Welcome to La Gringa!

Welcome to La Gringa!

We’re in Mexico!  We’ve made it a little over halfway down the peninsula of Baja California, and are currently in Loreto, in a little bar on the ocean.

We spent a few more days in San Diego than originally planned, getting everything in order and trying to photograph the hummingbird that lives in the tree next to the porch.

We also went to Torrey Pines with Joyce, where botany stops making sense.

At least one of these plants is hopelessly lost

Oh!  Speaking of botany: up in northern California on the trip down the coast, we hit the brakes and turned off the highway following a tiny brown sign that said “Botanical Trail.”  There was an empty parking lot at the end and a tiny path leading off into the woods.  At the end of a short trail was a small marshy clearing filled with more pitcher plants than I’ve ever seen in my life.

Bug-eating plants are obviously cool on principle, but pitcher plants in particular are awesome.  They can get huge – these were about two feet tall – and come in fantastic shapes and colors.  You probably already know this, but just in case: they’re named for their slender, vase-shaped leaves that are full of liquid and lined with downward-pointing hairs.  When a bug creeps over the edge, it tumbles in and, unable to escape, dies and is eventually dissolved so the plant can absorb the nutrients from its little buggy body.  One species found in the jungles of Borneo is so large that researchers originally thought they trapped small mammals, since they had observed little native tree shrews perched on the rims of the pitchers to get at the nectar bait growing above.  Finally somebody noticed that they almost never found skeletons inside, although the shrews came to the pitcher plants all the time.  That’s when they figured out that the plants were actually the perfect size and shape to catch the shrew droppings as they sat on top of the pitcher – and in fact, they found shrew poop at the bottom of the pitchers.  The plants need nitrogen, so personally-delivered fertilizer pellets are perfect!

Also, some of them are shiny and kind of pink, so it’s probably a good thing they do not come in human-trapping size or I would be toast.

On Wednesday morning, we turned south and drove away from San Diego for the last time.  The border crossing at Tecate was even easier than expected.  The formalities consisted of driving up to an unattended gate that opened automatically, after which we had to go searching for somebody official to give money to in exchange for tourist cards.  We finally wound up in a tiny office with a folding table, where a man who looked rather annoyed at being pulled away from whatever video he was watching on the computer checked our passports, handed us some paperwork, and sent us on our way.

Highway 1 is the only main road that runs the length of Baja, and we had crossed the border many miles to the east of it.  There is a road that connects Tecate to Ensenada where you can pick up the highway, but to get there you have to brave the Ruta del Vino.  Here, not even a hundred miles from the border, we experienced our first real danger of the trip:  the friendly guy pouring ‘samples’ seemed determined to get us roaringly drunk.

We escaped with only a few bottles, and continued southwards down Hwy 1.  The drive down the coast that first day did not have the most inspiring scenery.  The highway is too far inland to see the ocean most of the time, so the view was mostly small dusty towns scattered across dry rocky desert.  We went through a few military checkpoints, where friendly men with big guns asked where we came from and where we were going before waving us on through, and passed so much road construction that it’s a wonder there are any potholes left (oh, but there are.)  I’d read about how much trash there was on the roadsides, but it was still a little surprising to see how much plastic junk was strewn everywhere.  We spent that first night in El Rosario at a hotel that was apparently very kindly disposed toward barking dogs but also blessed with a sweet chorus of frogs across the street.

Since we’d come so far the first day we were now clear of the border zone, and as soon as we started the drive the next morning it was obvious that we were in a different part of Baja.  The guidebooks mention (I believe this is a direct quote) the ‘vast, uninhabited desert” that covers central Baja from El Rosario to La Paz, but that doesn’t give the first clue of how pretty it is.  I’m not sure when their rainy season is, but many of the plants were in bloom and much of the desert was covered in a carpet of green.

Maybe a yucca? It smelled incredible.

One of the weirder species of tree native to this area, the boojum, is usually described as looking like a giant upside-down carrot.  That may be true most of the time, but they’re currently impersonating vertical hedges.  Even Zach, who had seen them before, didn’t recognize them until we’d driven past dozens of them wondering aloud what those weird skinny bushes were.

Equally Seussian with leaves as without

There were also unending forests of huge cordon cactus.  Think saguaros on steroids.  With more arms.  Mutant saguaros on steroids.

Halfway through the day, we pulled over to wander around for a bit.  Zach started across the road ahead of me, and was almost to the other side when he looked up, yelled something, and spun around in a mad dash for the truck.  For a second I thought he’d seen a car coming over the hill, but then I heard a faint buzzing… that was very rapidly getting louder.  I turned and ran for it too, as the air around us filled with tiny black shapes.

 I don’t even remember getting back into the truck, but somehow we made it inside and, after a frantic check for clinging hitchhikers, stared out the window as the swarm darkened and then abruptly disappeared.  When we poked our heads cautiously out a few minutes later, it was perfectly quiet and the sky was clear.  I have no idea what they were, but they sounded pointy and I’m glad they didn’t stop to prove it.

In Catavina there was supposed to be a gas station, but it was abandoned.  There was, however, a guy on the side of the road with a bunch of barrels marked Gasolina.  He filled us up for a surprisingly low markup over what we’d paid in Ensenada.

Near sunset, we came over one last hill and saw the deep blue water of the Sea of Cortez before us.  This was Bahia de los Angeles, a sheltered bay that’s home to a small fishing town and not much else.  At first, it was eerily arid after the lush desert.  The boojum and elephant trees had disappeared a few miles back, and the landscape quickly turned from green to pale red as we wound down towards the coast.  The few cordon cactus that did survive here wore crowns of vultures.

We jolted slowly down the most thoroughly washboarded road I’ve ever seen, and parked on the rocky beach right below the huge “Welcome to La Gringa!” sign lettered with white rocks on the hillside.  The only other vehicle out there belonged to a friendly trucker from Montana, who welcomed us with cold beers and chatted until dark.

Later that evening we went for a walk down the beach.  As we reached the water’s edge, we turned around… and saw our footprints glowing blue in the rocky beach behind us.  The waves shone with tiny lights that winked on and off like aquatic fireflies.  Bioluminescence is my new favorite thing ever.

We spent two days there in Bahia de los Angeles.  On the first morning a school of bait fish got trapped in the shallow bay, and hundred of pelicans and gulls were enthusiastically pulling them out of the water.  A pair of sea lions came through, and later that day a small whale passed right next to our parked truck.  There were coyotes everywhere, and herons and egrets and tons of clams in the rocky tidal lagoon, some of which became our dinner the second night.

Sea lions! The one on the left has a fish in his mouth, and the one on the right is laughing at me because I keep getting pictures of ripples instead of sea lions.

Anybody know what this is? It was about the size of the vultures but way prettier.

We’re on our way to La Paz right now, and will be down in that area for several days before taking the ferry over to the mainland next weekend.