Wahoo!! We left snowy Arizona for our Baja Honeymoon shortly after the new year. A long drive brought us to the border town of Mexicali and into Baja California, Mexico.
Grudgingly we stopped at the local Wal-Mart to pick up a few necessities and were surprised, or maybe not, to find that their Mexican stores employ child labor. The baggers at this particular store were between ten and fourteen.
On day 2 we started our drive to Bahia de los Angeles, a 85 mile dirt trek. Along the way we were passed by some true Baja buggies, though Jeff’s Toyota held its own.
The views on the drive along the gulf coast were as spectacular as the road was rough. We were *very* glad to finally hit pavement again, and no worse for wear, except for the truck’s topper, which barely made it home.
Bahia de los Angeles was great – a beautiful little bay. We spent a couple of days there, sleeping in the palapa and walking along the shore. We attended a sea turtle lecture on several endandgered species that live in Bahia and migrate to Japan. Campo Archelon (where we camped) also runs the Programa Tortuga Marina, which captures, breeds, releases and tracks turtles. We found the stray dogs in Baja to be plentiful and friendly. With just one pat on the head we made immediate friends. One followed us all day in Bahia, we finally decided to feed it – when it tried to follow us back to camp we had to deter it by throwing rocks at it – tough love.
The central part of Baja is home to all sorts of things, one being the cardon, the tallest cactus in the world. Mature cardon, here the friend of the vulture, can reach heights of 60 ft and weight more than twelve tons. These ain’t no gringo saguarros.
Punta San Jacinto was an amazing surprise. After a frustrating stop in two dusy towns the day before, and a morning of rain and unrelenting wind – the wreck of the Isla del Carmen, the Pacific and the sunset were welcome. We ran around taking photos and gawking at the rusting freighter, tidal pools and sunset.
Here’s Sarah with one of the *many* strays that almost came home with us. If it wasn’t for the jealous cat at home at least one may have made the trek north.
We stopped by Cuevas Pintadas, a cave with pictographs from the Cuchimi Indians from 5,000years ago. After the cave we took a short hike up an arroyo – which had water from the recent rains. Sarah washed her hair while Jeff couldn’t stop himself- he proceeded to remove tamarisk – a highly invasive riparian species. The Mexican govenment has no idea how much money Jeff’s handiwork just saved them.
We stopped for a few minutes in the spring break capital, San Felipe. It was quiet in the off season, and was a nice place to stop along one of our grueling drives, but seemed to be more of an American territory than a Mexican town.
Much of what we drove through in central Baja looked like what is seen in the background – a forest of cardon and boojum. The boojum tree (aka cirios meaning candle) is endemic to Baja and looks like something out of a Dr. Seuss book.
