|
|
Baja 2009
A
year since my last motorcycle trip into Baja...that’s entirely too long.
My friends and I had been hesitant to enter Mexico because of the
drug wars and the attendant negative publicity here in southern
California.
But a year is too long. I needed to get my knees in the Baja
breeze again. My
good friend John felt the same way.
My first journey into Baja was with John back in 1994, and it would be
good to do the ride with John again, except this time we had the right
equipment. Our earlier trips had been on cruisers. This time
we would do it on real motorcycles.
After
listening to me rave about my KLR-650 Kawasaki, John bought himself a KLR.
The plan for this trip was to explore
places off the Transpeninsular Highway.
On previous trips, we’d seen signs for the ruins of various
missions, El Marmol, and a few other intriguing places, but we didn't want
to take our street bikes down those gnarly-looking dirt roads.
This time, we would take them on with our KLRs.
So,
here we go.
|
|
|
| This shot shows what this trip was
all about. I grabbed this somewhere out in the middle of the
Vizcaino Desert, roughly 100 miles north of Guerrero Negro.
That's my red KLR-650 up front, and John's green one. These
are great bikes and they are perfect for Baja. John and I
have spent a lot of time exploring Mexico together, and at the end
of this page I’ll provide links to some of the other motorcycle
trips into Baja and mainland Mexico.
|
|
 |
We
left late on a Thursday afternoon and made it to Rosarito Beach.
My favorite hotel down there is the Rosarito Beach Hotel.
It’s a classy joint, but the adverse publicity is killing it.
My guess is that fewer than 10 rooms were occupied when we were
there.
|
| Our
plans were somewhat indefinite. When
we linked up on Thursday, we briefly talked about doing a banzai run all
the way to Cabo San Lucas on the KLRs, but that would have really been a
push. I was tired and it was
already dark when we passed through Tijuana, and south of TJ, the Pacific Ocean mist was fogging my faceshield.
I thought about Susanna’s restaurant in Rosarito, and all thoughts of Cabo
vanished. For that
night, Rosarito Beach was it. |
|
| Susanna’s
is the best restaurant in town, and maybe the best in all of
Mexico. If you stay in
Rosarito Beach and don’t have dinner at Susanna’s,
you’re missing an opportunity.
It is a 5-star dining experience.
I eat there every time I am in Rosarito, and I’ve never
had anything but a superior experience.
The wine list and the menu are top drawer.
|
|
| Susanna, our host for another
wonderful dinner in Rosarito Beach. You
have to try the Santo Tomas wines (they are from a local Baja vineyard,
and they are exquisite). |
 |
 |
In Rosarito Beach. The LA
Times is killing this place with its unending stories about how dangerous
Mexico is.
We
were the only two customers in this club.
Sergio,
our server, took great care of us.
|
| Rosarito
Beach was deserted. Look at
this scene. It’s a shame,
really. More than half the
stores, restaurants, and other places were boarded up.
Normally, this is a hopping party town.
Now it’s dead, and there’s really no reason for it other than
the US news media’s fixation on demonizing the place.
|
 |
 |
The
next morning we rolled along the Pacific coast to a great breakfast in
Ensenada.
|
|
| Velero's
is on the
waterfront just behind the Corona hotel.
It sounds like it would be a tourist place, but it’s not;
the clientele appeared to all be local folks.
The breakfasts are great, and it's the hot ticket for
breakfast in Ensenada. They bring a large plate of light,
delicious pastries as soon as you sit down.
The coffee and the orange juice are superior.
Then they bring a tortilla shell with melted cheese and
their own salsa. I could have
(and should have) stopped at the pastries and the cheese tortilla,
but I went for my customary eggs with the fixings you see here.
It was as good as it looks.
|
|
 |
John
forgot his toothbrush, so we stopped at a farmacia somewhere south of
Ensenada.
There
are lots of pharmacies down there.
You
don’t need a prescription for many of the drugs that require
prescriptions in the US, and the stuff is a lot less expensive in Mexico.
They seem to be just as good as what we get up here.
|
| John and his KLR, on the Transpeninsular Highway in Baja's
wine country. |
 |
 |
Our
first excursion in the dirt was to see the abandoned mission in San
Vincente. We took a dirt road
heading west from the Transpeninsular highway.
|
| We
first saw a series of buildings that we mistook for the mission.
These buildings, as a it turned out, were private homes.
We were stunned. They
were magnificent, and they were tucked away back in the hills down a rough
dirt road.
Wow.
|
 |
 |
We
asked a young lady where the mission was, and she told us to walk over a
hill.
We
did, and we saw a rural cemetery.
There
was something about this cemetery that was captivating.
It seemed to come from another era, and after reading
the headstones we saw that it did.
It
was meticulously maintained.
|
| This
is what’s left of the San Vincente Mission.
The local folks are restoring it, which is why the walls appear to
be relatively new.
|
 |
 |
The
mission walls underneath the restoration.
|
 |
When
we walked back up the hill to get back to the KLRs, I shot a few more
photos of the cemetery.
|
| If
there’s such a thing as elegance in a graveyard, this place had it. |
 |
 |
This
more modern facility is San Vincente’s current church.
It offered great photo opportunities.
We wanted to go inside, but it was locked.
|
 |
John
relaxing in front of the San Vincente church.
It
was fun being out in these areas on the KLRs.
We would not have attempted this on the street bikes.
|
| John
yanked on the cord, and that bell was loud.
We stopped. We didn’t
want the San Vincente residents to think they were being summoned.
|
 |
|
Shortly
after leaving San Vincente, we took another dirt road west for about 8
miles and hit the Pacific coast.
I
have read Clement Salvadori’s outstanding book about motorcycling in
Baja many times, and he had a shot of a shipwreck off the San Jacinto
shoreline. I always wanted to
get that shot, but I didn’t know exactly where it was.
So, our plan was to intersect the coast several miles north of San
Jacinto, follow it south, and find the wreck.
The
ride along the road following the coast was rough.
Real rough. The road
was mostly soft sand, and that makes for real tough riding.
On a motorcycle, the front wheel wants to twist and dig in, the
overall sensation is sort of a blend of emotions, dominated by sheer
terror and a general sense of being out of control.
At one point the sandy road was so unnerving that I wrestled the
Kawasaki off the sandy path and up into the weeds.
It was a marginal improvement.
I couldn’t see where the wheel was going, but at least the sand
wasn’t calling the shots anymore.
Then we encountered something we hadn’t expected as part of our off road, rural riding experience.
Dogs.
In
California, you almost never see a dog off a leash. In rural Mexico, you
almost never see a dog on leash. And,
those things are aggressive. We
were chased by more dogs on this trip than I have been chased by in my
entire life. They
weren’t just interested in scaring us or getting a good laugh.
Those things wanted us for dinner.
I
don't like dogs. I was mauled pretty badly by one when I was kid,
and I still have the scars to prove it. I
know that those of you who have taken the Motorcycle Safety Foundation
course or who have read about such things are thinking that being chased
by a dog is no big deal. I
know about slowing down, letting the dog calibrate his intercept path
based on your reduced speed, and then accelerating to confuse the thing.
That works on pavement if there is one dog.
Try doing it in soft sand when there’s pack of four or five that
are fanned out along your flank. In
that situation, you are not just a motorcyclist.
You are a potential meal.
In
some rinky-dink little fishing town north of San Jacinto, while eyeballing
the coast line for the shipwreck, a pack of dogs came after me.
They always seemed to want a piece of me worse than John.
I think it might have been because of my yellow fluorescent riding
jacket. Whatever the reason,
four or five dogs came after me, snarling and spitting and literally
smacking their jaws as I tried to fool them with the slow-down-speed-up
maneuver. In soft sand.
Trying to keep the motorcycle
vertical. Wondering what the hell I was doing down there.
Well,
one of the dogs got me. I felt him crash into my right leg, and when
I looked down, the thing had his chops clamped down on my jeans just above
my ankle. The
dog was literally being dragged along with me for what seemed like
a long time (but it was probably just a couple of feet).
"This is not good," I thought. I could see it now.
Making a beeline for the border to get medical treatment. Rabies
shots. Who knows what else.
John
and I got a bit further down the path and I stopped to check my leg.
I didn’t know if the thing had actually bitten me or if it had
just got a mouth full of denim and boot leather.
I didn’t feel the dog's teeth penetrate me, but I was too
adrenalized to feel anything. I
checked my leg and I didn’t see any bite marks.
John looked at my leg and pronounced me unharmed.
Had I not been wearing boots, that probably would not have been the
case.
Wow.
Dodged a bullet on that one... |
| Along Baja's Pacific Coast,
somewhere north of San Jacinto, after confirming I was not going to become
a rabid motorcyclist.
We rolled past another
little town, made a sweeping right turn as the dirt road followed the
coast, and there it was... |
 |
 |
The
Isla Del Carmen, shipwrecked off the San Jacinto coast in 1984.
Wow, just like it shows in Mr. Salvadori’s book.
The only difference is that the salt water had another
quarter-century to work its magic on the wreck, and it broke into two
pieces.
Oh,
and the other difference is that this shot has my motorcycle parked in
front of the hull, which makes it infinitely more interesting to me.
|
| Coastal stuff. |
 |
 |
Fishing boats in San Jacinto. |
| Our KLRs, with San Jacinto in
the background.
After
spending a while taking a bunch of shots, we took the direct route out of
San Jacinto heading due east. It’s
another dirt and sandy road, but it ran relatively straight and it put us
back on the Transpeninsular Highway just north of Camalu.
|
 |
 |
America
and Palmyra, two young ladies in Camalu.
|
| We
had chicken fajitas for lunch at the Las Brisas, a small restaurant in
Camalu.
This
is Octavio, the proprieter and Camalu’s philosopher-in-chief.
He explained to us that Camalu is the best place in the world. Who
knew?
We
struck up a conversation that lasted for nearly an hour as we enjoyed
Octavio’s culinary talents. He
is an interesting man. Like
everyone we met in Baja, he made us feel welcome and he wished us safe
travels.
|
 |
 |
John
enjoying Octavio's chicken fajitas.
|
 |
We got as far as El
Rosario that second night, and we stayed in a hotel Clement Salvadori
recommended (the El Sinahai). It
was an inexpensive, no-frills kind of place (just exactly what I like in
Baja). Mr.
Salvadori also recommended the attached restaurant, which we
visited for dinner. |
| John
had the fish tacos. They look
great, don’t they? |
 |
| I
didn’t know it, but the rear window to my El Sinahai hotel room faced
into a neighbor’s yard. A
neighbor with roosters. Lots
of roosters. The kind that
start cock-a-doodle-doodling at 4:30 in the morning.
Right into my window.
I
had visions of making rooster fajitas, but I decided not to.
Truth is, those things sounded so strong I didn’t know if I could
take them in a fight.
|
 |
Maria,
our waitress in El Rosario.
|
|
There’s
another abandoned mission west of El Rosario about three miles down
another dirt road that winds through more small settlements.
We tried to find it the next morning, but we couldn’t.
While rolling down that road, though, we encountered more Mexican
dogs, and the dogs came at us again. We
outraced them that time.
We
could have poked around some more trying to find the mission, but the dogs
unnerved me. I reckoned that
we had gone far enough to pass where the mission should have been, and I
turned around. When we went
through the area where the dogs chased us, I hit about 60 mph on that dirt
road. I didn’t see the dogs
this time.
|
| When
the Transpeninsular Highway continues after leaving El Rosario, it crosses
a long bridge and then winds up into the mountains on the northern edge of
the Vizcaino Desert. The
wilderness starts here, and it is awesome.
I
grabbed shots of our KLRs a few miles into the mountains.
I
love this area. It’s
the first place you encounter Cardon cactus and the cirios.
These things grow only in Baja.
You can’t find them anywhere else on the planet.
The Cardon are the giant cactus that look something like the
saguaro cacti in Arizona, but the Cardon are much, much larger.
|
 |
 |
The
cirio are the weird-looking thin shoots that grow to heights of around 30
or 40 feet (maybe even more). Someone
once wrote that they look like a plant that Dr. Suess would have designed.
|
| Another shot along the
Transpeninsular Highway south of El Rosario. |
 |
 |
A few of the Cardon cactus. |
 |
The background almost looks like
it's been painted into this scene. |
| After
rolling down the highway a few more miles, I spotted this tarantula
crossing the road. We made a
u-turn, parked the bikes, and started taking photos.
This thing was huge, easily double the size of the tarantulas
I’ve seen in California.
|
 |
| John
got in front of this guy and squatted down to get a closer look, and
then something wild happened. The
spider ran at John. We
were both shocked at its speed.
They normally seem very deliberate and slow, but I have to
tell you, these things can move terrifyingly fast.
John moved faster than I’ve ever seen him move, and he
jumped up and started paddling backwards so fast he looked like a
roadrunner cartoon. We
both laughed after it happened.
So, here we were, two guys approaching age 60, screwing
around with a tarantula in the middle of the Baja peninsula,
laughing like a couple of kids.
Baja does that to you.
Look
at this fellow’s little beady eyes.
And his hairy butt. That’s
quite a hairdo. It kind
of reminds me of that Beavis and Butthead cartoon. I always
get those two guys mixed up. |
|
| The
tarantula crawled under a plant, I took a few more photos, and we were on
our way.
Incidentally,
I used my D200 Nikon on this trip, and an older (non-VR) 24-120 Nikon
lens. I mostly shot at f/8
(the 24-120’s sweet spot). I
also had the 12-24 Tokina along for the ride, but I never even mounted it
on the camera. The 24-120 is
not a macro lens, but it did an
acceptable job here.
|
 |
| Our next planned stop was the
Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana Velicata. We almost didn't
go. I had been spooked by the dogs, and I told John the night before that
I wasn't too keen on rolling through any more tiny towns with dogs.
John waited awhile and casually mentioned that he really wanted to see some of the
sights accessible only by dirt roads. I acquiesced. I was
later glad I did. Wait til you see some of the photos I grabbed. |
 |
John on the way to the Mission
San Fernando Rey de Espana Velicata.
True to form, we were chased by two more
dogs when we left the Transpeninsular Highway to take the dirt road to
this mission. John told me one of them was a Chihuahua, and it
looked pretty funny racing as fast as it could trying to catch me. |
| The Mission San Fernando Rey de
Espana Velicata.was the only one in Baja founded by the Franciscans.
It only lasted from 1769 to 1818. Father Junipero Serra (who
later developed the missions in California) built this mission to convert
the local Cochimi Indians. Unfortunately, the Spaniards brought
diseases for which the local people had no immunity, and disease soon
ravaged the area. The entire mission system in Mexico ended in the
early 1800s, when Mexico gained its independence from Spain. |
| The Mission San Fernando Rey de
Espana Velicata. This is all that's left of it. |
 |
 |
Our KLRs parked in front of the
Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana Velicata. |
| After visiting the Mission San
Fernando Rey de Espana Velicata, we rolled south along the Transpeninsular
highway a few more miles and took another dirt road east to see the ruins
at El Marmol. El Marmol was a world-famous source for marble and
onyx that stopped work about 40 or 50 years ago. We'd seen the signs
for it on our earlier travels through Baja. I always wanted to see
what was out there, especially after reading about it in several Baja
references. |
| Well, here it is.
There isn't much to it, other than a pile of big rocks. |
 |
 |
The ride out was exciting.
The road was rough, and had deep sand in several spots. My friend
Bob had previously told me that the best way to take this stuff was at
high speed, and that's what we did. It made an enormous
difference. I could see the bad stuff flying by beneath me, but the
KLR's long-travel suspension let me zoom over it. It was almost an
out-of-body experience. |
| I bottomed the suspension in a
few spots, and this is what it did to my KLR's license plate.
Many KLR owners locate their license plate
up on top of the rear fender.
Now I know why. |
 |
 |
Two KLRistas at El Marmol.
That's my yellow riding jacket, and it
seemed to really aggravate any dog who saw it. |
 |
On the way out of El Marmol,
where the dirt road rejoined the Transpeninsular Highway, we stopped for a
break.
We had a good conversation with Jose, a
police officer from Catavina who let me take his photo.
There were two dogs hanging around this
place, and one of them stayed by John when he fed it a snack. The
dogs were friendly until we got on the motorcycles, and then they turned
mean. This time, they seemed to be after John. They left me
alone. They chased us off the property. |
| Our planned stop for the
evening (and our turnaround point) was Guerrero Negro. It's a town just
south of
the 28th Parallel (the 28th Parallel forms the border between Baja
California and Baja California Sur, the two states in Baja). It's
about halfway down the Baja peninsula. Guerrero Negro is an
interesting town. It's named for the Black Warrior, a sailing ship
that sank off the Baja coast a long time ago.
Guerrero Negro is one of the best spots to
go to see the whales in Mexico. The whales hang out in Laguna de Ojo
Liebre (the Eye of the Jackrabbit), also known as Scammon's lagoon.
I've been down there several times to see the whales, and it is one of
life's main events. That's a strong statement, and if you've never
seen the whales in Baja, you'll think I'm exaggerating. If you've
seen them, though, you'll know I'm not. It's a surreal and
awe-inspiring experience. The whales are in town from January
through April, so we wouldn't be seeing them on this visit.
The little town of Guerrero Negro has
another distinction: It's one of the biggest salt producing regions
in the world. The area has hundreds of square miles of shallow
flats that the Mexicans flood with sea water. They let the water
evaporate and then they bulldoze up the salt. Mitsubishi owns the
production operation. |
 |
We stopped for fish tacos in
Guerrero Negro's Baja Mision restaurant.
These were the only two dogs that didn't
chase us. |
 |
Laura, our waitress in Guerrero
Negro. |
 |
John saw this Chinese restaurant
in Guerrero Negro, which seems kind of funny. |
| We tried their chicken chow mein,
and it was great.
|
 |
 |
I got up early the next morning
and grabbed a few shots around town. This is a mural on Guerrero
Negro's supermarket wall.
I rode through all of Guerrero Negro,
including its residential areas. Another 8 or 10 dogs chased
me, intending to do me serious harm. None succeeded. By this time it
was almost funny. See a dog, go like hell, hope for the best.
It was grand sport. |
| This is one of the salt
flats. When this area dries, the salt company will scrape up
the salt, flood it again, and repeat the process. |
 |
 |
We usually stay at Malarrimo's
in Guerrero Negro. It's a great hotel with a great restaurant.
I had a cup of coffee that morning that was perfect. |
 |
As I mentioned above, Guerrero
Negro was our turn-around point on this trip. Here's a shot on the
way home, in the Vizcaino Desert. Those Cardon cactus are sure
impressive. |
| We stopped again in El Rosario,
this time for a lunch at Mama Espinoza's. This is their take on fish
tacos. They were excellent. |
 |
 |
Maria, our waitress in Mama
Espinoza's. |
| On the Transpeninsular Highway,
south of Ensenada. I had to stop and grab a shot of this cactus
patch. |
 |
| We rolled into Ensenada well
after dark and decided to call it a day. That night we stayed in
the Best Western in Ensenada's tourist district, and it was nothing like any
Best Western I'd ever stayed in. It was a really nice
place. We unpacked and parked the KLRs right next to the
entrance. The hotel put a rope barricade around them. We
didn't know if it was to keep people from touching the bikes, or if it was
to isolate them for another reason...John's KLR's fuel petcock had
developed a drip, and the area soon reeked of gasoline. |
 |
Ensenada, like Rosarito, was empty. We saw some cool cars, though, and I asked the guys
around this one if I could take a photo. |
 |
The club was friendly, and we
had a good conversation. The car in the background (the one shown
above) belonged to Reynaldo, the guy with the Southeast sweatshirt.
He explained that Ensenada had an active car club. |
| The guys asked me to grab a shot
of the artwork on Robert's car (he's the tallest guy in the photo above),
and here it is. |
 |
 |
Ensenada's tourist zone at
night. It was deserted. |
 |
I awoke early the next morning
and took a few more shots walking around Ensenada. This is Edgar,
whom I saw playing with a very energetic puppy in Ensenada's La Patria
park very early that morning.
I found out Edgar's name by doing my usual
"Como se llama usted?" routine. After introducing himself,
Edgar also introduced Brittany.
It was nice meeting a dog in
Mexico that appeared to have no interest in having me for dinner. |
| Three of Mexico's great patriots
in La Patria Square...Benito Juarez, Miguel Hidalgo, and Venustiano
Carranza. |
 |
| So, there you have it...four
days and 1300 miles of KLR riding in a round trip blitz down to Guerrero
Negro, with a few off-road excursions to grab some interesting
photos. It was a blast. And it was safe, at least as all the
negative publicity about the druggies and the narco-terroristas
goes. The dogs (and maybe the odd tarantula or two), well, that's
another story...
If you are thinking of going into Baja,
don't let anybody scare you away. It's great and it's safe.
Oh, and those links I promised you for some
of our other Mexico moto trips...here they are:
- Baja
October 2008...racing down to and then being chased back up
the peninsula by Hurricane Norbert!
- Baja March 2008, a quick 1700-mile buzz down the Sea of Cortez coastline to
Loreto on a couple of fast Triumphs.
- Baja
2007...a similar road trip on a Triumph in 2007. This page
has some great whale photos!
- San
Felipe, a 2006 weekend trip on the KLR 650 Kawasaki through
northern Baja.
- Bahia
de Los Angeles 2006, a ride on the Tiger to visit a beautiful bay
on the Sea of Cortez.
- San
Felipe's 80th Anniversary 2005. Another Harley ride, before it
gave up the ghost for good.
- San
Felipe 2004, a quick weekend sprint on a couple of red-hot sports
bikes.
- Baja
2004, a quick 1550-mile motorcycle trip to Mulege and back on the
Suzuki TL1000S.
- Baja
2003, another whale watching trip with my daughter and three of
her friends on spring break.
- Baja
2000, a trip to see the whales with the girls and a couple of
friends.
- Baja
1997 from LA to Cabo, across the Sea of Cortez, down to Puerto
Vallarta, and back through mainland Mexico.
|
|
