cbike

I'll be in San Diego this fall and was thinking of crossing the border for a few days. Possibly doing a small 3 day bike tour. I'm tending toward a credit card tour unless you think the area is great for camping. Any good routes in that area?

Oh, and I have to stop by the Monumental Plaza de Toros since last time I've been on the other side of the fence there.

stevepusser

I'm not really sure about the developed camping on the Mexican side, but you can look at other Baja tourists' journals at crazyguyonabike. You can start looking for campgrounds/hostels/motels from about Rosarito Beach on southwards to Ensanada. The last I heard, in Mexico it was still legal to free camp anywhere on the beach, too, but there may be some security issues.

Tecate, at about 2000' elevation inland along the border, is a lot quieter and more authentic than Tijuana. It's a nice day ride up there along the US side on Hwy 94 and back. There's a couple of county campgrounds along 94 that have hike and bike sites: Portrero and Lake Morena. You might put together a loop that includes Highway 94, Tecate, down to the coast south of TJ, and then back to SD.

You can also take a county transit bus up 94 which can carry two bikes in front racks, if necessary: https://developer.sdmts.com/sdmtsapp/...splay=V&tod=wd

Takara

Tijuana is actually pretty amazing, but it's a gritty, fast-paced city of 1.8 million people. The road to Ensenada, about 100 miles south on the coast, is a ferociously busy expressway, and Ensenada itself is a depressing shadow of its pretouristic self -- it's become Mexico's Daytona Beach.

I second Stevepusser's suggestion to consider crossing at Tecate, or better yet Mexicali, to get into less bike-unfriendly territory. You miss the coastline, but you also miss the traffic and all the ugly exurb development. Tecate is stilll basically a small town, and Mexicali is basically still a has-its-own-character inland border city; Poor Tijuana is increasingly the vast multiplication of a duty-free shop in Blade Runner.plus cheap Las Vegas details.Super interesting to urban sociologists, but arduous biking territory unless you're primarily biking as an urban sociologist, too.

cbike

I'm still undecided to what I'll be doing. It would be great if I could avoid camping to make the trip simpler.

Looks like highway 2 is the only option between Tecate and Tijuana. From Google street view this section doesn't look at all interesting and has a lot of traffic. The route between Tecate and Mexicali looks actually quite interesting. The only issue is that it's 85 miles which would be pushing it quite a bit especially with the 2000 ft climb. If there was a place to stay in La Rumorosa then it would be quite doable. I found only one mention of a hotel but that was in 2006 and wouldn't even know where in town that one would be.

The suggestion of the bus route is quite interesting, too. I could ride the bus up to Tecate and cycle back to San Diego in a day for not much money.