Baja Road Trip

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Linda Steve and I have just returned from our week-long trans-peninsular road trip, meaning we crisscrossed the upper 2/3s of this wonderful spit of Baja several times. It is quite a bit longer (length-wise) than the state of Florida; miles of almost uninhabited desert with unfenced ranges and lonely ranches. As we drove farther southeast (and southwest) the landscape morphed into different plants in the mountainous terrain. We camped directly on Pacific beaches as well as beaches on the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California).

Since this has been an El Nino weather year the west coast has been getting a lot of rain. You may have heard about the January rainstorms that hit the fire-damaged hills around Los Angeles causing terrible floods. San Diego and the Baja coast got those big rains too, so we witnessed the terrible aftermath of flooding and mud events as we traveled. When living in desert conditions you really see how everything depends on water, and when the rain comes the plants take advantage! We have seen a greening take place, an early spring. In Guerrero Negro, where we saw the whales, the rainfall is normally 1/2 inch per year. This winter they have gotten a lot more.

Our whale watching adventure is too long to tell in a paragraph! But, safe to say it was a religious experience! We chose a place where we were guaranteed to see whales. Scammon’s Lagoon is THE nursery for Grey whales. We booked a tour, and went out in a panga, a wooden motorboat that holds a dozen people (there were only 5 of us). Pacific winds can roar into this bay and keep tours off of the water, but we lucked out with a calm day. The whales came right up to the boat. They rolled around, waved their tails, and blew waterspouts through their blowholes. They swan under and around us, and some even floated up under the boat lightly nudging it! Check out the video we included.

My favorite cactus: The boojum cactus (pronounced bu-johm) defies description! It lives only at a certain parallel in very specific conditions. We saw forests of them! They are tall and conical with the tallest reaching 60 feet. They look like huge, skinny, upside-down carrots with short green side-sprouts. Most grow straight up - very symmetrical, but some bend over, curve and scoop taking on human qualities. I imagined them as Ents, able to march off into the desert for a noble cause (remember the trees in Lord of the Rings?)! In the photos we also show some impressive giant Cordons.

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