The Sea Of Cortez

Once upon a time California was nothing more than a fantasy in the minds of plundering Europeans who believed a myth that described a far off land of plenty, a dream state where dreams come true and everyone has all they need and more. California became that mythical land made flesh and it all belonged to the King of Spain who gave away chunks of it as rewards to his loyal subjects. 

This wondrous new land stretched from New Spain which was governed from the Mexica capital Tenochtitlan, set among the marshes of modern, dried out Mexico City, and California ended north of San Francisco at what eventually became the border with the Russian Empire at Fort Ross (“Rossiya” - Russia) which is now a California State Park.

If you read Dana’s “Two Years Before The Mast” you’ll get a good idea of what Spanish California was like and why Monterey, an all weather port, was the capital. After the United States snatched the western states from Spain and discovered gold at Sutter’s Fort Mexico’s last remaining chunk of California, retaining its original name of “Lower” (Baja) slipped into obscurity.

Under the Spanish Baja was divided into two by order of the Pope who decreed the northern half was to be proselytized by the Franciscan order and the Southern half by the Dominicans. Which decree ended their feuding and created an artificial border to this day mid peninsula!  Under Mexican rule Baja California was the northern half, a land of rain and thus agriculture, industry and commerce trading with the American California which had become the industrial powerhouse of the original dreamers’ vision. The Southern half of Baja only became a state much later and was named Baja California  Sur -BCS.

Baja California has a population around five million concentrated along the US border. The only large city in BCS is La Paz a city of only 250,000 people. The rest of the state is a desert of small towns and spectacular mountains and beaches. No surprise then that BCS lives off tourism. It is the outdoor playground for Californians from the US, Canadians and others. 

Baja California runs on Pacific Time while Baja California Sur runs on Mountain Time. In this backwater at the southern end of the thousand mile long road there is only one highway of note, Highway One and our plan is to follow it beach to beach. So far it’s working! 

Baja California, the one know erroneously to some gringos as “Norte” is home to a mountain national park with snowfalls in winter and where an observatory is located. We  plan to visit that as well as Baja’s “wine country” in the Guadeloupe Valley a place with the sort of moisture BCS completely lacks. Therefore in the sparsely populated south where cell phone signals come and go Rusty lives off leash and we spend our days swimming and loafing and reading and playing backgammon. 

Driving towards Loreto we were astonished to find a perfectly smooth highway which turned east at Ciudad Insurgentes and led us across a high desert of saguaro cactus leading to a distant mountain range. The formerly solid cellphone signal faded to nothing as we climbed into the range of craggy cliffs and canyons. It was spectacular. 

We met some friends from our multinational Oaxaca campground, Cheryl and Guy from Brisbane on their right hand drive Australian custom camper, eleven years on the road and heading north to prepare to ship themselves home. We made a date to meet on the beach. 

We stopped for water and gas in Insurgentes and in the event they arrived first! You will hear gringos advise you Baja is isolated and you should carry spare gas two spare tires and I suppose if your plan is to go deep into off roading desert tracks you should plan accordingly but for us on the paved roads Baja has gas, water food and cokes all over the place. 

We got delicious empanadas and tamales in the middle of nowhere and had we wanted ice creams and junk food they were ready to oblige. It doesn’t get much more civilized than this. 

After we drive through the mountains we spiraled back down to sea level, spotting a golf course(!) and a fancy resort far below us on the beach. Our goal was an isolated stretch of waterfront to hang out on for a few days. First we met up with the Australian couple Cheryl and Guy in their yellow four wheel drive    truck.

Also on the beach much to our surprise was a huge RV towing a Jeep. 

Bard And Alma

The nice  young señorita in the office at Maranatha just north of La Paz asked if we'd like to pay for our “dry camp” spot (no power/water/sewer services) with 300 pesos or sixteen dollars. Dollars? who expects to use a foreign currency a thousand road miles from the border?

It's a full service RV park in the US style with games for snowbirds to play as they while away the winter with their stationary road machines. Personally I'd rather spend the winter as we did, a few nights here and there exploring cities and mountains and beaches all over Mexico but we were in the home of the people who decorate playground rides with Biblical quotations. It is the Maranatha RV Park after all!

I enjoyed the WiFi but was glad to get on the road.  We had directions to meet an American resident in a suburb of La Paz. Layne had been persistent in following up with Bard after we met him on the beach and when he said he was sorry he’d missed us I saw the disappointment in Layne’s face and was pushed to suggest we meet him at his home. 

“It’s the round house,” he messaged Layne. “You can’t miss it.”  I hate people sho say I can’t miss it because I’m the one seeker who  can easily miss anything, any house …

The home above is not Bard’s round house but a building typical of his neighborhood. I couldn’t miss the round house, he was right because it is round:

Let me make it clear neither Layne nor I are interested at this stage in our retirement journey in settling down but we both really liked the place Bard, formerly of Pagosa Springs, Colorado has bought this place on a hill outside La Paz. 
Bard is retired but Alma isn’t and she works as a realtor in La Paz. She has one adult daughter but Alma lives a very independent life. Bard makes no bones about being pushed out of fashionable Colorado by gentrification and steeply rising costs, a feature of all our lives and he lives in Mexico to save money and with a slowly increasing appreciation for the way of life in laid back Baja.  

Rusty likes home living and he settled down to cool tiles and shady arbors wherever he could find them. Bard’s neighbor is a bigwig in local politics which has its good and its bad. Florentino has two large German shepherds that bark all the time. Rusty was quite put off by two big slavering snouts telling him off from their side of the chicken wire. 

Bard and I drove to Walmart for picnic supplies and steaks for the grill and he told me about the extravagant parties Florentino gives to his well connected friends. The smells of cooking float over the fence and we hoped our grilling efforts might tantalize him in turn. We bought ceviche too, quite delicious:

Notice the rope. Social distancing and masks are taken seriously in Mexico. The ceviche seller dunked Bard’s 200 peso bill in a glass of bleached water while holding it in a gloved hand. “They have a clothesline in back with drying money pegged to it,” he told me. Covid has killed a lot of people and businesses in Mexico. 

We ate a steak dinner with baked potatoes and grilled onions and asparagus and drank too much and talked the night away. Florentino’s influence brought water to Bard’s  street where previously he had to order water to fill his cistern with truck deliveries. On asking to be plugged in to the new water line no one at the utility knew anything about it apparently. Florentino wasn’t into ordering water by truck so someone at the utility got the job done in a hurry! 

The idea was to spend a night up the coast, Bard and Alma alongside us in their minivan. Bard knew of a place on the Pacific Coast not far out of La Paz where we could drive a paved side road to a collective farm (“Ejido”) which has a very nice access road, above. From there we took a dirt road for thirty minutes down to the beach. 

This would be a different coast to Baja, the surfing zone where waters are rough, winds are cold, and beaches are endless.

The pavement ran out 15 miles from Highway One, the main road up the peninsula. The dirt road that followed was sandy and with some washboard but it was well used and the base was solid, hard packed sand. I was confident we wouldn’t get stuck. We’ve been doing quite a lot of dirt roads in Mexico. 

The saguaro cactus was everywhere as we wound our way down to Playa Cedros and the endless expanse of sand. It was lovely. 

Unlike the Sea of Cortez beaches this place wasn’t burning hot in the middle of the day, the breezes blew and the sand, though hot to the touch didn’t seem quite so Scandinavia underfoot. Swimming was out of the question but Alma and Bard didn’t seem to mind. 

We weren’t alone even though we felt like we were. 

Someone out fishing off the point:

We took the sand road down to the beach and stopped where the sand got soft and yielding. There wasn’t much science to it!

There was lots of shade for his Lordship. 

And much to explore when he felt inclined. Total lack of freedom for Rusty will be hard to get used to back in the States. 

We only met the woman from the travel trailer. She was Mexican corralling five dogs and kudos to her for their rescue. Rusty wasn’t happy to see the pack descending on him so I never got to talk to her. I fear if I lived in Mexico I’d drive Layne and Rusty mad by reducing too many dogs. 

Incidentally there was a dirt race taking place that weekend, a smaller version of the Baja 1000 that runs north to south down the entire peninsula. Consequently there were crowds of people and tents all along the horizon. At random unpredictable times motorcycles or cars roared into sight, kicked up a cloud of dust and disappeared. 

I sat out alongside the course for a bit but saw nothing more inspiring than a support vehicle bouncing down the road alongside the course. 

I also spoke to some spectators but they knew nothing of the schedule and I found the young men somewhat unpleasant as they tried to embarrass me to gain approval from the young women. I fear I gave as good as I got but I expect they scored anyway. Unfortunately. 

It was a cold Pacific night in every respect reminiscent of why I got tired of beach life when I lived in Santa Cruz. Alma and Bard went to bed at sundown in an effort to get out of the wind. Layne and I found GANNET2 Weill insulated of course to be quite comfortable as a wind refuge. Layne cooked sausages  and onions with rice for dinner and we ate a flat Mexican pastry dessert filled with chopped nuts for pudding.  So the actual amount of suffering was limited to being cold. I enjoyed snuggling into our bed linens. Often we lie on the cover sheet when it’s hot but it was a treat to sleep in the desert cold. 

It was time to go. We went north and they went south. You could say back to reality and I’m okay with that. I like my reality.