BajaNomad

Yumans take trip down the peninsula

BajaNews - 2-1-2009 at 02:10 AM

http://www.yumasun.com/articles/takes_47184___article.html/b...

BY MICHAEL MILLER
January 17, 2009

We finally decided we could devote our winter break to driving down the Baja Peninsula. It would be a 15-day adventure and a 2,600-mile round-trip from Yuma down to Cabo San Lucas.

My wife, Lori, had made the trip with a girlfriend a dozen years earlier and thought it was high time I had the experience, too. And, at 5 years old, our daughter Mary was old enough to remember it.

We spent a couple of weeks lining up what we thought were the essentials: Mexican auto insurance (essential indeed), a Mexican tourist card (which we never ended up using for anything) and a temporary international plan for our Sprint service (which never actually worked).

On this sunny Christmas Eve, we stuffed the bullet-shaped carrier on top of our black Jeep and headed west on I-8. When we showed little Mary the map of our destination, she said, “It must be God's finger!”

Wine country

At the Campo exit high among the Laguna Mountains in California, we exited into the village of Manzanita, where the quaint Mountain Top Store and its friendly proprietors take you back several decades.

The windy, boulder-lined road through Campo to Tecate - laborious but stunning - I was pretty sure I recognized from an old Roger Corman racing movie.

Crossing from the U.S. into Mexico is always one of the more dramatic contrasts you can find - dogs barking at you from the rooftops, an improvisational approach to driving. We must have spent an hour shopping and people-watching on the bustling, beautiful city square of Tecate, home of the regionally popular beer.

The trip down Highway 3 to Ensenada on the west coast has a different libation to offer: wine. This route through the vineyards seems to have taken its cue from Napa Valley in developing as a tourist destination. Many of the establishments have recently built a motel on the grounds for those really serious about tasting the variety of wares.

At a town called Francisco Zarco, we hunted down the bakery, run by a family of Russian immigrants, that was mentioned in our guidebook, where we stocked up on cheese and sweet bread.

The coastal highway

As with so many places on the west coast, the drop down from the hills to the ocean is breathtaking. But the coastal road itself, although it's improved a lot in recent years, is crowded and frustrating.

In Ensenada we made a loop down along the cheerful waterfront. But back on the truck route, we crept through the sprawling city among darting taxis and loud, listing gravel trucks.

The highway from Ensenada to Colonet is significantly inland and no doubt beautiful. But it was approaching nightfall, and I had to concentrate on the traffic and the narrow roadway.

After Colonet we regretfully passed the turnoff into the Sierra San Pedro National Park. At 10,000 feet, the Picacho del Diablo would be covered in snow; that trip would have to wait for a different time of year.

From there, I don't think we missed much in the dark. The road is flat and straight - a long string of identical, dusty agricultural villages, each with its set of speed bumps.

All the Pemex stations appear to be new, created in the image of the American Circle K, with a mini-mart inside and clean bathrooms - but still with the traditional full-serve attendant at the gas pumps.

Heaven

When we finally reached San Quintin, I suddenly realized I'd been driving for about 12 hours through some pretty tough conditions. We watched for a motel, but the only ones listed in the book were right on the dusty truck route.

In one of our luckier decisions, we pushed on and left the highway for the dirt roads, searching several villages for the turnoff out to Cielito Lindo - “Pretty Little Sky,” or “Heaven” if you prefer - a charming hotel-restaurant right on the Santa Maria Bay.

We weren't sure at first if the place was open. It was pretty dark, and the three or four cars might just belong to a handful of winter caretakers. But there actually was music coming from the restaurant.

At the bar were a handful of retirees from a nearby RV park, expatriates maybe, singing along to the ’60s oldies emanating from portable radio. We occupied the table next to the fireplace and feasted by candlelight on ceviche, shrimp and a mountain cracked crabs in mild red chili and oil, washing it all down with Negro Modelo.

We were one of only two groups staying overnight, the other being some schoolteachers from central California who convened at this spot every year. Exhausted, we crossed the vast courtyard whose fountain and walkways with their intricate inlaid stones we would be able to appreciate only in daylight the next morning.

Our room was unheated but spacious. On the dresser top, we laid out a few presents we had brought along to open in the morning, and then dove under the comforters.

That was the first day.

A hard road

On Christmas morning before leaving Cielito Lindo, we took a stroll on the beach. From atop the sand dunes could be seen the seven charming little volcanic islands that protect the Santa Maria Bay.

Mexican Highway 1 follows the ocean from San Quintin to El Rosario, then climbs to a plateau and heads inland across the desert. From here on, this solitary paved artery has a consistent quality: that is, the roadway is a narrow two-lane with absolutely no shoulder; and it's built up, with ditches about six feet deep on both sides.

To ensure the drivers' vigilance, the entire journey is punctuated with colorful roadside shrines for the travelers who have met their end along the dangerous route.

Certainly there is no margin for error, and it was constantly a marvel to us that two semis - or two RVs - could pass each other at all. What was even more amazing were the die-hard cyclists, loaded down for a weeks-long trip, creeping across the barren landscape just inches from the whizzing traffic.

On this particular day, we passed a U.S. family with innovative equipment: the mother was packing most of the gear on her bicycle, and the father had not one but two children, each on a separate seat and wheel, attached to his bike in a series, like little train cars. No matter where they were heading, they had a long way to go, and we said a prayer for them as we passed.

Crossing over

At about the middle of the peninsula, one passes through a desert preserve, actually part of the Sonoran Desert that includes southern Arizona. It features a huge variety of exotic cacti such as the giant cordon, a relative of the saguaro, and a tapered, spiny tower called a “boojum” tree, in reference to a Lewis Carroll poem.

The highway follows this lush desert for some miles and finally reaches the turnoff over to Bahia de Los Angeles on the west coast.

The view from higher ground down to the Gulf of California is especially spectacular at this point. The Mexican mainland is not visible, but a huge island, “The Guardian Angel,” protects the gentle curve of this bay. The contrast of blues and browns is hypnotic.

Our plan was to camp half the time on this trip, so we located an establishment, run as usual by Americans, at the far end of the beach.

We were directed to one of the thatch shelters (palapas) facing the water and grilled our food over the barbecue pit. Predictably, the stars that night were breathtaking.

Family's adventures continue on the Baja Peninsula

BajaNews - 2-1-2009 at 02:12 AM

http://www.yumasun.com/articles/adventures_47361___article.h...

BY MICHAEL MILLER
January 24, 2009

On the third day of our trip down the peninsula, we woke up on the lovely crescent beach at Bahia de Los Angeles.

We paid a local girl to put cornrows in little Mary's hair, to save us the trouble of brushing for the rest of the trip, then we broke camp and headed over to the nearby tortoise sanctuary, which appeared to be occupied by neither man nor beast.

In town, we spent an hour at the quaint museum of maritime artifacts and oddities, then headed back up the slope away from the coast. This road is one of the few spurs off of Highway 1 that is paved. Within just a few miles, though, we turned off on the first of our unpaved side trips.

Off the blacktop

The desert on the way down to the Mission San Borja is lush with the unearthly ciria trees, yuccas, cholla, elephant trees and giant cordon cacti. Down a remote side road are the Pinturas de Montevideo - a collection of varicolored abstract symbols painted by an ancient indigenous people along a volcanic wall.

After several hours, two mountain passes and no sign of another human being, we finally came to the mission, nestled in a wooded valley. The foundation of the original structure is still there beneath a rigid awning and beside it the rebuilt mission from 1742, which still hosts Mass once a month when the priest makes it out that way.

Gabriel, the youth who showed us around, was descended from the native population to whom the Jesuit missionaries had brought their religion. Gabriel gestured to an area below the church, saying that 2,000 of his ancestors had been buried there in a single year after their encounter with another gift from the Old World: smallpox.

This was a story that had unfolded all along the coast. All but a couple of the missions had been abandoned within a few years of being built, for lack of a congregation.

Nearby, a young American couple was resting in the shade of one of the palapas. They told us not to come too close because they thought they had the flu, but we suspected an attack of Montezuma's revenge. We ate our lunch a couple of palapas over, with the entire family of caretakers regarding us innocently.

We hit the transpeninsular highway again at a dusty village called Rosarito and headed south to Guerrero Negro, home to the world's largest evaporative salt works and, in winter, to nearly the entire West Coast population of gray whales. The birthing season still was a week or two away; we would try to catch that on the way back.

A squatter's paradise

In the morning, a thick fog lay over the coastal plain, and we drove inland through an alien landscape of lush desert flora that rivals anything else in the Sonoran Desert.

In the center of the peninsula is the lovely town of San Ignacio with its beautiful white mission, set above a grove of date palms. From the staff at the state museum, we gathered information about the remote caves full of Indian art that we planned to visit on the way back. On the concrete plaza, we played Frisbee with a group of local kids until it was too dark to see.

Next day, on the road to the east, we passed Tres Virgenes, a trio of pristine volcanic peaks. The highway hits the coast at Santa Rosalia, one of two ports for the ferries from the mainland.

It's a former French outpost, established by the Rothschilds for the export of copper. The spacious houses here, built of Oregon pine, are unique on the peninsula. The prefab galvanized-iron church, in fact, was designed by the immortal Alexandre Eiffel for the 1889 World's Fair.

We pressed on beyond Mulejé, an hour to the south. Lori had a certain location in mind from her trip a dozen years earlier, but near one community of beach houses a row of dome-shaped palapas caught our eye.

The place turned out to be abandoned - fleet of kayaks and all - the owner having absconded to Thailand with his new wife. But we found several groups of Americans squatting in the spacious palapas, so we joined the party.

Our neighbors were a motley collection of mavericks and misfits, the elder being a scruffy mystic who had hitchhiked all the way down from the Olympic Peninsula with his hippie girlfriend and arrived a week earlier.

A gypsy anarchist from Oregon, who actually parked his camper just off the grounds, was the self-appointed caretaker, maintaining the toilet and periodically dredging the natural hot spring marked by a circle of stones out on the tidal flat. Jim believed he had a ringside seat for the Apocalypse from the sliding door of his van.

Coincidentally, there were two gay couples from the Bay Area, one male and one female. And there was a group of stoners on a quest for the perfect surfing wave. There were average Joes, too, like the couple from L.A. - a Japanese-Canadian father and his brother, his wife the film editor and their adopted Chinese daughter.

The composite crew made for great company around the barbecue pit under the waxing moon. Breakfast and lunch were bought cheap from a guy who wandered back and forth on the beach with a bag full of tamales and burritos.

On the second day we took a side trip back to Mulejé to stock up on provisions and visit the mission, a unique structure made of the characteristic round stones of the area. There we met a couple from New Jersey who had been married in that chapel 20 years earlier.

For the rest of the time at our hostel-by-the-sea, which we dubbed Eco Mundo, we paddled the high-end kayaks out to the nearby islands, played tag with the pelicans and sipped Tecate with our new best friends.

The landed gentry in the neighboring community didn't much appreciate the squatters, of course, and conspired to take their daily strolls along our stretch of beach, making loud snide remarks. The atmosphere was gradually getting tense, so after two days we reluctantly pulled away from our unauthorized paradise.

Toward a new year

The next stop, Loreto, is one of the more cultured cities on the peninsula, with art galleries, fine dining and an elegant mission. We hooked up with a classy young American couple, and together we looked into some options for eco-tourism, only to decide it would be too expensive and too time-consuming.

The young man was a genetic engineer, engaged in a government project to help indigenous farmers in the state of Oaxaca to map the genes of certain hardy varieties of corn. I was relieved to learn that the Indians would retain the patent.

Lori and I made a tentative offer to drive our new friends out to the old Mission San Javier the next day. But after a night of brainstorming agreed we would have to disappoint them as our itinerary demanded we press on and make that side trip on the way back.

We pushed off very early. On the outskirts of town we saw a cemetery of brightly painted mausoleums and resolved to explore that too on the return trip.

The coast below Loreto must be the prettiest on the whole trip - mountains on the right, crescent beaches and hidden coves on the left. After a particularly hair-raising stretch along the cliffs, the road turns inland. We had about 400 miles to make that day; fortunately, the flat highway and the glorious weather could accommodate a serious pace.

We had thought we would stop and explore La Paz, but we found it to be a pretty typical crowded, smoky Mexican metropolis, with endless expanding suburbs. We stopped at an Internet café to check e-mail and write a couple of blogs. The service in such places is generally dial-up, so we had time to do our laundry, too - in the same establishment.

Spontaneously, we pushed on to a remote solar community on the coast called Cabo Pulmo. That night in the larger of the two restaurants, we ran into our multi-ethnic L.A. friends from Eco Mundo. They had hooked up with a couple of authentic hipsters from Northern California, who also had adopted an Asian daughter of about the same age.

I had a long talk with Raj, as he had been renamed, and it turned out that he had been a follower of the Indian guru Rajneesh, who had led an ill-fated commune in the early ’80s. I made note of the fact that he seemed amazingly level-headed - in sharp contrast to the contemporary press coverage of the phenomenon.

We slept hard that night in our quaint thatched-roof cottage, to the occasional sound of New Year's fireworks.

Return trip from the Baja tip

BajaNews - 2-1-2009 at 02:14 AM

http://www.yumasun.com/articles/baja_47530___article.html/re...

BY MICHAEL MILLER
January 31, 2009

At Cabo Pulmo we were just inside the Tropic of Cancer. We woke up on New Year's Day in our thatched cottage and headed south along the sandy road that follows the eastern shore toward the tip of the peninsula, easily one of the most beautiful stretches on the Baja.

Within a few miles we passed the cove we had visited the day before. We had tried to kayak out to see the colony of sea lions around the point, but as soon as we had passed the shelter of the rocks, the wind from the open sea stopped us cold. We had spent the day instead snorkeling among the amazing variety of tropical fish. I had to dive several times to admire one particular moray that had looped itself into the porous coral.

The fingertip

The coastal road alternately dips down to beaches like this one and rises back up to gentle grassy hills with spectacular views of the sparkling sea. At one point we got out the binoculars and watched a gray whale and her calf slowly making their way north from the ocean into the Gulf of California.

Elaborate homes are widely spaced all along this stretch, owned mostly by wealthy Californians, we guessed. Many of them are new or under construction, and we speculated on how long it would take for this area to be developed, with a paved road and dense condominiums.

Finally we had to cut away from the coast. It took a bit of trial and error to find our way on the back roads into San José del Cabo, probably the most lush and the most genteel city on the peninsula.

We ate a hearty lunch in a second-story restaurant overlooking the shaded Boulevard Mujeres. At the cathedral a block away, a wedding was just ending and the guests were spilling into the beautiful plaza, where a lifesize nativity was set up.

Highway 1 between San José and Cabo San Lucas is the only significant stretch of four-lane we would see on this trip of 2,400 miles. Indeed, “The Corridor,” as it is called, could be somewhere in Southern California, with its condos and golf courses and gated communities.

We pulled over for a picture of the offshore island arches - the signature sight of the Baja - and made a quick loop around the downtown harbor area, for the record; then we pushed on up the west coast.

We were looking for a campground south of Todo Santos where Lori had stayed a couple of years before. To find it, though, we had to explore a few rural neighborhoods dotted with vacation bungalows.

It turned out that the campground had long since closed and had been taken over by bands of surfers, their VW vans scattered among the dunes. The ones with seniority actually occupied the deserted administration building, their colorful boards leaning against the crumbling stucco and their laundry hanging from the windowsills.

Swimming was out of the question because only rocks lay beneath the surf. One area, where the visitors had made towers of these smooth stones with the patience of eternal youth, looked like a pagan shrine.

This is evidently a premier surfing spot. All evening and then again in the morning we watched the thrilling acrobatic displays.

Backtracking

In the artisan community of Todo Santos, we ate crepes at a New Age café that might have been in downtown Sedona. Then we browsed the galleries, with their paintings and displays of silver jewelry.

At one folk-art shop we made significant additions to our collection of masks, though we had no room for them in the Jeep. We even bumped into a couple of our buddies from the beach at Mulejé.

The rest of the day was spent on the long drive back to Loreto on the east coast. Just as we made the mountain pass overlooking the Gulf of California, a full moon was coming up over the water. Lodgings that night in Loreto were a U.S.-style motel, with a courtyard - and an unheated pool.

In the morning, we set out for the San Javier Mission up in the mountains. The initial stretch inland was closed because work was just getting under way to pave this road up to the mission, so we had to follow the nearby riverbed.

The road into the mountains is only one lane, so we chewed our nails to the nub on the blind switchbacks. At intervals, roadside shrines mark the sheer drop-offs, but the views out to the Gulf are to die for.

The tortuous drive is easily justified by the mission's stunning setting - a lush miniature valley. The building has obviously enjoyed a recent facelift, and the gilded altar is the largest and most elaborate of those we saw.

The main street through the village has been freshly surfaced with cobblestone. Evidently the residents are anticipating an upturn in the tourist industry once the road from the coast is finished.

By evening we made it all the way back to San Ignacio, in the heart of the peninsula. We caught the museum staff just as they were leaving and arranged for our trip out to the remote cave art sites in the San Francisco Mountains the next day, as required.

Our room that night was at a local family's house right on the plaza. We ate dinner with them and then spent a freezing night in a windowless add-on out back.

An ancient record

We got up before it was light in order to make our rendezvous with the guide up in the hills. We had to backtrack on the highway a few miles to the east and then turn north on a jeep track.

At an optimum pace that wouldn't be too hard on the vehicle, the trip took about two hours. The vegetation was stunning, though, interrupted only by an occasional dusty plot with goat pens and a shack or two.

At last we came to a family house at the end of the road. The veteran guide already had taken a small group up the trail, so we were assigned to his son, Martin. Martin (and, we would discover, his dad) seemed to be bred for this work of loping back and forth across the desert terrain; both of them were beanpole thin, with stilt-like legs.

We got the feeling that Martin had trouble regulating his pace for us. Lori and I both have long legs, too, but we also had 5-year-old Mary, and I had to carry her most of the way, which we figured must be about five miles on an increasingly upward slope.

Finally we came to a brief set of switchbacks, and above us we could see the cave - an overhang, really. Martin let us through the gate in the chain-link fence just as the other party was coming out.

The rock face is completely covered with the red-and-black outlines of various desert animals and of humans about twice lifesize, and there's one very clear rendering of a whale. We had first learned about these remarkable drawings about 10 years earlier when we had studied Spanish in Cuernavaca, south of Mexico City. Our art-history lecturer had referred to them reverently as proof of an intelligence in this hemisphere as advanced as anywhere else in the world at the time, several thousand years ago.

The two-tone men, it is said, represent demigods. But we'll have to rely the findings of the ongoing archeological survey for any interpretation, for the Cochimi Indians, ancestors of these artists, have not survived the visitation of European immigrants.

One more crossing

That evening when we got in to Guerrero Negro, the transition point between the north and south peninsula, we had another excursion to book. This was the beginning of the whale-watching season, and we wanted to catch one of the early launches out into the bay.

In the morning, we drove out onto the salt flats and finally came to the boathouse at the water's edge. The wind was blowing so hard, though, that even this sheltered bay was flecked with whitecaps.

About a dozen of us pilgrims had gathered. We were given full-length raincoats and loaded onto two launches, and our helmsmen set off against the waves, spray flying as if we were in a storm.

Quickly it was obvious, though, that the weather was too rough for us to see anything, even if we encountered whales, so we turned back. We were told we'd try again if the wind died down. But, after an hour of sipping cocoa on the enclosed porch and peering into the overcast distance, we reluctantly collected our refund and resolved to use this excuse for a future trip down this way.

We drove hard to the north, beyond the turnoffs to San Borja Mission and Bahia de Los Angeles, to Chapala - not a place so much as an intersection - and turned in on the graded road that would take us up the east coast toward San Felipe and Mexicali. This was our first experience on the trip with washboard surfaces, and we decided we preferred the undeveloped desert tracks.

In the middle of nowhere we came to Koko's Corner, pretty much the only outpost along this stretch of the annual Baja 500 cross-country motor race. The proprietor was on hiatus in the States, but we poked around among the various structures and devices - all made out of Pacifico beer cans. Inside was a tiny saloon with undergarments stapled to the walls (we did not contribute our own), and Lori said that the ladies' outhouse featured a small library of eroticism in Spanish.

It was getting late when we hit the coast at Bahia San Luis Gonzaga, so we provisioned ourselves at the general store and asked about camping out by the beach. We were counseled that we didn't want one of the palapas in this wind, so we settled for one of the restroom areas in the unfinished café next to the water.

Sure enough, all of the beach houses were boarded up against the weather, and we were alone. We cooked dinner on the porch in the lee of the howling wind and watched the moon rise above the crashing waves.

Heading home

The northeast coast is considerably more barren than the rest of the peninsula, and it seemed especially so in the cold wind. We did enjoy the view of the desolate offshore islands, one of which looks like a shrouded corpse - thus the name El Muerto. But the road from Bahia Gonzaga to Puertocitos, where the pavement finally resumes, is easily the worst I've ever experienced.

To make more than five miles an hour, one has to ignore the consequences to one's vehicle. When I stopped to take a break from the physical work of driving, I realized that I'd punctured a tire on one of the sharp rocks.

We wanted to try out the hot springs at Puertocitos, but they sit among the rocks at the water's edge and can't be accessed when the tide is in, so we just ate lunch in the restaurant, happy to be sitting still.

The paved road north is smooth and new but built like a roller coaster, so we were a little seasick when we arrived at San Felipe. I hadn't been down there in several years and was astonished at the new condominium developments, especially south of town.

The downtown Malecón, where the shrimp boats were beached, is still pretty much the same, and we observed our ritual of visiting several seafood stands. We also loaded the Jeep the rest of the way with Mexican handicrafts.

We had intended to spend our last night here, but now we were out of pesos. Besides, we were weary and decided we wanted to spend one whole day at home before we went back to work, so we started off on the four-hour drive to Yuma on that cold, clear night.

At the Mexican army checkpoint, we thought the glum soldiers would want to search us from top to bottom, out of boredom. But when they found out we could actually wish them a happy Three Kings Day in Spanish, suddenly they appeared as what they were - a group of freezing kids who were just happy for some friendly talk.

Approaching Mexicali, we calculated that we wouldn't make the midnight closing time at the border crossing east of town, so we headed into the city center. I had forgotten how vast that urban area is; unexpectedly there was no line at the border.

We figured we were perfect candidates for secondary inspection - our dusty Jeep stuffed to the ceiling with disordered gear and a 5-year-old passed out akimbo in the back seat. But the Customs agent took one look at us, laughed and waved us through.

It had been quite an adventure, but we were inexpressibly relieved to be driving on the interstate, with its four lanes and 10-foot shoulders.

Bajahowodd - 2-1-2009 at 04:39 PM

Thanks for posting the final installment, along with the others. Maybe it's just me, but I get an equivocal feeling about the writer. I almost feel like he could have written this by doing some online research. Oh, well. But, I'll bet he stayed at Hacienda Suites in Loreto.

BajaDanD - 2-1-2009 at 09:14 PM

Quote "On Christmas morning before leaving Cielito Lindo, we took a stroll on the beach. From atop the sand dunes could be seen the seven charming little volcanic islands that protect the Santa Maria Bay."

Am I crazy
I have never seen this Ive seen the volcanos but only one is an island. SanMartin
Other then that the story was pretty good.

BornFisher - 2-1-2009 at 11:26 PM

Well maybe it`s just me, but I love Baja trip reports from the words and eyes of others. Thanks for the post!!

David K - 2-2-2009 at 11:14 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by BajaDanD
Quote "On Christmas morning before leaving Cielito Lindo, we took a stroll on the beach. From atop the sand dunes could be seen the seven charming little volcanic islands that protect the Santa Maria Bay."

Am I crazy
I have never seen this Ive seen the volcanos but only one is an island. SanMartin
Other then that the story was pretty good.


There are a few blips (L.A. Bay being on the west coast of Baja, Muleje, Koko...) but nice story otherwise!