It was unique venture into Baja California. The date was July 6
through July 9, 2004. It was a reunion of long time friends relaxing
together, enjoying old memories and making new ones. The cast of
characters was diverse. Eric Flourié, a Mexican native of French descent,
was a chemistry student at SDSU in the late fifties and early sixties. His sister preceded him and was in my chemistry laboratory section in the
mid fifties, and I became a friend of the Flourié family over the years. John Low was a fraternity brother of Eric (aka Kiki)
during the early sixties and they have maintained their friendship and are
neighbors now. The forth Caballero Viejo was Michael Healy oceanographer
and bagpiper of some notoriety and renown. Mike was Eric’s thesis advisor
when he got his Ph.D. in Chemical Oceanography at the University of
Washington. Now he is with NOAA. I will always be grateful to Mike because
he sponsored the only oceanographic trip I have ever participated in.
When we were partially functional, we went about a quarter of a mile
toward the ocean to the Gypsy Campground and had excellent burrito
breakfasts at the elevated Wet Buzzard Saloon. It is elevated because
that area is subject to flooding by high tides with a wind behind them.
This was the first time that I had seen campers in the camp ground
surrounding the restaurant. As Eric and I walked up the ramp to the Wet
Buzzard, what to our wondering eyes should appear but a naked girl facing
us from behind a car door across the street. She was changing clothes
behind the car door from other campers, but facing us. We didn't mind,
but she quickly turned around and completed her change. There is always
something interesting to see in Baja!
Thus alerted, we went up for a
breakfast of machaca and egg burritos, and coffee. After breakfast we took
a tour of the beach. After observing the same girl
To initiate
this adventure, we assembled in
Mike’s room at the Padre Trail Inn in Old Town promptly at seven AM on
Tuesday, tiempo Mexicano. Would you believe nine? I arranged to
leave my truck at the Inn parking lot. John and Mike drove John’s pickup
to Ensenada. Eric and I went in Eric’s Chevy Suburban.
Those who have followed my travels will not be surprised to know that our
first important stop was for brunch along the old road to Rosarito. If
memory serves, it was Javier’s Carnitas. It was Carnitas for sure! We
ordered round after round of hot fresh carnitas tacos, we added the fresh
garnishes, and washed them down with good brewed Mexican coffee. Eric
surely knows how to pick eateries and is experienced enough to know that
tacos must be ordered one at a time, so they are always absolutely fresh
and hot. If you order three at a time, one is hot, one is warm and the
final one is cold. We took a detour north to visit the lots that Eric and
his sister have purchased on a hill looking out over the Pacific and the
Coronado Islands. The coast was still overcast so we didn't get the
complete view, but it has to be just beautiful. His sister’s beautiful
home is under construction but Eric has not broken ground on his yet.
Then we headed for Ensenada. Even when the visibility is poor, it is
still a beautiful drive along a dramatic and varied coastline. In
Ensenada, we assembled in the parking lot of the Mission Santa Isabel
Motel which was built by Eric’s father and is still operated by the
family. John left his pickup in the lot. After a mini-tour of the motel,
we all loaded into the Suburban and started our Baja nostalgia tour in
earnest. We changed dollars to pesos, $11.20 pesos to $1.00 dollar, at
the Casa de Cambio across the street and started south. At the edge of
town we sampled the tamales at Eric’s favorite stand and purchased a dozen
or so for the road. The growth of Mexican and vacation housing along the
coast is somewhat overwhelming. We all want it to stay pristine forever,
of course, but time marches on and more and more people want to enjoy the
coast.
pleasuring her boyfriend between the dunes, we took the road which runs
about four miles southeast along the spit which forms the south side of
San Quintin Bay. There were only a few spots wet enough to make us feel
safer with four wheel drive. On the tip of the spit there were several
pickups, trailers and pangas belonging to local fishermen. There was also an abandoned
house and a functioning navigational light. The spit on the Pacific side
of the bay is only a little over a half mile to the west.
We back tracked to the Celito Lindo and then went north of San Quintin and
around the north end of the bay. Our first stop was at several of the
pits where the volcanic ash from the landmark cinder cones is recovered
for roofing and other uses. The ash forms very distinctive layers from a
fraction of an inch to several inches thick. The ash varies from dark red
to black and some of the bands are separated by a white layer of caliche. Eric needed vesicular basalt of this type for his hydroponic tomato
greenhouses, but the shipping from here to Santa Rosalia was prohibitively
expensive and he found a source near Santa Rosalia.
Next we stopped at an oyster shed in one of the four oyster farms on False
Bay. Because Eric speaks Spanish, he talked to the oyster men and
translated for us. Two boys were using small hand picks to trim oyster
shells to a palm size and to poke a hole in each.
These shells will be hung, spaced out, on
cords. Oyster sprat are shipped from Oregon and seeded onto the shells. The cords of seeded shells are hung from floats in the bay and about two
years later, the oysters have reached almost a foot in length and are
harvested. The two men were doing the harvesting. Eric declined to buy
any because we didn't have a proper ice chest and large oysters are not
the best to eat.
Our first stop was to see Eric’s son-in-law in San Vicenté. This man is a
real entrepreneur. He has a small hardware shop where he also fabricates
assemblies, for instance electrical service heads, and he has constructed
a small cannery for local vegetables like nopales (prickly pears). He is
bright, energetic and outgoing. Then we went on to San Quintin where I
lost my job as highway guide when I went right past the turnoff for the La
Pinta Hotel and Celito Lindo Motel (www.bajasi.com). After all, I hadn't been there since June of last year when I sat on that
road for an hour waiting for our wet and muddy cyclists to show up.
Another senior moment.
Due to my laxity, we were late for the sixty
minute happy hour at the Celito Lindo Bar. I bought the drinks, was
forgiven my errors and was reinstated as guide when off the pavement
only. We had dinner at our patio table, but I forgot what we got. Then
we retired to our four person room. Everyone but John Low got a pretty
good bed, but John got a marginal cot with kind of stale bedding. Eric
tried an experiment of trying to sleep without his sleep apnea pump. The Celito Lindo is on a generator, so the power is off from ten PM until 7
AM. He purchased a power inverter so that he can run the pump on twelve
volts, but who wants to sleep in the car if there is a nice bed handy. The experiment was basically a failure so he got a lousy night’s sleep.
Neither the toilet nor the shower worked in our unit and in the morning we
grumbled our way over to the bar for morning coffee.
From the oyster farms we went around False Bay to the Pacific shore and
the seven mile peninsula which separates False Bay and San Quintin Bay
from the Pacific Ocean. We went a little way south on the sand, but the
tide was in and we couldn't make a long safe drive down the beach, so we
went back to the road north along the coast. Our first stop was at the
little fishing village of La Chorera. This town is on a rough black
volcanic headland where the surf crashes dramatically. The small iron
crucifix which formerly adorned the rocks has disappeared. The last time
I saw it, someone had placed a lamp shade on top as if to shade it from
the hot sun. The road along the dunes north of town is all in relatively
soft sand. Without lowering the tire pressure, the Suburban took us
along without hesitation except on a couple of soft upgrades which
required a little run for momentum. We looked down on the beaches covered
with smooth rounded rocks which were being hand bagged for sale.
Then we
came upon the ponds where salt is harvested. The source of the salt and
of the water are not obvious because the ponds appear to be well above sea
level. Our doctors of oceanography, Healy and Flourié, tasted the product
and pronounced it to be good pure salt. Just north of the salt pans, I
told them that the road ends in a marsh and we would not be able to go
farther up the coast. Well, the drought had dried all of the shallow
lakes and bogs, so we just kept going and going and going. Often we drove
on the smooth margins of dried ponds. That was my second bad off-highway
call of the day, so I was in jeopardy of losing my off-highway guide
credential also. We came to a farm on a bluff and had to go quite a
distance inland to get around it, but once we were up on the bluff, we
shortly found a road which took us back to the cliff over the shore. We
ate lunch on the cliff with a great view all the way up to Punta Camalú.
