Northern Baja: No Diablo

Friday April 1. The next leg of the highway north through the spine of central Baja passes through the most gorgeous desert in all of Mexico. North of Cataviña is a giant boulder field littering the desert

The desert in central Baja

with rounded sculptural forms and the terrain is varied and cut with arroyos. There are also a couple cave painting sites from the post-hispanic era. We stopped at one that was well signed and accessible from the highway. A little further north we explored off-road trying to find another site described in the book, but were satisfied with a short beautiful hike.

We stopped in El Rosario for gas and were lured into lunch at Mama Espinoza’s Restaurant which is famous as a founding sponsor and checkpoint for the Baja 1000, a major motorized off-road race. The food was excellent—crab cakes and shrimp enchilada—and the walls were covered with pictures of men and their machines—trucks, desert buggies and dirt bikes—and other memorabilia. The parking lot was filled with motorcycles and the tables were filled with their riders. One of the riders rode with his service dog. Definitely a colorful environment.  

Our next target was climbing Pico del Diablo (3095m/10,154ft) in Sierra de San Pedro Mártir National Park. We headed for the tourism office in Lazaro Cardenas/San Quintin to get more information and maps. We stopped at the first government office we saw on our way into town, and lo and behold, the receptionist was very helpful: she described exactly where to find the tourism office a few kilometers up the road and even gave us the name and phone number of the man who runs it. He didn’t have any maps or paper information for us, but was able to describe the road and call ahead to verify that the mountain lodging is not yet open for the season: there would be no showers. I found some route descriptions and a crude trail map in our guide book: it would be a three-day expedition. We bailed. There were a host of reasons, but number one was that Mike didn’t want to drive an extra 200km out and back on a gravel road. We were tired of driving. We later realized that Mike was also getting sick again: that nagging cough that he has had off and on for four months came back and sapped his energy.

We headed instead for an ocean-front hotel and RV park in Punta Camalú, a surfer beach. The road to the coast was rough dirt and discouraging, but we found the place. While the hotel, parking area, and

Punta Camalu

cliffs were crumbling, barren and grim, the surf itself was endlessly fascinating. The varied wave patterns along the beach were unusual. We paid a modest sum for parking (with no water or electric hookup) and they let us shower in a room for no additional fee. We enjoyed our beer and ceviche and our conversation with the Americans at the next table: an aging, avid surfer and his wife and niece and nephew, down from LA for a weekend surfing trip.

Saturday April 2. Instead of driving back to the highway the way we’d come, we decided to drive the dirt road a little further up the coast and take the next road east to the highway. It looked simple on

The coast track...

the map. It wasn’t simple on the ground. We ended up well entertained for several hours, exploring the dirt tracks, looking for routes east—they all petered out in fields—and looking for drivable routes across the washes. The only other vehicles we saw were several trucks loaded with bags of beach rocks to be used to landscaping, a four-wheeler traversing private agricultural lands, and a flock of dirt bikers.

Back on the highway, it was an easy trip up to Ensenada. We never found any tourist information but did stumbled upon the art museum, so toured that first. It was free and modest. Working from the list in our old guide book, the first hotel we found was full, but the second had a room for us. We checked in, ate our leftovers on the balcony, and walked out to survey the town. Saturday night, the last night of spring break, the bars were packed, with music and tables spilling out onto the sidewalk. The street life was hopping with see-and-be-seen young tourists. The love hotels advertised their room prices in neon. We walked down to the waterfront where young families were strolling, kids were skating, and toy venders were hawking. A popular activity was the bumper-car-like, ride-on stuffed animals kids were driving around in a fenced circle of plaza.  

We were hoping to visit Mike’s niece Jodi in LA. Mike called her and learned that she was about to start a new, all-consuming, two-week work assignment and would not be available after Sunday. So we resolved to drive to LA tomorrow in time for dinner.