Beach camping in San Felipe, Baja California, Mexico

All right I know this is going to be cold but I gotta do it. Hi we're Mel and Jay. Together with our cat Benny we're traveling the Baja Peninsula all the way to Cabo and back. Our first stop was San Felipe. This was a great starting point for us to figure out some of the essentials for traveling in Baja, meet some other travelers and get our first taste of authentic Baja fish tacos. San Felipe is about two hours south of the Mexicali border crossing. Highway 5 is paved and was in good shape when we traveled. Good morning from San Felipe. Today we are going to show you what there is to see here. Yeah we found a beautiful spot here on iOverlander. Free camping steps to the beach. Yesterday when we got here this was all just like a big sand flat so there's some pretty big tides. 15 feet. Now the water is like right here and I don't even think it's high tide yet but yeah listen to that beautiful sound of lapping waves. This water is so calm. Yeah. Yeah and actually I don't know if you can see on the camera but all along like right here there's like a really turbulent water area that's actually a sandbar. So when the water goes out it slowly reveals this beautiful little sandbar and then it comes in it just slowly covers it again which looks really cool. Meanwhile our camping spot is right up behind us. You can see there's a couple other rigs up there. I think we're gonna like it here in San Felipe. Yeah let's get some tacos. Some other campers were telling us about different tacos you can get here and yeah we were getting hungry. So we've just sat down at the restaurant we've just placed an order for some fish tacos. Our first ever in Baja and we just happened to notice at the table there's like eight different hot sauce options which is pretty awesome. Classic habanero black salsa. Habanero verde. I don't know what this is. Extra hot. I love the flour tortilla. It's soft and fluffy. Fluffy? I don't know if that's the right word. The fish is piping hot and the toppings just go great with it. I love it. Alright so we just got back from La Bodega. Let me show you what we got. So the total bill came to 404 pesos and 49 cents. It's about 20 bucks. So for approximately 20 US dollars we got a bag of chips, a box of cereal, cheese slices, black refried beans, some chocolate wafer cookies. These were only five pesos each. We got some chipotles adobados which is an ingredient for a recipe that we'll try at some point. We got a dozen eggs, fresh buns. These are still hot. I watched her wheel them out. Iceberg lettuce, half of a papaya, a cucumber, a bag of avocados, three roma tomatoes, three plantains, and a six pack of beers. All of that for 20 bucks and I feel like at home that probably would have been more like 40. Maybe more. Maybe even more. I mean like a papaya at home is like super expensive. About a dollar twenty for half of a big beautiful ripe papaya. And buns! Okay this was like the deal of the century. These buns were two pesos each so which works out to about 10 cents. Are you gonna go in the water? Someone said that the water here is actually pretty warm. It was like in the high 70s but I don't believe that so I'm gonna test it out. Yeah it's not super warm. And I am saying it's probably 62 degrees fahrenheit. What's your reading? I got 61. 61? Yeah this is showing like 16. All right Mel's going in. Wait for it. Oh even just the sand is cold. Yeah all the way to the to the deep water right there. No no. Really? I'm such a wuss. Maybe if I stood here for a while I would acclimate but right now this is really cold. All right I know this is gonna be cold but I gotta do it. It's your first chance in Mexico to go swimming. Yes we came to Mexico because of the ocean. Here goes nothing. And it's very shallow so I don't even know how far out I'm gonna have to go before I can like get underwater the whole way. And it's a little bit murky because it's a sand bottom. Just said he's up to his knees. Okay are you ready? Three, two, two and a half, one, go. And it's cold and yet he's not coming back. How do you feel? Nice and refreshed. You always say that. Just a quick little safety PSA for you. Last night Mel and I just finished up our dinner and we kind of smelled something that smelled a little bit like burning plastic and we weren't quite sure. We kind of narrowed it down to this area over here which under here is where all of our electronics are, our solar charger, our batteries, everything. So I pulled these panels back, tried to get in there and get a really good look but I couldn't find anything. Plus we weren't really using a lot of power so everything was cold to the touch. There weren't any wires in there that were warm. We tested the smoke alarm just as a precaution and then Mel went to plug her phone in and she goes, oh this is hot. So this is just a USB-C cable and it was hot and started to melt. I never even knew that these things had enough amperage to do that. So just be aware your USB-C charging cable may at some point self-destruct. All right we got a hibiscus beer. We're going to try this out later but we did taste test it and it was pretty nice. Before we left we were in touch with a couple who moved from Alberta to San Felipe, bought a property and opened up a small RV park called Baja RV Heaven. Be sure to check it out if you're in the area. So what are you making tonight? All right tonight we are making from the cookbook Mexican scrambled egg tacos. Now this sounds like breakfast to me but we like breakfast for dinner sometimes anyway so we're going for it. It's also called tacos de huevos revueltos a la mexicana. If you speak Spanish I am sorry if I've just butchered your language. So we need garlic which I've been having trouble finding in the stores. So unfortunately we're gonna have to just use some of our garlic powder. A chili. I'm actually gonna remove the seeds from these. This is a serrano chili and they're kind of spicy. We need some onion as well. Now I have to chop up these chilies a little. Spicy? Yes very spicy. Oh my gosh I can't like even put my nose over the jar. I feel like I'm making an onion milkshake, a really spicy one. So I have a little bit of a story here for you. Many years ago I was making something with scotch bonnet peppers. I made the mistake of wiping my eye when I was cutting them. You want burned? That burns. My eye was on fire. It was burning so bad I ran to the bathroom. I was flushing my eye out with water. It wasn't really helping for long and then Jay comes up to me and he's like wash your eye with milk and I was like milk? You can't put milk in your eyeballs and actually he looked it up to convince me with google and um yeah so we got some milk and I rinsed my eye with milk and it was like instantly fine again. It was amazing. So that's my hot cooking tip for today. If you happen to wipe your eyes with chilies or whatever a little bit of milk can go a long way. I think I'm gonna turn up the fan. My eyes are starting to burn a little. Now for the tortillas we know this isn't the correct way to reheat them but this is what we've got. So we've got just really low heat just to warm them up so that we're not drying them out. Here's my sous chef helping out chopping up the cilantro. Do you like cilantro? I feel like it's one of those things that people love or hate. Apparently there is a genetic factor into the way that you can actually taste cilantro and for some people it tastes like soap. The eggs are looking so tasty. All right these are done. And as a finishing touch we've discovered this salsa chipotle picante sauce that they had at the taco place. It's really good. There we go. I love this. This was like a pretty easy recipe. Don't forget the sauce. Oh yes. You should try it. It's really good. After being alone in the desert it was great to have some company. There were an average of about five or six rigs that stayed on this spot while we were there and one night we had a nice campfire with everyone. It is our last day here in San Felipe and we've met lots of friends here. It was an amazing time. One of the people we met is Mike here from Let's Just Go Travel. It was pretty cool. We came up here and we saw two rigs. One of them was a truck and a trailer from BC. What are the odds? Seriously. Like talk about serendipitous. We are thousands of miles away from home and we run into these wonderful people who are doing the same thing as us which is really really cool. Yeah so thanks. We've had an awesome time hanging out with you. Yeah same with you guys. It's yeah like you said it's just so coincidental that like we not only have we met on this beach this is our first beach also here in Baja and we live an hour and a half from each other back at home and we're both YouTubers. Like how does that happen? Right like that's so cool. Check out our channel we're called Let's Just Go Travel and we live full-time in our RV and we're just having adventures here in Baja. And they've definitely done some really cool stuff. Check out their drone footage is awesome. Yeah but it's moving day today so we're both heading out and we will see you next week in Baja San Luis Gonzaga. Gonzaga. Gonzaga. I'll get that right one of these times. We will see you in Baja de... oh. We will see you in Baja San Luis Gonzaga next week. See you there. Bye! What am I asking you? I don't know what you're getting at. I don't know what to do. Should I like Are you cold? Maybe a little bit. The breeze is chilly. Press play. Yeah. No no no. Close the door the whole way. Come in. Oh. Spicy? Yes. I should have waited until I got my drink. My mouth is on fire. Spicy. Make sure you don't miss the next video by liking, subscribing, and turning on notifications. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you in the next one.