Log from the Sea of Cortez
There are inspiring books. There are travel books, which I read, and afterwards I have only one idea left in my mind: I have to go there or have to do that. I read „In Patagonia“ by Bruce Chatwin and I was mesmerized. „The great railway bazaar“ by Paul Theroux drives you into the arms of India, his „deep south“ into the impoverished former confederate US. „The Chains of Heaven“ by Philip Marsden made me long for doing a walk in the ethiopian highlands. And „the log from the Sea of Cortez“ by John Steinbeck made me go to Baja California.
Cactus garden typical for Baja California
Baja California is a peninsula between the pacific ocean in the west and the gulf of California, which basically is the long estuary of the colorado river which spills the little, which is left of its poisoned waters into the northern end of the bay. From Tijuana at the American border to Cabo San Lucas at the southern tip it is a piddling 1600 km. The middle of the route is marked by the monument which marks the border between the mexican provinces of Baja California Norte and Sur.
From my base in Pasadena to Santa Rosalia, my favorite spot at the time, about in the middle of the peninsula, it is 1200 km along the then almost new carretera transpeninsular 1. A second road did not exist at the time. Gas stations were rare. And after an empty stretch of 200 km you could arrive at a gas station which had run out of gas. So it was indispensable to fill up each time it was possible. It was not advisable to drive at night. The road is full of „vados“, dips in the road to let the occasional flash flood run off. At night these are the favorite hangouts of stray cattle. Vado and cattle you often only spot in the last moment. In addtion, the odd unlit horse cart or pickup might block the road.
The road down into Bahia de los Angeles
The camping spot on the beach after the car was towed out
In a bookstore I had found a guide book called „Hidden Mexico, Beaches and Coasts“. It recommended to go to Bahia de los Angeles, a bay with a little fishing village about in the middle of the peninsula, and camp there on the beach. That sounded just right to me. After an overnight stay in a motel on the way, I arrived in Bahia de Los Angeles in the afternoon and followed the instructions of the guidebook: „take the road north toward airport, follow sandy fork opposite airport road, continue several miles until sugar white sand signals your arrival“. The sandy track was my terminus. After a couple of km I got stuck in deep sand. No way to get out. I locked the car and walked back the long way to the village. There I got help. A couple of men with a boy got a tractor to pull out my car. Triumphantly the boy aged about 10 drove the tractor. For 20 $ they pulled my car back to the village, under the condition that the boy was allowed to steer the car. Later I found a nice spot on the beach to camp.
„Where there is little danger, there seems to be little stimulation“ (John Steinbeck, log from the sea of Cortez, 1951).
The biggest Baja plant, Cardon cactus
The cirio (boojum tree) is the typical endemic plant of the baja desert. After rain, it blooms, ...
... after a long drought it curls down
One of the few animals
The rugged mountain ranges of Baja California between the calm coast of the sea of Cortez and the wild Pacific is covered with a cactus garden ranging from 20 m Cardon cacti to 3 cm succulents. A lot of them are endemic. The coasts are dotted with beaches and beautiful, some almost circular bays. One is Scammons lagoon, which, in January to March, is filled with gray whales coming here to give birth. Scammon was a whaler who slaughtered the creatures relentlessly in the bay. Now it is a reserve and one of the world‘s best spots for whale watching because they cannot go anywhere the shallow bay. At that time another sandy track of 20 km led to the lagoon.
The road to Scammon's lagoon
Boats waiting for whale watchers
Baja was also on the spanisch missinary route north. To accomodate the holy men, a series of missions with sometimes spectacular churches like in San Ignacio 1786 were built into the desert, which had no wood or other building materials. Hidden in the desert are cave paintings and remainders of settlements and mines.
The church of San Ignacio, a tiny village in the middle of the desert
The interior of the church, everything had to come by burro from elsewhere
Ruin of another mission church and graveyard
„Probably the airplanes will bring week-enders from Los Angeles before long, and the beautiful poor bedraggled old town will bloom with a Floridian ugliness.“ (John Steinbeck, Log from the sea of Cortez, 1951)
The church designed by Eiffel in Santa Rosalia
Streets in Santa Rosalia
Discarded steam engines and mining equipment decorate the streets of Santa Rosalia
South of San Ignacio is the Copper mining town of Santa Rosalia. It was found by the French mining company El Boleo in 1884, which exploited the copper mine until 1954. There were several futile attempts to restart the exploitation of the mine afterwards. The town is dotted with french colonial architecture and the prefab church was actually constructed by Eiffel, exhibited in Paris in 1889 and Brussels and then ended up in the mexican desert.
The streets of the town were lined with french colonial buildings in a varying state of disrepair and dotted with remainders of mining equipment, steam engines and machinery. The former smelter towers over the little town. At that time the intrepid visitor was free to expore the rusty remains. A paradise for the industrial archeologist.
Steam engine and in the background the ruins of the smelter
The old ore port of Santa Rosalia
The remainder of the smelter
The hotel and the cemetery overlook the town
The place to stay in town was Hotel Frances, the colonial former guest house of the mining operation, spectacularly situated like an eagles nest on a ridge above town. The empty pool in the court yard was surrounded by parasols blown to pieces by the wind. Everything was covered in dust, but the bar was open and they had ice-cold modelo negra in the fridge.
The Hotel Frances in Santa Rosalia in 1988
The courtyard with the empty pool
At the bar I met a Mexican guy, who convinced me to spend the evening in the only pub in town. You know how things go. In the pub I met a couple of French guys who needed a ride back to Tijuana the next day and I promised to pick them up at 8 in the morning. I don‘t really remember how I made it back up the hill from the pub to the hotel room.
In the few streets of San Ignacio
Not much to do for a cop at the time
When I turned up at the street corner with a considerable hangover next morning, the French were already waiting for me. I was really glad to have them in the car. Even now the 1200 km distance from Santa Rosalia to Pasadena without break will take you 15 hours to complete. I definitely needed some distraction from my headache. North of the border between the mexican provinces Baja Sur and Baja Norte it got dark. To avoid collisions with cattle in vados or innocent unlit donkey carts, I stuck myself behind a truck in the hope he would get all obstacles off the route. It worked and we reached Tijuana around midnight. When I returned to University the next morning they told me they were about to call the police to search for me. When they learned that I had driven down into Baja alone, they were flabbergasted. How could I do such a stupid and unnecessary thing?
Later I went back to Baja California for several other short trips. I bought books with a complete set of topographical maps for an exhaustive exploration of the peninsula by 4x4, but I never found the time for a long trip. When I compare the maps now with what I find in Google, again, much has changed beyond recognition. There are more roads, vacation home projects, settlements. A couple of the beautiful bays are completely covered with development. Probably they even built additional gas stations. The famous vaquita, the endemic dolphins of the Sea of Cortez, the smallest of the kind, are reduced to a total population of 19 (yes, nineteen). The smelter in Santa Rosalia is still towering above the little town, but is now fenced off for security reasons. They have renovated the Hotel Frances. They have got water in the pool now. Since you cannot go there for the near future, look it up in Google. It is beautiful. Can‘t wait to go there again.
“It would be good to live in a perpetual state of leave-taking, never to go nor to stay, but to remain suspended in that golden emotion of love and longing; to be loved without satiety.” (John Steinbeck, Log from the Sea of Cortez, 1951)
