Day Fourteen: Thursday, March 29: San Javier

Today we drove out the 35 km on a rough dirt road through the Sierra Gigante mountains to San Javier - such incredibly beautiful desert scenery! With views back to the Sea of Cortez as we climbed, and Rupestran rock art greeting us along the way - several stream crossings, a few small ranchos, palms filling the arroyos and cardon, cholla, Zalate, the native wild figs, and palo blanco hanging off the steep cliffs.

San Javier is a piece of "old Baja" and this small ejido must feel great pride in what they have done - it is so beautiful and clean and well kept - cobblestone streets lead the way to San Javier Mission, which is the second of all the missions in the Californias. It was founded in 1699, and later moved to its current location in 1720 to make room for all the orchards - it is very well-preserved and very old feeling - simple, Moorish architecture that I found more appealing that the ornate decor of some. It was really a gorgeous place, warm friendly people, tidy little homes and businesses, in such a beautiful valley in incredible desert scenery!

The village of San Javier is quite a gem - after the long drive in, you enter through stone gate posts to find cobblestone paved streets, abundant flowers, fruit trees, date and fan palms, and a tidy little village with welcoming locals. As you turn onto the main street, it is a broad avenue leading to the Mission - taking the place of the town square. Everything is neatly swept, and, there are streetlights - what a surprise so far in! There are power lines, though we saw none leading into the village - turns out the big generator we saw on the main street next to the police truck is the source of electricity for the village, and it is the job of the local policeman to turn on and off the generator in the evenings. Here's a link to a blog of someone who spent a few days there - Mellow Velo: Life On Grid's Edge. We saw bicyclists on the road in, who were likely doing the same thing. Maybe we even saw this person! There was a lovely little hostel - "Casa de Ana" where I wished we were staying to enjoy the hospitality of this community a bit longer.

Listening to a local family say prayers inside the old sanctuary, I felt moved, like I should approach the alter on my knees like a penitente. I spoke to one of them as she walked out, and she was very pleased to see how much I appreciated their church – I told her I wanted to get married there, and asked to whom - I pointed to Devin who was sitting on a wall outside and she laughed happily. I wish we could have!! We hope to find a nice little place to get married somewhere on our trip, but of course, San Javier Mission is in Mexico, so there might be a little problem with paperwork.

There were some palapas selling souvenirs across the street from the mission, and we just wanted to spend some money here to support their continued prosperity. While shopping, I had a local dog that really wanted to make friends… a little ~too~ friendly, and I was joking with the young man at the tienda that I thought the dog wanted to “hacer amor” – he laughed and said, well, he’s a Mexican dog, to which I responded, so he’ll make love to ANYone, then? Ha. Laughter all around. I had to break poor Duque’s heart, but I’m sure he’ll find a new amor soon. Ha. I bought a mug, just because we wanted to spend money in their town, because we appreciated what they had done and how lovely it was, and the warmth of the citizens. I’d like to go back and stay at the little hostel in town some time, and maybe continue the trek over the mountains to the Pacific. But it was almost sunset and we wanted to get home before dark, so we headed back west.

On the drive back the Jeep started making a horrible screeching noise - it seems something may have been caught in the wheel well, or was scraping on the metal disk brakes - it was awful and echoed in the canyon as we descended the steep rocky road with hairpin turns - we stopped in the road and Devin crawled under to see if it was something he could knock loose, and couldn't find anything, so we kept going a ways to find a better place to work on it - a relatively flat area with good visibility both directions. As it was getting dark, we jacked it up, and before removing the wheel, Devin did some more diagnostics and was able to pry the metal shield that covers the inside of the wheel away from the disk brakes, where it had been rubbing - probably a big rock got thrown up from the other tire and dented it. No more noise!! And we didn't have to take off the wheel. Yay!! We drove down to Loreto in the dark, seeing the glowing eyeshine of various beasts (mostly cattle and rabbits) along the way, outlines of Cardon (like Giant Saguaro) cacti, and enjoying the desert night as the lights of Loreto approached.

For more photos, see our San Javier Picasa Web Album

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