Arizona - the first few days (5/9-10/07)

Entering Arizona

First Day: Sense of Place is interesting - you don't expect to see much real difference when crossing a political border like a state line, but the border from California to Arizona at Blythe is different - first, there's the river. Crossing the still wide Colorado (before it empties its last irrigation in the Imperial Valley) and that swath of green lets you know you've crossed a real boundary. Then there is the vegetation - suddenly saguaros! The rocks change gradually to more Arizona style jagged desert peaks and shale "badlands," but you don't see Saguaros in California - Ocotillo, Cholla, Creosote, Prickly Pear, Yucca, but no Saguaros. Shortly after crossing the Colorado River, the first Saguaros show up on the red rocky hillsides, and you know you are in Arizona!

We drove out to Alamo Lake State Park for our first night back on the road. Very hot this time of year, but very nice out there. We enjoyed some of the old tourist signs in towns along the way - cute little motels with funny names, like "Burro Jim's," and a cafe that had a sign out front that said "Hot Beer, Lousy Food, Bad Service - Welcome!"

Prescott: The second night, we made it over some tough grades and windy roads to Prescott. We had internet access in the campground at Lynx Lake, since it wasn't too far from town, and Devin researched roads to avoid burning up the transmission on more roads like that! He discovered the Mountain [Roads] Directory, which has a webpage with the Arizona part free! It lists all of the grades, speed limits, curves, etc, for most mountain roads so you can make informed decisions about whether to drive your rig on them. The route we had been planning to take from Prescott to Sedona (continuing on 89 and 89A) was going to be even worse than yesterday, so we made a slight change in plans. Drive the Moho on the main highway and explore on the Jeep. We liked Prescott, and can see why Janet and Art loved it there and would love to move back someday. The old part of town with Courthouse Square is lovely!

On the way out through Prescott Valley the next day, we stopped at Ace Hardware to get some hose plugs for our water system - it had been leaking very little through the fill valve, and we decided to outfit most of our connections (grey water, tank flush, and fresh fill) with quick connects, so we would plug the other side of the quick connect until we attached a hose. Quick connects are great - we already have them on our water filter/fill system and it makes it so easy to just hook up and fill. Anyway, we had a $20 gift certificate for Ace from Devin's cousin Dave (from two Christmases ago) and we were excited to finally use it! When I went to check out, though, there was a problem. After getting two levels of managers involved and making a call to India, where the customer service for the gift card apparently was, they finally were able to give me credit. They were very nice through all of this, and even though the gift card was apparently "expired" (I thought that was illegal!!) they gave me store credit and we got our quick connect hose plugs and also a couple of bird feeders! I would definitely shop at Ace again - excellent customer service!

We drove that day to Dead Horse Ranch State Park in Cottonwood, near Sedona. It is a very nice state park along the Verde River - Arizona's only designated Wild and Scenic River (wait, what about the Grand Canyon stretch of the Colorado? Doesn't that count?) Our campsite was up away from the river but had some desert trees around it for a bit of shade. We put out our awning and put out our new bird feeders and made ourselves at home. We saw roadrunners right away, catching lizards, and Broad-tailed Hummingbirds where whirring around as well. After a quick lunch of cold chicken we had gotten in Prescott (what a good idea to have food ready when you pull in after driving!), we headed up to Jerome in the Jeep.

Day Seven: Thursday, March 22: Cataviňa to Guerrero Negro

Driving south from Cataviňa we went through more beautiful desert – the big boulders reminiscent of Joshua Tree seemed to disappear, that is until “El Pedregoso” (literally, the rocky one) which is a huge “rock pile” of boulders – it sort of marks the end of the Cataviňa-style of desert. After that we descended to Laguna Chapala, a great dry lakebed where the dirt road coming down the eastern side of the Peninsula from San Felipe meets Mex 1. Joseph Wood Krutch described it as a desolate place, but we thought it was quite beautiful, perhaps because of the weather. It was clouding up and the sky was very dramatic – we even had a few raindrops on the parabrisas (windshield) before reaching Guerrero Negro! We were entering the Vizcaino desert, which has been described as flat and barren. We didn’t agree!! The desert floor was carpeted with wildflowers! And we began to see Joshua Trees (actually their close relatives). It started feeling more like the Mojave desert at home – there were even Creosote Bushes! And with Mountains all around, and the dramatic clouds in the sky, we thought it was quite beautiful.

The roads, however, were another story! The roads were some of the roughest, and the lanes the thinnest, and since there were very long straight stretches, other cars went faster, so it was difficult driving. There were places where the white line seemed to waver as if the road painters had a few too many cervezas with their lunch! Ha. Sometimes the road painters would fool you into thinking there were actual wide shoulders, or what we’ve come to think of as “wide” after driving down here for a few weeks. Turns out it’s only an illusion, and the “wide” shoulders come at the cost of a thinner lane! I guess there’s only so much asphalt to go around…

We crossed the border into Baja California Sur, where they give you a little inspection ticket for 20 pesos and then you drive over a sprayer that sprays the underside of your vehicle for pests. Kind of icky, but it was over fast and we closed our windows in time! Guerrero Negro is a fairly nice town, with paved streets, gas stations, banks, restaurants, hotels, etc. It’s a “company town” for the salt companies, at least originally. I tend to like cities whose main economy is NOT tourist dollars. The town feels vital and like it will go on whether or not you go there. It was actually raining when we pulled into the Malarrimo hotel/restaurant parking lot, which the clerk said was extremely rare.

They had a nice gift shop with original paintings from a local artist for only 130 pesos! (that’s only $13 US) The artist wasn’t great, but was prolific, and some of his work captured the feel of the desert. The whale paintings were just a bit too cliché for my taste, though. We bought a small painting of the desert with the highway winding through it – it could have been made from one of our photos! We had dinner at the restaurant and it was good – we had grouper. The restaurant has all sorts of flotsam and jetsam displayed from Malarrimo Beach, which is a beach out on the Vizcaino Peninsula that is situated just right to catch everything that washes up from the Pacific! Lots of interesting stuff, and of course, lots of garbage. They only had the interesting stuff at the restaurant and bar – ha.
We had an osprey nest on a telephone pole next to us and heard it feeding its chicks and calling. There are LOTS of ospreys and nests in Guerrero Negro – there’s a bird sanctuary at the other end of town with rows of posts with platforms specially made for them.

---

Go back to Day One of Baja Trip

Day Six: Wednesday, March 21: Flat Tire!

We got an early start the next morning for our longest drive yet to Guerrero Negro, and almost immediately after hooking up the Jeep and beginning to drive we got an alarm from our tire monitor – we had a flat tire!! We stopped and got out to inspect it, and you could hear air just streaming out of the tire!! I followed the tracks we’d made and found nothing that would have punctured the tire, so we pulled over to a spot where we would have easy access to the tire and unhooked and jacked up the RV with its built-in leveling jacks so Devin could crawl under and inspect the tire. It was no longer spewing air, and Devin figured out why – it was a deep but very narrow cut into the sidewall of the inside rear tire – probably happened when we pulled back onto the road over one of those rather sharp edges after pulling out. When we stopped before, all the pressure of the RV was on the tire and the cut was at the bottom, so it opened, but when the cut was at the top, it stayed closed, and when we had the leveling jacks down, the pressure was off the tires, so it stayed closed then, too. We may have had it for a few days before it leaked enough air to set off the alarm, but we sure wouldn’t want to get a flat tire in the RV while driving on the Baja Highways! There is really no place to pull over most of the time – we’ve come across broken down trucks that are just stopped in the lane with cones or triangles to warn traffic and the driver acting as flagger while waiting for some kind of help. We are very thankful for the tire monitor!! It could have literally saved our lives today – a wonderful Christmas gift from Devin’s dad.

Devin checking the air in the spare

Now the hard part is to find a way to fix it…. It’s not really repairable, since it’s a deep sidewall cut rather than a simple puncture. We do have a spare, but it came with the RV… checking it, Devin found that it is about 10 years old! It’s a new tire with the label still on, but has been sitting in the spare compartment of the RV since 1998. Some neighbors in the campground had a Sportsmobile with an onboard air compressor, so before they left, they came over and we filled the spare – no cracks in the sidewalls, so it’s probably good to go, but Devin is still nervous about driving the 18,000 pound RV on an old tire.

We drove into town in the Jeep in search of either a new tire, or more likely, someone to help us change the tire, since it’s a pretty major undertaking in an RV. We also needed to call our Mexican Insurance, because we had purchased the “Diamond Coverage” that included road service and repairs. The only phone in town was at the hotel, and they kindly let us use their front desk phone. Though we purchased our insurance from Vagabundos del Mar, an American travel club, the actual insurance came from Mexico, and when they answered the phone, it was not only in Spanish only, but it was a poor connection. Now my Spanish is conversant – enough to get by in most situations, but I am definitely not fluent! Telephone conversations are difficult under the best conditions, and with the poor connection, it was near impossible. Finally we got someone who spoke English and after much waiting and working on them figuring out where we were (Cataviňa was not on their map!), they said the nearest repair service was in Ensenada, 6 hours away! At least calling them gave us an excuse to go into the fancy La Pinta hotel – we of course took some photos!

We decided to look for more local help, and finding no one at the Llantera (tire shop) in the abandoned Pemex station, we talked to a guy who was selling gasoline out of the back of his pickup, with a sign that said “gasoline, aceites, mecanico.” The Mecanico part sounded promising. He said he could come out to Rancho Santa Ynez in about 20 minutes and help us – I asked what this would cost, and he shrugged and said it was up to us. I think this is not normally something he would do, but he was just being helpful. He showed up as promised with his wife and they checked out the situation – they didn’t have the right size lug wrench either, so they went back home to get another tool – twice! They were really nice and helpful, and I regret that I didn’t get photos – they seemed like down-to-earth good folks that had lived in the area their whole lives and appreciated its beauty and tranquility.

That night we met Ralph, who lives in the arroyo behind Rancho Santa Ines every winter – he had been out scouting the route for next year’s Baja 1000 and wants to have it come through Rancho Santa Ines next year! The people there were excited by the prospect because it would mean a lot of money for them. Ralph said the main guy behind the routing of the race was going to fly down that week to meet with him about it. He was very pleased with himself, and one of the great things is that it kept the race all on one side of the highway for much of the way – they don’t close any roads for the race and it must be really scary crossing the highway… or being on it when the race is on!

The best part about today was getting to watch another Cataviňa sunset:

---

Go back to Day One of Baja Trip

Day Five: Tuesday, March 20: El Marmol

I had been reading about El Marmol in my Joseph Wood Krutch book – he had used the recently (in his time -- the late 50’s) abandoned Onyx mine as a base for some of his explorations of Baja and had some neat descriptions of the area. Our friend Greg Arnold is a rockhound, and we thought that he would particularly enjoy some onyx from this famous mine in Baja. Apparently there was quite a demand for Onyx as a luxury stone, used the way marble (and now granite) is used. In fact, the actress Theda Bara had an onyx bathtub carved of El Marmol Onyx. The advent of cheaper plastics and changing fashions eventually made the mine unprofitable – the stone had to be transported over the rough dirt roads to the coast and shipped to the US.

There are huge blocks of onyx strewn about the mine area, like the ruins of some ancient Stonehenge like structure. The rock is marbled with yellows and browns and touches of red – some is very white, and it is very hard. There is a schoolhouse remaining there that is made entirely of onyx blocks – it really just looks like plain stone, until you notice the marbling in each stone. Joseph Wood Krutch said he had been imagining something like the Taj Mahal, “only better” – ha. He was a little disappointed, but we thought it was neat. It is in partial ruin now, and I can’t imagine that ruin came about naturally – I think people may have taken some of the stones for souvenirs. We collected some samples of onyx from the ground, and could have gotten much more, but of course there is the problem of hauling them all back!

We stopped at a small Rancho/Loncheria Sonora at the Junction of the El Marmol turnoff and Mex 1 on the way back, because they had a sign out front advertising “Figuras de Marmol” which I thought may be carved there from the local onyx. It was in interesting stop – there was no one there, but a coyote-dog cross greeted us shyly, and an old man came around and yelled for someone to let us in. A genial man and his very cute daughter (or grand-daughter) came out and they had huge and beautiful onyx carvings… but they did not look like the special onyx at El Marmol, lacking the rose color banding that made this particular onyx special. They were the more typical white and green color – we bought a couple of small souvenirs anyway, just to spend some money there.

We stopped on the way “home” in some of the neat boulder strewn areas with great cactus “landscaping” and took some more photos – this area is very photogenic! The road we went down leads to the beach, where someone said you could buy lobster if you wanted – but it is many miles – we just went a short way to check it out and take photos of the Jeep in the desert.

We saw some evidence showing that particular road had been used in the Baja 1000 in a previous year – the insane 1000 mile road race that takes place every year in Baja! Sometimes it goes the length of the peninsula, and other times it loops back to Ensenada. Mama Espinoza’s in El Rosario is a traditional checkpoint, and they had posters all over of some of the more famous participants. There are several classes – dirtbikes, trucks, and even VW bugs! It’s open to anyone crazy enough to enter, from people who spend thousands on their fancy racing trucks to old beat up bugs, from teams of drivers, mechanics, and pit crews to single entrants. That night we decided to watch the DVD of Dust to Glory, Dana Brown’s excellent movie of the Baja 1000, once again to see if we could recognize any of the locales. We couldn’t, but it was fun watching it again! The Baja 1000 is everywhere down here – I guess it is THE big event every year – it seems to have influence in every town we’ve been to. The racers are rockstars, and lots of cars are a little fixed up like the racers, or at least have the stickers.

---

Go back to Day One of Baja Trip

Day Four: Monday, March 19: San Quintin to Cataviňa

The highway followed the ocean for a while, and I started to see what is a new kind of cactus for me – later I figured out it is the sour pitaya. It is very common in most of Baja – I thought at first it was a type of unbranched cholla, but it isn’t, but rather a type of organ pipe cactus. The road soon turned inland and wound around and up and down more mountains – Baja is much more mountainous that I had expected! And the desert mountains are quite beautiful. The farther south we travel, the more “landscaped” the rocky terrain becomes with more and more interesting cacti.

At the top of a grade we came to a plateau and encountered our first military checkpoint. Mexicans take the war on “drogas” very seriously! They stop every vehicle, come in a make a perfunctory search – probably assessing whether we seemed nervous or not. I probably didn’t seem nervous – I wanted to take their picture and was chatting away, but they didn’t want it taken. One young man with a very sweet smile and a very big gun said he was a “monstro” with his gun. I said no… or at least he was a monstro with una sonrisa! (a smile). I think it may be illegal to take their photos, which is why I always ask, and so far none has said yes, but none have said it wasn’t permitted, either. One cute young soldier at a later checkpoint said he never liked having his picture taken ever since he was a young boy. Later, another soldier was very interested in California, and if there was work there, and at yet another checkpoint, one asked about the beautiful wall hanging we have in our bedroom – fabric art created by Janet, Devin’s sister, from a photo of Lake Powell – the soldier wanted to know where it was because it was so beautiful. We’ve been through quite a few checkpoints already now, but that was our first. All, so far, have been relatively pleasant experiences with very polite young men who ask permission to come in and search and chat with me in Spanish. I hope our border crossing back into the states goes as smoothly and pleasantly, but I’m a bit skeptical. Not that we have anything to hide, of course – I’ve just heard that they are very tough – hopefully we won’t be pulled into secondary to search, but then again, we have lots of time, so it will just make another blog post if so! Ha.

After the checkpoint, we pulled into El Rosario, the last town at which to get gas for another 200 miles! We were about to enter the infamous “Gas Gap” of Baja California. Forwarned is forearmed, however, and we pulled into the Pemex and gassed up both motorhome and Jeep, then pulled over near a store and did some grocery shopping. After our shopping, we went to the famous Mama Espinoza’s, where we had been instructed to say hi to “Roly” who I believe is the current “mama” at Espinoza’s. She seemed nice but busy, and asked after Rich and Tonya when I told her they sent greetings. We were not able to try the spicy lobster soup as Tonya suggested since they had no lobster, but maybe on the way back north we will. We had fish tacos which were quite good, and continued on our way south, leaving the little valley of El Rosario for more and more mountainous terrain as we entered Baja’s Desierto Central (central desert region).

Boojums, Cardon, and Elephant Trees – Oh My!
Cortez thought Baja was an island – and it is almost an island, geographically, but also in terms of biology. There are many plant species that are endemic to Baja – they are found nowhere else in the world. Islands often develop unique flora and fauna because of geographic isolation, and Baja seems to have similar effects from being a very long, thin peninsula.

I knew a little about Cardons and Boojums, but reading Joseph Wood Krutch, found out much more and also about several other plant species. The area around Catavina has several of these all concentrated together, so is very exciting for a botanist, even a lazy one such as myself. Devin bought me a Plants of Baja book before we left, and that has been a source of further information to help us appreciate the unique plants of the area. I took so many photos! “Drive by shootings” mostly, as there are not many places to pull out along the road, but we drove through absolute forests of cardon and boojum on the way here, and saw entire hills covered with elephant trees! All of these are Baja endemics. Cardon are like Giant Saguaro, only bigger, and their branching pattern isn’t the classic right angle “elbow” but rather upward sloping branches. Elephant trees in this area (there is another species also called elephant trees farther down) have white bark and very thick trunks that taper down to the tips of the branches, I guess sort of like an elephant’s trunk.
And Boojums… there isn’t much that one can compare to a Boojum!! They are quite odd and unique plants found nowhere else on this earth except the central desert region of Baja. The real name is Cirio, which means church candle, but the name Boojum comes from Lewis Carroll, and seems to have stuck as it fits the odd plants that have been described as gigantic upside down carrots… but they really only fit that in that they taper from the base to the top. They are green, “hairy” – covered in tiny branches and sometimes flowers, and sometimes they branch into two or more splits at the top. Sometimes those attenuated tops bend over and most photos or drawings of Boojums have the tops arching down, but plants that look like that are rather rare. They give the feeling of being tendrils reaching up from the earth to touch the sun, they seem to wave, even though they are still. Devin said they seem like something from the imagination of Tim Burton. Very odd plants indeed!
Rancho Santa Ynez
We stayed that night at Rancho Santa Ynez, which was truly like a trip back in time – much of Baja is like that. This small rancho could have been a film set for an old John Wayne movie. An old adobe brick building with a central courtyard, open-air kitchen off one side, a few rooms to rent on the other. Windmill, stone cistern, cattle wandering about, oh, and RV parking out front. The “RV Park” part was a large flat area with cactus and trees and cattle wandering through, but enough room and hard-packed sandy surface for parking lots of RVs here and there. It was overlooking a large arroyo with another Baja endemic species, the Mexican Blue Fan Palm. I went on a photo walk at sunset and snapped portraits of Elephant Trees, Boojum, Cholla, Old Man Cactus, Pitaya, and Cardon!

Muy Tranquilo.

---

Go back to Day One of Baja Trip

Baja - "brief" summary of the first two weeks

We are currently in Loreto, in Baja California Sur, Mexico. We have been having the most amazing adventures so far!! We are officially in love with Baja.

Yesterday, 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, 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!

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. 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, burros, and rabbits) along the way, outlines of Cardon (like Giant Saguaro) cacti, and enjoying the desert night as the lights of Loreto approached.

That was our most recent adventure - among others are when we've been surrounded by whales asking for a scratch on the back - they really do come right up to the small boats and bring their babies - they make the effort to gently float up close enough to the boat so we can reach down and "pet" them - their skin is surprisingly soft! It was amazing to be in this small panga, just us and our capitan, Leopoldo, in the midst of beautiful Ojo de Liebre (Scammon's) Lagoon, surrounded, literally surrounded, by whales - we had FIVE mother whales and their babies all at ONCE surrounding the boat, taking turns in the "line" to get a scratch! Truly amazing! Leopoldo was very good about not chasing the whales, but let them choose to come to us - he would pilot the boat to a place near where we saw spouts, and we would wait at a distance, idling, and if they didn't come to us, he would move on. It was a very moving experience - Leopoldo kept saying "bueno, bueno, bueno!" and spreading his arms as if to say, "see what I have brought you?!" What an amazing day.

More recently, we camped for a few days on the beach of the Sea of Cortez at Playa Santispac, which was just incredible - one of those places, like Saline Valley, that is so relaxing that you feel as if you'd already been there weeks when it has only been 2 or 3 days.

We met some wonderful people there - Alethea and Bernardo camped next to us for a couple of nights - she is a teacher from Alberta, Canada, who had been teaching English in Mexico, where she met Bernardo, who is from Guadalajara, Mexico. They were a great couple! Bernardo was very international - his family is from Germany, and he went to high school in England, so he is fluent in three languages - but he is Mexican born and raised. He speaks English with a British/Mexican accent :-) We shared a wonderful fish dinner with them on the beach one night, from fresh pescado bought from the vendors who came by every morning, and with a marinade that I learned from my former roommate Tom from Wrightwood - lime juice, soy sauce, cilantro, serrano chiles, purple onion, and garlic. Yum!

There were all sorts of beautiful shells on that beach, and wonderful bird and sea life. We rented a kayak and paddled out to an offshore island - a true "desert island" - covered in Cardon and Cholla and other cacti, but with Pelicans nesting among the cacti! We saw baby pelicans in their nests - omg they are SO cute! It felt like we were on the Discovery channel in the middle of a nature show - we floated silently through crowds of pelicans as we wove through small islets - close enough to touch, but we stayed silent and only paddled when we needed to, and only one hopped over to the next rock when we got too close. It was a solemn and stately procession of pelicans! American Oystercatchers and Spotted Sandpipers and Eared Grebes down at the shore on the rocks, along with strange prehistoric looking bugs - like giant pill bugs - which all swarmed up to just cover the rocks when we approached!! Below us yellow and black striped "seargent major" fish (I called them bumblebee fish) and a big blue parrot fish, lots of sting rays, dolphin fish (mahi mahi), jacks, and many others swam through the blue-green water, seaweed, rocks and sand we could see many feet down. Overhead, Turkey Vultures, Pelicans, and Frigatebirds made interesting aerial dance partners, and were joined by an Osprey that landed on a Cardon and watched us from on high. No photos of this experience, since we were afraid to bring a camera in case we dunked the kayak - ha. But it is certainly one of the more vivid memories we've had on this trip!

Another night at Santispac, we dined in style on a sailboat that was anchored in the bay - Tony and Marquita, from San Carlos and Albuquerque, came and got us from the beach in their dinghy and treated us to lasagna - I brought a bottle of red wine from Trader Joe's we'd been carrying for just such an occasion, and we stayed out on their lovely 34 foot boat until after sunset, being entertained by sailing stories, listening to the weather on the ham radio, and enjoying fine company. They also picked up Caleb, from a neighboring sailboat, who really looks like an "old salt"! People are very friendly and open down here!

Earlier in our trip, we traveled through the desierto central and stayed at Rancho Santa Ynes outside of Catavina for a few days. We explored some back roads there - went out to El Marmol, an abandoned onyx mine, where huge blocks of onyx have been left laying about like stonehenge, and there is a ruin of the only schoolhouse built entirely out of onyx.

We found when we were leaving Catavina, that our RV had a flat tire! We had probably cut the inside of one of our rear inside tires when we pulled back onto the highway from a rocky pullout before arriving, but since it was a deep slice, and we had had the RV up on its leveling jacks while camping, it hadn't been noticeable. As soon as we were pulling out, though, our tire monitors (a Christmas present from Devin's dad - thank you!) gave an alarm, and when we got out to look, you could hear air just streaming from the tire! Catavina is in the middle of the infamous "gas gap" in Baja - some 200 miles with no gas stations, and very little in the way of services or towns. Catavina itself is not much of a town - there is a hotel, and a few buildings - some guys that sell gas from barrels in the backs of their pickups, and that's about it. Well, we found one of those guys and asked for help - he was great! He and his wife came out to the rancho, had to make 2-3 trips back to get the right size tools, and helped us change our tire - not an easy task in an RV!! We gave them beer, soda, and more money than I think he was comfortable accepting, but we were so very grateful for both his hard work and their kindness. So now we are driving on our 10 year old spare, which still had the label on it, but it has been sitting for 10 years. It seems to be holding up fine, so far!

Which is a good thing, because the highway down here is no picnic! I know it used to be all dirt road beyond El Rosario, but even so, the lanes are MUCH narrower than in the US, with NO shoulders (often a drop off on the edge of the pavement of 6-12 inches that would be very dangerous to hit at highway speeds, especially in a 9 ton RV), guard rails are rare, and where they do exist are often smashed down from people going over them. Little shrines and memorials dot the highway's margins the entire length of the penninsula, solemn reminders of the dicho posted on one roadside sign, "Vale mas tarde que nunca" (better late than never). The roads are winding and often rough or full of potholes, and steep grades (including one that actually is officially named "cuesta del infierno" - the grade from hell - ha!). The lanes are officially 9.5 feet wide (though sometimes seem narrower!), but our motorhome is 8.5 feet wide, not counting our mirrors, which probably stick out a foot on each side, so when trucks or other RVs are passing, we have to have our right tires ON the white line, inches from the edge - quite the white knuckle driving experience!! The trucks don't slow down - they are expert drivers. We, on the other hand, slow to almost a stop when they pass us!! It's not hard to do because, fortunately, there is very little traffic, and most of the other RV's are heading north. The cars that do come from behind, we send around us using the Baja convention of the left blinker to let them know it is clear. People pass readily where most of us would never consider passing!! But the system works, and keeps us from being a rolling roadblock, so we can go as slow as we need to. Our top speed is usually about 40 mph, a nice speed for sightseeing! We typically drive under 100 miles on driving days, otherwise, this wouldn't be nearly as relaxing a trip.

Today begins the Semana Santa holiday - people have been warning us about the craziness of Semana Santa - the beaches, apparently, are where everyone in Mexico wants to be during the holiday, and thousands of people are expected at the lovely near deserted ones along Bahia Concepcion where we camped - in fact, they are moving a carnival onto the beach at Santispac! Playa Coyote will have 3 live bands, and there will be partying all night long. The roads will be full of traffic, and we are warned to beware of drunk drivers. Yikes! We just decided to stay in Loreto one more night so we can get an early start in the morning - we figure everyone who's been partying all night will be hung over and sleeping it off in the mornings, so if we drive early, we should avoid some of the worst of it. We may head north, rather than continue all the way south at this point, and we have decided we are definitely coming back. Next time, though, we will come earlier and stay much longer - perhaps January through March, giving us time for much more exploration and relaxation, and to truly settle into the Baja way of life.

I am going to try to add photos to this post, and maybe go into more detail, but I think our internet will turn off in a short while, and I wanted to get something posted before that happens - likely we won't have internet access until we get back to the US after this.

Some of our more relaxing pursuits other than exploration have been reading - I read Joseph Wood Krutch's "The Forgotten Penninsula" and Devin is reading John Steinbeck's "Log from the Sea of Cortez." I figured out Cielito Lindo on guitar, we've enjoyed birding and I've added several "lifers" to my bird list, and of course practicing speaking Spanish - my Spanish always improves by leaps and bounds in Mexico, of course, but I am still at the internal translation stage - so that when someone speaks rapidly, I can't always keep up, and it's amazing how quickly then Spanish goes from being a perfectly comprehensible language to complete gibberish! Here in Loreto is the first place we've found where many locals speak English, because of all the gringos here. There is an airport with direct flights, cruise ships come here, and many Norte Americanos have bought property and either have retired here or come to fish or vacation. I stubbornly insist on speaking Spanish because that is how I will keep improving!

I hope to post more details on the whales, San Javier, the desert, dogs, birds, etc. I hope I will not forget the soul-enriching beauty of this place.

Thanks for reading our blog!