January 14 to January 20, 2017—beaches; desert; ; kamikaze drivers; roads curving along the base of, or over, mountains by the sea
Guererro Negro
Guerrero Negro is on the Pacific. It is a one industry town, the industry being salt making. It is a fairly large burg of 10,000 people surrounded by 100,000 acres of salt evaporation ponds. We arrived at Malarrimo RV park and shouldered our way into the crowded lot in the dark, in the rain. The establishment consisted of a very nice, linen tablecloth restaurant in a dirt parking lot surrounded by about thirty extended parking spaces which were the campsites, a three room building containing two crummy showers and one crummier toilet, the whole surrounded by a ten foot cinder block wall painted white. The next morning, after a night of heavy rain, there was a lake in front of the restaurant that stayed for two days despite attempts to snake out the drain and an open sewer in front of the bath house.
The main street of the town had several intersections flooded to a depth of a foot. Drivers delighted in plowing through at full speed and throwing water onto other cars, pedestrians, storefronts. The back side of the town was a warren of dirt roads lined with hovels; two bars and ten stray dogs per block.
Our site cost the equivalent of ten bucks a night and the restaurant and bar were really very good and equally inexpensive.
Coming out of the restaurant the first night we ran into Mark and Valerie, our Canadian friends who parted from us a week before and five hundred miles ago in San Felipe in their monster diesel truck while we were caught in the gas crisis.
Alan was not confidant that he could communicate his welding needs to the local craftsman and decided his repairs could wait a little longer. We all took a drive out to a nearby lagoon to see if the whales had started arriving yet but the dirt road to the beach, wending through the salt flats, got narrower and messier with each kilometer so I decided to make a five-point turn while I still had the room. We later learned that the whales, gray whales, had not yet arrived to mate and spawn in the lagoons around Guerrero Negro.
Whaling is a big part of Baja history but even more so in this town. The restaurant was filled with artifacts and memorabilia of the whaling scene of the 19th century.
Hung around for two nights and headed back to the Gulf Coast in a three vehicle caravan that we have maintained for a week now.
The roads here have been overall good. For long stretches of Highway 1 there is no shoulder and the road is built on the top of a ridge, so any momentary inattention that causes a wheel to go off the road would send you down a precipice. Occasionally there is a major flaw in the pavement, and we have had to brake for herds of goats or wandering cattle. A surprising number of drivers are suicidal. If I were to tell you of their stunts (passing at high speed on a blind curve or approaching the crest of a hill–cars, gas trucks, commercial buses) you would accuse me of exaggerating. These guys have great faith in their deity or a great desire to meet him.
Stopped for lunch in Santa Rosalia, a town established by a French copper mining concern in the 1800s. The hulking rusted machinery of the enterprise remain where the French left them when they were expelled during the Mexican revolution, the success of which is celebrated each year as cinque de maio. The buildings are wooden frame buildings, unlike the adobe and brick of the rest of Baja, and the has a European feel. The town church was designed by Gustave Eiffel and shipped from France, and there remains a French bakery in town.
Mulege
Mulege was our destination and we reached it late afternoon. It is celebrated in Baja history as the site of a successful repulse of an American force, led by Winfield Scott, in the Mexican American War. It wasn’t much of a battle but being one of the only successes of the Mexican army in that conflict it is a source of pride.
It is an idyllic, oasis town. A healthy river nourishes the date palms that cover the town. Dates were harvested here for export into the 1970s but the dates are inferior to majoul dates from the middle east and the harvest is no longer worthwhile. We stayed three nights in a camp in the center of the town (population 3,000) and enjoyed the ambience, the friendly people, the delicious food. There is a museum of sorts in the old prison, a large fortress overlooking the town on a hill. It was in use into the 1970s, always a low security facility where prisoners, men and women, were let out during the day to work and called back to the prison in the evening by the blowing of a conch shell horn. A nearby mission is worth visiting also, an imposing 18th century structure of locally-fabricated concrete and stone with walls four feet thick. We had our laundry done in town overnight, two Ikea-bags full for fifteen dollars, washed and folded. Alan got his frame welded with the help of a translator.
We ate at Dany’s taco stand every night. It doesn’t make sense to cook in mexico when a full meal can be had for four dollars.
Coyote
We drove down the coast an hour to Coyote Beach on the Bay of Concepcion. Parked feet from the shore, blue-green clear water, porpoises and whale sharks offshore. No electricity or water, $5/night; vendors come by every few minutes selling peeled fresh shrimp $7/pound, blankets from Oaxaca, pastries, laundry services, etc etc. A nice cantina a mile away with an acoustic duo playing and singing sweet Spanish melodies.
Alan and I climbed a good ways up the hill behind the camp, an arduous and probably unwise adventure but we escaped major injury and felt proud. Mark inflated his thirteen foot boat and caught a bunch of fish for dinner including a 24 inch snapper and several foot-long trigger fish.
Then he took Brenda and Betsie out to the islands that dot the bay and have pristine white sand beaches hidden in coves. And they also went to the hot springs that bubble up into the gulf alongside the cliffs. Frigate birds. Vermillion flycatchers.
[View of Coyote Bay about halfway up the mountain I climbed.]
And bioluminescence. I noticed the beach at night was silver bright like mercury when it hit the shore ten feet in front of us. Then someone down the beach shrieked and we saw that wherever the water was disturbed, by hand or by the movement of feet, it glowed brightly with the light of countless jewel-like particles. Freaking amazing.
Mark, Alan and I went out fishing and cruising the islands on the third day. Mark decided it was too much effort to deflate and reinflate his boat so we spent the morning figuring out a way to attach it to his camper. When we got it lashed on we headed south, past a friendly military checkpoint, destination: Loreto.