all started to come out of it, and we got antsy to move on. Brenden, Scott, and Evan took the dinghy to the beach in Santispac on our last full day there and hitched a ride into the town of Mulege so that they could get some more fresh groceries, and also show Scott around the cute town that we’d come to love last year.
Cruising Bahia Concepcion: Playa Coyote
We wanted to check out at least one more anchorage in Bahia Concepcion before we left to go further south. So, we picked up the anchor and cruised a short distance down to Playa El Burro, which we couldn’t find a spot that we liked to drop our anchor (there were several seemingly at-least-semi permanent boats anchored or moored in Burro. So, instead, we popped around the corner to Playa El Coyote and found a nice spot to drop the hook.
We dropped the dinghy and went to shore, seeking to find some petroglyphs rumored to be found at the trailhead across the road from the El Burro turn off.
We didn’t find any petroglyphs- but we did find our very first rattlesnake! Evan was in the lead walking up the hill and came across a three-foot red diamond rattlesnake. It was beautiful.
Thankfully, it was completely non-aggressive and just continued on its way. We turned around and went back down the trail. That was enough adventure for us for the day!
So, we headed back to the boat and stayed one night there in Playa el Coyote, picking up anchor the next morning to head down to San Juanico.