Bahía de los Sueños

Bahía de los Sueños is the new name of Ensenada de Muertos, a cove of white sand and warm, shallow turquoise water on the Sea of Cortez southeast of La Paz, in the Los Planes delegation. Access is free: from Los Planes follow the main road 13 km toward Agua Amarga, then about 2 km of dirt track to the beach. The Gran Sueño resort at the bay puts it 35 miles southeast of La Paz, about an hour's drive, and two hours north of Los Cabos.

The water invites kayaks, paddleboards and snorkeling, and the bay is one of the sport-fishing hot spots southeast of the city, with a July-to-October peak. The stretches without development are used for camping and picnics, but there is no mobile signal, so bring what you need, including shade, respect the dunes and take your rubbish home. Along the cove sits a resort complex with the Centro de Trenes restaurant and the Gran Sueño villas, which offer lodging, dining and a beach club.

The name Ensenada de Muertos appears in records from the early 1800s, explained by legends of sailors dead of typhus and crews buried after an epidemic. The bay was ignored until the 1940s, when the Los Planes farming zone opened and the road to La Paz was built, and through the twentieth century it was a fishermen's refuge. In the 1920s a French-owned mining company from El Triunfo built a road, a warehouse and a stone pier with five stairways to ship ore from here; the company left five years later, and INAH now protects the pier as a historic monument. Today the whole coastal zone is marketed as Bahía de los Sueños, the Bay of Dreams.

Sources: La Paz tourism office · Go La Paz, fishing · Go La Paz, La Ventana · Gran Sueño resort · Visit Los Cabos, La Ventana