January 14 to January 26, 2017—Loreto to La Paz (with addendum to previous entry)
I neglected to account for a day in our trip from Guerrero Negro to Mulege. We stayed at a beach campground outside Santa Rosalia. It was typical of many campos to be found along the coasts—set up right on the beach, no water or electricity, an outhouse; somebody who might or might not be entitled to do so comes around each day to collect the five or ten dollar (American) fee. This camp, the name of which escapes me, also had a cantina that served food and beverages, and had wifi. There were about fifty sites, less than half occupied. The residents were older folks (older than me that is) who had been wintering in this location for decades. They all knew each other. Most were from northwest US or Canada.
Early in the morning Alan and I talked to a guy, who had been out fishing since dawn, as he was bringing his boat to shore. He told us about the fishing and his history with the place. He noted that every year one or more of the old-timers passes on and, surprisingly to me, there were no new people moving in; none pursuing the beach-camping life for several months during the winter. I don’t know what has changed. He didn’t know what had changed. In any event this guy was knowing and friendly, but as we were preparing to leave the camp an hour or so later he came over to Brenda and started a spiel that went “People like to have mementos of their travels and with that in mind I’d like to offer this book of poems of my own to you. Some people are put off by poetry because they don’t understand it but I think you will find my work quite accessible. Let me read you one,” and he proceeded to read some iambic pentameter doggerel about Mexican children and sunsets, simple-minded stuff. It was accessible alright, but not at his asking price. I offered to trade him an unused Potomac Riverkeeper hat but he said, “No the price is thirteen dollars.” I’m behind his back signaling to Brenda, “Ixnay on the ookbay!” She offers ten, I might have sprung for five for the amusement value, but he sticks to his $13 price. Sorry Amigo, no vende. Hustling old codger, maybe he’s the reason gringos stopped coming to Mexico.
Baja Sur is desert cut through with high mountainous remains of volcanic origin veering from coast to coast, and cordon cactus the largest in the world, and crystal waters on the Sea of Cortez side and the wild Pacific on the other. In between is vast areas of untrammeled, scrubby land broken up with the occasional small town or village. Some, like Mulege or San Ignacio, are palm tree oases beside perennial rivers. Others pop up in the most inhospitable of areas, compact collections of ramshackle shanties that could be in Soweto or Kingstown, or cute little towns of adobe painted bright and planted around with flowers. On long stretches of fifty miles or more there will be a few roadside tiendas or taquerias, little wooden shacks or one room adobe buildings selling a few comestibles and beer. There are maybe a dozen cities, excluding the border towns, that number more than a couple thousand residents
During the monsoon season, September, the rivers flood and destroy whole villages. In 2009 a flood wiped out a swath of houses three deep along the river in Mulege, along with road infrastructure and bridges, a disaster from which they are still recovering. Historically, the capital of Baja California has been relocated from cities destroyed by rainstorms. The high mountains receive more regular rainfall which seeps through the porous volcanic rock and emerges in intermittent streams that support small homesteads seen off the road marked by windmills. In the central plains of the south there is more abundant water near the surface and row crops like corn and chickpeas are grown. But tourism and fishing are the prime income sources for the Baja peninsula, with a few cities supporting some mining operations.
It is a dusty place. The residents of the cities and shanty towns are constantly sweeping the few paved streets and sidewalks. All over Mexico, every third building is in a state of being under construction or under demolition, it is hard to tell which. There are building lots everywhere with walls of structures, two or three or even four walls, some chest-high, some ready for a roof, and it is obvious that they have been in this state for many years. Perhaps these are markers of the 2008 financial crisis in Mexico. Or perhaps they are being built slowly as resources become available. Somone told me that a building in Mexico isn’t subject to taxation until it is finished so there is motivation to leave your house unfinished.
Loreto
Loreto is a decent-sized city of some 20,000. In the mid 18th century it was the largest city in the western coast of the Northern hemisphere. In 1750 there was no place with more inhabitants from Alaska to the equator on the Pacific coast. It was the home base of the Spanish Christian missionaries who went inland to San Javier to build what is now the oldest European church in western part of the northern Hemisphere (1749) and which we visited by driving, sans trailer, over a 5,000 ft mountain range for a day trip.
They went up the west coast establishing missions as far north as San Francisco. Junipero Serra started from Loreto. First the Jesuits, then the Dominicans, then the Franciscans. Just as in the US, many of the native tribes died from disease or outright murder shortly after the arrival of the Europeans.
We moved into the RV camp within the city of Loreto, and were soon joined by Mark and Valerie who had been dry-camping on the coast while we were in Mulege.
Over these few nights several restaurants were sampled, I tried unsuccessfully to obtain cash advances on my bank card, a problem that had surfaced in Mulege and was starting to become a worry, and too much tequila was consumed by Mark and I. Brenda and Betsi hit all the little shops along the malecon and around the old town square.
We met a Canadian who played the pennywhistle and he and Brenda met up in the camp patio in the evening to play some songs. They played a few songs, drew a small appreciative crowd, played a few songs more and fun was being had, until some recently-arrived camper complained about the loudness. It was 9:30 in the evening. The musicians obliged and the party broke up. At 6:00 am the next morning the cross fit gym started up with superloud headbanging music and the complainer, according to a witness, “packed up and left in the time it took for me to take a piss.”
There is a nice new hotel and a nice new waterfront promenade in Loreto, constructed recently by the government.
Actually, a few of the Sea-side towns have similar construction projects and similar appearance and Alan hipped me to the fact that a previous government had invested a bundle in these Sea-side projects with the idea that they would draw in the yacht-cruising set. The problem for the government was that yacht cruisers aren’t inclined to pay American prices for hotel rooms and mooring spaces when they can anchor offshore for nothing. The hotel in Loreto probably had two hundred rooms and, at the time we were there, exactly two renters. And the story is the same in La Paz and other locations. The public works project was a bust and in fact may have been a pork project all along.
Loreto is clean, friendly, with lots of good services. It is also noisy (heavy metal music started early and ended late at the nearby CrossFit gym; dogs barking; roosters crowing) and after a couple of nights Brenda and I headed back to the Pacific coast with Alan and Betsi while Mark and Valerie continued on down the Gulf coast.
Puerto San Carlos
A three hour+ drive from Loreto, over the mountains to the Pacific, Puerto San Carlos is on Magdalena Bay, a large protected cove famous for whale watching. We got in late and it was extremely windy, gale-force. We pulled onto the beach behind a hotel/restaurant, asked around, and a guy said we could stay there for $10 american (he was the only guy so far smart enough to quote prices in US dollars. When we arrived in Mexico one US dollar was buying 19 pesos; by the time we got to this place a US dollar was worth 22 pesos—a ten percent increase in value over three weeks.)
We arranged for a whale watching excursion the next morning, $150 total for four of us, for 3 hours, in a panga which is the universal work boat of the Mexicans on both coasts. Boston whaler-sized, high jutting prows, open, fiberglass, powered by anything the seamen can get their hands on. The fishermen beat the daylights out of these boats busting through the chop at high speed. You hear them in the morning in every seaside town—Bam! Bam! Bam!—racing out to sea. We had a margarita in the restaurant and were asleep by 8pm, worn out by driving. The next day was too windy for whale watching so we skedaddled back to the Sea of Cortez to
La Paz
La Paz is the capital of Baja California Sur (Baja Sur being the southern half of the peninsula. In the 1500’s Spanish and Portuguese sailors, who had explored the opening of the Sea of Cortez, thought that the whole Pacific coast of what we now call California was one big island extending from what we now call Cabo San Lucas to god-knows-where.) La Paz is a city of 200,000 residents. We took a spot in an RV park outside of town called Maranatha. It was a large operation with event and dormitory spaces, a pool that the cool weather did not make inviting. We were in a very spacious site near the highway. Made friends with Jeff and Sonya from Washington State, next door to us in a Class A (i.e. bus-sized) RV. Stayed two nights, went into town, shopped at the WalMart, took Soulie to a vet. We were concerned that she had been bothering her eyes and ears with rubbing, but the problem appears to be more serious. She has been eating well throughout the trip but has lost over two pounds. Her protein levels are on the low edge of normal. We made two visits to the vet and he gave her antibiotics the name of another doctor to follow up with in Los Barriles in ten days.
We left the rv camp and went to a free beachfront site twenty miles away, Playa Tecolote. Severe winds and crashing surf. A few hours after we set up camp a group of kiteboarders arrived and proceeded to execute worldclass kite surfing maneuvers right in front of us, twenty of them executing the most acrobatic and high-speed antics. During the night the surf broke over the beachhead and flowed into the campsites. The dirt trail we had come in on was a nascent river.
We managed to find our way out and decided to escape the wind by crossing back to the Pacific Ocean again, which at this point on the peninsula was only an hour away.
