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.
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.
posted by johnz at 7:01 AM
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