THE BEGGAR OF CATAVINA

CATAVINA..land of giants, spas, and beggars.



I always know I'm halfway to my Baja destination when I drive into the small desert compound of Catavina.

For me, it's about 650 miles from the Tecate US/Mexico border to my driveway.





Once upon a time, a young child called this place the LAND OF THE GIANT ROCKS and I am reminded of that ever time I pass through this scenic boulder field. Just seeing some boonjums again warms my heart with old memories.





Did you see this wash just north of town? I am also reminded of flash floods and when this arroyo's smooth stone bowls would be full of fresh water...and we would swim in them for hours. Our spa. A rare luxury in the heat of the desert.



We have all come across this vado or dip in the road just a couple miles north of Catavina. One of the landmarks of the Baja Road that was oftentimes flooded. At times we would take advantage of the running water and wash our rigs here. Safely over to the side of course...no sense hogging the whole roadway, even though it was an hour or two between vehicles back then.

Some strange events happened to me at this bump in the Baja Road. Right there at the bottom of the vado, where a sharp trench cut by the water made you slow way, way down...I crossed paths with an amigo I had just met the year before when he and his wife were camping in Coyote Bay. He was traveling north and I was southbound. We pulled off into a wide spot and had lunch together, renewing our friendship, then finally continueing on our separate ways. A welcome chance meeting of Baja Buddies.

The next year at about the same time I am headed north and who do I meet at the very same bump in the road? Si..the same fellow, who is my amigo Pier. We were both totally amazed and decided to call it Dos Amigos Vado. That was over 30 years ago and we've met almost every year since in other Baja places. Who knows when we will connect again at our vado?

Knowing us and how much we love Baja, I'd say the chances are pretty damn good.



I noticed a new addition to this area a few years back. Now DON'T ask me how many, I might say 2 when it was probably 12.. That new addition was.....




....a new tourism business...a museum, camping, and hiking trail enterprise.



Unfortunately when I passed by the last few times (NO, I don't know how many times!) the facility was in shambles. Looks like Mother Nature batted last.



Once upon a time in Catavina we stayed at this pink motel & adjoining..uh, cafe. It was called Mi Cabana...My Cabin.

Well, I really love cabins..grew up in them all over the Up North country. So I figured that with that name going for them, these would be a welcome change to the never-any-hot water & no-electricity at the old El Presidentes, which became Pintas, and now..you know, called something Desert or..?...wait, that's it, I think.."Desert Storms", right? I can never quite keep up with all these name changes over the years.

My gal's mother and her nice cat-in-a-cage took one room, while we took the adjoining one. One look inside did not bring to mind any 'cabin' I had ever stayed in Up North. A cell at a monastery would have more decor and appeal than this cement cubicle. The bed was a wobbly narrow swayback with a threadbare blanket and one pillow. No sheets, no pillow case. Our furniture was an over-turned can with a half-burned candle melted down on top. No matches. We DID have a window to escape through if a chupacabra or such busted down the 1/8" plywood door.

I heard a slight cry of alarm from the room next door.

I thought, 'That guy is not going to refund one centavo, soooo...'

I hauled in a big cooler full of Pacificos and Cokes, a bottle of Bacardi...and got some limes and chairs from the 'cafe.'

After 3 or 4 hours the rooms were not so bad. The cat had a bad hangover the next day.


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NEED GAS?

Although this gasoline is muy caro it is for those emergencies when you have forgotten to top off your tank. You know you've done that, right? Here I am getting about 5 gallons ... just in case. It's about 70 miles north to the next Pemex...and almost 100 to the south.






I really liked these remote Baja Road hotels when they were first built during the highway construction era...1972-73. Back then they were all El Presidente Hotels and they were a welcome sight to weary travelers. Later this one became one of the Pintas, and now today of the Desert Inns. Far more than being merely a place to rest and eat, the lounges became gathering spots for early Baja vets to share experiences of their trip to date.

You always seemed to meet an old friend in the lounge..or meet a new one. You ran into some real 'characters' out here in the middle of the Baja desert. Fun stuff around those evening bull sessions at the old Presidentes. A chance meeting with some Baja authors, or amiga Baja Patti, who I had already met in Conception Bay. The tequila flowed that night! What stories she had..and what a love of horses and horsemen.

So many others get lost in the fog of my memory banks, faces you had seen somewhere before?, familiar rigs like the Tortuga out in the lot, more amigos like JW Black aka Blackjack, an ex-girlfriend from Polson Lake (Hi Joyce! oh mama mia...), well..you get the idea. These were the kind of places Baja-lovers would bivouac for the night, pulled together by that common bond, the love of this land a lot of us now call home.



And there are some Newer additions.....


Hold on a sec..thinking of 'Baja Characters' who hasn't passed through Catavina the last couple of years without being greeted by this unique guy. The Beggar Of Catavina

"Gotta extra peso?"

For myself, I first ran across him sitting on the wall next to the highway pretty close to that little general store on the north edge of Catavina. If you slow down enough he'll approach and ask for a small 'donation'..."gotta peso?" Give him a fewkh and then ask how he came to be in this lonely stretch of real estate...You'll be truly amazed at the stories that will enfold!

After listening to just ONE of his explanations as to how he came to be here...I looked up an old photo online to check that story out for myself. I dunno..he really doesn't look that much like 'BOY' in the old Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies. 'Sides, those movies are a mite dated for his age, doncha-think?

'Andy' (a name he gave me one time) also invented the Frisbee and the Hula-Hoop. You gotta love him, though. He's part of what makes the Baja Road so damn much fun!!




The last time I visited with Gottapeso was Sept 15 during one of my trips to Mulege after Hurricane Jimena. He asked where I was from and then told me many actual facts about my home state. So indeed, it seems he has a wealth of information at his disposal to impress and entertain. Hey, it's his rice bowl. I asked if I could take some photos of him and post them on the internet with a story about him. He said fine..and when I pass by again I will show him this result.

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Another Plus..it's just plain fascinating around the Catavina Rocks. No small wonder it became a national treasure and park worthy of it's legal protection, the Desierto Central de Baja California, Baja's unique Central Desert.


The various cactus found in these parts are truly amazing and should keep any botanist busy for weeks.



Hundreds of species of cactus live here, many of them found nowhere else.


This desert is also home to many non-cactus species,


including two almost identical looking but unrelated versions of the elephant tree,


and the cirio, or boojum, Baja's signature contribution to the world of unusual flora.

Some interesting history on The Boojum. This plant looks like nothing else. It mimicks a giant carrot growing upside down, with its root sticking up to fifty feet in the air. It has a trunk and leaves, but no branches until it's a hundred years old or more, when the trunk divides into two or more whip-like tops. A fifty-year-old specimen might be a foot thick at its base, and less than five feet tall. It's one of the slowest growing plants in the world, at the rate of a foot every ten years, which means a mature fifty-footer may be more than 500 years old.
An Arizona botanist, in 1922, applied the name boojum, after the imaginary "boojum" that inhabited "distant shores" in Lewis Carrol's Hunting of the Snark. The early Spaniards called it cirio, or candle, probably because of its resemblance to the handmade tapers that decorated the Jesuit altars.
After plentiful rainfall, the "candle" sprouts a flame of yellow blossoms at its tip, and its trunk is covered with small green leaves. When water is absent, it sheds all its leaves, to preserve moisture within the trunk. The boojum is abundant in this two hundred mile strip of desert, but the only other place it grows is a small patch at the same latitude across the Sea of Cortez, in the State of Sonora.


This is fertile ground for the giant cardón, the world's largest cactus, reaching more than sixty feet tall. The cardón is often mistaken for its smaller northern cousin, the saguaro. In Indian lore, the cardón sometimes took on human attributes and moved around the desert at night when people slept.


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These giant cacti may have been an inspiration for the ancient cave paintings of giants in the nearby mountains.


OR...the cactus may be just damn glad to be here in Baja and simply signaling YIPPEE!

Unique varieties of barrel cacti, organ pipe (pitahaya), prickly pear (nopal) and cholla also decorate the landscape, along with yuccas, agaves and rare varieties of ocotillo, a thorny Medusa-head vine distantly related to the cirio.

These plants provided food and water for the Baja native people who survived in the desert for thousands of years before the arrival of the first Europeans. Then as now, some of the woody stalks were used as firewood, and for constructing shelter and fences. One of the first things I noticed in area were the unique cactus-rib and living fences.



Young nopal pads, and pitahaya and several other types of cactus fruit are still popular foods in Baja today. All of us have noticed these well-cared fields of 'ping-pong paddles', as that youngster used to call them so long ago.

Well, the shadows are getting longer and ..."I have miles to go before I sleep"..so it's time to move the herd south again.



Can you hear that familiar voice out there..? I can.

"We're burning daylight, pilgrim."





[Edited on 12-3-2009 by Pompano]

Can only say, thank you so much for sharing ...... the pictures just add so much to a thread, and thanks for all the work putting all this together to put up...

I am grateful for the posting Pompano.

Thanks Roger,
Saves me another trip.

That "Dos Amigos Vado" has not changed much in 30+years

1978 Catavina Vado

I remember driving through it slowly to help cool the underside of the car when there was water sitting in it..

Happy Wanderer

Catavina's rock garden

A natural playground.

More....More !!!!

It is always a highlight of our trips to Baja to spend a little time in Catavina. Thanks for the post.

Love the Blue Palms!





Taken at Rancho Santa Ynez

[Edited on 11-30-2009 by tripledigitken]

Dennis,

The music link worked! Only thing is...no words. It is just you getting a chance to play your drums with the accordion-playing, Un Peso, in Catavina.

Roger,

Again...great photos! I have seen the beggar, Un Peso, for the last couple of years..around eight trips through Catavina. I usually give him a few pesos but never asked him to relate his story(s). Glad you could fill us in. Those vados, and the boulder fields are old friends too.

Thank you.

Thank you Pompano, I really look forward to your posts. Thank you for taking the extra time on your journey
that it must take to take all the photos, then put a post together for our entertainment once you get home.

If I may, I'd like to add a little bit of what I have on Gottapeso.

"My name is Andy Hurr, but that's not really my name."



We took a video of him in Aug. but I can't get the video to sinc with the sound when I put it on my computer. Here are some notes I took on our way south. I took the video on our way back north when we gave him a small yellowtail. He didn't know what it was but was going to cook it in butter on his one frying pan.

"My name is Andy Hurr, but that's not my real name. I is the baby who stared in Tarzan. Jane was my real mom. I think I came from Hollywood and Vine but I can't remember cause I was just a baby."

He's waiting for his trust, which is in Switzerland but he "can't have it here otherwise it will get spent."

The house in the movie Scarface is his real house. He has a house in Brazil.

He either wrote most of The Beatles songs, or gave John Lennon the ideas.

"I wrote most of Elvis' songs. Elvis didn't want to make the movie Blue Hawaii because he didn't know how to surf, so I took Marilyn Monroe to Hawaii so she could teach Elvis to surf."

He invented pink champagne for Marilyn.

He invented the steam iron for Marilyn because she hated ironing.

He doesn't collect aluminum cans because, " I had 4 cans once and the can guy never came around."

He invented the crockpot, the rotisery oven, pipes under concrete to melt snow and ice, navagation systems, the Hybred motor, drew the designs for the motorized lawn mower, Invented the name "Catapillar" for the heavy equipment company at the age of 8 when lying on his back in a park with a girl watching a catapillar crawl by.

That's all I had jotted down in my journal. He has always answered to the name Andy when we greet him. We'll check in on him again come December.

P<*)))>{

[Edited on 1-12-2009 by Paulina]

Gottapeso...

I've heard some of those stories and more. He invented the Frisbie. The Beatles and Marilyn are frequent threads in his version of reality.

FISHY! yer online! did I miss the next chapter or conclusion of your story?

nuthin' like putting pressure on the author!



And ps-thanks pompano for a wonderful pictorial story.

Catavina personalities

Quote:

Originally posted by BajaNuts FISHY! yer online! did I miss the next chapter or conclusion of your story? nuthin' like putting pressure on the author! And ps-thanks pompano for a wonderful pictorial story.

Quote:

Originally posted by motoged More....More !!!!

This is one of my favorite cactuses: the candelabra.

I did literally LOL when I read your post. My kids keep showing me all the Dos Equis commercials on YouTube. They are quite funny.

[Edited on 12-1-2009 by fixtrauma]

Could he be a Vietnam Vet?

A deLorean? For the longest time? What's that about?

They don't rust.



On edit: Serious, it looked as if it was heading north, missed the very sharp turn or over corrected and hit the hard 90 left into the arroyo. Of course it was stripped instantly and over the years it sank deeper and deeper into the sand. At one point it was gone, probably collected during the dead car body clean up that happened a few years back.

P<*)))>{

[Edited on 2-12-2009 by Paulina]

Hook............

It's probably just my general crankiness, but I found the You Tube video to be way too patronizing. Several years ago, we overnighted at the El Moro outside of Santa Rosalia. come dinnertime, we went into their restaurant to find a very paltry buffet (which we opted out from). But we did meet one fellow, a self-described Viet Nam vet, who lived in his van in the Mulege area. He told us that he drove up from Mulege just so he could enjoy this (awful) buffet. I sincerely hope he is OK. But the bigger issue here is that this country needs to stop throwing its youth at the world just so a fortunate few can make obscene profit. The last legitimate war this country was involved in was WWII. We were attacked by Japan. We were helping our European friends beat back the assault fro Hitler. Everything since that time has been little more than a thinly veiled excuse to make people rich at the cost of our precious youth. Still happening today.