Entertaining the Troops

Entertaining the troops

Because the weather has been cold and windy on the northern Baja Pacific coast,

we decided to barrel down the road and get to the southern part of the peninsula and the Sea of Cortez as quick as we could. “Barrel,” however, is not what you do in the Baja. The guidebooks told us to allow 6 ½ hours to go roughly 200 miles—the stretch from San Quintin to Guerro Negro, and we thought that was crazy. Turned out the estimate was right on.The roads are extremely narrow and winding, with no shoulder and often a drop of a foot or more onto the land alongside. And the speed limit is usually 50 mph maximum, or less. It was white-knuckle driving for Steve all the way. We’ve turned inland from the Pacific, and the country is wild and desolate. Lots of tall cactus, century plants ablaze with bright yellow blossoms, and these really cool weird trees? cacti? called cirios or boojum trees. One of the guidebooks describes them as upside-down prickly green carrots, and that describes them exactly, except that they are huge—some are 30 feet tall. They apparently are found nowhere else on earth except the Baja.

The Mexican government is apparently cracking down on guns and drugs and we’d been told to expect to be stopped and searched at some of the military checkpoints, which seem to crop up randomly along the highway, often in the middle of nowhere. It’s a bit intimidating to drive up to a roadblock with soldiers wearing desert camoflauge and carrying machine guns, but we’ve been waved through each time, until yesterday, when we were stopped and politely asked if they could check our vehicles. I put Ellie on leash and walked her back to our tow vehicle with me because she was growling at the soldier who entered the Royal Palms. After the soldier finished checking out the Jeep, we stood around outside waiting for the guy in the motor home to finish his inspection. There were about five soldiers standing there near me, so I told Ellie to “sit.” She immediately did so, which caused grins and admiration from the soldiers. One of them pantomimed a “sitting up” pose, which Ellie does nicely, so I had her do that. More grins. I then put her through her whole routine—lie down, crawl, shake, roll over, and roll back the other way. They loved it. About this time, their compatriot had finished inspecting the motor home and came over. “My” soldiers made me put Ellie through the whole routine again so the new guy could see. After that, they waved us on our way with lots of “muy bueno perro”s (very nice dog) and good will toward all.

Today we made it to San Ignacio (89 miles, 2 ½ hours driving time), a real desert oasis. It looks like something out of a movie about the Sahara. We are camped under some date palms, right next to a beautiful, calm lagoon. A black-crowned night heron spent the day dozing in the palm right in front of us, and now that it’s dusk, just took off to catch himself some dinner. We had a great late lunch of chicken tacos in town, so will probably forego dinner in favor of microwave popcorn with a DVD movie in a little while. Tomorrow we will be camped on the Sea of Cortez. At the campground in Guerro Negro last night, we had dinner and drinks with a couple from British Columbia, John and Patsy Solly, who were heading home after 3 months on Bahia del Concepcion, near the town of Mulege (pronounced Mule a hay). They were raving about the place and had pictures to prove it, including a whale and a pod of dolphins that came to say hello while they were sea-kayaking in the bay so we’re going to check it out and hopefully stay there for a week or so before wandering down to La Paz..

While we were visiting San Ignatio I followed signes to El Bano (bathroom). It was inside a very ancient store where there were 2 very ancient proprietors. The explained in Spanish and hand motions that I should follow their dog. I was starting to laugh but the guy opened the back door and the dog shot out in a flash so I hurried and followed him. The little dog led me down a walkway, then a ramp, then around a corner to another walkway and when I got to one spot he looked at me and ran back. I looked up and there was the El Bano! Smart dog.