Baja - Water Availability

Only some camps have good potable water that needs no more filtering than you do at home, like Brita pitcher or no filtering at all. Permanent camp residents will tell you if this is the case. Boiling a tap water is a must, of course, if this is for making meals.

All other places ... For meals and drinks I would say - purified water only. Either in small bottles ($$), or bring couple of 5-gallon jars and refill it, most grocery stores will have a refilling machine. Called Agua Purificada in Spanish.

For showering it doesn't matter much. You swim in the ocean, so you can wash you face and body with tap water on the camp without worrying how good or bad it is. I don't think you will have to fill you water tank too often. Purified water should better be kept in 5-gal jars that you filled, and for shower you can use their shower cabins on a camp. What Mex said - tap water may clog your plumbing with sediments coat, so I suggest you use their cabins instead. On cheaper beach camps there can be no cabins though.

Be cautious using domestic water in tiny out of the way communities. Much of the water down here (I have been on the peninsula now for 2 years)is 20,000 year-old aquifer grade and it is LOADED with dissolved solids no standard filter can touch. It isn't hazardous (but I do not trust water in Santa Rosalia) but it can coat a hot water tank so quickly it isn't funny. Domestic water in Mulege has less TDS than in Guerrero Negro, Vizcaino, Loreto or Cd. Constitucion. How much is "a lot" of total dissolved solids? Oh maybe ten to sixty times as much as what is allowed in municipal water north of the border. Flush your rig well if you have to use high TDS domestic water.

Spent this last February and a lots of March driving down the back up the entire length of Baja.
No trouble finding water for our camper. We only ever drink bottled water, had no trouble finding plenty of that.

Have a great trip Baja can be fun.


Whale rolling over for us.


Rather a nice beach near La Paz.

Just about everyone in Baja drink bottled water. It's cheap and readily available. There will be a reverse osmosis water outlet in just about every town. Just take your empty water bottles in and exchange them for full ones. Some RV parks have water vendors come through the park.

Like some of the other posters, I also have an elaborate filtering system that I use to fill my water tanks, but it's really slow, about 3 hours to fill my 90 gallon tank. So I use it for flushing the toilet and washing. In a lot of Baja the local water has a microscopic amount of salt that is almost impossible to get the taste out with filters.

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
The peninsula is 900 miles long, so it would help to have some clue as to your destinations.

Don't know - never done this before, but pretty much the entire 900 miles...

It was just a question in general.

The peninsula is 900 miles long, so it would help to have some clue as to your destinations.

There is only one Tap in all of Baja.........................Seriously you won't have any problem finding usable potable Water and there are several RO/UV Filtered Water Plants in nearly every Town and City!

mitch5252 wrote:
Is fresh water fairly available in Baja? Not necessarily for drinking, but for 25 gallon trailer tank and maybe 2 x 5-gallon water containers?

Thanks.

Yes. Some towns have reverse osmosis outlets set up for filling RV's. Having said that, all we do is fill up the tank via a two stage filter (I micron absolute) put in an ounce of bleach, then run all the drinking water through a third filter that removes the bleach and then through a ultra violet filter. We do this for anywhere we travel. We have never been sick and rarely buy bottled water. If we do we buy it buy the gallon.