It’s time for a surf trip!  It’s been 12 years since this epic trip to San Juanico to surf Scorpion Bay. As I plan my next Mexico surf trip (elsewhere), I’ve gotten nostalgic, and want to share this last big trip.

We took a boys surf trip to Scorpion Bay at San Juanico, Baja Mexico for a week of surfing at the famous 4 points located along the north end of the bay.

Many people ask me why we would choose to leave Maui for surfing.  Well, in the summer, we often get island blocking from the best swells, and those that sneak through are usually not very big.  We took a chance at hitting Scorpion Bay on a south swell (which is also fickle.)

Thankfully, we scored chest to head high fun waves with minimal crowds.  My first attempt to get to Scorpion Bay was with Jay, Nari, and Paul and their 2 homies. We drove from California, spent days exploring, surfing, camping, and nearly getting stranded. It was such an amazing trip! BUT, I had to work, and I headed back before I could get there…  The rest of the boys scored some fun ones. You win some and lose some. Worth every second!

The waves

The waves were incredibly long.  On the perfect swell, the 4 points can connect and leave surfers’ rides in excess of 3 minutes. We clocked our longest ride at just over a minute long.  We’re ok with that, since 1 minute on a wave feels more like 20 minutes.  Amazing rights!  We didn’t get any barrels, but we got plenty of fun rides.

Getting There

The area is in the middle of the desert, and it’s really not for the weary traveler.  Instead of driving for 2 days from San Diego, we opted to take a shuttle from San Diego to Tijuana, a flight from Tijuana to La Paz, and finally a 6 hour drive from La Paz to San Juanico.  San Juanico is a VERY small town with around 50 people living there.  Mostly Mexican residents, we did encounter a few ex-pats that love the wave enough to have moved there.  We don’t see this appealing because there’s really nothing around.  Surfing is a lot of fun, but we need a little more to sustain our sanity.

When we went, we couldn’t change our money at the airport in Tijuana (closed), so we hoped to do it in La Paz. It was a Sunday, and EVERYTHING was closed… There were no ATMs in San Jaunico at the time, so we had to resort to borrowing money to get by.

Scorpion Bay Hotel

Our friend had the hook up, so we enjoyed comfortable beds, nice rooms, and even a game room. They even sometimes had water and electricity, and occasional entertaining staff.

The Food

We found a few brick and mortar restaurants, but most of our meals were at a food truck that had some of the best tacos of my life. No, thinking back, they were the best of my life. I’m sure there’s plenty more built up and more options now, but we didn’t complain.

San Juanico Night Life

Our little village happened to have a pretty crazy little local festival called San Juanico Days.  It was like a 3 day carnival with clowns, rides, games, fights, and all kinds of weirdness you’d only find in a very small, isolated community.  We had fun, but some of the events left emotional scars (chicken fights.)

All in all, it was a successful trip.  Here I am surfing a few fun waves on a chest high day.  Glad to be back in Hawaii, but what a fun trip! Here are some shots of Wes getting super long rides: