...Baja on my mind part 2

...With our one extra gallon of gas we rolled out of our camp located high on the cliffs above the break to route-find our way down the northern Baja coastline. We were roughly a 3 hour drive west of Hwy One. Our goal was to go south down the coast and come out again down by Santa Rosalita. This section was a first for all of us so we knew the trip would not be completed without some unexpected twists. We left camp after a glassy morning surf session. Heading into the afternoon our sunset drive was filled with miles of scenery and scenes that can only be seen in remote Baja. The unmarked roads are gnarly enough and the characters you meet on them are as genuine as it gets. At a small fishermans camp at Punta Morro we exchanged names, met most of the family and asked and received directions going south in both spanish and english. We gave out some cold beers and then got back on the road(s) with our heads full of directions and cans full of cerveza.


That first day of driving turned into a moon bright night and then as concentration dimmed we found ourselves lost and driving down a few dead end roads and some roads that "just didn't feel right..." so we got smart, stopped, camped and awoke the next morning in a beautiful desert valley just a short distance from the "coast" road we thought we wanted.

It had been raining lightly on and off over the last few days. It never rains that hard - that often in Baja but when it does rain it turns that hard red dirt into slick-ass mud. Mud that cakes your tires and loads them so badly that it is worse than driving on ice You can barely walk on it without falling on your butt. Our Toyota 4runner sports 35"x12.5" mud tires and Detroit differential lockers so we were managing the stuff fairly well but my brother's VW bus was a little sketchy and having some traction issues. We drove carefully until I was towing my brother around a sandy beach stretch. I decided to drive towards the area of a small puddle. It seemed harmless. The area around this puddle ended up being a sea-silt bog from hell. This thing ended up sticking the 4runner and VW van axle deep in sea sludge and we were steadily sinking. After realizing that we were really stuck and we were not driving out of it we got busy. We unloaded all the gear to lighten things up. Out came the hi-lift jack, the come-along and the shovel. It took all the tricks in the book, a bunch of precise rock placements and a few choice words to get unstuck and out of that mud hole, but of course we did it. There was no other option!

No more forward motion

Yes, I towed my brother into a mud hole!

Family bonding time

Hi-Lift Jack - don't get stuck without one

Not your average mud hole

At camp that night we all noted that Patagonia owner Yvon Chouinard always says something like "an adventure doesn't start until something goes wrong." We camped at a nook on a cliff next
to the heaving pacific that we never would have stayed at were it not for that mud. Our cerveza supply had been drank, traded & given away by this time so luckily Andy had some vino tinto he uncorked for the tired celebrations that evening. The next day found us on that slick baja mud I now call "red ice" and we feared further silt/mud bog situations that looked imminent according to our crude but effective maps. By the time we arrived in a pristine coastal valley with visible red ice on the road for miles skirting an expansive mud/silt area we were getting worried about our gas levels and the prospect of having to tow the van and/or get stuck again so we flipped around the point to do a surf check. There we found Mike. Mike owns a lot of land right there and he told us about the Wild Coast conservation group, their efforts and his personal donation of lands to the group. His place was simple and sensible. He had the basics on hand for 3-4 months of surfing, sunning, wildlife viewing and no doubt seeing many old Mexican friends and meeting wandering, needy surfers like us. Mike uncorked one of his gas containers and let me have 5 gallons. When I tried to pay him for it he told me "No, it might be me who needs it next time." He concurred that our proposed coastal route could have some rough, nasty, slick and potentially mud boggy flats and arroyos. And the surf had gone flat so there was not much point in taking the longer, riskier coastal way. So he pointed us east in the direction of another road that would lead us up and over the mountains and drop back down to Hwy 1.

My kind of place

Mike's Pemex

That next 40 miles took us about four to five hours. An amazing tour through canyons, cordon cactus forest, palm fringed oases, rough-cut red-mud laden road grades and mountain peaks with expansive views of the pacific ocean to the west and the mountains and desert of Baja in all other directions. It was out there and it was great. By the time we hit Hwy One I was running on fumes. I put the extra gallon of gas in, we toasted roadside with some Bailey's, flagged a travelling windsurfer down and got directions towards the closest gas. We found out that we had hit Hwy One about 15 miles north of El Crucero and you can get gas there from the back of a Toyota pickup. The guys use the old school metal gas cans and a chunk of rubber tubing . They get the siphon started with their mouth (think gargling gas) and you purchase the gas in 5 gallon units. Both my brother and I filled up. The guys were stoked because we filled up their pockets with pesos and they loved our red mud covered Toyota as well.

Baja Family

Made it!

Andy left us in El Crucero. He had to drive north for a ski rendezvous with the KAVU Elements Tour crew in Colorado and New Mexico. It was raining again and we were heading south towards the 28th parallel and the bustling town of Guerrero Negro. The first hotel as you come to G Negro is on the right. We decided to check it out. We were so tired by this time. We had been camping for the past 11 nights over more than 1,500 miles with about 200+ of those miles being off road. We needed showers and a bed. I also needed a cold cerveza so I went directly to the hotel cantina for a Pacifico. I ordered two and was quickly introduced to Manuel the bartender and Ken from Garden Grove, Ca., the only other guy in the place. Manuel and Ken were old friends that visit when each is in the others country. They were great company, very generous and full of stories. Jyl and Hailey joined us after a while and we talked for hours.

Parallelo 28

After a good nights rest and some reorganization and washing of the vehicle we artfully dodged the roadside tourist registration building and went into G Negro for supplies. Soon we rolled down the skinny little road known as Hwy One towards Baja Sur. The truck drivers are truly amazing in Baja. They are great drivers but it is still disconcerting when they fly by you just inches away. Many of the dual trailer trucks would crowd the edge of the road so badly! It seemed almost miraculous at times that the trucks did not slide off the steep shoulders when taking a tight turn or passing another slower vehicle. Of course they do have a wreck every now and then but overall their driving is pretty amazing. The crazy people are definitely the bike tourers. They ride on no shoulder through congested towns and through hot, un-peopled desert stretches. The truck drivers are incredibly respectful of the cyclists I have noticed and I am sure the cyclo-tourers greatly appreciate that. There is a fair amount of drinking and driving down there and the road was built in the early seventies. Riding a bike down the side of it is something I will never do. More power to the folks who do.

That night found us in Mulege on the Gulf of California. We went out to a late dinner at the rustic El Candil restaurante and then camped. At daybreak we were back on the road heading south. This day would be a long day of driving. We made slow time due to the fact that a travelling carnival was on the road with us. They were heading to La Paz to set up. There were about 30 trucks and trailers in their caravan. Every time we would stop to get breakfast, gas or whatever we would have to battle our way back around these guys. We finally arrived in Todos Santos late in the day about 8-10 hours after our departure from Mulege. We set up a quick camp and slipped into a restful sleep.

Photo: Todos Santos in the distance

Photo: Locked, loaded, lifted

Photo: Todos Amigos Inc.

Time to surf. Although we had some decent waves up north it had been relatively small except for one session of just overhead peelers off the point. The trip had been great so far. We had definitely packed in a lot of adventure and lobster by this time. But we were jones'n for surf. Rolling out of camp early paid off for the first two days as we scored some small but nicely shaped beachbreak and a session at La Pastora. Then it went flat... Since we were staying close to Todos Santos I was able to check the online surf forecasts at La Esquina cafe easily. I saw something coming from the SW and decided we should go to a place we had surfed the previous year. We knew it was going to be a zoo at all the breaks in or near TS due to it being Christmas vacation and having been flat for a week. It was very warm in the air and water temperature and the sun was blazing. We knew it was time to move so we stocked the cooler and headed north to our new friend Armin's house for a Christmas eve party with the neighbors. The Cota's are a very generous and lively Mexican family who own much land north of TS. They fed us well and shared bottles of mezcal, tequila, anejo rum and Pacifico. I learned a new term that next morning... "Muy Crudo!" Meaning "Very Hungover!"

Photo: Casa de Armin

Our departure time from Armin's casa stretched later and later into the day as we did what we could to temper the previous nights damage. When we finally left it was afternoon and we had a long ways off-road to drive. We were going to find our way north through a giant land preserve along un-marked, un-named "roads." We would end up using the Baja 300 race-course whenever we could find it and lots of good-guesses and gut feelings to retrace our previous years trip to a reeling left-hander that we called Tortuga Reef.

Photo: Back road sign

After a late night roadside camp out in the middle of nowhere we made it to Tortuga reef around noon. The place had totally changed since the previous year when we had scored it going off. All of the sand had been stripped away and much more of the reef was exposed and the break was messy, unorganized and blown out. We headed back down the beach a few miles to camp out of the wind below a point we had passed earlier but not before scoring a dozen or more oysters straight off the reef for dinner that night.

Photo: Baja fresh!

The wind was blowing hard onshore when we setup camp and went to sleep. The next morning it had turned around and was going straight offshore into a building swell. Time to surf.

As with most of my Baja sessions, this trip, I was the only one out. The waves were small but punchy, warm and fun.

Baja Sur - beachbreak right

I surfed the beach break right in front of our tent three times a day.

Tube - tuck

On the morning of the third day we met Carlos and Emily. They had shown up the night before in their Toyota pickup for some camping and surfing. We talked together and I listened to Carlos tell of a hollow wave just a ways north. Later that morning I paddled into some decent surf further up the point. After lunch we fired up the truck and rolled up to what I will call Flesh Eating Reef. Here is what we got that afternoon.

Carlos ruled this shallow, hard breaking Baja reef. Here he is deep in another barrel.

Another view of Carlos in the barrel. Yes it is really that shallow.

That's me paddling into a little spitter. Should have been deeper... & standing

Me again flying along the reef.

Carlos flying

Carlos loves the Mexican green room

The afternoon glare was intense and so was the wave

What a payoff it was. A couple of days of clean, crowdless surf. My arms and body were getting tired! So when I got knocked off my board in a barrel and Maytag'd onto the sharp ass reef I knew I should paddle in. But, I didn't until the second time it happened and I noticed the blood in the water. I nursed the injury with a little Hornitos and Pacifico and we all had some post session laughs.

Bandages y Ballenas

In the next post: surf video from Baja Sur y Norte will be added as we head back down south to the international peace zone then high tail it north to eat mas langosta, get stung by a scorpion and surf another swell.