Part 4: Cabo to Asunción

La Paz to Cabo Pulmo 

Red Tail, kestrel at la Ventana

Even at the slower pace of desert life, our six weeks in La Paz seemed to fly by. We explored the bahías, the montañas, the playas, and took in the local culture of Baja California Sur's capital city. Then on martes, Jan. 15, 2019, we packed the car again with all our camping gear, loaded the kayaks on top, filled our propane tank and water containers, and headed south to the cape, cabo, the end of the peninsula. We stopped one last time in El Triunfo for breakfast and to buy veggies from our favourite street-side farmer. Our next destination was the parque marino nacional at Cabo Pulmo.

Above Cabo Pulmo

The paved road to the park ends outside of La Ribera well before you get to the settlement of Cabo Pulmo. My first impression was "beach ghetto"--a compact grid of one-roomed, palapa-roofed cottages, a couple of al fresco restaurants, and a dozen snorkel shops along a rutted dirt road looking out toward the confluence of the Sea of Cortez and the Pacific Ocean. A walled walkway between casitas leads to the beach where a row of boats pulled up ready to take divers and snorkelers out to the reef.

We were there for three nights and the whole time it was too windy to kayak or even snorkel.

On the way to the beach

So we hiked the rocky bluffs and tall puntas. And we saw our first whales. Humpbacks. They were fairly far offshore, but easily identified as they put on a great display of breaching and flipper waving. We had a couple of decent lunches at a nearby restaurant and met the young gay owner, Enrique, who serenaded us on his guitar and showed off his bright mural paintings. 



Kisses from the Saints
From Cabo Pulmo we drove a little north and west to Santiago, replenished our supplies, then took one of our more memorable side trips to Cañon de San Dionisio in the Sierra la Lagunas. We set up our tent on another of the rare flowing streams in the desert in the shade of a gigantic Palmer fig tree.

Under the spreading Palmer fig...

 

We had only just settled in when a healthy-looking young dog came bounding up the cañon. He had a facial expression I can only describe as euphoric—it said, “Here you are, the humans I have waited my whole life for.” He immediately adopted us even though we tried hard to get him to leave, using our rudimentary Spanish to command him to “go” or “vete a casa.” We did our best to ignore him, but he sat on our feet, turned belly up for scratching, and waited patiently for scraps as we cooked. He slept next to us for three nights. Once with John and once with me, as we were standing, he bounded, leapt up, and seemed to kiss us right on the lips. And so I named him Smoochie. 

A hike with Smooch

Smoochie was our constant companion. He followed us on hikes and sat with us as we watched big lizards on the rocks in the river. He claimed our camp as his territory to defend. On the third day in the late afternoon five biologists pulled up next to our campsite in a truck. They were from the university in Ensenada doing field work, we learned, on Chagas disease, also called the “kissing bug disease.” It’s a parasite that takes years to express in humans, and can be deadly. It is carried by a particular beetle (the kissing bug). There have been human cases from La Paz to Cabo. Mice, bats, and possibly other mammals can be carriers. The biologists had not seen any beetles this time of year, but were trapping mice (in baited boxes) and bats (in a net set up across the stream) to test for the parasite. 

Lizard in Cañon de San Dionisio

As we talked with them, a neighbouring farmer walked by with his three dogs, and Smoochie went crazy. A vicious fight ensued, the two smaller, more tenacious canines against Smooch, who seemed to be losing. We stood by helplessly. The farmer finally grabbed a big stick and forced the dogs apart. Smoochie was pretty beat up, his pride crushed. He slept in our camp that night, but away from the tent, licking his wounds. The field biologists returned in the morning. They caught several mice to test, but no bats. While Smooch was distracted by the lead scientist who seemed to take a liking to him, we packed up and left, worried the dog might follow us. I left him a little snack, even though he was clearly well fed by someone. The memory of Smoochie haunts us a month later. By the way, as far as we know there is no connection between the kissing bug and doggie kisses. 

John is still talking about going back to rescue Smoochie

Escaping the Big City to San Cosme
Neither John nor I had been to Cabo San Lucas, the decadent resort town at the tip of Baja. After all these years we decided to finally go see it. We had booked a hotel room for two nights, but experienced total culture shock—swarming American tourists, aggressive tour guides twenty feet apart, everyone speaking English, malls and bars and big hotels, almost as many Señor Frogs as Starbucks back home. You would hardly know it was Mexico. One night was all we could stand. It was the night of the blood moon. We walked with dozens of other couples to Land’s End beach and waited on a rock for the lunar eclipse. But we got bored and left early. I'm sure it was lovely. We saw lots of pictures later.

The view of the Sea of Cortez above San Cosme

The next day we drove north again (with brief stop overs) and on to San Cosme to camp for several days. San Cosme is the first beach as you plunge down the Sierra la Giganta mountains toward Agua Verde, the fishing village chronicled by John Steinbeck. The one-lane, rugged road is edged into sheer cliffs. It snakes around every crease and crevice in the rock face and careens from mountain crest to sea level in less than 3 kilometres. From the top, the view of the sea is breathtaking.

One other camper was lodging on the beach—another Enrique, a 68-year-old baker who was taking a few days off to do some fishing. He had a pierced ear and longish grey hair tied in a ponytail. He was super friendly. He told us he refused to learn or speak English, but patiently communicated with us in Spanish, teaching us a few new words and expressions. Enrique was alone in his pickup/camper and seemed anxious to gab as we set up our tent under the large palapa. For the next several days it was very windy and almost cold. Enrique said he was freezing, so he moved his truck to a more protected area off the beach.

Green heron at the Loreto marina

We were disappointed we couldn’t kayak because of the wind, but we took some interesting hikes. We ID’d a bald eagle (very unusual) near a brackish lagoon, and stumbled on a young sea turtle we thought was dead on its back above the high tide line. John flipped it over and discovered it was alive, so we helped it into the water and it briskly swam away. By the fourth day of wind we decided to check into the hotel at Tripui. We tried to hike up Cañon Ligui again, at stream level this time, but couldn’t make it over the first waterfall—wading through waist-high water but the rocks were just too steep to climb. However, we ran into a fellow photographer, Jim from Telegraph Cove (Vancouver Island), and chatted for a while about hikes and birds.

San Javier is one of the oldest missions

Boulder climbing

For the next week it was an AirB&B in Loreto, just off the malecon at the bustling marina. Our second story nest was roomy and had a kitchen, but the palapa roof let in all the street noise. Neighbour dogs fought late into the night. Youth rocked out in their cars on the strip. Fishers banged their boat trailers down our road at 5 a.m. The palm-leaf eaves provided a perfect haven for a host of chirpy birds. But we got used to it. While in Loreto we: saw Jim from Telegraph Cove two more times while bird watching; took a day trip to San Javier mission in the mountains and hiked to near the top of the ridge where there was a statue commemorating a famous goat-herding dog (see the video: elcolordelamemoria.com/leyendas/san-javier-una-vida-en-oasis); kayaked north from our favourite Picazón launch site; and bouldered up a steep mountain canyon south of town.

Memorial Tour

Back to Isla Danzante

Domingo, Feb. 3, the start of our fourth month, we set up camp on a beach near Ligui across from Isla Danzante, a spot that is nearly sacred to us. Danzante is the site of our first Baja adventure and is loaded with Sonoran Desert plant and animal life. It's also well situated for watching blue and fin whales. We immediately hopped in our kayaks and circled some small islands near shore. I think we are happiest when we are kayaking. 

Sunrise the next day was glorious. Local photographers even came out to capture it. We had our longest kayak to date: across to Danzante, down to its southern tip; over to one of three distinctive candeleras; across to the beach where we first stayed 20+ years ago; on to “Lori’s beach” where we camped long ago with Greg and Lori for her fiftieth birthday; finally back to our camp. We stopped on Danzante and climbed to the saddle in the ridge above the main beach. On the water we saw turtles, dolphins, flying rays, blue-footed boobies, a sea lion, and many tropical fish. During a rest stop on Lori’s beach a kayaker in an inflatable pulled up. He was from France and had worked for a time in Vancouver, but spoke little English. He was out looking for blue whales, as were we, tho they hadn’t arrived here yet. Our paddle that day was seven nautical miles of bliss. 

Sunrise from the hill above our camp near Ligui

And then it rained. Lightly at first during the night, barely reaching ground. But by 7 a.m. our tent, which was not designed for rain, was saturated. We hastily packed up and went back to Loreto to dry out. While there, we ran into Trudy, whose tour company will take us up into Sierra San Francisco on mules to see the ancient rock paintings in March. We also met a woman at our hotel who went to Evergreen State College (my alma mater). She, too, had her car broken into in La Paz. We discovered we’d be going to Laguna San Ignacio about the same time and might see her again.

On the beach in Bahía Concepción

The weather conspired against us for the next two weeks. We said a melancholy goodbye to Loreto over a breakfast of street tacos. We drove to the north end of Bahía Concepción, Playa los Naranjos, where we booked a funky plywood cabin that whistled in the wind and had electricity for only a couple of hours each evening. One day we dined in the gringo enclave of Santispac and another in palm oasis of Mulege with its narrow streets and weathered buildings. One of the most intense bird feeding frenzies I have witnessed was on the spit near the faro in Mulege. Back at the beach in Concepción we watched Heersmann gulls, pelicans, and dolphins. The wind blew strong and we bundled up in the mornings. 

Bikers roll in for lunch at Armando's Cafe in Santispac

We met our neighbours in nearby cabins and got invited to a cocktail party at Carol and Mike’s. They, Dan, Elise, John, Jeff and his wife were old hippies who had been wintering here in the same cabins together for years. There was pot to smoke and a loud, animated discussion about local history, including the colourful old, rifle-toting crank, Armando, who owned the camp.

Juvenile Heersmann gull

Dan was a wine aficionado who retired from a tour guide business in Sonoma. John and Elise were from Colorado. Jeff was becoming a permanent resident of Mexico. I learned Carol was a fellow Jazzerciser and we hit it off—we agreed that none of the husbands could do the moves we do. It was a fun evening and we marvelled at the sunset against the Sierra los Gavilanes, the backbone of the long peninsula that forms the bahía. 

On the Ocean Side
Domingo, Feb. 10, we left the Sea of Cortez and headed to San Ignacio, halfway to the Pacific across Baja. On the way we checked out the campground near the dormant volcanoes of Tres Virgenes that we almost stayed at on our way down. There was a huge amount of trash strewn around the entrance, but farther back it was a decent site. Ancient elephant trees grow out of the high mounds of volcanic pumice. We will have to stay here sometime.

Osprey on a 6 foot high perch at the laguna

The lush greenness we had encountered in November now was fading, turning to yellow and grey. though a few things were still blooming, including a gauntlet of purple grape soda lupine for miles along the road's edges. I had never explored the town of San Ignacio before. We toured the mission, museo, and picturesque square. The next day we drove out to Laguna San Ignacio on the ocean to look for whales—a huge change in topography and plant life. Over one hill it abruptly went from mostly cardons and palms to only Joshua trees, then changed again to barren salt flats. After miles of washboard roads, we walked along the windblown beach and finally spotted greys in this secluded bay that serves as one of the main whale nurseries. We looked unsuccessfully for red knots and John photographed ospreys on their low perches (there are no cliffs or telephone poles here).

The old mission in San Ignacio

Back in the town of San Ignacio we went to dinner at Rancho Grande and ran into the woman we had met in Loreto. She joined up with her daughter and daughter’s partner from California as they headed out to the laguna to camp at Kuyima where we had just been. The two younger women were lesbians and recounted the tale from just hours earlier of being hassled at the army checkpoint on the highway. We talked about dealing with the army and the drive ahead of them. They bought us beers.  

Tomorrow, martes, Feb. 12, begins the last leg of our adventure starting with three weeks on the ocean at Bahía Asunción.