A Little Piece of Paradise: Playa el Requeson

Well, Baja, Mexico, just keeps getting better and better. I keep saying to myself and our friends…”it can’t get any better than this”–and then it does. Playa El Requeson is what I consider a little piece of paradise. We loved it so much we stayed for ten days before moving further south.

Playa El Requeson is on the Bahía Concepción (Bay of Conception), which is a beautiful and fairly shallow bay. It has beaches all along its edge that are very popular this time of year with RVs, vans and other camping. We decided to go to this beach because it had an interesting feature that during low tide you could walk across to an island. That sounded really cool. It did not disappoint.

I was a little worried as we were driving to it because we were arriving quite late in the afternoon on a Friday. That is never good timing for boondocking. As we drove along, every beach we passed was completely full of RVs. I kept thinking we weren’t going to find a place. The beach right before Requeson was packed. Oh dear–I thought. But I had said a prayer a little bit earlier that there would be a place for us at that beach. Playa El Requeson is a triangular shaped bit of beach with water on two sides of the triangle. We found a beautiful location right on the water on the left side as we came in. We were about 20 feet from the water at high tide and much further at low tide. The water was not very deep and you could walk out quite a ways into the bay before it got very deep. However, you needed to do the stingray shuffle because it was a totally sandy bottom and so there were sting rays in the sand.

Our friends had their kayaks with them, so we were able to go out in the bay on the kayaks. That was so peaceful and relaxing. You could see the rays in the sand and sometimes swimming along. There were also some dolphins out in the bay. Lots of sea birds too. The pelicans were huge and they really land hard in the water. The seagulls are greedy birds. At one point, I watch a seagull chasing another bird who had just caught a fish to try and steal the fish. Another time I watched a seagull come in for a landing on the water. There was a whole bay, but the seagull chose to land right where another bird was, so the bird had to move. What, not enough room for both of you in this large bay?

The tides were wild. At high tide the water was about 20 feet from our rig. At low tide it was 50 feet from our rig but the cool thing was then the water was super shallow and you could walk out into the bay really, really far. You had to remember to do the stingray shuffle so you didn’t step on one. It also made it so that the island to the right in the two pictures below was no longer an island. We walked over to it on sand and didn’t get our feet wet. It was crazy how much it changed with the tides. You have to admit that it is a pretty sweet view from our front window at low or high tide.

Also on the beach, we had vendors coming around every day bringing fresh fish, shrimp, produce and other souvenirs. They were very respectful and not aggressive like some can be. And in fact, it was fun to talk with them and interact. They spoke English fairly well, so we could communicate. I really loved the guy who came by and said, “almost free”, as he was advertising his stuff to you. We bought fresh halibut, yellowtail tuna, jumbo shrimp and a blanket. Needless to say, we have been eating very well and I am now warm with my blanket wrapped around me when we sit out in out our chairs at night.

The other interesting thing about this beach is how busy it is. When we first arrived we had a ton of space to ourselves. A few days later, it was like an RV park with very little space in between. We also had a group from the Baja XL event that was going on stay for a night. The event is an off-roading event. It sounded like fun. Maybe Mike and I will do it someday too.

About 40 minutes north of our beautiful camp on the beach, is the town of Heroica Mulegé. Interesting fact about Mulegé. During the Mexican-American War in the mid-1800s, the people of Mulegé defeated the Americans and so their town was officially given the honorary name of Heroica Mulegé (Heroic Mulege). It was a fairly long drive to go into town, but we went several times for various errands and events. The Mulegé Brewery had a super bowl party. There was a farmer’s market. There were live band performances put on by some newly found friends who are ex-pats living in Mulegé.

We had another first here in Mulegé. Our friends were able to arrange through some other friends who live in Mulegé, to go pick some oranges. The couple whose property the orange orchard is on, are expats from the States. They moved here about a year and a half ago. They have a beautiful piece of property with a cute house and fruit trees galore. Citrus, pomegranate, avocado and more. It was another little piece of paradise. They were super kind and let us pick all the oranges, clementines and grapefruits we wanted. They told us they had just harvested several trees with the mayor of Mulegé and then they took them all to the families in the poorer neighborhoods. What a kind thing to do!

My friend and I also ran into Mulegé one day to do some errands. We took my laundry to the laundress. They did an excellent job. They did the laundry for me and folded it all for really inexpensive, but it took about three hours for them to get it done. So we had time to run all our errands, plus explore a little. We bought groceries from the tienda in town. We also bought purified water. You can take your empty jugs and they will fill them for you and it is super cheap. We ended up driving around a bit and found the cemetery. I loved it, like I love all cemeteries. Occupational hazard. I always think of the lives of the people who are buried there. Mexican cemeteries are particularly colorful and beautiful. We both loved looking at it.

One of the last nights we were there, we got an amazing display with the whole sky being red and orange. The pictures don’t do it justice. This was an incredible place and we did not want to leave, but after ten days we had to move further south to get to our RV park where we have reservations so we can be near Cabo San Lucas.