Bahia Tortugas

This Cannery has been shut down for quite some time, there is another one that is still in operation

Bahia Tortugas is about half way down the coast of Baja. It's 135 miles to the nearest town and 100 miles off the main highway. There's about 2,500 people who live here making their living off of primarily lobster and fishing and I don't know what else, but most people here have nicer vehicles than I have ever owned. Nice quiet little town, friendly people, not at all touristy and very dusty. A couple restaurants, bars, markets, a post office, and one gas station. The only visitors they get are cruisers as it's a good harbor and one of the few places to fuel up, a couple people in competition to sell you diesel, they keep a lookout for boats coming in and motor out to see you as soon as you enter the bay to try and be the 1st to offer you fuel. We ended up paying 1100 pesos for 100 liters which comes out to be about 3.46/gal. They weren't happy that we only wanted 100 liters but we had filled up in Ensenada, went to the Pemex station with a bunch of 5 gal containers and payed 2.65/gal.

Met an old guy here who has decided that he's getting too old to keep up with his boat and is moving here, he said he can rent a pretty decent house for $100/mo and actually be able to afford to live off of his social security check here.



Being so far off the beaten path, prices here were pretty high but it could of been worse, not being a tourist town, they're not trying to gouge anyone. The markets here are filled with primarily merchandise that looks like it came from Costco, much of it actually does have the Kirkland brand on it. All the Mexican products that I was used to buying at the Mexican markets in California can't be found here. We weren't even able to find Mexican Coke or Jumex, those being preferable because they're still made with cane sugar and not high fructose corn syrup, and was always something we could get in California, Costco even carries it.

Most of the people here don't speak any English. We try to use our Spanish, what little of it we have and they wanting to speak to us in English, seeing how we obviously don't know much Spanish, but since they don't know how to say it in English don't say anything at all, they just smile and nod, they don't even try to say in Spanish.

The little dog I think was once white and fluffy

Last night we sat on the beach drinking Negra Modelos that we bought from a little stand on the beach for 15 pesos a piece. We watched the sunset and the moon rise, watched the dogs playing on the beach, and the cats stocking gulls all while listening to Mexican rap music.

Most of the other boaters we've met are heading north as they should be this time of year. This is the only other boat we've met who are crazy enough to be heading south like we are this time of year, Rich and Lori with their two kids on Third Day. We got to know them while getting the boat ready in San Diego. They caught up with us here in Turtle Bay.

We leave here in the morning for Bahia Asuncion and points south. Don't know when we'll have internet access again. So far it's been really good coverage thanks to Slim.