Puerto Penasco, Mexico

A journal of our full-time travel around the USA in our motorhome.

We left Coronado on Friday, February 28^th and drove back to Yuma for an overnight stay. Then on Saturday we drove to Ajo, Arizona and met up with our friends Kris and Jan from Albuquerque for the weekend. We hadn’t seen them since September at Lake Powel and enjoyed catching up.

On Sunday we explored the small town of Ajo; viewed its nearby open-pit copper mine; and visited the local museum.

We drove to nearby Why, AZ on Monday morning and a busy campground to meet up with our Fantasy RV Tours group that was headed to Puerto Penasco, Mexico on an “8-Day Taste of Mexico” trip. There were 26 motorhomes and one 5^th-wheel RV on the trip with about 50 people total. The people in the group were from all over the U.S.  

We left Tuesday morning and drove in a convoy about 27-miles to the border town of Lukeville, AZ. After an uneventful border crossing, we drove 63-miles down Highway 8 and arrived in Puerto Penasco, a Sea of Cortez coastal town of about 65,000. Everyone in our tour group had a Reef RV Park front-row, full hookup campsite on the beach.

It was a busy week with several tour van trips into town. First was our welcome dinner at the El Capitan Restaurant, located high on a hill above town with a great view of the water. At sunset you could see the 10,500-foot-high mountains, 62-miles to the west on the Baja Peninsula.  

On Wednesday morning another group trip into town to a hotel where we enjoyed a breakfast buffet and my favorite, chilaquiles. We had a guided tour of town after breakfast.

We enjoyed a group lunch at Flavio’s on Thursday, followed by a stroll along the Malecon shopping area.

One couple in our group from Stewart, Florida dressed as a pirate and mermaid for the sunset cruise on Friday night. The waves were flat, the weather was perfect, and later on the cruise we could see our campground and motorhome on the beach.  

We rode into town with Kris and Jan on Saturday morning. We went to the Tequila Factory store and learned how they harvest and cook agave and then distill the sugars to make tequila. We also tasted several different kinds of tequila.

We asked the Tequila Factory guy to recommend a place for lunch and we weren’t disappointed in the nearby La Curva Restaurant. We tried the dish he recommended, the Molcajete. It was a dish of shrimp, chicken and beef cooked in a tomatillo sauce with onions and cheese.

After lunch we went back to the Malecon to do a little shopping and we bought some fresh off-the-boat shrimp and sea scallops to take home.

We enjoyed a nice farewell dinner on Sunday just a short walk from our campsite. The Mare Bleu Restaurant prepared an awesome Italian dinner for us.

We left Puerto Penasco at 9AM this morning and headed north back to Arizona. No problems crossing the border and we’re back in Ajo for an overnight stay, on our way back to Yuma tomorrow, and then California on Wednesday.  

Steve & Julie Cornelius