Mulege to Loreto to La Paz

Dolphins & Sea Lion

Whale Shark

Humpback Whale Fin

They loved swimming by our boat

Sea Lions

Our sauce exploded in our dry goods box on the rocky road

Mulege

New Beige at campsite

Pufferfish

Sea Treasures

Loreto Mission Church built in 1697

Sunset & Moon Rise

In our wetsuits

Rock formations

On the boat

 

Thursday 2/9/12

We woke up this morning and the rain had stopped.  It was still cloudy but we decided to try to rent some kayaks anyway.  Unfortunately, the rental place listed in our guide book (Lonely Planet, which sucks by the way.  There have been plenty of times already on this young trip where they have left the space blank on what I consider essential information, especially when it comes to maps.  And if you go by the name Mapito, that's a big deal.) was non-existent.  So on a wild goose chase, we followed the road on the north side of the Mulege River east to the Sea of Cortez to try to find a place called Pancho Villa.  As far as I could tell, it was not there.  But we did climb to the top of a hill at the mouth of the river and then to the abandoned lighthouse at the top of that, for some great views of the area just as the cloud cover began to break up.  We climbed around the rocks underneath the cliffs below, looking for tide-pool creatures, and then….

On the road again, we rolled over some of the most spectacular road traversed terrain that I have ever seen.  I’ve driven a lot on The Cabot Trail, The Pacific Coast Highway and The Blue Ridge Parkway, but the road from Santa Rosalita, past Mulege, and Punta Chivato, to Loreto tops them all.  We were getting pretty close to the Tropic of Cancer, and the deserted desert beaches hundreds of feet below us were lined with palm trees and bordered by sparkling turquoise waters.  The uninhabited islands directly off shore caused my imagination to flush with Robinson Caruso fantasies. 

A couple of successful passes thru armed military search points and we were in Loreto, Baja South, Mexico.  This town is supposedly the oldest European/American settlement in Baja.  Back in 1697 some Spanish religious folk settled here and built a really impressive mission.  It’s astounding, the superiority of this structure compared with that of the other inhabitants of the area at that time.  This is a multi-story, artistically masoned, ornately carved, gold encrusted palace, built at a time when all of the people (besides the priest and the governor) were living in mud and stick huts.  So out of proportion were people’s sense of priorities that over tres cientos anos tarde, it is still BY FAR the nicest building in town.

Enough of that.  We got some tacos pescado y camerones for lunch at McLulu’s.  She was very nice and we spoke at length with her en Espanol.  She is not Scottish.  A guy from California came down here and told her about a place called McDonald’s that did really well selling hamburgers back in Estados Unidos.  He said that she should call herself “McLulu’s” and maybe similar success would be her’s.  I was wondering if the guy was playing a joke on her or if that was really a serious business strategy tip he was giving her. Anyway, she thought it was a good idea, because going on 27 years later, there we were. 

We hung out on the beach on the east end of town, but it seemed kind of shady with an unregulated derelict lot of local louts laying about, so we parked our home on the main camino and walked the old brick paved streets of the colonial city, eating ice cream (black cherry, Marcie’s Pap’s favorite, in a waffle cone.  Chica tried to sell me a regular sugar cone, but I wasn’t having it.) and taking pictures (Marcie).  After that is was dominoes and drinks at this place called Palapas.  This is the name of those palm frond circle shade umbrellas that you see on tropical beaches. The place was a huge, building sized one of those.  I had a killer pina colada there.  The bartender must have had a crush on me or something because he even shaved a cinnamon stick off, zest style, on the top of the beverage froth.  Then out to dinner, I don’t remember the name, where Marcie had scallops (scallops), I had octopus (pulpo) and we both had some drinks for the equivilent of like 20 bucks.  Plus when we sleep in the back of the truck and don’t pay for a place to stay this is a really cheap day, even with the late night game of dominoes, played by streetlight, over Pacifico cervezas, on the old colonial Spanish town square.

Friday 2/10/12

We woke up in the back of the truck on the Malecon (Mexican ocean side boardwalk).  It was a perfect, cloudless, sun filled sky.  Marcie and I walked back into town to a coffee shop for some super strong americanos.  A banos use and some online business later we were walking back to the truck to start the drive south to La Paz, capital of Baja California South. 

This drive is mostly thru the desert, and Marcie started off at the helm.  First though, we had to go thru some giant mountains called the Sierra de Gargantua.  The road had some pretty hairy mountain passes, slouchy roadside shoulders and a lot of double trailer semis playing for the other team.  We stopped at a Super Marcado for some chicken and veggies, and then a roadside produce stand where we got some dates (way too dried out), oranges (really good and juicy), empanadas dulce (sweet, pastry things that are kind of nasty and we did not really know what they were but I was hoping they were like Hottt Pockets) and two ears corn (They call this maise.  We cooked it up for dinner tonight and it is the worst corn I have ever had in my life!  This is the same quality that is grown for cattle feed in The States.). 

I took over behind the wheel and drove us through the desert, and surprisingly no military search downs, to La Paz (the peace).  It was a little hectic getting into the urban flow.  None of the streets are signed.  Marcie and I thought that we had done good research on where we needed to go once we arrived, but that all went to shit in an arguing mess.  Eventually we found the kayak tour place.  But they wanted $280 dollars for both of us to go on an overnight camping kayak trip where they would ferry us out to this geological wonder of an island, with wet suits, snorkel gear, kayaks and lunch and pick us up the next day.  It sounded awesome, but that’s too much money to drop in one fell swoop.

 So on to the city office of Baja Ferries to book passage on a 6 hour boat ride with our truck, across the Sea of Cortez, to the Mexican mainland and the city of Topolobama (Great name.  Try saying it, Topolobama.).  We needed some kind of permit from an office that closes at 1:30pm and it was now 3:00.  Typical Mexican BS. 

After getting denied twice in a row on the kayak tour and the ferry ticket, we were in the mood to score.  So we went to a tour office and booked a trip for tomorrow out to Espiritu Santo, an island just outside of La Paz bay.  For $150 they will take both of us out there by boat, bring us to a couple of different snorkeling spots and to a beach to chill, eat lunch and hike around for a couple of hours.  Included is lunch (ceviche (I’ve heard of this in restaurants but still not sure what it is)), wetsuits and snorkel gear.

On a tip from the tour organizer we drove out thru La Paz, east past Pichilingue where the port’s ferry terminal is, to Playa Tecolete.  There we found a spot where we could drive our truck out onto the beach, beside a palapa (see yesterday) and camp for free. 

Right now the tide is coming up quick on our truck camp spot.  No big deal.  I just have to move the gear up a little higher on the beach.  There are millions of stars out here, so far away from the grid glow.  The moon just came up on the east horizon, 7/8ths full and orange.

~Jon

Sunday 2/12/12

We awoke today on the same Playa Tecolete where we camped the previous night.  Yesterday was a wonderful day for our 7-year anniversary.  We took a snorkeling trip to the Mexican Island Preserve of Espiritu Santu.  This included a guided tour on a motorboat, the use of snorkel gear and wetsuits, and a lunch on a private playa.  The trip left at around 9:30 am and returned at 5:30 pm.  We had talked to a guide about having one of his mechanic friends look at the electrical problem we keep having with the truck after the drive on that dirt road from San Felipe.  This was supposed to happen while we were gone, so we somewhat nervously left our key.  Nothing seemed to have happened with that because we couldn’t find the guy when we came back and there wasn’t a note. Oh well.

There were about 12 people on our trip and Jon and I were the only Americans. We had a Mexican Capitan who didn’t speak much English and a Mexican naturalist who spoke perfect English with a surfer California type accent.  He also went to college in the US and worked on shark research at the Scripps marine research center in San Diego.  He was very knowledgeable. There was an older rich Euro Spanish couple that I thought were from Spain but turned out to be from Mexico City. They had matching cell phones and leisure suits.  There was a trio from France, all our grandparents age.  The man, Jean-Pierre wore a speedo and was really hard-core about swimming. Every time we stopped the boat he wanted to swim in his speedo.  There was a jolly older woman from Italy who seemed to be a lone traveler and she didn’t swim at all and always needed to have our capitan Alberto to lift her in and out of the boat and take her picture.  When we stopped for lunch she hid in the only 2 foot piece of shade on the beach, but she was very nice.  There we two Canadians, eh, from Alberta.  They were both young females and didn’t do very much talking. There were two other women who didn’t swim either but just lounged around and took pictures. Then there was us.

On the trip we saw many extraordinary things.  We saw a whale shark, which is the largest fish in the world.  The one we saw was only a juvenile and was probably around 20-30ft long. Dang!!!  After this we played around with a pod of dolphins that jumped out of the water and swam along side our boat for a good 20 minutes. The next spectacular thing we saw was a colony of Sea Lions.  The annual population of this colony is around 300 and they are a mating colony.  Here we were able to get out and actually swim with these playful animals.  Jon bumped into Jean Pierre early on and thought it was a Sea Lion.  I think he might have screamed like a girl.  They are a little scary though because they want to play with you and come up to grab your flippers or arms gently to see what you will do. 

Our naturalist told me that the difference between seals and sea lions are several things that you can physically see;  (1) sea lions have external ears and seals do not, (2) sea lions have arm like flippers that they can stand up on and seals can only lay and swim with and (3) sea lions also have feet like back flippers that they can also stand up on when seals only have a back fin.  He also told me that they are part of a group of animals called pinnipeds, which also include: walrus and seals.  I’m sure I knew this when I had to teach Marine Mammals class at Barrier Island but I had long forgotten, so he was a really good guide.  Next we stopped at a private, water access only, beach and had a catered lunch of triggerfish ceviche, tortilla chips, oranges and water.  Jon walked around while I read on the beach and then we snorkeled for a little bit and moved on.   

We moved on and motored into the little coves on the isla to look at some fish and reefs from the boat.  We did stop at a colony of Frigate birds that were mating.  The males were flashing their pulsing, swollen red necks at the females trying to attract one to mate…the females looked scared and even a little disgusted by this display.  I saw more than one attack a male in an aggressive manner…I don’t know how any mating gets done there. Finally on the way back, yours truly spotted the telltale upwelling signs of a whale in the distance.  I signaled the capitan and we sped off into the sunset to see what it was.  It turned out to be 2, possibly 3, humpback whales.  I tried to take pictures as they were playing around and surfacing but I didn’t get the iconic picture of the caudal fin in the sunset.  Oh well, it was still a fabulous trip.

After the trip we decided to look for the ever elusive Churro-cart before we headed back to our campsite.  As we were walking around looking we got caught in the La Paz Gay Pride Parade, we think, and when we found the cart he was just setting up so we decided not to wait because the sun was setting and we needed to set up camp.  We came back to the same playa as the night before, after a quick check at another playa which turned out to be a day access only.  We had another amazing dinner of curried chicken, fresh peppers, onions, avocado, cilantro and rice under the stars.  It was a wonderful 7-year anniversary. 

Today, Jon went for a quick cave discovering hike when we woke up, now we are having a light breakfast on the beach of oranges and coffee/tea.  Then off to a hotel in Cabo San Lucas, where I’ll post the next blog.  Until then.

~Marcie