Micah and Dan snorkel in Baja

Introduction

[This blog post (well, back then it was just a "webpage") was transferred here from Daniel's old website which is now dead.]

Camping on the beach, snorkeling the bays, driving endless hours, and meeting the Immigration officers in unique ways…

Being a MK is great, because you have a much different outlook on life. It also helps that Micah and I both have adventurous dads who have rubbed off on us. (Some of you who know our dads may be saying that’s really scary, and it might be.) That’s why when we both told our parents what we were thinking of doing for Spring Break, they wished they could come along.

The idea was vaguely formed sometime last semester: drive down to Baja California (which is actually in Mexico, if you didn’t know) for our Spring Break and camp. Why? It’s the natural thing to do if you have a car, of course. Exploring a new place is always fun. We also hoped it would be a learning experience and a chance to practice some Spanish. I’m not sure if we really accomplished the second goal very well, but we did learn a lot about Baja. Both of us had been to Mexico before, but that was when we were like 2 years old or something, so that doesn’t count. We decided we would go to Baja and camp on the beaches for the whole week. That’s about all we decided. People would ask us what we were going to do down there, and we could list a whole bunch of possibilities, but nothing certain. I can’t tell you how many people asked to come along, but we told them no because we had no idea what it would be like and didn’t want to be responsible for others if we got stuck in a Mexican jail, had to sleep in the car because of bandits, or whatever. We promised next time to take brave souls.

The week before Spring Break was hectic for both of us. I was busy studying for a Calculus II midterm and doing some other projects and Micah was busy writing his important once-a-semester Torrey paper and preparing for his presentation. So neither of us had time to think about the trip much until Friday. Friday afternoon we printed out a bunch of info about Baja off the Internet. Then we tempted ourselves at REI, but only bought the Lonely Planet guide to Baja California and a good map. After buying some camping food at a grocery store, we returned to our room to madly pack. Originally we had decided to leave 3:00 am Saturday morning so we could get to the border by around 6:00 am, but that’s about the time we finished packing. Feeling sleep was important, we slept 5 hours and left at around 8:00 am Saturday, April 4.

Saturday

Biola to San Quintin

As we sped down the 5 freeway toward the border, Micah got out our new Baja book and started reading. Then he got out the map and picked a spot as a destination for our first night. That’s basically how we planned the rest of the trip. I would recommend the Lonely Planet series of books for anyone traveling to a new place. (I wouldn’t, however, recommend going with us when traveling to a new place. =) ) There’s one written for quite a few countries around the world, and they’re very informative about almost every major place to go. In our case we didn’t really have a specific agenda, so we decided we’d turn around when half our gas money was used up, we ran out of food, or got sick of camping, whichever came first.

Picture: This was the only day we wore these clothes, and that was because we thought we should look nice while crossing the border.

It took us less than two hours to get to the border from Biola (La Mirada, LA). As we approached San Ysidro, we stopped at the first place we saw to get car insurance (Comercial America). Naturally, the next exit after that had tons more places with better competition, and probably better prices. At least we know that for next time. After filling up on gas, we headed for the San Ysidro-Tijuana border crossing, the most heavily trafficked border crossing in the world. There were about a hundred cars lined up in the 5 lanes, but we passed through quickly. Immigration consisted of a guy looking into the windshield of the car and waving at us. Not quite like other immigration I’ve been through, but we didn’t care. Little did we realize how important the lax checkpoints would be to us later on…

I was driving when we crossed the border, and the minute we pulled onto the road in Mexico, I could tell we were in a different country. The driving was slightly similar to driving in the Philippines, although not quite so bad. People were actually pretty good about staying on their side of the road. Actually, we were really impressed with the roads after reading how bad they were supposed to be. Maybe that’s because we’ve seen much worse in other countries. There’s a divided toll road that’s almost as good as a freeway, but that ends after about 70 miles in Maneadero. The rest of the Transpeninsular Highway is a skinny two-lane road. Aside from the areas with really bad pot holes, extreme curves, and cows on the road, it’s not too bad. (I came very close to smashing the car into two cows the first day). We were able to average about 60 mph most of the time.

From reading the book and talking to others, we knew we were supposed to obtain Tourist Cards if we were going to be in Baja for more than 72 hours or if we were going to go south of Maneadero (which is just south of Ensenda). We met both those qualifications. The book seemed to imply we would be issued the cards automatically, so we were surprised when we didn’t get anything crossing the border. We kept looking for a place to get one. We paid $2 one place and they gave us a receipt. “Maybe that’s the Tourist Card,” we wondered. We didn’t realize until coming to the next one that it was just a toll for the road. “Well, maybe they’ll issue the Tourist Cards when we go south of Maneadero” we thought.

Sure enough, there was a military inspection point just outside the town. It was just like the many others we passed through during our stay in Baja. We got used to them and didn’t mind them too much, until the last day, when they became a little scary. Basically, it was a bunch of military guys carrying big guns standing by the side of the road. One guy would do the inspection while the other guys stood around doing nothing. The guy usually just asked us if we had any drugs or guns, and if we said no they let us go on. Although we never said yes (because we didn’t have any), I’m assuming they wouldn’t have been too happy if we had said yes. Sometimes they would have us get out and open up the car. They’d poke around a bit and say we could go on.

But unfortunately, we didn’t receive Tourist Cards from that checkpoint, either. A little concerned, we decided to check in the next major town. There was a “tourist office” in San Quintin. The “tourist office” was actually the town bar with a table in one corner that had tourist brochures. We walked in and tried to ask about Tourist Cards. The first guy we talked to didn’t know any English (and our Spanish wasn’t adequate), but he called in another guy who knew English only a little better. We explained our situation, and he said “You don’t need tourist cards.” We were a little confused, but couldn’t really communicate well enough to find out why. From that point on we pretty much forgot about the whole thing…until Thursday.

Right next to the “tourist office” was a bank with an ATM. We needed some pesos, so we figured getting them through the ATM was a good way to get the best exchange rate (it was 8.5 pesos to the dollar). I got really excited when it told me I had 1,200 in my account until I realized it was in pesos.

We had crossed the border around 11:30. Not stopping for lunch (we never did the entire trip, mainly because we didn’t really have any lunch food), we easily made it to our first destination before dark (283 miles from Biola). We camped just south of San Quintin on the Santa Maria beach. Well, kind of on the beach. The book said there was a hotel there, but that you could camp for free a half kilometer north of the hotel. The problem was that there was a ceaseless 30-mph wind that blasted sand everywhere. We found the leeward side of an old concrete building to camp behind. Tired and cold, we wanted something quick for dinner. There’s nothing better than Ramen noodles. Er, I mean, nothing cheaper. We had found Ramen for 10 cents a package, so we bought $2 worth. If humans could live on Ramen alone, we would have had plenty of money to spend later on renting scuba gear. Since that’s not the case, we still have half our Ramen packages left over and no money.

Sunday

San Quintin to Santa Rosalia

The next morning we arose with sunrise, took down the tent, and jumped in the car. Breakfast was granola in the car. Later on during our trip, when the granola ran out, our breakfasts consisted of junk food. I forgot to mention that we had a whole apple box full of Oreo cookies, Oreo bars, crackers, and Fig Newtons that Micah’s dad had sent us. He had gotten them free at the dump. Because of the wastefulness of the American food industry, they had been dumping a whole trailer worth of perfectly good food. In some ways I wish we hadn’t had so much junk food, though. Oreo cookies make me sick now.

Baja California is a unique blend of desert, beaches, rocky coasts, and mountains. But most of it is desert, as we quickly found out. Thirty-six miles south of where we spent the night is a town called El Rosario. It’s there that the Transpeninsular highway leaves the western coast of the peninsula and passes down the center through the Desierto Central. This Desert National Park is some of the most beautiful desert I’ve ever seen. We hit it at an awesome time of year, because it was wetter than usual. Thank you El Nino. Colorful wild flowers lined the road, providing a beautiful foreground to the forests of cardon cactus (they look like the saguaro cactus) mixed in with granite boulders. In addition, there was another cactus-like tree called the cirio that I had never seen before. It looks like a huge inverted carrot, with large 3-4 inch “hairs” growing on its smooth skin. I saw some growing as high as 25 feet, and they can get up to 65 feet in height. They rarely have many branches. The cirio grow only in that portion of the peninsula and in one part of mainland Mexico. There’s a picture of one below on the right. It was here that I started taking pictures with my nice SLR camera and didn’t stop until I had used 5 roles of film. Micah and I are both interested in photography, so we had a lot of fun and got some good shots, some of which you see on this page.

For those of you who could care less about cirio and cardon, I’ll go on. There was also a military checkpoint that we breezed through. Micah jokingly said “Well, we fooled another one” as we drove on. Little did we know until Thursday the irony of his statement. Driving through the desert was kind of like driving through one of those plain states in the US–a long, straight road that goes on forever. Not that you could fall asleep, though. With speedy tourists passing huge trucks on the two-lane road and large pot holes popping up out of nowhere, you had to be alert. And don’t forget the cows.

The road gradually made its way back to the western side of the peninsula as we approached the town of Guerrero Negro, which is almost halfway down the peninsula. We stopped in town long enough to buy some gas and go into a little market. Feeling a lack of fresh fruits (after eating junk food all day), we bought the some oranges. We also bought something that just about anyone in the Philippines has had before: NIDO brand powdered milk! Sorry, I guess that doesn’t mean much to you, but I drank it for the last 3 years of my life so I thought it was kind of interesting. It’s handy to have on a trip when you don’t have a fridge.

Our destination Sunday night was Scammon’s Lagoon (Laguna Ojo de Liebre), which is just southwest of Guerrero Negro. The lagoon is on the western side of the peninsula and is a well-known whale-watching preserve because it is the mating and breeding ground of California gray whales. Ironically, it’s named after a whaler who made a lucrative business killing almost all the gray whales in the area. Now the population has recovered; the whales migrate 6000 miles from the Bering Sea to the warm waters of Baja, where they stay from January to late March.

But all this meant to us was that we had a possibility of swimming with the whales.

Pero no.

We turned off on a dirt road that was supposed to lead to a camping spot on the lagoon, but a mile down found it blocked off by huge tires. Still determined, we turned around and tried another road. We ended up off-roading (in a tiny non-off-roading Honda) for over an hour before giving up. We could have gone back to Guerrero Negro and paid money for a boat to take us out, but that was out of the question. We’re college students. Need I explain more? We never did get to see any whales, although we saw the skull of one in the market in Guerrero Negro and later a 50-foot entire skeleton in a different town nowhere near the ocean.

Instead, we figured since we had a few more hours of daylight left that we could drive on to Santa Rosalia, which is on the eastern coast of the peninsula. As we crossed the peninsula it got more mountainous. There’s even a cool-looking volcano around there that might be fun to climb. Every few miles there would be a “vado” (dip) sign, and the “curva peligrosa” (dangerous curve) signs were too numerous to count. We ended up driving after dark for a half hour or so before arriving in Santa Rosalia (driving 390 miles that day). That was the only time we broke our rule of not driving at night in Mexico, since we wanted to be on the safe side.

It was also the only time we paid to camp. Since we arrived so late we didn’t want to have to search for a camping spot, so we forked out $6 to stay at Las Palmas RV park (picture on left). They even had hot showers. We also filled up all our water containers, since we were carrying all our own water. We had Ramen and chili for supper, which was an improvement over straight Ramen, but still not too satisfying. Both of us slept soundly that night, feeling clean and relaxed.

Monday

Santa Rosalia to Mulege

The next morning we only drove 38 miles south to Mulege, where we spent quite a bit of time during our stay in Baja. It’s a small Mexican town with quite a few tourists, but certainly not over-run with them. There’s even a dive shop run by an American where you can rent gear. We stopped there and asked the best beach for snorkeling and she said Punta Prieta. I of course totally wanted to go scuba diving even though I had no idea what the diving would be like. Micah wasn’t as adamant as I was. We agreed to scout out the area first to find the best diving spot. As it turned out, we never did end up getting to dive for various reasons (mostly having to do with pesos and dollars), but we know where we’ll dive next time.

We set up camp on the sand near the rocky beach at Punta Prieta and decided to go snorkeling. Micah somehow thought the water was going to be miraculously warm and suggested swimming without wetsuits. I told him we’d better not be that optimistic and make use of the wetsuits we had. It’s a good thing we did. It might have been slightly warmer than the beaches in CA, but not much. But that was okay. Just getting to snorkel again was awesome! It was a completely different kind of snorkeling than the tropics: less colorful, colder water, and no coral. But I tried my hardest not to compare it and instead see what was cool about it. It actually wasn’t too bad, I’m just spoiled is all. The coolest fish we saw were sting rays and there were a lot of other big fish. We saw one 3-foot fish that was so well-camouflaged it looked just like a rock. Swimming through the kelp was my favorite thing to do: there are walls of it that make tunnels to swim through. By the end I was pretty frozen and ready to dry out.

We had an interesting lunch of cold chili and tortillas, and settled down for a siesta, something that soon became a habit of ours. Lying on the beach with nothing to do is about the best thing in the world after being in college for half a semester. We did eventually set up a tarp so we wouldn’t get too sunburnt. Of course, I ended up totally roasted before the trip was over anyway. That night we managed to cook some really tasty rice using our nifty camp stove. Rice along with canned beef stew turned out to be a luscious meal. We finished eating by moonlight and washed our dishes in the ocean. Before heading for bed we tried juggling rocks by moonlight. It hurts.

Tuesday

Exploring Bahia Concepcion

We both woke up in time to see the sunrise and have a quiet time. I sat atop a nearby cliff while reading Acts. We decided to try something fancy for breakfast: Jiffy cornbread mix. It didn’t work. Our frying pan was aluminum, and we didn’t have any oil or eggs, which meant the jiffy mix wasn’t the right consistency. We did add milk, but that didn’t help. It just stuck to the pan and burnt. If we tried cooking it like scrambled eggs, it got half-way cooked and we ate it with honey. But after a while it got kind of sickening. Our second method was cooking it on sticks like dough boys, but that didn’t work either cuz it kept falling off. We resorted to something better–quesadillas with peanut butter and honey instead of cheese. And we had Oreo brownies for desert as usual. Next trip we’ll not take so much other food and leave some money to buy tacos at the local Burpy King. We did successfully boil some of our water for drinking.

Having heard about cool beaches farther south, we drove 21 miles and explored Bahia Concepcion. Sure enough, it was an awesome area. It’s a bay littered with inlets, cliffs, rock islands and best of all beautiful beaches. The highway goes right along the coast giving a great view of the bay. We wanted to see the entire thing before deciding on a camping spot, so we spent the day exploring the various beaches. We even tried driving partway out on the peninsula, but it would have been 40 miles to the tip on a slow, dirt road.

The first beach we stopped at was really flat. It was low tide, so there were little tide pools separating sand bars. Micah said it looked like one of those levels in Mario Kart where you’re driving on sand and through water. We had some fun there running around on the sand and practicing our prancing techniques (don’t ask). It almost looked like the tropics except for all the cacti lining the beach. There were dozens of huge piles of clam shells everywhere, so I guess it must be good clamming area.

Unfortunately, all the nice beaches were packed with tourists, so we found a less-discovered beach to camp on. It was very windy as usual, but that didn’t stop us from setting up the tent and cooking another delicious meal of rice and beef stew.

Wednesday

Exploring Bahia Concepcion some more

The next morning we both got up in time to take pictures of the sunrise. Micah went down to the water and got the beach angle, while I got the desert side of things.

Since there were plenty more beaches to explore, we made our way north to see what we could see. One rocky point we went out on was promising for rappelling and cliff diving. The problem was that the places we saw for jumping were a little too dangerous–we would have had to have perfect aim and a good trajectory and even then we weren’t sure. Next time we’ll for sure spend more time there, but we moved on instead.

Micah and I had been joking that our trip would not be complete without a flat tire and getting stuck in the sand. I wish we hadn’t been so prophetic. At El Sombrerito beach near Mulege, we thought we saw a cool place to camp a little ways down. We came to this spot that looked a little less like dirt and more like sand, and I thought we should back out. Micah thought we could make it. I don’t know who was dumber: me for listening to Micah or Micah for telling me to go on, but I guess I’m the one to blame since I was driving. Anyway, we made it about 25 feet across the sand before the tires started spinning. One of us pushing didn’t help a bit, so we soon had the jack out. We would jack one side of the car up, put a plywood strip under it, and then do the same on the other side. Of course that involved a lot of digging around the car with frisbees and pots, the best things we had. Then I’d get into the car and try to reverse. We’d get about 4 feet each time and then get stuck again when the wheels ran off the plywood. After about the first try, a friendly guy named Carlito came walking down the beach. “Dumb Americans,” he was probably thinking, but he helped out anyway. Four cycles and a few hours later, we were back on solid ground. We gave Carlito a whole bunch of Oreo cookies and 10 pesos and said, “Muchos gracias.”

Not wanting to stay close to that evil beach, we went back to the beach in Mulege where we had gone snorkeling before. The snorkeling that day wasn’t as good, though, because the water had gotten more turbid. But that didn’t matter because we got a good siesta. After that we made a little trip into town to see what it was like. The most interesting things we saw were the weird American tourists.

Thursday

Mulege to Bahia de Los Angeles

When you’re camping you go to bed when it gets dark and wake up when it gets light, so it was no problem to have an early departure Thursday morning. We had decided that we should start heading north that day. By 8:30 we were past Guerrero Negro (the whale town). Just north of that town the highway crosses the 28^th parallel. Not only does the time zone change, but you pass from Baja del Sur into Baja. There’s also a military inspection point which we figured would be just like the others. What happened next was quite interesting and I’ll give Micah’s side because he was the one in the driver’s seat and I was just sitting there not saying much.

“As we pulled up to the checkpoint, we noticed right off that there was only one guy, that he wasn’t wearing a military uniform, and he had a hat on that said Immigration or the Spanish equivalent whatever that is. He was noticeably overweight and reminded me a lot of Sgt. Mendoza in the Zorro shows. The first thing he asked was if we spoke Spanish and I decided the chances of me understanding his English were better than the chances of him understanding my Spanish. He then asked to see our tourist cards. ‘Passports?’ we asked quickly, whipping them out for him. He took the passports and asked to see our tourist cards. Um, we said, we didn’t have any. The following conversation was the most interesting hodge-podge of Spanglish that I have ever encountered. I understood about 2/3rds of what he said, he probably understood less than that of the very slow, very clear English I was speaking with the odd Spanish word thrown in. He asked why we didn’t have any tourist cards and we explained about missing them at the border crossing, asking about them in San Quintin and being told we didn’t need them and never being asked afterwards if we needed them and thus forgetting about the whole thing. We weren’t trying to be bad. We had been admittedly foolish. Sgt. Mendoza said he would under no circumstances let us back through without tourist cards. Apparently you don’t need them to get into Mexico, only to leave. =) He said that to rectify the situation we would have to go back to Guerrero Negro, find the bank, pay a $25 fine each and then the bank would issue us tourist cards and we could cross. Then he said that since it was Easter everything was closed and we wouldn’t be able to do this until Tuesday. This being Thursday and school starting Monday, we didn’t see that as a very viable option. I asked if we could settle the fine at the military installation up the road or at the immigration office by the side of the road there and he said no. He was quite adamant. At this point we went back into more discussion about us needing to get back, not having the time or the resources to stay in Mexico till Tuesday, being misinformed, etc. Eventually I asked (politely begged might be a better way of describing it) if we could settle the fine somewhere that was open and go on our way. Then something interesting but not so surprising happened. He said that we could pay him and he would take care of the fine. I accordingly pulled out my wallet and wondered what we were going to do because at this point we were about $10 short of the $50 fine when he said that $10 would be fine. We paid and drove off.

“It all happened so fast that it was over before we knew it. 100 yards down the road I looked at Dan and he looked at me and we thought about what had just happened. One thing that was quite clear was that the Mexican authorities would never see any of that money. We honestly weren’t trying to bribe him and we had before we really knew it. At this point we began to wonder just how much of his story was true and I suspect a whole lot of it wasn’t. You can raise legitimate arguments on both sides that the system is made to work that way or that you shouldn’t cow to a system just because it is made to work that way. Our circumstances were complicated by a language barrier and we were glad to not be in a Mexican jail until Tuesday. I think this situation would make a very interesting article and plan to write one soon.”

So that was our first encounter with Tourist Cards. We definitely know better what to do next time, and we honestly weren’t trying to bribe anyone. But since there wasn’t really anything we could do about the fact that we were in the country illegally, we decided we might as well go on to Bahia de Los Angeles like we had planned. It’s farther north than Guerrero Negro off a side road that leads to the eastern side of the peninsula.

Our trusty book told us we could camp out on Punta La Gringa (390 miles from Mulege), a cool point that sticks out into the island-littered bay. You have to go about 5 miles north from the town on a washboard dirt road that more or less ends at the point. The slow, bumpy ride was well worth it as we eventually came to a gravel beach with ocean on either side and a good view of the bay. After a long siesta and some time exploring the rocky point, we decided to check out the snorkeling. We squeezed into our wetsuits, grabbed our mask, snorkel, and fins, and forced ourselves into the cold water. Punta La Gringa would be my choice for scuba diving next time, because it looked like it had some potential. It got quite deep for one thing. There were about a hundred rays on the sandy bottom, schools of fish, and crabs. Washing dishes that night was enlivened by phosphorescent plankton in the water that would sparkle if we swished our hands hard enough.

Friday

Bahia de Los Angeles to San Diego

Even though Punta La Gringa was a great place to camp, we decided to make more progress north to give us extra time in case we ran into any more trouble related to Tourist Cards. We came to three checkpoints that day. One of them was a surprise one we didn’t remember from our trip south. Again, Micah was driving, and I like his account of what happened, so I’ll put it below.

“Easter in Mexico means parties. Lots of them. It was Good Friday and things were already winding up for the weekend. At all the other checkpoints we went through that day the soldiers were friendly and not very concerned that we could have had bazookas in our stuff if we wanted to.

“By mid day we were already to the last checkpoint just south of Maneadero. We figured this might be the big one to worry about. When we got to it there were so many cars going both directions for the holiday that soldiers weren’t even stopping them. We pulled up to the head honcho and saw he happened to be wearing a hat that said immigration. We did a little minor quaking in our flip-flops. He looked at me who was driving and then waved sort of vaguely either in the direction of the shoulder for us to pull over or for us to just go on. I thought he said pull over, Dan thought he said go on. We pulled over and waited a while and he was completely ignoring us. Other cars with CA plates were just going through so we decided he must have meant for us to just go on. I very slowly pulled onto the road and very slowly drove on, giving them plenty of time to shout before they started shooting but nobody noticed or cared.”

In order to fulfill the second part of our prophecy, it was natural that we got a flat tire that day. We actually had just stopped in the beautiful desert to get some pictures and water the cactus when Micah noticed the front left tire was really low, as in pretty much flat. Fortunately, the car has a pretty good spare that was able to take us all the way back to Biola.

Originally we had planned to camp at one of the tourist beaches near the border until it was time to come home. But because of the holiday the beaches were jam packed. There were tents lined from Ensenda to the border, with parties going on all over the place. We decided camping there wouldn’t be too fun, so we kept going. After getting a little lost right at the border, we joined the million other cars wanting to cross into the US. Our customs inspection consisted of a bored-looking guy asking us if we were both US citizens.

It became apparent as soon as we were back on the freeway why people get bored driving here and fall asleep at the wheel. It was quite frustrating to not have to swerve around potholes and cows and oncoming buses. And the lanes were almost wide enough for two cars. That night we dropped in on the Peske family who live in San Diego (driving about 450 miles that day). They’re friends from Biola who didn’t seem to care that we were filthy, hadn’t taken a shower in days, and had a car that looked like a dust cloud. They fed us and gave us a place to spend the night, which was great.

Saturday

San Diego to La Mirada

The next morning we made it back to the Biola area and unloaded at Micah’s Uncle’s place. We were able to do laundry, clean the car inside and out, and change the car’s oil there. Now all I have to do is figure out where to buy a new tire for my car. The one that went flat in Baja went through too much and supposedly can’t be patched.

As I look back on the trip, all I can say is that the Lord was with us every step of the way. We had a great time “bonding” while exploring a new place. Next time (and there will be a next time) we’ll know a lot better what to bring, what not to bring, and most importantly, that we need Tourist Cards. There’s a whole other country just a few hours away that’s waiting to be explored.