It was a nice change to be woken up by the sun, even though it meant we were out of bed by 7am. First sunrise in the Baha. Perfect. I got myself comfortable in my chair at the back of the car wearing only my underwear and being just warm enough thanks to the early morning heat. I shaved my legs and had a head shower and by the time I was done, Dan had made cereal for both of us. We sat and ate, watching the rabbits run around, much to the frustration of Cleo who couldn’t chase after them since she was attached to the car.
As I blogged, Dan perused his more modern Spanish phrase book and decided it was a smidge more appropriate than his Mum’s 1958 version. When he’d been through the useful phrases for the day, he took Cleo out to actually chase some bunnies. I didn’t see any of the chase, but when she came back, she was one buggered doggie. According to Dan, she’d run full tilt at a hare all the way across the plain. I don’t know what made her give away the chase in the end, but as always, she didn’t catch anything.
It was getting much too hot to sit around, so we packed up camp and made our way back to the highway. Dan was driving again and after the bumpy road to get out to the highway, it was relatively smooth sailing except for the dangerous potholes that crept up on us. We continued through desert landscape, forever switching between cactus of all sorts, then to Joshua trees, then to scarcely anything in the valleys. We were surrounded by mountains and then we weren’t. We were crossing the Baja peninsula now, going from the west side to the east and it was desolate.
Near the bottom of the Baja California state, we went through two military checkpoints. At the first, we just spoke in broken Spanish and English with the guard before he sent us on our way. At the second, just before the border of Baja California Sur (South), we slowly drove through since no one was around. Our first stop for the day was in Guerrero Negro (pronounced nay-grow), or what we referred to as Negro (pronounced nee-grow) town. It would be a fuel stop and a food stop. Again, we were on the hunt for fish tacos.
Driving down the main street which was full of speed humps and haphazardly placed stop signs, I saw a taco truck that looked familiar for some reason. Dan pulled over immediately and I found out that the truck looked familiar because it was published in the moon book. This book was from a few years ago yet, here was the van noted to have some of the best tacos in town, served by Tony.
We ordered our usual quattro pescados tacos (4 fish tacos) with a soda, all for 100 pesos ($5). Tony fried the fish fresh and after piling on the salads, we ate by the truck. Having now had many a fish taco, we were both in agreement that we hadn’t had better than our first round in Tijuana, which just meant we had to keep looking. That’s not to say Tony’s tacos were bad, they were just different. I don’t think we’d had a bad taco yet.
When we got back to the car, I saw that the hotel we’d parked in front of, the Hotel San Ignacio, had a sign for Wifi so I thought I’d try my luck. To my astonishment, there was no password, nada (nothing). As soon as I connected, my phone went mental with all the messages I’d missed and briefly we were back in touch with the world. It was even a good enough connection to upload some blog posts. We chilled in the car for a while, making the most of the internet connection but after about half an hour, we were both keen to be back in our isolation.
We meandered down the main street of Negro town, on the lookout for beach access before we realised that there was no beach, only a flat bay. We drove loops around the town, driving all the way out to the bay where we found a school that looked uncharacteristically quiet. As we drove back into town, we drove past the salt mill. I’d read about this in the Moon book, it employed 60% of the town’s people and we could tell. It was the most prosperous town we’d seen yet and the carpark at the salt mill was packed.
Dan was on the hunt for churros (don’t ask me why, as far as I know, they’re an Italian delicacy with nothing to do with Maxico) and we stopped when we saw a sign for them. The sign was faded and the churro machine looked out of commission but still, he went inside to enquire. He came back out minutes later disappointed.
On the way out, we filled up with petrol, disappointed to find we couldn’t pay with card. Dan had to use American money which wasn’t ideal and meant we were running low on cash. I filled a couple of containers with agua (water) and checked the oil while the car was filling (the pumps in Mexico are quite slow). I found that the oil was on the empty mark so we bought a quart to top her up.
Conscious of our cash situation, we decided to drive all the way back through town to the back we’d seen by the salt mill to try out the ATMs. There was military posted outside the building which looked like it was a standard thing. Probably making sure no one robbed the bank? We both had success at the ATMs getting 3,000 Pesos ($150) our each. Now we could really go out on the town! Next, Dan wanted to buy a couple more quarts of oil just in case the Cabana kept eating it. Finally, after a couple of hours cruising around Negro town, we continued on our way.
More desert driving for a good couple of hours until we came to the town of San Ignacio. We were getting into the habit of stopping at every major town because they were usually a couple of hours apart when we were ready for a break from the driving. The Moon book warned us that this was an oasis of a town, acting as a nice break from the dry, harsh desert. We could see from a distance this was right on point, all we could see was a plume of palm tree heads. It seemed like there was hardly an inch between the trees.
Just as we came to the outskirts, I saw a side of Dan I hadn’t seen before. A bee flew into his window, hit him on the arm, then (according to Dan) went down his back and straight towards his bum. Within seconds, his hands were flailing and he was wailing like a girl, instructing me to “Get the bee! Get the bee! Get the bee! I gotta pull over!” I could hardly contain the hilarity as I looked down his back to see nothing at all. When he found a spot to pull over, he found the bee by his foot and squished it, feeling quite accomplished with himself. I still couldn’t stop laughing.
As we drove in, we followed the river that fed this oasis until we came upon the town’s plaza. It was very quiet but it was the first time we’d seen any colonial architecture. At one end of the town’s square sat a mission built in 1756. It was a beautiful old building with modest gardens to either side and a nice chapel in its interior. I loved the narrow staircase that wrapped around the outside of two walls leading to a door with no hint of a railing.
After wandering around the mission, we walked around the square where Cleo made a friend. He was a gray coloured undernourished pitbull with a beautiful face and a glint in his eye. Cleo was probably the first female pitbull he’d seen in years. Balls wagging away between his legs, he soon had his dick out asking Cleo very politely if she’d be interested. She played super hard to get, snapping at him every time he sniffed too much. After about twenty minutes of courting, Cleo let him get in there and have a good lick but had no interest when he tried to mount her. Eventually, Dan intervened and held Cleo to stop her from having a traumatic experience.
Still not quite ready to get back in the hot car, I got some of the pińa (pineapple) out of the fridge that we’d cut up yesterday. We sat on a park bench and enjoyed the cold fruit, Cleo sitting with us so she was out of reach of her suitor.
Happy with our tour of San Ignacio, we hit the road again with me driving. We were only aiming to go another hour or so and after about that much time, we were on the east side of the Baja peninsula for the first time. No waves expected here in the Sea of Cortez but we were still excited to see the water again.
As I drove along the highway, we had two different encounters. The first was when two people coming towards us flashed their hazards lights at us. Not sure if it meant the same thing we’d used to it meaning, I slowed down to the speed limit just in case it was cops. When we saw two cows on the road, we understood the meaning and I slowly drove by. The second encounter was with a homeless man. On the other side of the road, he was holding up an empty bottle, appealing for water. I didn’t have time to react and turn around but me and Dan both wanted to go back and give something. After a few km’s we found a turnout and I went back. We were pretty heavy on water so gave him a nearly full container of the water we’d gotten at the petrol station. We didn’t feel too bad giving him tap water thinking he’d probably had much worse. We also hung a packet of corn tortillas out the window. He was grateful, but also not scared to ask for more. “Algo mas?” Dan scrounged through the pantry and found some bagels we weren’t likely to eat so gave those to him as well. Satisfied with his score, he retreated to the shade of a small tree where it looked like he’d been staying for quite a while. Good karma for us!
At the Sea of Cortez, we came into the town of Santa Rosalíta that looked like a busy port. When we read about it later, we found out it has an active copper mine which explains the multitude of conveyor belts running from the mountains by the sea to the end of the pier.
The town was cramped, but very Mexico. Since it was around 6pm, we caught the knock off traffic, which didn’t mean many cars on the road, but lots of workers dispersing throughout the city streets all wearing the same uniform. It was the first town we’d been in that had a few descent hills which made navigation non-straightforward. After I took a wrong turn down a one way street, I flipped a bitch (Dan’s phrase for chucking a u-turn), we used the maps on my phone to weave our way through the city. It probably would have been worth a walk around, but we were ready for camp so we drove on through. I felt like we got to see a lot of the town anyway since we seemed to be taking every street possible to make our way out. As I drove, I was happy to spot the metal church in the centre of town that was designed by Mr. Eiffel, the same man who went on to create the Eiffel tower. It had been in the Moon book so I recognised it when I saw it and pointed it out to Dan.
Dan was playing navigator and had found a couple of would-be looking campsites which we scoped out. The first was near a residential area that we didn’t fancy because we didn’t want to be in people’s backyards. It was an interesting community to drive through anyway. Every shack was the same except for the colours they were painted, sharing side walls. Each house had a large black tank on the roof that probably served as the hot water supply. It’s definitely not first world.
We turned back the way we came figuring we’d head to the first spot we’d seen from the road, but we never made it that far. We saw a dirt road leading out to the bay and this was it. A rocky beach with a bird’s nest structure sitting out on a rock. It was very picturesque and calm, we were stoked.
We wandered the rocky shores a while, finding that it was much the same as what we’d seen before in terms of rubbish scattered everywhere. Hungry from a day of driving, I got started on dinner, keen to use the fresh veggies we’d bought a couple of days ago. I fried up a storm and ended up with fried rice. In the time it took me to cook dinner, the sun went down and Dan had collected enough drift wood to make a fire. The sunset was a long one, turning the sky a different shade of red every minute so we had plenty of time to enjoy it as we ate, watching the twinkling lights of the city steadily come alive.
I was tired from a day of driving so as soon as the fire dwindled to ashes, Dan did the dishes, I cleaned my teeth and we retreated into the van. Despite being near the water, it was humid and hot so when we became too irritated to sleep, we played a bit of cards to make us really tired. Dan won the first round which made me wanna stop playing, but after a bit more lying around, not able to get to sleep, we played another in which I won.
Even after the cards, we still couldn’t sleep, this time because of a single mozzie that was terrorising us. Dan was determing to destroy it, turning the light on and remaining still to catch his prey. I was sceptical, but sure enough, a few patient minutes later, I heard smack and a triumphant hoot from Dan. I was asleep moments later.
