The Sun Was Going Down in the East

The road out of Mulege winds along past beautiful beaches and mangrove-lined lagoons. At times it hugs cliffs over little coves with sailboats lying at anchor in the placid turquoise waters. We arrived in the old town of Loreto, the orignial capital of the Californias, it's original settlement dating back to 1697. We ate breakfast there and took pictures on the cobblestone street with the wind blown sea sparkling in the background. Miguel drove the next leg of the highway, back inland over the low mountains and down into the low plain to the town of Ciudad Insurgentes, where we went through a glorieta (one of those circular interchanges, common to Mexico, where four roads come together, and you go around some statue in the middle of town and turn down the road you want), and the Insanity Pepper drove right past the the road going South, and turned onto the one going North. I was alseep in the back, nursing a nasty Jack and Tecate hangover. When I woke up late that afternoon, I noticed the sun was going down in the East. I hoped it was some big bend in the highway which would soon turn back to the south again, but after about forty-five minutes I began to berate the Pepper and took the helm again and flipped us around and we headed back south again.

Deeper and Deeper

The next morning I heard someone walking around camp. I guessed it was Miguel or Carlos, but I was too tired to open my eyes until I heard the door of the truck open and someone rummaging around in the glovebox. I opened one eye. Okay. The big lump in that sleeping bag is Miguel and the little lump in the other sleeping bag is Carlos, so who's going through the glovebox. I sat up. It was the hippie who had been sharing his Jack Daniel's with me while I fished the surf the night before. I cursed at him and scrambled out of the truck and he ran off before I could catch him. The guys woke up and we did a quick inventory and didn't seem like the bastard had gotten anything. We decided to get a move on. We broke camp and packed up. Got in the car, started the engine, put her in gear, and the wheels spun in the dirt. And spun and spun and the car sank deeper and deeper into the sand. Again. A Mexican fisherman beached his panga and came over to help. He said he had a car and that he would try to pull us out and he walked up the beach and came back a while later in an old truck. We tied the bumper of his truck to our truck, and he revved the old truck up and pulled his bumper clean off. It was almost funny. We tried tying the rope to place under the chassis. The wheels on the Mexican's old truck spun and spun and sunk deeper into the sand and soon he was stuck, too. Nothing to do but open some Tecates and pass them around. Soon a couple of American women drove up in a Subaru Brat. "Hey, guys! Stuck?" It turned out to be a girl of about twenty years old and her mother of about forty driving around Baja by themselves for the adventure of it. They tied the rope to their car and pulled our truck, and the fisherman's, out of the sand. "You should let a little air out of the tires next time, and you should be able to drive right out," the mother said. Tecates all around and then we were on the road again.

The Desert Turns Into a Jungle

Around Mulege, the desert turns into a jungle. A river comes up from below the desert and flows out to the Gulf of California. It almost looks like Vietnam. The hillsides are covered with vegetation and dotted with small houses. You pass through the little town and come to a dirt road lined with wild palm trees that follows the river out to the beach. It had rained, and the road was muddy, and the windshield became spattered. There's a round adobe house with a thatched roof where we drank Tecates and ate grilled sea bass and lobster. Some other gringos were there and we had tequila shots as the full moon rose from the sea and the little group of us broke into applause. We all decided we wanted margaritas, so we drove back into town and drank in an old hotel and sang songs and laughed and joked with the other people. Around midnight we drove back to the beach to set up camp, but we were too drunk to bother with the tent, so Miguel and Carlos found a spot that wasn't too rocky and unrolled their sleeping bags. I took my fishing pole down to the surf and cast a lure into luminscent waves. Some old hippie came down and stood with me. He had a bottle of Jack Daniels that we passed back and forth until it was gone. I crawled into the back of the truck and passed out.

The Sea of Cortez

On the road again, southeast, across the desert, sometimes you only drive about fifty miles, but it seems like so much more because the landscape seems so vast, and the road so tortuous, and every second your eyes are registering sights they've never seen before. You feel like you've been crossing the desert for days and days when you come around a bend on a cliff and for the first time see the brilliant blue waters of the Sea of Cortez.
It is a striking contrast, the juxtaposition of marine and desert; where else in the world can you photograph a giant cordon cactus against the deep blue sea? The first town you come to on the Gulf coast is Santa Rosalia. On its outskirts are the remanants of an abandonded copper mining operation, begun in the 1880's, with old steam locomotives rusting among the junked mining equipment. Santa Rosalia looks like Tombstone, or some other old west town with wooden sidewalks and storefronts. In the middle of town is an iron church, designed by the same Eiffel who designed the tower in Paris. Inside, the sun shining through the stained glass windows made Miguel, Carlos and me look like we were covered with religious tatoos. The Insanity Pepper was sure there must be a cat house in a town such as this, but Carlos and I were more interested in getting closer to Cabo San Lucas before dark, when, according to all the guidebooks, it is not safe to drive. The Pepper took the wheel from here, and immediately backed over a moped in front of the church. I was in the back of the truck. "Miguel. Miguel! Miguel!" Crunch. We scrambled out of the truck and righted the moped. A dude came out of the church while we were all standing around the moped and he got on it looking at us like, what are guys looking at, and he fired it up and scooted off. Next thing, the Pepper some how took the wrong road out of town, and we found ourself on some narrow road winding up the side of some mountain cliff. After who knows how long, we still hadn't come to any place safe to turn around, and we didn't want to travel a zillion miles into the Baja mountains, so the Pepper executed a blood curdling three point turn in which the tailpipe and me hung out over oblivion with the Pepper grinding gears and spinning wheels before we were down out of the mountain and on our way to Mulege.

Black Beds of Lava, Like the Walls of a Maze

I woke up in Guerrero Negro and I had not been macheted in the night by Flor's brothers, though my head felt like it had been. Ugh. Why do I drink whiskey? We made our way down through the desert. The army stopped us to search the truck for guns and drugs. The whole time I had my marijuana joints in the cigarette box in my breast pocket.  They didn't seem too worried about my can opener. The road passed through vistas that defy words. For hours on end there is a sea of sand and nothing more on either side of the road. Then you round a bend and you are in a forest of cactus with castles of boulders. Then you enter a a volcanic wasteland, where the highway winds between black beds of lava on either side, like the walls of a maze. The heat shimmers in the road, and you spot rattlers sunning themselves, and lizards scurry out of your way. Three extinct volcanoes rise in succession, called the Three Sisters. Then you come out of the maze of lava, you come around a turn, and there, sticking up above the rim of a canyon is an amazing vision: Green. Hundreds of green palm trees rising from the oasis down in the shallow canyon, and rising just above the palms, the cross on the top of the Mission San Ignacio. Down in the canyon, the spring there has filled a little lake of blue-green water, which sustains an orchard of date palms. A little pueblo has sprung up around the mission. We stopped and had beer and ate lobster brought in from the coast. There was an enormous banner welcoming the Baja 1000, and support teams for the racers were partying and waiting for their teammates.

The Three Virgins of San Ignacio

Succor

Three Virgins,
sisters,
rose
from the ancient plain.
Prehistoric pressures bubbled
and became extinct;
molten lava, like blood, flowed forth,
where the moon was born from the Gulf,
and where, even in the apparent barren land,
serpents squirmed and horned things gave forth,
and thorned things,
even within the now-frozen heat, the solid liquid,
under the blazing star,
long after the surface had cracked
as of desire,
the crowns of palms grew vibrant
from below the earth, and a crucifix,
where from nowhere, like a miracle,
like love,
sprang up,
and water,
water,
water flowed out from the parched Earth,
water,
succor, running underneath.

Blood for Blood

Around dusk we crossed the 28th parallel where a huge sculpture of a Mexican eagle hangs over the road at the border between the states of Baja California and Baja California Sur, about halfway down the peninsula. It was dark by the time we pulled into Guerrero Negro. The streets were half paved, half dirt, and pocked with potholes full of muddy water. The town survives because of a number of salt works on the Vizcaino Peninsula, named after the sailor who first explored the area. Nearby is the famous Scammon's Lagoon to which the gray whales migrate from Alaska each year to mate and calve their young. My friends and I decided to look for a place to camp near the lagoon, though we were a couple of months too early for the whales. First though, we had to take care of the battery clamp. We actually found an open auto parts store, no problem. I bought a clamp, and nothing went wrong! I went to the glove box to get the flashlight so I could see under the hood to put the clamp on. Oh, there was the electric tape. Doh! Could have used that back on the road when the asses where braying at us. I removed the old clamp and attatched the new one, and off we went to look for the lagoon. We found the turn-off, a washboard road that rattles your guts so much your muscles get sore. Fourteen miles we went down this road before we came to a pile of salt and a chain across the way forbidding entrance. We turned back. I took a picture of a nearly full moon between the arms of a big cordon cactus. We found a cheap hotel next to a little bar and got a room and went to the bar. The owner of the place came forward and shook our hands and said, "Welcome, racers." He gave us beers and told us how pleased he was to have us. Cool. I asked if he had any whiskey. "I have one bottle of whiskey seven years, no one has asked me for whiskey. Only tequila. For you, I open the whiskey. First time in seven years."
"I'm gonna finish the bottle before I leave," I said. Miguel and Carlos ordered beer and food. The owner's daughter served us. More gringos came in and the owner greeted them, "Welcome, racers." We soon learned the Baja 1000 was about to go off. THE BAJA 1000! The teams were scouting the course, before returning to Tijuana to begin the race in a couple of days. Anyone who thought we were in the race, we didn't dispel them of the delusion. I was sitting at the bar when the owner's daughter, Flor, asked my name. "John," I told her, and she asked me how to spell it, and she wrote it on a napkin surrounded by hearts and flowers and her name. Hmmmm. I spent the rest of the night drinking the whiskey and flirting with Flor, and she kept writing my name on napkins and drawing me pictures. Then all of the sudden she seemed angry about something and she wrote on the napkin, "Blood for Blood," and gave it to me and said something about her brothers and left. Blood for blood? Holy shit, what did I say? I staggered back to our room ready for her brothers to jump me. I grabbed my can opener from the truck and went to the room. I noticed that the door seemed to be made of cardboard. I curled up on a bed with my can opener and passed out.