On The Road Again (South to Cabo)

Things are moving along a lot faster now.  We left Punta San Carlos and drove south to meet our friends near the tip of Baja at the end of October.  Just south of San Carlos, the highway veers inland from the Pacific side to the Sea of Cortez side. It was still insanely hot during our drive, so we were on a mission to quickly get back to the Pacific side.  Typically, the cooler Pacific ocean keeps air temperatures moderate on the west side. Not this year. The water was warmer than we've ever experienced -- 85 degrees!  Swimming isn't exactly refreshing.

Bay of Conception, Sea of Cortez -- trying to smile in the sweltering heat

On our way south, we hit the cute Baja town of San Ignacio where we purchased 5 lbs of dates for the LOW price of $8.  Two hours down the road we found them in the grocery store for $5/lb (which is still insanely cheap). San Ignacio is a desert oasis teeming with date palms as far as the eye can see.  Dates are everywhere!  We camped under date palms and our tires became covered in the sticky dates.

Hanging out under the date palms

One of our next stops was near Pescadero at the San Pedrito surf beach.  Normally, I wouldn't make note of this in our blog, but the drive was a bit interesting.  One week prior to our trip to San Pedrito, Hurricane Paul caused major damage to southern Baja, including this beach.  As we were bumping along through the sand to get out to the beach, we noticed that the track was getting narrow, and the sand was getting deeper.  For some reason--probably because we've driven the road several times before--we decided to just keep going.  Normally, we would have stopped and walked the rest of the road to make sure it was drive-able, but stopping is a big no-no in deep sand. Once you're moving, you have to keep moving.  

As we drove, the sand got deeper and deeper.  Both of us were white-knuckled and wide-eyed.  Scott was driving, and I kept saying stupid things like, "whoa, keep it movin'... slow and steady...we're okay, we're okay, we're okay".  We made it to some hard ground and literally had to catch our breaths.  If we had gotten stuck, we would have had to wait until the next morning to go hiking in search of someone to pull us out. In the future, we both agree that we must avoid situations like that. Past performance is no guarantee of future success.

Even though we made it to the beach, we were worried about getting out. Our initial plan was for one of us to walk out the way we came, and use our walkie-talkies to give the all clear signal. Meeting another vehicle on the deep-sand, single-lane track would have been really bad. Instead,  Scott spent a good part of the next morning finding a 2wd route under some palms over hard-packed ground.

The day after leaving, we learned that all roads heading south from Pescadero were blocked by protesters (if you care, you can learn about why here).  If we hadn't left, we would've had to make a large detour north to get back to our friends the following day!  Whew, I guess if you can roll with it, things usually work out in the end.

Our "boutique" overlook camping spot at Cerritos, south of San Pedrito

The Good and Bad of Sleeping In The Desert

When we left PSC a few days ago, we stopped for the night in the high-desert before hitting the main Baja highway.  I always look forward to this.  The high-desert cools down nicely at night.  It has a familiar smell that I can only describe as clean, yet dusty. The drive is only 40 miles, but it takes us 3.5 - 4 hours.

Scott loves being able to take his shower outside, with a view

The sun sets on the Baja desert

The night was deafeningly quiet and we slept very well.  At 6am we awoke to what we thought was a strong gust of wind or possibly an earthquake.  We pushed each other out of the way trying to look through the small window by our heads.  We could see 3 cows rubbing against the truck in the light of dawn.  It felt like the truck might tip over.  In a frantic voice Scott says, "We've got to get them off, they could break something".  He followed that with, "MOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" He didn't yell or scream, he simply mooed.  It didn't work.  I pounded my fist on the wall and the cows quickly walked away.  Along this 40-mile stretch we often see cows plodding along, probably looking for scarce food and water.  Maybe they are also looking for something to scratch against. This time, maybe they were walking home after a big night out and thought they could tip the truck over while we slept. Silly cows--don't they know that's a myth?

If you look closely, you might be able to see the faint cow trail going straight to our truck

The Baja Desert Turns Green and So Do We

Get your head out of the gutter.

I recently blogged about the epic, 10-year rain that we experienced while staying at Punta San Carlos (PSC).  Following the rain, we ended up staying for nearly 6 weeks. It allowed us to witness the desert in all of its flowering, green glory.  The pictures never seem to capture how amazing it was.  Perhaps it's because what is normally in the place of the green flora and bright flowers are brown, dead-looking plants. The contrast is what's so amazing and otherwise can't be captured in a picture.  Besides the abundance of plant-life, we also witnessed a bloom of caterpillars, moths, and butterflies.

There's something fascinating about these dangerous and painful cactus' with soft, gentle flowers

Do these fat caterpillars turn into bird-sized moths?

This poor hummingbird thought he/she hit the desert-flower jackpot! The hummingbird-sized bug was more successful.

On a less pleasing note, about 3 weeks into our stay, we made the 3.5-hour drive out to the nearest town (El Rosario) to get food and water.  The day after we returned, we both came down with what we thought was a nasty case of food poisoning that ended up lasting nearly a week.  We later learned that a gastrointestinal virus was going around El Rosario which I have no doubt we contracted.  For 2 days straight, all we did was sleep, moan, and stumble to the outhouse.   Between the two of us, we probably lost 20 lbs.

We left PSC a few days ago and are now on our way south feeling healthy and strong, enjoying the continued desert greenery.

Where Are You From?

"Where are you from?" is becoming an increasingly hard question to answer.  We get asked this a lot.  We are originally from Michigan and Indiana.  During our mid-20s and early-30s we lived in Vancouver, Washington (a suburb of Portland, Oregon) but haven't lived there since 2008.  Our license plate is from South Dakota.  What makes it even more complicated is that we don't plan on living in the USA for quite a while.

We've never lived anywhere near South Dakota

Any time we are asked this question, we first have to decide what is being asked before replying.  Is he/she wondering how far we have driven to get to our current location?  Just making small talk?  Wondering where we live at the moment? Or maybe the question is posed to us while we are sitting in the surf lineup.  "Where are you from?" might really mean, can you actually surf?  Or maybe it means, how long are you going to be camped here?  Maybe I should answer "Michigan" instead of "Portland".  That would explain the ketchup I enjoy on so many meals.   For us, it is a very loaded question, regardless of the intent.

For the most part, we usually always answer Portland, Oregon.  This isn't really true, since we never lived in Portland.  Our excuse for saying "Portland" is that no one really knows where Vancouver, Washington is.  In reality, we spent a lot of time in Portland and almost all of our friends live in Portland (even some of our Vancouver friends).  The northwest clicked with us in a way that Indiana and Mighigan never could. From the start, it just felt like home, and it still does. We fell in love with the clean whitewater rivers, the cold Pacific ocean, volcanic mountains, the relentless summer winds of the Columbia river gorge, the music scene, and quality, hand-crafted beer.  Without even noticing, living near Portland also turned us into tree-hugging, hippies.  What other city in the USA provides kitchen compost bins along with garbage containers?

Vancouver, WA is the "backwoods" suburb of Portland, OR (and those cans of beers are props)

When we first meet people, we usually hope the where-are-you-from questioning ends at that.  It gets complicated when people start asking us about the recent weather in Portland or where we recently surfed on the Oregon coast.  We've been wondering how we are going to answer this question as the years go on.  Will we still say "Portland" 5 years from now?  I much prefer the question, "Where are you going?"

At the moment we are in Baja which certainly feels like "home" to us