Day Eleven: Monday, March 26: Santispac - relaxing on the beach and meeting new friends

Early (7am) this morning, we awoke to the sound of a horn that played “Oh What a Beautiful Morning” from the musical Oklahoma – a fitting song for Playa Santispac. We had read about vendors selling groceries and other items that came by early, so I quickly got up and dressed to see what they had. Obero was the owner of the truck with the musical horn, and he was really nice – great smile and attitude, and helpful clear Spanish. I like it when people make it easy to communicate! Bought some fresh tortillas from a tortilleria in Mulegé, some limes (limons), garlic, avocado, steaming hot tamales and some empanadas. All was quite good and we were quite happy to no longer have a reason to leave this beautiful beach!

Last night we got some new neighbors in a tent and the palapa next door, Bernardo, from Guadalajara, Mexico, and Alethea (pronounced “Ah-LEE-thuh”) from Alberta, Canada. Alethea had been teaching English in Mexico and she and Bernardo met down here, and now he was traveling with her up to Canada. What a great couple they were! We learned more about Mexico and Mexican culture from Bernardo, who is fluent in three languages and went to high school in England, so speak English with a British accent. We enjoyed chatting with them and ended up deciding to share dinner – there were vendors who drove up to the campsite selling fish, shrimp, scallops, and more. We also arranged to keep the kayak they had rented so we could go out in it the next morning, when they were leaving. The little store/restaurant on the beach was on "summer hours" and didn't open until 2pm, making renting a kayak in the morning difficult!

The Mighty Kayakers Return!

We waded out in the water some- it stays shallow quite far out, collected shells, read, watched birds, took photos, and generally had a lovely day. There are sting rays in the water here, so wading is doing the “Baja Shuffle” to keep from getting stung. Bernardo and Alethea waded out quite far before seeing their first stingray, which made their return wade quite a bit slower! Bernardo then found good sticks to use to test where you would put your foot and brought me one when I was out splashing about. Devin already has one – his cane. The only problem is they get water in them and he has to remember to drain them before bringing them inside – ha. We waded out quite far, looking at the little schools of fish and small crabs that would occasionally startle me by scuttling right across my feet! I think I stepped on one once, because it pinched my toe! Only lightly, but it was still startling.

My mosquito bites were starting to itch fiercely, to the point of madness, and talking with Bernardo and Alethea, we found out about “Vampire Flies” – don’t know their real name, but that’s what they called them, because they act just like vampire bats – injecting some anticoagulant with their bite and then lapping up the blood, rather than sucking the way mosquitoes do. They make a small crater-like wound. Devin had seen one of these on my leg at San Ignacio – maybe I had vampire fly bites!

While we were sitting out on our “patio” watching the Herons, Egrets, Pelicans, Frigatebirds, Ospreys and Vultures, a couple from one of the sailboats motored in close to shore in their dinghy, set anchor and waded up. They introduced themselves and asked if we’d watch their water shoes, after they changed into walking shoes. Tony and Marquita were another wonderful couple, warm, friendly, fun, funny, genuine, and talkative. They had a place in San Carlos in the winter, and lived in Albuquerque in the summer. They said walking was something they didn’t get to do enough of on their sailboat, so they came ashore to go for walks, in addition to going into town for supplies. They went for a walk, came back and got their shoes (we were watching them to make sure no dogs ran off with them, which had happened before, apparently!) and they said we were hired! Ha. Marquita said we’d have to come out and see their sailboat, and we thought that would be great.

It was a great day, and we had a wonderful dinner, too – Alethea and Bernardo made shrimp in garlic sauce and scallops – but they aren’t real scallops, and are quite chewy, though delicious. Alethea was quite embarrassed at their chewy-ness and said they were like bubble gum, but they weren’t ~that~ chewy! They tasted quite good, too! They come from a different creature than what we call scallops. What we call scallops, the Mexicans call “Mane de Leon” (mane of the lion) and they get quite large. What they call scallops come from a spiny large shell that is oblong, and apparently the disks are cut out of a larger organism. They are called Callo de Hacha, and just the adductor muscles are eaten. Atrina maura is the scientific name, as far as I can tell from Google research since then, or Pinna rugosa, or some other species of Pinna or Atrina – sometimes called a Pen Clam or Fan Mussel. I think these type of scallops are meant to be eaten as ceviche, and cured with lime juice rather than cooked, but we didn’t know that then. The next morning, Bernardo fed the leftover scallops to the crabs - he said he heard the crab saying "chewy!" Ha.

We grilled the fish, of unknown variety (just “pescado”) on our Weber Baby Cue, which was the first time we got it out in Mexico. Here’s the marinade, which I got from my former roommate, Tom Wright, who cooked salmon this way – yum!

Recipe for Fish Marinade:
Lime Juice
Soy Sauce
Garlic
Serrano Chiles
Onion (purple is good)
Cilantro

After marinating, wrap fish with some marinade in foil and grill for 10 minutes or until firm and no longer translucent. flake apart and serve with warm tortillas and fresh salsa (tomatoes, onion, cilantro, lime, chiles - basically, the marinade without the soy sauce!)

Go back to Day One of Baja Trip

Day Ten: Sunday, March 25: San Ignacio to Bahia Concepcion/Playa Santispac

Headed to the west coast today – to the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California) and the famous beaches along Bahia Concepcion. Leaving San Ignacio, we passed an omen of Semana Santa - a carnival on a truckbed headed for the beaches! We also started seeing some new terrain as we passed the recent volcanism of the Tres Virgenes volcanoes. Where these blocky lava flows crossed the road, large “Palo Blanco” trees grew on them along with a slightly different assemblage of desert plants. After going through this interesting area, we came to the infamous “Cuesta del Infierno,” literally, the Grade from Hell! I thought that was a nickname, but no, there are official Government Highway signs with that name! It descended through neat country, like a cross between the Badlands, the Painted Desert, and the Grand Canyon. The grade was definitely steep – thank goodness we (and by “we” I mean Devin) installed the supplemental tow braking system – we turned up the gain on the Jeep’s brakes so it could help hold us back as we descended to the coast, and got little glimpses of the shining blue Sea of Cortez when we didn’t have our eyes glued to the edge of the cliff – ha. At the bottom, the highway goes right along the coast, and pelicans and other seabirds accompanied us as we drove south.
Old mining equipment and buildings line the highway north of the old mining town of Santa Rosalía, and one guidebook made a comment that Santa Rosalía hadn’t “cleaned up after itself” very well – egad! I hope they don’t! The old mining buildings and equipment were interesting and historical! Sort of like the kind of ruin we love to come across rusting out in the desert in California, that is protected in National Parks like Joshua Tree and Death Valley. There is a mining museum in town, which we didn’t take the time to visit this time, but would like to someday.

We came to the town of Santa Rosalía, and decided to stop along the beachfront and unhook the Jeep so we could explore a bit. There is a church there said to be designed by Eiffel of Eiffel Tower fame, and a famous French bakery. The guidebooks didn’t seem to think much of this town, but we really liked it! I think a lot of people come to Baja with preconceptions about what they want to find – idyllic beaches on blue water with palm trees – Hollywood’s cliché of Paradise. Santa Rosalía is a town that was founded by a French copper mining company, and built out of wood – a rare commodity in Baja California. Most buildings down here are made of adobe brick or stone or cement, but the mining company had lumber shipped from the Pacific Northwest to build its little “company town.” I like to think of Santa Rosalía as the “French Quarter” of Baja – all the buildings are two storey and have balconies, most with bougainvillea or other vines decorating them, all painted in bright Mexican colors, and the town is very much alive and vibrant, and not just from a tourist economy. There were many stores and people filled the sidewalks. We wanted to visit the Boleo Panaderia, the French bakery that has been there since the 1800’s. We found delicious treats there and will stop again on the way back north!

As we were re-connecting the Jeep for towing, a car drove by and all I heard, as the driver’s neck snapped around to look, was “…con quarto puertas!” (with four doors). A few minutes later he drove back in the opposite direction and gave the Jeep a good look and us a big smile and thumbs up! It’s fun to have a car that gets noticed – certainly has never happened to me before!

We continued our drive south, passing through Mulegé over the river lined with palms, and down to Playa Santispac, our destination for the night. Okay, so maybe there IS a paradise that looks like you might imagine down here! This beach is off of Bahia Concepcion, and off a small bay (Bahia Coyote) off of that large bay. It’s a sheltered cove, with a wide arc of sandy beach and shallow emerald green waters out to deeper blue depths with islands topped with cactus and circled by pelicans, frigatebirds, and turkey vultures! A few sailboats were anchored out in the bay, clouds reflected in the calm water – what a place!

As we pulled in, no one was at the “oficina” where you paid $7 a night to camp on (and I mean ON) this lovely beach, and a carload of Mexicans leaving told us to just camp and they would find us and collect our fees later. So we found a secluded spot on the beach and angled the RV for maximum views out our windows, put out the awning and slide-out, and started in right away doing some serious relaxing!!

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Go back to Day One of Baja Trip

Day Nine: Saturday, March 24: Guererro Negro to San Ignacio

Before we left Guerrero Negro, we bought an original painting from the Malarrimo gift shop for only 139 pesos – that’s only $13. The artist lives in town there, and isn’t great, by any means, but has some paintings that were quite appealing because we loved the desert scenery they depicted. I ended up choosing the one Devin told me he liked best – with the highway going through it, cardons and boojums along the sides. We hung it in the bedroom of the RV.

The road south of Guerrero Negro is just as bad as the road north of it, but the scenery is interesting the entire way. Just as we were getting to San Ignacio, there was a checkpoint, and then the huge date palm forest came into view over a rise of the desert, and we descended to the oasis of San Ignacio.

We passed the guidebook-favored Rice and Beans which is right on the highway, pulled over, unhooked and I went on a scouting mission for where we would spend the night in this oasis in the desert. I first checked out Rice and Beans, which had a caravan in, and so only a couple of tightly packed spaces. Full hookups and supposedly internet access and a good restaurant, but it looked kind of like a crowded parking lot and I thought maybe we could do better. Next went into San Ignacio proper, and found a neat place in the date palm forest right on the “river”! A bit too tight for the RV, sadly, because it was pretty! And another place across the “bridge” over the lake/river/lagoon was also nice, but the entry was a bit rough for our house on wheels. I guess it’s fed by springs, which is why all the date palms can grow, and why San Ignacio is a true oasis, so it isn’t a river, and I guess it’s a small lake. It’s confusing to call it a lagoon, though, since San Ignacio Lagoon is down a very rough 40 mile dirt road and is on the Pacific Ocean – where more grey whales come to give birth. Finally cruised through El Padrino, where there were a few Americans “out back” in the dry camping area, one of which was a smart ass and said I should pay him if we come back. That decided it – I like sassy people.

So I went back and reported this to Devin and we moved in. $8 a night, camping in palms at the edge of the oasis with a view of the surrounding desert. Lots of birds here – we got to watch a Kestrel eat a lizard at the top of a dead palm, and the dawn and dusk chorus was White-winged Doves, Cactus Wrens, and Gila Woodpeckers!

The Americans, Caroline, Brian, Paul and Al, were a group of “singles” who had informally caravaned down and been in Baja for a few months. They were on their way back north, like everybody else. We got lots of good tips from them, like where to stay in La Paz, free beaches south of Loreto, Todos Santos, the southern loop, and how to treat water – All four of them did it differently and it worked fine for them all – ha. Brian swore by this stuff he found in stores down here called Microdyn, and he liked it because there was no bad aftertaste like with chlorine. Caroline used only bottled water. Paul chlorinated it the same way we did, and Al just drank water right out of the tap – no problems! His logic was that the country couldn’t function if people were sick from drinking the water all the time, so if they drink it, he could too. Turns out that we’ve read most Mexicans don’t drink the water out of the tap most places. In fact, we later met Bernardo, from Guadalajara, who was born and raised here. He rarely drank out of the tap- except occasionally late at night if he was thirsty and didn’t want to walk all the way to the kitchen. But Bernardo did say that people were being ridiculous by not using ice or brushing their teeth with tap water. We still chlorinate ours in our tank, use it for washing and brushing our teeth, and drink bottled water, and that has worked well for us. “To each his own,” should be the motto!

Of the four singles, two lived in their RVs full time (Brian and Al), and two traveled with their dogs (Caroline had a big yellow lab in a small Isata “Sport Sedan” and Paul had a cute little dog – I forgot what kind of brindle bull terrier – named Mr. Hobbes), and one, Brian, traveled with a cat in his Airstream Trailer. They were a bit of an odd bunch – funny and fun, but probably a little sick of each other after traveling together for months in Baja! They sometimes acted like an old married couple – but there were four of them. Ha. I think I made Brian’s day when I insulted him just right – he’s the smart ass that made me want to stay there in the first place. I said, “oh, I could tell right away that Brian was for entertainment value only, not to be trusted!” But actually, he did seem to have very good advice and I would in fact trust his judgment, when I could tell he wasn’t full of it. Ha. He was an ex-cop from Chicago, to add that to the equation, and a great cook, according to the others, and very picky about food, so he led them to the best restaurants. He told us about the Hotel California and Tequila Sunrise in Todos Santos, which we had read about, and gave us this recipe for “Dr. Margarita’s” famous Damiana Margarita:

2 Shots Tequila
2 Shots Gran Marnier or Cointeau
1 Shot Damiana Liqueur
Juice of 4 limes (limons)

After sharing with us all sorts of advice, some of which I even took notes on, they also fed us dinner, which was nice! As dusk settled in, the bugs came out – first time I’d noticed any in Baja, and I glibly said that “mosquitoes don’t like me.” Oh shut my mouth. I’ve been suffering greatly ever since to the point that I think it’s influenced my desire to stay in Baja!! Oh for a little foresight and bug repellent! I also stop to pet every dog I meet, and at first, all the bites showed up only on my ankles and feet, so it could be fleas… god I hope I didn’t bring them into the RV!! More on my pain and suffering later…

We drove through the lovely colonial style town of San Ignacio, anchored by its Mission and tree filled square, and drove up the road towards San Ignacio Lagoon a ways. We had originally considered going whale watching (whale petting?) in both lagoons, but after our amazing experience at Ojo de Liebre, we didn’t really feel a need to do it again – in fact, we almost didn’t want to do it again to water down that experience in any way, if that makes sense. At any rate, the road was VERY rough and washboarded, which discouraged us only a little, but enough that we decided to head out to the Sea of Cortez the next day.
I suppose the main driving influence in our decision, though, was the impending Semana Santa celebrations. We wanted to experience the solitude of the Bahia Concepcion beaches we’d read about, not in the festival atmosphere of Semana Santa. Turns out that once again our timing, though we thought we were “late” was probably just right in many ways – earlier in the year, the beaches we were headed to would have been packed with RVs, and later with families on vacation, but now was going to be “just right.”

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Go back to Day One of Baja Trip

Day Eight: Friday, March 23: Ojo de Liebre Lagoon/ Vizcaino Biosphere Preserve -- Whales!

“Bueno, bueno, bueno!”
These were the words that our “capitan” Leopoldo kept saying as we were blessed with visits from whale after whale after whale… but I get ahead of myself.

We started out following signs I’d seen in town when I got cash and groceries – found the bird refuge with long rows of poles with osprey nests, white pelicans, and lots of shore birds. Followed the signs to “Dunas” and Ojo de Liebre Lagoon, and came to sand dunes, then a gatehouse. I knew we had to go through salt company land to get to the lagoon, so I expected we would just register or whatever there, but he asked us for our “permisos” and said we had to go all the way back to town to get them at the company headquarters! I realized that Devin had been right, and the road we wanted to go to the whale watching area was off the highway south of town. It was a worthy side trip, though – interesting seeing the piles of salt and bird sanctuary. It was a beautiful day for photos with a dramatic sky!

As seems usual for us, everything happened just as it should. We felt like maybe we got too late a start, but it was rainy in the morning, and the sun was coming out as we arrived at the lagoon after an interesting drive through the salt evaporating ponds. (no permit needed on this road – there was just a small booth where a guy wrote down our license plates and we signed in.) We wandered in to the restaurant/museum/tour center and found that trips in a boat to see the whales were $40/person, $10 cheaper than in town. We bought two tickets and waited about 45 minutes until the tide came in further so we could get on the boat directly from the dock. I think they thought (and rightly so) that Devin may have had difficulty wading out to the boat. It turned out we were the only two people on that boat, and our pilot (I called him our “capitan”) was Leopoldo, who we later found out was the husband of the cook in the restaurant. They were very nice people!

It was a beautiful, beautiful day. So beautiful, that from the beginning of getting out on the water in the small “panga,” I found myself thinking of how to say in Spanish, “This is the Day that the Lord Has Made” (Este es el dia que El Senor ha hecho). Something about the Spanish language, about being out on the water surrounded by beauty, brings out the spiritual/poetic side of me. The feelings it evoked remind me of when I was a child seeing Yosemite for the first time, and knowing that I was in church, somehow.

It was not only an incredibly beautiful day, we were in one of, if not THE most beautiful place I have ever been... at one point, FIVE mother whales and their babies were surrounding the boat - on both sides, underneath, rolling next to the boat and looking at us with their great eyes, blowing whale snot in our faces (which wasn't really all that unpleasant - nicely salted - ha!) babies on mother's backs being held up to get a better look. These gentle giants, friendly monsters, were gracefully floating up to the surface next to the boat so we could reach down and scratch their surprisingly soft skin... I was in tears at several points during the day - it was an incredibly moving experience.

They came to US... we went out to where they were, then floated and waited - first one mother and child, then another and another till there was practically a waiting line!

The rain of last night and this morning is, on the Vizcaino Peninsula, an extraordinarily rare event, and the clouds and sky were fantastic. We live on a wonderful planet - I think we should keep it! At least I hope to stay a while.

The whalers, including Captain Scammons who first 'discovered' the lagoon, used to call the grey whales "Black Devils" - but I think they were confused, and they, themselves were the devils. The whales emanate love and beauty and the essence of gentle, caring nature - one flip of their tails could have torn our small boat into splinters - they gently nudged the boat, and were very careful not to swirl their tails too close, or to rise up underneath us. I’m glad they’ve forgotten the days of Captain Scammons, and I hope those days don’t return for the whales. Devin and I both said later how we felt overwhelming feelings of - hard to explain, but perhaps just well wishing - wishing them well on their journeys, and perhaps they wishing us well on ours. We felt a wonderful connection to these great beings.

It's quite beautiful here - it's a biosphere preserve and world heritage site, and if this is the most amazing thing we experience on this trip, or in life, I think we are satisfied. That's how powerful it is.

Baja is beautiful - thank goodness Ojo de Liebre Lagoon is in Mexico...if it were in the US, I'm sure there would be condos and marinas lining the shores...but it is huge and empty and incredibly beautiful and this one day is worth all the planning and the entire trip!!

But we aren't coming back yet - ha!

Leopoldo’s wife cooked us a delicious lunch when we returned, and explained what “Ojo de Liebre” meant when I asked – Eye of the Hare – the shape of the lagoon on a map is a bit like a large rabbit, and the whale watch area is where the eye would be. We felt we were at the eye of something, being surrounded by the swirling, spouting, friendly whales! What a wonderful day.

Before leaving, we drove along the shore of the lagoon in the campground there - wow. We want to come back to camp there - you can see whales from the shore, and it is so beautiful. When we were just sitting along the shore of the lagoon soaking it in, Devin said, "so this is where they make it." I asked what, and he said, "silence." That's why I love him.

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Go back to Day One of Baja Trip

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.

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Go back to Day One of Baja Trip

Interlude

The posts for the rest of our Baja trip will be coming soon... we are now (April 13th) back in the U.S. and I have my laptop back, and just finished copying all the photos from the Baja leg of our journey to my computer, so I will be uploading photos to go with the already written blog posts and getting them uploaded sometime soon - before we start any other adventures, anyway!

Right now, Devin is getting a root canal, and I am sitting in the internet cafe next door eating a scone. Poor Devin. Later we go to pick up the RV from where it got its differential leak fixed (new seal, fluid), and we got some new tires to replace our flat and our old spare.

So now the suspense is over and you know that we made it out of Baja alive - ha! Well, we wouldn't want to worry anyone too much. We now refer to it as the "Baja Driving School" because just about any roads up here seem like a piece of cake now!

Thanks for your emails and comments - we love hearing from people!

Devin and Maggie

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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:

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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.

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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.

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Day Three: Sunday, March 18: Ensenada to San Quintin

South from Ensenada, Highway 1 goes inland and through some mountains and into agricultural areas. We saw all sorts of crops being grown, and the valley of San Quintin could be near Bakersfield in California’s great central valley. We saw lots of vegetables and strawberries, and flowers, but the most interesting crop we saw was nopales. Nopales are the pads of the Prickly Pear cactus, and it was odd to see it grown as a crop, with great piles of the pads as they were harvesting in some areas.

In San Quintin we stayed at El Pabellon RV Park, which is a beautiful beach with dunes – camping was right on the beach with a small bit of dunes between us and the ocean. We slept to the sound of crashing waves that night! But first we decided to go out to dinner – we went to another RV park, the Cielito Lindo, which has a restaurant. We sat outside, and had some fun encounters with other travelers there! First, a crusty old American came by and said he had a gift for me – he had a small item wrapped in foil and he had definitely been drinking… but he seemed harmless enough, and had somewhat wild gray hair and a twinkle in his eyes in a well-tanned face, so I took the bait and opened the “package.” He proceeded to tell me about it – he said he is the only one to make these earrings from sea snail opercula (the “door” of the shell when the snail lives there). They were actually pretty nice and I put them on right away! He explained that he had lived there at Cielito Lindo for years and just had some friends visiting from Arizona and he was “drunk as a skunk”! Ha. I said I sort of noticed but didn’t want to say anything, to which he laughed. Then he called his dog, “LBD” (for Little Brown Dog) and walked off into the sunset. I think his name was Richard, but I’ll always remember the way he introduced himself with great flair, saying his name was “RICARDO” with a loud and musical accent.

All this action drew the attention of some other diners, and we met Joe and Kim and their two children – turns out they are from Livingston, Montana, of all places! My nephew and his wife, Josh and Nikki, live in Livingston, and I’ve enjoyed visiting them there and we will definitely be going through there with the RV this summer or fall sometime!! They were also staying at El Pabellon and had just come out to Cielito Lindo for dinner – Kim said she’d been dreaming about their delicious cracked crab for months!! Joe works for the Park Service in Yellowstone, and Kim is a vet – in fact she had been through the campground earlier in the year and had de-wormed and treated for fleas both camp dogs – a mom and her pup. We bonded over Livingston, their community theater where Josh and Nikki are regulars and Joe and Kim’s son wants to participate as well, and working for the Park Service. They said they have RV hookups at their house in Livingston and we should definitely call them when we come through!! How fun!! They seemed like great people – fun and easy to talk to with great kids. That was our first taste of “Baja Social Life.”

After a restful night at El Pabellon, we took some more photos in the morning and headed farther south.

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Day Two: Saturday, March 17: Estero Bay at Ensenada

Estero Bay is a huge and very fancy resort, catering to Norte Americanos, mostly, I think. It has certainly been the most expensive RV park in which we’ve stayed in Baja. I use the term “Norte Americanos” by the way, since “Americans” isn’t quite accurate – Mexico is part of North/Central America, so in a sense, they are Americans, too. And Canadians are quite plentiful in Baja! But we felt that after our first full day of driving Baja roads, and after so long in preparation for this journey, we needed to land our first day in Mexico somewhere “safe” and have a chance to regroup a bit. It certainly didn’t really feel like Mexico, there. Everyone spoke English, and pretty much everyone staying there, either at the RV park part or the hotel or in the many small houses that are part of it, was American from the US. Still, it was very lovely – with RV spots right on the estuary where we could watch the tides come and go, with shore birds and sea lions on the opposite side. It was quiet and nice! We stayed two nights while we planned our route and stops a little more, Devin started some audio Spanish lessons, and I began reading a book on Baja: Joseph Wood Krutch’s The Forgotten Penninsula.

The second night I decided to take advantage of the empty hot tub and swimming pool that is just for the RV park – came back from a walk along the waterfront and got into my swimsuit, convinced Devin to come with me to keep me company, and… the pool and hot tub were full of teenagers when we got there!! Undeterred, I said, I’m going into the hot tub anyway! Turns out they were a bunch of really nice high school students from a boarding school in Sedona, Arizona, and were a pretty international bunch – there were a couple of students from Germany, Canadians, Korean, and I can’t recall where else, except there was one super nice girl who was a Paiute from Walker Lake, Nevada! That is near Mono Lake, sort of, which is where I bought the land that helped us pay for this adventure!! Anyway, I had fun talking with them and watching them cavort in the water, and I was glad I had persisted and gone into the hot tub, because there had been a heavy marine layer there that day and it was quite chilly – pleasant, but chilly.

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