Bumped into a friend in the coffee shop across the street from where I’m staying. I knew him from my stay at Kiki’s. Turns out he’s moved out to South Beach. Has a big deserted beach, a little store nearby, he said, and the potential for a bar with big screen TVs to watch the NFL games. Talked it up quite a bit so I decided, a few days later, to take a trip out there the 12 miles or so to check it out. I’m going to stop along the highway and take some pictures of the numerous developments that are along the coast here in San Felipe. Remember this town is very close to the US, has several ‘Baja’ cross country races in several styles of off-road vehicles every year so has a boom or bust economy. When the US economy is booming, they come down here in droves and the speculators pour billions into properties. Than something happens, like 8 human heads found in front of the police station in Acapulco, and people stop coming. Leaving the condos unsold and the infrastructure unfunded by those taxes from the buildings…after the city paid to pave the road out there. So in a lot of ways, what I’m seeing here now, is only half the San Felipe story. I’ll keep coming here in future years to see what a ‘boom’ is like.
Anyway, a couple miles from my RV park is this Pemex gas station. It’s on the highway out to South Beach, parallels the ocean shoreline mostly. And we’re going to take a ride on it…dodging potholes, and stopping at a working near seaside developement or three for pictures. Note the shape the road is in.
Just a random shot just after a big roadside sign advertising a NEW IMPROVED condo site BUY TODAY that never got built.
A little further on, just past the man made harbor, is this fairly modern setup. Lots of buildings on the site, but the roads are blocked off. Place has some cars parked in front of a home or two, but no obvious entrance. Way off in the distance is Kiki’s. I’m not staying there any longer though.
And eight miles on, I get to the South Beach RV park. This is suppose to be a semi-permanent setup where you buy the RV space, than pay for outbuildings to be built around your RV. That kind of setup is fairly common throughout the US and spills over into Mexico. I’ve seen 50 year old setups like that here in Mexico. Not specific to San Felipe.
Anyway, this is where Dave is living now. It’s fairly new…probably built just before the RV’ing crash in ’08. But I could see they were keeping up with expansion. Probably not at the rate they started at. Nice brick driveways. Great view of the ocean.
One of the outbuildings and some pleasantries for the expected numerous owners some day.
There’s the beach. Very wide, very sandy, very remote. And you can see that, yes, they do have some plots sold. Owners fees probably don’t do much to pay for everything so they’re probably running in the red all the time.
Here’s an unimproved site. The brick road fronts the properties, and they are ill defined. Some sites were obvious though. Rather dusty up here, I expected sandy soil, but it’s more like common, dry dirt with sand mixed it, so I guess, yeah, sandy soil. And with the wind storms we get here, it’s probably not always pleasant.
Way off in the distance, 12 miles and to the left of those hills, is San Felipe. Not many people have bought a site here at this development. I won’t be either. Too far from anything. I understand you can rent a site too. I don’t even want to do even that.
There isn’t a damn thing around here. They did build a bar on the grounds, but you can see there’s not many RV’ers here so it never opened as far as I could tell. Just one forlorn ‘Bar’ sign on a nice, but closed, building. Nice roads and sidewalks though. This all tells me it is fairly new because the roads aren’t all busted up with lots of potholes like the nearby highway.
From someone’s pipe dream…tennis courts. Empty and crumbling. See the fence posts are starting to fall over. Big wind storms around here on occasion.
As I left the grounds, hey, what’s that?
Some kind of Mexican eagle I guess.
I was impressed with that RV community…the nice roads, the sites, what little infrastructure they had in place, the obvious development. And the looks of what some RV’ers were already doing to improve their lots.
What I didn’t like was the remoteness. There’s nothing around the place. That bar they built is closed, there isn’t one nearby to watch games at, there isn’t a close store…the nearest one is 5 miles away. I do like my solitude, but that place is just too much solitude.
So I’m heading on back to San Felipe now…backtracking. And I’ll post a few pictures of what I find along the road. Here’s a virtually empty place just a couple miles north…also has RVs but the infrastructure isn’t as fancy as South Beach.
One shot of the south side of the highway, you get this great view of this mountain. It is that dark. Volcanic ash color. Kind of lonely around here.
And another community along the highway. All these places with buildings front the ocean. Most of them on the first line of hills above high water. This one in the following picture was kind of strange, I didn’t feel comfortable trying to negotiate the difficult looking road through a nearby ravine. So took a picture from over on this side.
And I noticed a Aeropuerto Internacional sign on the highway and diverted my trip over to take a look. There’s a jet there on the tarmac. It was moving around when I arrived. And a couple days later I saw a newspaper article at Fat Boy’s bar that there was going to be regular jet service from TJ to San Felipe. Maybe that was a test jet, testing the runway or something? I didn’t see any passengers through the plane’s windows or around the airport. 
Getting ready to take off I think.
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Back on the road, and a few miles closer to San Felipe, is another community of winter residents, mostly. And you can tell from the big sign, that during ‘bust’ times, if something is not nailed down, it’s going to disappear. People have to feed their kids of course. BTW, I spotted the ladder on the left side of the building in the breezeway behind a locked gate. Guess Rodney is still out of town.
This is one of several little communities along the seaside. With easy access to the beach if you want. These are either summer or winter homes. Depending on the owner’s whim. 
See how they’re built up from the shoreline? The verandas end up 10-20 feet above waterline. So storms can, and do, inundate some of these structures lower sections. The lower areas are utility rooms, storage, and perhaps a mini kitchen, along with the veranda, but the upper parts are the living spaces.
Little better view of the structures here. 
Almost looks like a city street. Except these are all homes…no business except a motel or two.
Three miles later, I was back at the RV campground. That was a fun tour.
And that’s all for today. Hope you enjoyed your visit to South Beach, outside of San Felipe, Mexico on the Sea of Cortez, Baja Norte. Where the sun always sets on the other side.
Thanks for visiting!