The first thing we noticed when we drove off the ferry from Topolobampo was how white and bright the light was in Baja California Sur. We took Highway 11 toward the state capital, La Paz, a city of a quarter of a million people stretched out along the protected waters of the bay.
We last visited la Paz in 1998, sailing down from San Francisco and the city is much the same only more so, cleaner tidier more organized and as vibrant as ever. It reminds me a bit of Tucson with desert landscaping, broad streets and the bright white light of lower latitudes. I was ready to find a beach and go for a swim, though I had to defer to Layne's smart decision to buy a roast chicken, load our tank with water and buy some walnuts for our evening salad.
This is Baja a land famous for the best fish tacos in Mexico so the irritating gringo in me rejoices in the best tasting fries I have ever eaten in my 64 years. I exaggerate possibly, but only sightly. They were soft inside, crispy outside perfectly seasoned and came in brown paper bags and two dollars worth made me feel greedy. We all have our contradictions so from French fries we moved to Walmart and Layne bought salad blueberries and walnuts, gringo salad staples. We were ready to check out those turquoise waters and it was still early afternoon!
I will confess it dod not go well for a while, quite a while.I had located a promising beach wild camp in iOverlander putting us just outside city limits on the sandy barrier island of El Mogote. On our 1998 visit we landed the dinghy on El Mogoote and discovered a mangrove swamp and barely penetrable on foot. Nowadays there is a whole development of high rises visible across the bay. However at the far end there is nothing apparently, except sand dunes.
The blue dot above shows us at the Maranatha Campground just outside La Paz, a place of hot showers and powerful Internet, and many campers and vans and people who walk past not like Overlanders but as US campers do with no eye contact no interesting travel conversation and nothing to talk about. I miss El Rancho at Oaxaca, campground of a thousand nationalities. Pardon my diversion into nostalgia.
Anyway off we drove to find the dirt road to El Mogote. It was a couple of miles straight through cactus fields carefully fenced off from the road to keep the few grazing cattle out of the sparse traffic going to and fro out to the development on the point. I picked our way slowly and carefully, reluctant to air down for a twenty minute drive off pavement.
We arrived at the spot indicated and found ourselves in a rather bizarre open flat area with a huge sand dune in front of us. No sign of salt water! On top of the dune there was a buggy of the sort designed for off road fun.
"They're stuck," Layne said after watching the two occupants for a minute.
"Nonsense," I said knowledgeably. "Those machines are designed for this stuff." Unlike our home on wheels.
Do I need to point out Layne was correct? And the two stick figures on the distant hill waved and we heard faint pleas for a shovel. Hero van lifer to the rescue!
As you can see from the picture above the distance up the hill under 100 degree sunshine was quite steep and our portly Promaster was a mere speck on the horizon. Rusty and I set off and I soon discovered the dark gray sand was burning hot. It dribbled into the holes in my Crocs and burned my feet like boiling water. Rusty yelped and jumped into the bushes high tailing it back to the cooler dried mud and the van, and mommy and sympathy. I, the man with the recovery tools had to press on. It was hell.
The trouble with these machines and their four wheel drive and off-road tires is they engender a false sense of security and I knew that because I helped dig one similar out of the soft sand at Tenacatita beach. I struggled through the burning sand yelping like an abused dog and the driver, anxious I think to relieve his embarrassment took the entrenching tool and groveled underneath the machine digging like he had found gold. I pansied around gently sweeping burning hot sand out from under the buggy with the long handled collapsible shovel we carry for just such emergencies. My feet were throbbing from the hot sand contact.
We faffed around a bit and he reversed the thing out of the hole and they offered me a ride down the hill so now I really want one of these buggies. I'd load a shovel, a beach umbrella and lots of water into mine but Layne filled the woman's bottle with our cold water and off they went. His gearbox sounded a bit grumbly to me so I hope he has it looked at. He told me they helped a pickup out of a hole earlier that morning but he acknowledged no one excepts a dune buggy to get stuck in a dune and the truck had passed him by with a wave and without stopping just as I was clambering up the hill burning my feet.
Clearly this was not our beach spot. From the top of the dune I could see blue water a quarter of a mile away but the idea of walking through that burning sand to go anywhere was out of the question. There were plentiful tracks in the dried mud to show us off roading was a popular and probably noisy past time here so we decided to face the washboard again and drive out. It was about four o'clock and we had three and a half hours till dark. There is a Pemex gas station at Highway One just outside La Paz and its open parking area was going to be our overnight stop of last resort if all else failed. However things got better.
About 25 miles (40 kms) north of the dunes of El Mogote there lies a small company town of not much tourist interest called San Juan de la Costa and because there is a mining operation there the government has built a magnificent smooth two lane paved highway up the coast. iOverlander included a couple of rather uninspired reports of possible parking spots so we decided to go take a look, it was after all an easy drive.
This is Baja so the scenery was spectacular as we sept up the perfectly pave road with hardly any traffic to be seen. We came around a corner and looked down on a wide open flat area next to the sea. It looked too good to be true and as sign posted as El Califin. We pulled off into the dirt. Swimming time!
It was a lovely spotted we were alone. The water was surprisingly cool but it was clear as a swimming pool and we could see the ripples in the sand under our feet. We splashed about happily, had dinner and watched the stars come out in an inky black sky before we went to bed. Paradise!
It was from here I managed to post three pictures and a brief update on this page but it took me endless retries waiting for my phone to make a connection that would act the one minutes it finally took to make the upload. The phone signal was feeble but what did we care? Rusty loved the spot and would lose himself morning and evening in the bushes exploring and during the heat of the day he hid in any patch of shade and slept.
We were not completely alone as cars did show up in the afternoons and disgorged families ready for a picnic and a wade in the refreshing waters. The above cardboard construction is typical Mexican ingenuity. A bucket with a crude wooden seat is inside and a wire clip hold the door closed and two cardboard boxes become a beach toilet!
Layne continued her winning streak beating me three to one at backgammon, a game of pure luck I'd like to think.
Paradise it was until the inevitable serpent raised its ugly head. (This was an actual snake's trail I spotted in the sand below:).
Flies. I don't want to belabor the point because it is gross but we were inundated with so many flies we couldn't kill them fast enough. They coated the inside of the van for two days and we put out all sorts of little containers with the miraculous Totenfli pellets that killed them in droves. I swept the bodies out with a brush. It was so bad we both squirmed when we had to go inside the van. We packed up and left.
A lovely place and when we have our home made fly netting completed we may go back.
