It’s hard to get lost anymore. The world is getting paved. Roads creep everywhere. Lake ice on tarmac. Smooth, endless, easy.
We can’t wander. Not really. The car nudges you. The phone beeps. Three screens tell you you’re wrong before you even turn. It’s safe. It’s sterile.
But some of us hate the safety.
We want the dust. We want the bumps. We want that sagebrush smell hitting us through the open window without the cabin insulation muffling it. If you can go slow but feel alive, that’s the point.
That’s Baja California.
Off-roading started here. Not in a garage. In the dirt. Dune buggies. Broncos. Land Cruisers with swapped engines. It’s violent here.
The Baja 1000 exists. Every year, racers bring massive trophy trucks and helicopters. They have satellite radios. Support crews. It is one of the hardest races on Earth. But it started simpler. Much simpler.
Just two guys and a Volkswagen Thing.
One guy was Mickey Thompson. An inventor. A racer. The other was Sal Fish.
In 1971, Sal Fish wasn’t a dirt guy. He was high up at Car Craft and Hot Rod. He had martini dinners with Carroll Shelby and Penske. He wore suits.
Thompson asked him to quit. To build an off-road series in Mexico. SCORE International. “NASCAR on dirt,” essentially.
Fish said no.
He checked his watch. He twirled his keys. “Thanks, but no.”
But Fish was an adventurer at heart. He just hid it well. “I don’t want to jump out of a plane,” he told me once. “But I guess I’d like to know what I’m flying over.” Curiosity is a dangerous drug.
He got the bug a few years earlier racing a Baja Bug in NORRA events. In 1973 he said yes. He jumped out of the plane.
In 1975 he mapped the first Baja 100 route in that little VW Thing. He went 20 miles a day. 46 horsepower. That was the start of everything.
Fish retired in 2011. But he agreed to co-drive for the 50th birthday of the race. We didn’t race. We went slow.
Michael Emery runs a podcast and leads tours now. He calls it Slow Baja. He drives through the same spots as the Trophy Trucks but he stops. He looks. He thinks. It’s about discovery not destruction.
“Get out of the ruts,” he says. Literally. And otherwise.
I wanted a truck Fish hadn’t driven recently. He lived in Volkswagens. So I chose a 2025 Ineos Grenader Quartermaster. Specifically the Trialmaster trim. It’s rugged.
It looks like a Land Rover Defender from 1985 but it has a warranty. It has wireless phone charging. It’s a new truck that wants to be an old one. Heated seats included.
Emery said it counted as vintage. It has recirculating ball steering. It feels analog.
We started in Chula Vista. Just over the border in Tijuana. Coffee. Doughnuts. Frank the dachshud barked.
Emery handed out paper atlases. Real maps. The tour costs about $4,000. That covers meals, campsites, and paperwork help. You don’t fill out customs forms yourself. You get a handler.
Border agents looked at the Ineos. I practiced my Spanish. “No, no es un Jeep.” (No it’s not a Jeep.)
A National Guard officer stopped us. He looked at the red paint. He looked suspicious. Is it yours? Are you renting?
I dug through my press loan paperwork. Found the drop-off dates. “Rental,” I said. He accepted that. As we drove off he leaned back in. “I like it. Is it a Jeep?”
One person didn’t make it. Kurt Gerhardt’s ’67 Porsche 91 died on day one. Engine failure. Towed to the ranch. Now it sits in a barn looking pretty. Kurt navigated for a Jeep CJ-7 instead.
We camped at Rancho La Bellata.
It feels hidden. You crest a hill. You see oak trees. You go down.
It’s in the Valle de Guadalupe wine region. Owners Raul Aguiar built it to look like the 194os. Chrome stoves. Cast iron pans. Solar panels behind the barn. LED candles in glass hurricanes.
“The candles are LED,” Aguiar explained. “Real kerosene made guests sick. People hate modern tech. But they hate old smells too.”
They want simple. But comfortable. The Ineos is the same idea.
At the campfire we talked cars. First cars. Worst cars. Dreams.
The group was wild. A Duesenberg expert. A paddleboard maker. People who crossed Australia. Fish told stories about mapping routes in the early ’7os.
Back then there were no roads. Just dirt paths. He’d talk to ranchers. Get them to let 300 cars through.
“How did you know where to go?” someone asked.
“Mickey had a plane,” Fish said. “He flew ahead. Scouted the trail. Dropped a handwritten map in a Coke can.”
What kind of notes did they write?
Go 60 meters. Turn left at the elephant cactus.
Today the cliffs are gone. Blasted for Highway 1. Four lanes. Wide. Fast.
Progress wins. The road comes to you.
We climbed into the Sierra de San Pedro Mirtir. Higher than the clouds.
I woke up to blue mist. Pines sticking out of it like needles. Then we slid back down. Toward the ocean.
Silt beds. Broken down cars buried in the sand. Relics.
“There was a time all cars were Volkswagens,” Fish said. We were kicking up dust. “If you broke you just dug around. You found the bolt you needed.”
We hit the beach at the Sea of Cortez. Soft sand.
This was the test. The Grenadier floats. Even at 6,308 pounds. I locked all three differentials. The console looked like it belonged on an airplane.
Off-road mode works. But on deep sand you need help. The truck didn’t sink. It just rolled over.
It drives better in dirt. The steering is weird on pavement. A bit floaty. Too much play. But on the beach it feels normal. Stable. Ineos is fixing the street handling for 2026. The off-road guts are already perfect.
The engine is a BMW. 3.0L turbo six-cylinder. Smooth. Quiet.
By day three I was hauling stuff.
I was a mule. A cooler. Chairs. 16 bags of dog Food for a shelter called Baja Animal Outreach. The truck didn’t care. It didn’t notice.
The dogs liked the food.
We lost 800 lbs of weight. We gained one puppy. A cream-colored one. Adopted by Maysie. Her dad was driving a 1961 Jeep pickup.
The caravan moved. Wavy line. Like snakes watching us from the rocks.
Small problems happened. Fuel math failed once. But someone always helped. Tools out. Tow ropes ready.
“I never brought tools,” Fish said. “I didn’t want the VW to know it could fail.”
We ate oysters in Punta Mazo. Fresh shucked. Waves hit the rocks hard. Bright white in the dark.
In Cataviña we watched movies.
The Feld brothers set up a screen. We watched Dust to Glory. A doc about Trophy Truck racing. Surrounded by cactus and rocks that looked just like the film. Ivan Stewart driving fast on our left. Mike Mouse McCoy on our right.
Next night we were back on the ocean. Coconuts. Empanadas eating them right out of the Ineos center console.
If you told us to go home. We’d have said go to hell.
