The highway that runs the length of the Baja Peninsula is long and winding and dusty and desolate and surrounded by desert. This is not to say it isn’t beautiful, because it is, and I owe it to my time in Nevada that I’m able to see how beautiful the desert is. The boojum “forests” look like scraggly whiskers across the hilly landscape.
Vultures ride the wind currents in the middle of a hot day. The occasional cactus wren flits to or from a nest cavity in one of the bigger cacti.
Water is obvious along the highway. When there’s water, there’s a splash of greenery, either as an isolated oasis or as a row of vegetation along an irrigation canal. You momentarily forget the sand and rock around you and can’t take your eyes off the green. It’s almost seductive, promising cool water, shade, rest, relaxation. But we drove on.
We stopped at a shrine along the way to take some photos, rest, and check out the desert
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Did I mention the highway is long? We drove about a thousand miles in three days. I white-knuckled it almost the whole way, and my hands were constantly cramping. The landscapes were fantastic though, and I saw some things I’d never seen before, like these strange hills that looked like they were made entirely of house-sized boulders, just set in the middle of the desert. My herpetologist roommate would have gone crazy going snake hunting in them. I was pretty happy ooh-ing and ahh-ing and driving right by.
We didn’t make as much progress as we’d hoped that first day due to some construction and really slow traffic outside of Ensenada. Not wanting to drive in the dark (my strong sense of self-preservation thought it best not to attempt the hair-pin turns at night after almost killing us while trying to pass a truck on a turn earlier in the day), we stopped at a little roadside hotel in the Santo Tomás area and called it a night. The paint was peeling off the walls in big chunks and there were mounds of that nasty black mold on the bathroom ceiling, but whatever… there was a bed…. Which I slept on with my own sheetJ
The next day we made it as far as Guerrero Negro, about half way down the peninsula. This is the town adjacent to the Ojo de Liebre lagoons, the last pristine grey whale birthing lagoon in the world. If it had been winter, I certainly would have stayed to see them, but not this time. My new new 4runner decided to have some issues at this point, which just ended up being a matter of needing the timing adjusted, which was an $8 fix, thank goodness. And then we were back on the road.
This time we made it to Loreto. Well, barely. The last hour the dark came before I’d anticipated and we got stuck on the road in the dark for an hour. This was far south of areas where the bandidos hang out, mi familia, but I was definitely not happy about the hair-pin turns and random cows on the road. I’ll do everything in my power never to drive in the dark again. But we made it, and stayed at a great little guesthouse with well-decorated rooms, great aircon, and a nice family feel to it. The lady who checked us in was very sweet, and had a nice breakfast for us in the morning. Granted we were there at night and didn’t see any of the town really, but I wasn’t convinced that Loreto had anything to offer us in any case, and I wasn’t tempted to hang out for a while.
And so, finally, we made that last leg of the journey to La Paz. Now, La Paz I love. It’s got it all- the ocean, for when I can stand the sand, and the mountains. Nightlife, if you like that kind of thing, a thriving academic community, and I swear some of the genuinely nicest people on Earth. Great taco stands and restaurants, big shopping centers for when you want the convenient one-stop shopping experience, and a 15-screen movie theater, which is very important when you want to relax in the a/c in the middle of the day. And then the neighborhoods are so quaint and the houses are soooo cute, many of them in the quintessential style- pretty pastel colors, a nice shady garden in back, decorative ironwork around the front yard.
The apartment we’re staying in suits my needs just fine. No nice little garden, but very conveniently located to the university and shops. It’s a bit of haul to downtown and the malecon (boardwalk on the bay), but that really means it’s like a 15 minute drive, because nowhere in La Paz is that far.
From our front porch the first day I saw these cows walking in traffic, heading to the Pemex station for a fill up. Love it.
