Nov/Dec 2024 – Puerto Peñasco (Rocky Point)

Located at the northeast corner of the Gulf of California, Puerto Peñasco, also known as Rocky Point, is a popular getaway destination for Arizonans. It’s only 1 ½ hours from the border, and only 4-5 hours from Tucson or Phoenix, Arizona. Its location is not really along any of our common travel routes, so we never had the opportunity to visit previously. So why now? Well, we were planning to spend the holidays in Arizona, so we would be in Mexico for just a couple of months. Rather than drive multiple days down and back, we thought we’d check out Puerto Peñasco.

I (Trevor) had actually visited Puerto Peñasco about 15 years ago, while working for Newmont Mining. The company had an interest in a gold mine in the area, and Puerto Peñasco was a good place to stay while visiting the mine. My only exposure to the town was our hotel and a few restaurants, with no time to explore the city.

Condo

For this visit, we started with our typical research through AirBNB, looking for pet-friendly places to stay. We found a few options, and ended up settling on the Casa Blanca condo community on Sandy Beach, a couple of miles west of town. As we finalized our plans, our AirBNB host responded to one of our questions and included the name of their property management company – Desert Sun Properties. A quick google search later, and I found their listing, where we could book the condo for about 20% less! People have recommended this technique in the past – booking direct to save costs – but we’ve been too nervous to do it. There are lots of horror stories of people arriving at units that don’t exist, having issues with the owner and no 3rd-party platform to back up the agreement, or any other number of things that could go wrong. But for a savings of over $800, we decided to take the chance.

Skipping ahead – everything went great! We had a very nice two-bedroom, two-bath condo in a gated condo community. We were on the third floor of an 8-story building, with an elevator that was only out of order one time, for just a few hours. The property had 4 pools, but even though 1 was heated, we thought the weather was too cool to be playing in and around them. There also a small 18-hole mini-golf course and a nice concrete path circling through the property, where I could wander with Gunner, and where Sandy and I would walk every morning. It was nice to be able to go for those walks without leaving the property and having to worry about traffic on the main roads. The area felt very secure, with overhead cameras and walking security patrols through the night. November through January is low-season, and the community was essentially empty for the entirety of our stay.

Rooftop condo area view

Condo beach view at low tide

Our condo had some nice amenities – two large TVs, good high-speed internet, and a bidet in the hall bathroom! Sandy refused to try it, but I have to admit that I have fallen in love with a heated toilet seat and the spray-clean system. We had a full kitchen, washer and dryer, and an RO water system for drinking water. We saw that the RO filters were outdated when we arrived, and the management company replaced them within a few days. In the meantime, they provided two 20-liter (5-gallon) garrafones of drinking water. Once the filters were replaced, we thought the filtered water tasted a bit salty, so we continued to use the garrafones, and had them refilled at a local store in town for the low-low price of 12 pesos ($0.60 USD). The condo had heat and AC, but we rarely used either. With daytime temps around 70, and nights around 50, we were typically able to just open our doors to let some fresh air circulate. The weather was often windy during our stay, with many days of very strong gusts.

We also learned that very few places in Puerto Peñasco are dog-friendly. In addition to our complex, Casa Blanca, the Princesa property next door allows dogs for long-term stays. Other than those two, the only options we found were individual homes outside of the condo communities. Additionally, only a handful of restaurants appeared to be dog-friendly. That said, Gunner has really slowed down, and we haven’t been taking him out as much as we used to, so finding dog-friendly restaurants hasn’t been as much of a priority lately.

The City

As a city, Puerto Peñasco has all the necessities, though not a lot of variety. The main streets are paved and most side streets are well-packed sand. For most of our travels into town, we were able to stay on pavement. We did most of our grocery and supply shopping at Sam’s Club, or the Bodega Aurrera next door. Bodega Aurrera is owned by Walmart, and is a decent general store with a little bit of everything. One exciting event during our time in Puerto Peñasco was the opening of a full-sized, fully-stocked Walmart. We went there a few times, and you couldn’t tell the difference from the stores back home.

Similar to other beachfront towns, Puerto Peñasco has a malecon (boardwalk), but we found it a bit disappointing. The area is lined with shops and restaurants, each of which has buskers standing out front, with non-stop encouragement to shop or eat. We visited the malecon several times, but it was never thriving with visitors, possibly due to the time of year. It seemed like one-off events would draw people to the area, but these weren’t scheduled very often. Also, parking was very difficult. There aren’t many street-side spots, but instead a couple of lots charging 100 pesos ($5 USD) for all-day parking.

As restaurants go, Puerto Peñasco has a large variety of seafood spots, traditional Mexican restaurants, a decent number of expat-oriented hotspots, and a limited variety of Italian, oriental, and other ethnic foods. We were a bit surprised at how often we saw menu prices in U.S. dollars. The restaurants do the conversion at a lower rate (often 18 or 19 pesos per dollar, compared to the market rate over 20) so we always pay our bill in pesos. Similar to other destinations, we found that many places accept credit cards or pay-by-phone, so we’ve been using those methods more and more. But even when we pay electronically, we always tip the waitstaff with cash – our understanding is that because electronic payment systems are still fairly new in Mexico, tipped income may not get paid to the waitstaff for a number of days, or at all. Basically, the staff seems to appreciate tips in cash.

Our condo community had two restaurants on-site, but we thought their food was just so-so. Our most-frequented restaurant was Colin’s Cantina, located next door to our property, inside the Princesa community. Colin’s is an expat-centric sports bar, with a great 2-for-1 cheeseburger deal on Mondays, and amazing beef short rib tacos on Tuesdays. Rocky Point BBQ, with its Mexican-born, Texas-trained owner, may rate as our best restaurant in town, and it is also the best BBQ that we’ve had while travelling Mexico. They had a good selection of mesquite-smoked meats and all of the classic BBQ sides. Sandy enjoyed their baby back ribs while I went with pulled pork. Mariachi’s, on Rodeo Drive, is a good traditional Mexican restaurant. Sandy felt that they had the best chicken mole in town – a bit of sweet mixed with a bit of heat. I enjoyed their “chiles en nogada”, which is typically a seasonal item in other parts of Mexico. We enjoyed the food so much that we went for a second taste, only to find the restaurant closed for the rest of our visit so the owners and staff could enjoy the holidays with their families. Other good restaurants included the taqueria/cevicheria Cabo Taco, local birria hotspot Los Mesquites, and Giuseppe’s for breakfast, featuring a good Sunday breakfast buffet. We also belatedly celebrated my birthday with a very nice meal at Pane y Vino, with an upscale menu of pasta dishes and a nice selection of local wines.

Seafood tower and ceviche - Cabo Taco

Mariachi's mole and chile en nogada

Paella festival sampler

It may go without saying that a lot of expats call Puerto Peñasco home. A lot of restaurants have English-speaking staff, English menus, and pricing in dollars. A lot of the tourist activities, like whale-watching tours and ATV rentals, were also priced in dollars. The expats seemed to congregate at a few specific bars, at one of the many RV parks in the area, or within condo communities like the one we stayed in. Within the condo communities, most visitors seemed to be owners who visit their property multiple times per year, some were repeat renters, and a few were first-time visitors like us. We did notice the crowds were larger on weekends, with visitors from both the U.S. and from other parts of Mexico.

Activities

Puerto Peñasco had a good variety of events during our stay. Shortly after our arrival, we found some trick-or-treat streets set up for Halloween. The locals (and some expats) embraced the American holiday, with families standing in long lines to fill their bags with candy. Unlike other places we’ve been, Puerto Peñasco didn’t centralize their trick-or-treat street, and people drove from place to place so their kids could visit multiple candy stations.

Right after Halloween, the town switched over to celebrating Día de Muertos, the Day of the Dead. There were a couple of days of parades, some live music (including a retro-hair band from Hermosillo) and many people dressed as catrinas, with ornate clothes and faces painted like skulls. The local Avenida 32, known informally as Rodeo Drive, was blocked off, with all of the stores setting up altars, many locals selling food and treats, and with a large catrina contest for a packed crowd. It was hard for us to see or hear everything that was being said during the contest, but many of the catrinas were very well-done.

Catrina contest participants

Dia de Muertos parade

Rodeo Drive, site for Dia de Muertos

In early November, we discovered a paella festival at a local hotel. Throughout the afternoon, multiple vendors made large platters of paella for visitors to taste. A few were good, with lots of mussels or other seafood, and others were more experimental with their ingredients and flavors. In the end, we felt that our 700-peso ($35 USD) meal was just average. Coupled with 100-peso ($5 USD) beer and wine options, we felt we would not attend again if given the chance.

Later in our stay, a handful of restaurants offered dinner specials for Thanksgiving. We originally planned to attend one, but instead decided to drive back to Anthem, Arizona, to spend the weekend with Mom and Dad. One of the nicest attributes of Puerto Peñasco is its proximity to the Phoenix area. Our drive was only about 5 hours, including stops and crossing the border.

Most of our outings in Puerto Peñasco were to various beaches, with Sandy scouring each area for shells. The area by our condo was nice for evening walks, but not very good for shells. Most of her finds were small or broken. We tried Cholla Bay to the west, where Sandy found a few pockets of sand surrounded by rocks. And we also tried Playa Encanta to the east, with better results. There, she found many intact, smaller-sized shells for her growing collection. We discovered a shell museum in town, which really seemed to be someone’s large personal collection. It’s only open one day per week, with free admission, so no complaints. We also found a sea turtle aquarium, with 4 turtles in small tanks. The owner said that he had rescued the turtles from other aquariums, and while we were able to interact with the turtles, we found the small-tank conditions to be pretty limiting and a bit sad.

We did skip a few entertainment options during our visit. There are a number of shops that rent ATVs by the hour or day. There are a lot of trails around town, and we could often see and hear people exploring the area. Puerto Peñasco also offers fishing charters and whale watching tours. It seemed that this year was particularly good for whale watching, with frequent posts appearing in local Facebook groups. Another sight that we skipped was a biosphere reserve and volcano crater north of town. The area looked very interesting, but required driving almost to the border, and we would end up spending a long 8-10 hour day exploring. Overall, all of the items we skipped didn’t seem practical with Gunner, since we’d have to leave him alone for a full day. Instead, we’ll have to keep these on our bucket list should we return.

Other

As is typical with our trips to Mexico, we got our teeth cleaned. Facebook groups continue to be reliable for recommendations, though we found the prices in Puerto Penasco to be on the high end – 1,100 pesos ($55 USD) each.

We also needed some vet care for Gunner, and Facebook groups were helpful there as well. (More details on Gunner’s vet visit later in the blog.)

Reflecting back on our border crossings, passing through Lukeville / Sonoyta is very easy. We did not have any long lines when we crossed south on a Monday and Sunday, and north on a Thursday and Friday, though it’s said that the crossing can get busy around weekends and special events. The only crowd we saw was a line of cars heading south while we were headed north on Thanksgiving Day. On our second crossing south, we learned that we are only allowed to have one spare tire for our car. I don’t think I ever mentioned before, but we bought a full-size spare tire before starting our nomadic journey. The full-size doesn’t fit well below the car, so we just left the donut spare underneath and travel with the full-size spare inside the car. When returning from our short Thanksgiving trip, the customs staff noted that we had two spares and we had to pay an import duty of 800 pesos ($40 USD) for the second tire. For the skeptics, no, we weren’t scammed by the customs staff, travelers are truly allowed to carry only one spare tire per vehicle duty-free.

Costs

Probably the largest impact on our costs is the fact that the U.S. dollar has strengthened significantly vs. the Mexican peso. When we were in Ensenada last year, 1 dollar was trading between 16.6 – 17 pesos. During our time in Puerto Peñasco, that same dollar was trading between 20 – 20.5 pesos. Effectively, we could buy 20% more with each dollar.

We found Puerto Peñasco to be reasonably priced, but expensive by Mexican standards. Most of our meals were around 700-800 pesos ($35-40 USD), including drinks and tips, though the full range was more like 400-1000 pesos ($20-$50 USD). Admittedly, we didn’t eat at the fully-local restaurants or street food options, and instead leaned towards sit-down spots that are more popular with the tourists and expats. Our (discounted) condo cost $85 per night, or about $2,500 per month. This is comparable to what we paid in Cabo San Lucas – pretty expensive compared to our normal stays, and Puerto Peñasco is not nearly as entertaining and vibrant as Cabo! There were some other less-expensive options, but we made our choice based on what would work best for Gunner – easy to get him outside, and a nice place to walk.

Our condo was a 10-minute drive from the main part of town and we drove there 4-5 days each week for food or shopping. But since we didn’t take a lot of field trips or excursions, our overall gas costs were lower than other places we’ve been, even including our extra trip back to Phoenix for Thanksgiving. Also, our entertainment costs were pretty low since we skipped all of the higher-cost outings, like ATVs or charter boats.

In the end, we averaged about $130 per day in Puerto Peñasco, most of which was our condo. This ranks the town as one of our most-expensive destinations, more than the $125 per day we spent in Playa del Carmen, but less than the $147 per day we spent in Cabo San Lucas.

Gunner, and Future Travels

A lot of our travel planning and entertainment decisions are driven by Gunner. Mentally, he’s very alert, though he’s either deaf or has developed the selective hearing typical of teenagers. Physically, he’s lost a lot of strength. He can’t jump, walks are limited to about half a mile, and we avoid stairs whenever possible. Gunner has started struggling with incontinence, so he wears a diaper inside, and we try to take him outside every 2-3 hours. We have also noticed that Gunner prefers walking and exploring at night, possibly because it’s cooler.

While in Puerto Peñasco, Gunner had some additional incontinence issues, so we found a local vet – Servicios Medicos. The doctor didn’t speak a lot of English, but one member of his staff translated for us. They did some blood work, and eventually recommended a CT scan. There was a possibility that surgery could help, but this was quickly ruled out, and he was instead put on a neurological pain medicine.

Gunner resting in our condo

Overall, we found Gunner’s veterinary care in Mexico to be very good quality and very thorough. We had to make a few different visits to work through the issues, but the office was very easy to work with. On a cost basis, we paid $127 USD for his first exam and blood test, and $600 for his CT scan, including anesthesia. We estimate that these costs were about 25% of what we would have paid for similar care in the U.S. Medication is another story – though human meds are typically cheaper in Mexico, we have found that animal medications tend to be the opposite. We spent about $140 USD for a one-month supply of his pain medication and some recommended pre- and pro-biotics. Once back in the U.S., we were able to get a 3-month supply of his new medication for about $17 USD, and a similar duration of pre- and pro-biotics for about $35 USD.

Going forward, we’ve decided to change our travel strategy, and will focus primarily on Gunner’s comfort. We intend to move less often, and will likely do less excursions or daily entertainment where we’d be out of the house for more than a few hours. As far as locations go, we still want to target places with temps between 50 and 80. One challenge is that much of Mexico is not as dog-friendly as the U.S. Neighborhoods often have feral or unchained dogs, many areas are “concrete jungles” with limited grass or dirt, and many areas also lack sidewalks, or else they are poorly constructed, uneven, and difficult for Gunner to walk.

We haven’t finalized any plans yet, and think we’ll need to be flexible based on how Gunner is doing. In addition to targeting moderate-temp areas, we’ll be looking for locations with nicer neighborhoods, decent infrastructure, and limited steps and hills. We have gone so far as to modify our health insurance to increase our flexibility. For the past three years, we’ve used an international plan, with reasonable pricing, global coverage, but a six-month limit for time in the U.S. This year, we signed up for a South Dakota ACA plan for U.S. coverage, and modified our international plan to be ex-U.S. By managing our reportable income, we can get a good ACA subsidy, and our total health insurance costs will be very similar to our prior global plan. (This is actually a common technique with other nomads like us.) We’ll wait to make a judgment though – with ACA plans, out-of-state care is limited to emergencies, so depending on our own medical needs, we’ll see if our plan gives us the flexibility within the U.S. that we’re looking for.

Overall, based on Gunner’s limitations, Sandy and I expect 2025 to be a slower and potentially less-exciting year for our travels. We’ll likely be exploring less, and as a result, posting to our blog or to Facebook less frequently.

Final Thoughts

Overall, we felt that Puerto Peñasco was just “ok”. It is expensive by Mexican standards and lacks in a variety of culture and entertainment that we’ve found in other places. The town is a nice place for a short getaway, especially for people wanting to drive instead of fly. It’s close to Phoenix, but not really on the way to anywhere else - ideal for a short round-trip, but not convenient as a stop on a longer trip into/through Mexico. For the price, we concluded that we’d rather drive to Cabo (if traveling with Gunner) or fly to Playa del Carmen or Mazatlán (post-Gunner). In short, I think we would return only if we were looking for a short one-month, “one-off” destination.