the long overdue baja part 2

playa el coyote to santa rosalia (104 km) we left concepcion in the dark of pre-dawn, still struggling to get on the road as early as we'd like. we continued to climb and dip along the high bluffs over the water, but only 30km into our day and bridget was already showing weakness and we rested too long for snacks at a gas station in mulege. much as mountaineers race the daily storm on the summit, we feel as though we are racing the sun and heat of the day. after mulege we left the sea to cross a small peninsula, but soon after bridget needed another break and we propped the bikes right on the highway to seek an impossibly small piece of shade beneath desert bush. thankfully, abby has kept us wired on tang powder, bimbo bars and pep talks, and a combination revived bridget for the final 15 miles into santa rosalia. set in a canyon, santa rosalia is a former french company town and the area was mined for copper from the 1880s to 1950s. the french legacy survives in the colonial-style clapboard architecture--unusual for a mexican town--constructed with wood imported from oregon and british columbia. we must be getting close!

santa rosalia to san ignacio (74 km) left santa rosalia and said a final goodbye to the sea of cortes and also to sunrises over an eastern sea, a staple in our 2 years in belize. "only" one more climb and pass over the sierra la giganta and we'd be through with the eastern side of the baja peninsula and its blistering heat. we headed out early and determined, anything less and we might not have made it. for such a narrow peninsula (with a width that ranges only 30-145 mi), baja certainly has some outrageously large and steep mountains and on the eastern side they seem to explode right up out of the water. and so we climbed, out of santa rosalia at a shameful 3 mph and up from the shore, grinding on an incline that threatened to tip us backwards over our panniers. the land around looked like a nuclear test site: lone volcanic rock and sand, not a shrub of life. appropriately, the one sign on the entire 15 km climb read cuesta del infierno (slope of hell). we've learned to love the pessimistic honesty endemic to the mexican highways. on the other side of the range, the arid expanse of desert and shrub actually seemed appealing and we continued on as fast as our hell beaten legs would carry us to the little town of san ignacio. a first view of san ignacio from afar--a lush green patch of statuesque palms abruptly set in the desert--would make anyone think they were experiencing a mirage. but san ignacio is real, a genuine oasis with a permanent freshwater lake and lagoon, a watering hole for the towering date palms and many birds. we arrived early, by 11am, and picked out a first-rate campsite directly on the water (water! in the desert!) and with all-day shade provided by exquisite trees (trees! in the desert!) and a huge palapa. rejuvenated by our first oasis experience, we even found time and energy to check out the beautiful jesuit mission, with volcanic walls 4-feet thick, and the community museum dedicated to the cochimi pictographs that can be seen on rock faces throughout the remote central peninsula. truth be told, we were more baffled than impressed by the large and bold pictographs of human and animal figures. why, on so narrow a peninsula that is flanked by beautiful and plentiful waters, would a people continue to inhabit these slopes of hell? even more baffling is to think that the temples of the aztec and maya were contemporary with the cochimi rock art, a seemingly primitive form that did not change for over 4,000 years!?!
our 1-night stay in san ignacio turned into 3 as bridget's fatigue spiraled into another bout of major GI distress. luckily, with cool breeze, shade and ever-therapeutic hammocks, her belly bugs couldn't have picked a nicer locale; we think san ignacio is the only place in central baja where we could have been delayed so comfortably. during our second night, as bridget's parasites were hosting a memorable extravaganza, abby, in an attempt to steal the limelight and wanting to seem more hardcore, bribed a scorpion to sting her on the shoulder, causing paralyzing pain throughout her back and a thorough (but hilarious) numbing of her face. in the morning, when manuel, our campground owner and host, arrived to see abby hunchback with venim and drooling and bridget emaciated, he packed us into his ecotour van to seek medical attention. we were easily the most pathetic tourist specimens his vehicle has ever transported. it was a sunday, but san ignacio being a small puebla and manuel being a godsend, within an hour we were in the homes of the local doctor and the pharmacist, and between the two of them we were put on a course for recovery. for the rest of the day and under manuel's paternal watch, bridget sipped infant electrolyte formula and abby did shoulder stretches,. meanwhile, we were also trying to plan our next move; outside the san ignacio oasis all that waited for us was a desolate and harsh expanse of desert, 400 miles thick...
san ignacio to guerrero negro we were 4 days off our bikes but still bridget was too weak to ride, so we decided to hitch the 88 miles across the rest of the vizcaino desert to the pacific coast. after 3 long hours at the highway junction for san ignacio, we scored a ride from gregory, a long-haul truck driver headed for tijuana. gregory steered his truck with a fingertip grip and rocked his way through baja on earsplitting rolling stones and bob marley, and maybe the occasional joint. while it wasn't our ideal hitch, gregory packed our precious cargo into his truck with unmatched expertise (indeed our bikes have never had such a spacious ride), and even bought us a gallon of cold water, like gold in these parts. in the truck's cab, ever-fragile bridget was given the passanger seat, a throne compared to abby's perch atop gregory's sleeping den, an assortment of dirty sheets, slightly damp socks, and adult magazines. but even abby will tell you this arrangement was preferrable to the untamed hell we could see from the cab windows. we are desert-lovers, but vizcaino is a windblown wasteland. gregory dropped us on the outskirts of guerrero negro and we were still shocked to step out of the cab to feel out first daytime sub-100 degrees weather in 2 weeks. though it is sandwiched by the central desert to the north and the vizcaino desert to the south, guerrero negro is kept cool (almost chilly!) by the pacific and its winds. exhausted by the week and still recovering, we treated ourselves to 2 nights rest...in a HOTEL.
guerrero negro to punta prieta (124 km) 2 nights and a full day's rest prepared us for our earliest morning yet--a 4am departure that truly turned into the witching hour when we crossed the 28th parallel and the clocks turned back to 3am. we were traversing the empty central desert, a limitless expanse of nothing except sand and small shrub, made especially eerie and desolate in the thick black pre-dawn hours. we rode through the void with only a single 6V shaft of light to guide the way. our passage was slow going on the crumbling baja roads, mottled with potholes masked by the dark. but our efforts were rewarded, and by 9am we had hammered out 90 km, though already the sun was out with threatening intensity. at noon we arrived in punta prieta, already finished with the day's ride and ready for bed--true nocturnal creatures, now. a friendly policeman of the 700-person village suggested we camp out in the quiet park and recreation area behind the police station, and we made our nook for the night in the open air, perched on the large and shady bleachers of the village basketball court. punta prieta was the most tranquil and laid back of any village we have stayed at, and we had the rare opportunity of simply sitting back and observing daily life without the throngs of curious onlookers we've normally had to entertain; perhaps it was the heat, but the village energy was little more than comatose. from what we could tell, the sole activity that occupied punta prieta during the scorching daylight hours was the transport of water in 50 gallon bins, driven up from a reservoir in the back of pick-up trucks.

punta prieta to catavina (land of the boojums) 115 km if your snark is a boojum, you will softly and suddenly vanish away, and never be met with again (hunting the snark, by lewis carroll)


the unforgettable road to catavina was paved with cardon cactus and boojum (or cirios) trees, the most bizarre and ancient of baja desert life. both plant species are endemic almost exclusivley to the baja peninsula, but we have also seen the likes of them growing wildly in the pages of dr. seuss. cirio (which in spanish means candle) trees look like giant carrots and are the world's slowest growing plant, adding only a foot every 10 years (imagine that in the valle de los cirios, trees measure nearly 50 feet!). an american botanist gave the ancient shoots the name boojum, after the imaginary creature of the "distant shores" in lewis carroll's poem hunting of the snark. in mid-morning we rested beneath massive cardon cactus, also around 300 years old and said to weigh up to 25 tons, but even these were dwarfed by the huge boulders that had begun to define the landscape, proof that we were nearing the boulder fields of catavina.























in catavina we camped in the dried-up arroyo on a friendly, family-owned ranch, surrounded only by cows and boulders. we didn't realize it at the time, but it would be our last night in the remote baja desert, for in the wee morning hours, abby blew through 3 presta-valves which left her without a tube to ride on. we had no choice but to limp our way out of the ranch and 1 km into the village proper, where we hitched a ride with two mexican environmental scientists who, desperate for coffee, were racing their way north in search for their first brew of the day. sooner than we had expected and for reasons out of our control, we found ourselves fast approaching the southern california scene. already WAY out of our element, it didn't help that we arrived in ensenada just in time for the labor day weekend debauchery hosted by mexico for underage americans.