March 7 to March 14, 2017—Getting the Bends, exiting Mexico too quickly
Bahia de Los Angeles
Drove from Guerrera Negra on the Pacific coast to the Bay of los Angeles on the Sea of Cortez. The desert was an absolute riot of color, carpets of vivid purples, yellows, marigold orange. The mesquite trees in bloom, too, tangles of orange filament in the boughs. Boojum Trees, or cerios cactus, are prevalent here. They are up to twenty five foot tall cones, about ten inches wide at the base and tapering upward. Leaved branches about six inches long, widely-spaced, sprout from the cone. Another plant whose name I don’t know is up to twelve feet high and at top spreads candelabra-like arms, each supporting an orange or yellow flower the size and shape of a saucer with a teacup on it. Massive octopus-like cactus growing along the ground. Medusa’s head-like cactus here and there. A landscape that must have been seen by Dr. Suess at some point.
Bahia de Los Angeles is off the beaten track, about sixty miles from the highway en-route to nowhere. It is a small fishing village, winter- or permanent-home to a handful of gringos. We rented a spot on the beach, no amenities like electricity or running water but it came with a round stone-walled building open to the sea with a palm frond roof.
I hiked three miles, climbing 900 feet up the hill behind the town, half the distance to the highest peak there (the mountain chain it belongs to rises to almost 6,000 feet a few miles away.) I got myself into a bit of a perilous situation against my self-made promises never to climb anything remotely dangerous alone and never to move forward unless I am sure the handholds and footholds are secure. I’ll forgo the ugly details but found myself in a situation where all the stone was really loose slate, coming apart in briefcase-sized slabs or crumbling underfoot. I wrenched my back pretty good trying to keep myself from sliding down the mountain through cactus and briars. Still have pain standing up. Brenda, sensibly, hiked the sea shore. About 14 islands of various sizes and geologic composition offshore. A beautiful, remote location. You can rent a nice one-bedroom casita near the beach for 300 US$/month.
Rosario
Thence several hours driving to a run-down RV park in a medium-sized agricultural town in the interior. We were the only residents. There are scores of similar places throughout Baja—large camps that were well executed in the 1960s or 1970s, perhaps, but fallen into decades of neglect. The town is famous among gringos for Mama Espinozas restaurant. This town and the restaurant in particular figured prominently in the many Baja endurance races that started in the 1960s—the Baja 300, the Baja 1000. In the beginning the races were open to any vehicle of any type; now they are restricted to races just for motorbikes, or just for dune buggies, etc.
Outside of town was a geologic feature of interest, a collapsed volcano cone right on the shore. The on-line info said you can stand on the crown of the cone and look down at the water-filled crater that sea lions favor. The road was three miles of bad road and halfway in the road ran uphill at a steep grade and had major fissures –I was disinclined to continue up that slope. I found a place to pull over and we hiked into an arroyo toward the water. I guessed it would emerge on the ocean shore near the crater and we could hike to it on the beach. The arroyo did not take a direct route to the sea; it wended around through the mountains for two miles. It was full of interesting rocks and formations,
and there were fresh (undried in the mud) bobcat or mountain lion prints going our way. When we did finally reach the Pacific we were in a wave-crashing, steep-walled box cove with no access to the beach. We had to hike back the way we had come and never did see the crater or sea lions. It was fine hike though. Funny how the idea of a large predatory feline being in the vicinity complicates your viewing behavior.
The landscape north of here is very unique, starting around the town of Catavina. There are boulder fields and boulder mounds. Big fields of big, rounded boulders and big piles of big, rounded boulders. I suspect that the granite outcroppings here have gradually cracked apart and become smoothed by the wind. The stones look stream-worn but that couldn’t be the case in this high, dry location.
Not far from here a bed of giant fossilized copopods were unearthed in an arroyo. Also in this vicinity is El Marmol, where most of the world’s onyx came from up until recently. There is a school house built with solid onyx walls which was too far off-road for us to visit.
Up mountain and down to
San Quintin
Stayed at El Pabillon camp, behind the dunes on the Pacific. This is a prime agricultural region. The Driscoll company grows their berries here. If you have a strawberry from Mexico it was likely grown here. The workers are picked up in company buses at 5AM and brought to whatever field needs attention. The farms are vast, many of them giant scrim-walled-and-roofed greenhouses. I know they get the buses going at 5AM because the only other guy in the campground, from Idaho, asked me to go fishing with him. He had been coming to Baja since the 1960s, working in his early twenties on a tuna fishing boat out of Ensenada. The guy loves fishing and had arranged for a pilot to take him into the Pacific on his panga, his fourth fishing trip of the month. So we left at 4:30 and were out on the water ninety minutes later. Fished the Bay for ling cod, for bait, then went out to sea. Pangas, from shore, look like there are taking a terrible hamering, beating through the waves at full bore (135hp Honda engine on this one.) but they are surprisingly steady cutting through the water. We were in a thick fog almost all morning, maybe six miles out, pulling in sand bass, calico bass, johnny bass, redfish and whitefish, with regularity, all in the 12 to 24 inch range. Fileted out, back at Garcia’sfish camp, we had about thirty pounds of glistening white filets. My Idaho friend had a freezer and so kept the largest share, by agreement. I enjoyed being on the ocean and experiencing the panga, as well as the three-day portion of filets I kept.
We have a coleman cooler that I use to store our electric cables, water hoses, and other odds and ends. Since the water at the camp where we stayed was too salty I never hooked up and left the hose in the cooler box (the electric cable was hooked up). During the night someone stole the cooler with the water hose and, more distressing to me, my nice hiking boots which I had left outside to air. There were warnings in the guide books about this town. The farms are so hungry for agricultural workers that they attract “immigrants” from mainland Mexico who lack respect for local business owners like Maria who owns the campground. Maria had even posted a sign warning campers not to leave article unattended, but ten weeks of no problems in Baja had made me incautious. I only have myself to blame. The thief would be easy to find if you could gather all the thousands of ag workers in one place; he’d be the one with the nicest boots.
Also at Maria’s, I flipped a breaker trying to run too many cooking tools on the electric outlet outside the camper. The breaker wouldn’t reset however. Some of the other 110 amp outlets inside the trailer were working so I didn’t think there was a massive problem. But they stopped working shortly thereafter, as did all the utilities that run on AC, such as the fridge. Maria said there was a problem with the electricity connection in town but that didn’t really explain my problem. I thought I had burned up the unit that turned battery power into 110 power and that would be a real problem for us.
We drove three hours to Ensenada, which is a big town and would have repair services. I don’t know anything about electricity but took the parts apart that I could take apart, to look at them and say incantations over them. I discovered that the breaker was faulty, it wasn’t tripping all the way out and so wouldn’t reset properly. I felt like a genius for figuring this out. The other AC outlets and appliances were already working so what had happened, apparently, was that soon after I tripped the breaker by trying to run too many things the town’s electrical supply did indeed go out. The sequence of outages had me stymied for some time but I felt quite proud of having gotten the electric back in working order.
And so here we are at Estero Beach Resort in Ensenada. It is a luxe, pricey place which we felt entitled to after being ripped off and having mechanical issues. Pool, hot tub, walls, guards, hot showers, 50 US$/night. Another night here, a couple more nights somewhere else and the Mexico portion of our trip will be over. If someone were to ask me right now, “What was the worst thing that happened on your trip?” I would say, “Leaving Mexico.”