Cielito Lindo is a nice little spot to stay. It’s about ten miles south of San Quintin and a five min walk to the beach. It costs 160 pesos/night or about 8 dollars. No electric hookups, but water and sewer. There’s a restaurant on site known for their margaritas and rock crab claws. Happy hour is from 4-5 and makes for a great time to meet and greet other guests. When we arrived at Cielito Lindo, we thought we were the only people here…but everyone comes out of the woodworks at happy hour. Among others, we met Skip, a man from Boston that lives here full time and pays only $65/month in rent.
Around a full moon the tide water at the beach near Cielito Lindo tide water can come up really high, making walking on the beach impossible. We rode our bikes down the beach to the other campground El Pabellon. This campground is 140 pesos a night (7/dollars) but there are no hookups at all. There are large sand dunes that block the view of the beach. The neighboring campground is Fidel’s El Pabellon which has no obstructed view of the beach. These campgrounds are located in a better area of the beach in my opinion, but we decided to stay at Cielito Lindo because we didn’t feel like moving. Maybe on the way back we will stay at one of the others.
There isn’t much to do here other than go to the beach or on the weekends go to the flea market. Skip rode with us and showed us around the flea market. You can find all kind of great things for dirt cheap like bikes and wetsuits. I bought a slightly used shortie for ten bucks. I recommend staying at Cielito Lindo because of the restaurant and happy hour when you can meet some really cool people like Skip and Juanita, the former owner of Cielito Lindo. We saw her on Globe Trekker’s Baja California. That was almost 20 years ago and here she is still coming back every winter. That says a lot about this place I think. Here I am sipping a strong margarita, listening to the Mexican mariachi version of “Cuban Pete” and meeting others that equally share the passion to travel.
Before our next trek, we filled up on water at an aqua purificado dispenser in San Quintin. They usually only fill up five gallon jugs but since Tim has a “water thief” for connecting hoses to spickets, we pulled our rig up and were able to load up our whole tank! I hope we can continue to fill our tank like this because if we can’t then we will have to fill our tanks with unpurified water and treat it yourself with bleach. We would also have to buy separate water for drinking. Next stop is Bahia de los Angeles. We will stop halfway for one night in Catavina to break up the drive.
