Highway NetworkHighway One.

That’s all you REALLY have to know.   It is a generally high quality two-lane blacktopped highway leading from Tijuana at the border roughly 1100 road miles to Cabo San Lucas at the tip of the peninsula – passing through Loreto and environs on the way.  Between Tijuana and Ensenada there is an extremely scenic toll freeway.   South of Ensenada is a three to four hour stretch generally following the coastline through farming areas, with a couple of low passes to twist your way through, before a short hop inland to El Rosario.

El Rosario is a small town near the coast, a few miles up a scenic palm-lined estuary from the Pacific.  Get gas.  The stretch from there southward to the state line at Guerrero Negro is six or so hours at highway speed.   It goes through some of the most varied terrain and scenery on the Baja, with forests of cactus of different kinds dominating for a while, then replace by others, then a miles-wide field of boulders the size of buses, then just plain desert.   Some of it is flat, some has some curves.  But you will not find any gasolineras until just north of Guerrero Negro (except two or three “Jerry Can Harry” entrepreneurs who usually are there to offer gas at a small collection of houses called Catavina, a couple of hours south of El Rosario).  You also have the option of a side trip to Bahia de Los Angeles, with a rustic village on the Sea of Cortez, accessed by a paved highway leaving Highway One south of Catavina.

But back to Guerrero Negro and the pavement.  Highway One goes east from there, across the peninsula, passing San Ignacio (also on an estuary going down to the Pacific), with its more than 300 year old mission church, a couple of hours  later, and then on for another 45 minutes to hit the Sea of Cortez at the ferry port and mining town of Santa Rosalia.   As an alternative for the adventurous, armed with 4-wheel drive, a dirt road leads south along the estuary, then south paralleling the coast (past many spots famous in the surfing community), to rejoin pavement south of the village of San Juanico and eventually rejoin Highway One at Insurgentes, southwest of Loreto.

The blacktop from Santa Rosalia south to Loreto takes you through Mulege (yet another estuary, this one draining to the Sea of Cortez), along the scenic west shore of Bahia Concepcion, then on south overland to Loreto.  It’s about two and a half hours of driving for a normal person.   This area is discussed in more detail in another tab under this heading.

The first half an hour south of Loreto to Ligui is along the island-strewn shore of the Bay of Loreto, on the Sea of Cortez.  From there it’s up a steep, winding, and very ruggedly scenic section of highway and then a 45 minute shot straight westward to near the Pacific and the town of Insurgentes and, just to its south, the commercial and agricultural city of Constitucion.    An interesting but little known fact is that Highway One and its extension north and south of Insurgentes is more than 100 miles of straight line road with no turns or deviations, with Constitucion about 35 miles from the south end; the north end peters out into dirt road near San Juanico – where it’s joined by the dirt track from San Ignacio mentioned above.

Constitucion to La Paz is two plus hours of mostly straight but occasionally VERY twisty highway, bringing you into sight of the beautiful large bay of La Paz and the “City of Peace,” which is a commercial center, the oldest established population center in the lower Baja, and the capital of the state of Baja California Sur.

Just south of La Paz is an intersection that offers one of the few true options in Baja routing:    Highway One heads east past the historic mining towns of El Triunfo and San Antonio through about an hour of mountain driving to Los Barriles (think slow pace, fishing boats, and  — in season – wind surfing and kite surfing), and thence south more or less straight to the highly-developed tourist mecca of Los Cabos:  San Jose del Cabo,  Cabo San Lucas and the tourist Corridor between.

From that same road intersection south of La Paz, Highway 19 instead takes you southward to Todos Santos – justly labeled a “pueblo magico” – and on south along the Pacific coast to Cabo San Lucas.  It’s worth noting that, in contrast to the Los Barriles route, the link from La Paz to Todos Santos is now four lanes, and the Todos Santos – Cabo San Lucas section is as of late 2011 being widened to four lanes.  By some time in 2012, that link will be complete, knitting the two southernmost counties (municipios) of the state together by means of high-speed highway.

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