If you didn’t read the last post in this series, you may want to go back and read it first. driving baja: day one – crossing the border
On the second day, we got on the road at the crack of dawn. The weather was beautiful if a bit windy, and we continued our journey down the East coast. The rock here seemed to turn more volcanic and the wind was so intense at Punta Final that we could see the dust clouds pushing in off the water to the interior from miles away. After this point, Highway 5 turns west to the interior and we left the choppy waters behind.
One of the things I love about traveling is how my brain will complete a picture of an area before I have seen it. Once there, the reality is almost always different. Expectations are funny that way. I had assumed (from descriptions I’ve heard) that the northern coast on the sea of cortez was calm, crystal clear shallow waters – which was not the case when we drove through. Contrastingly, the wind was intense and the beaches very exposed, it felt much more isolated and wild than I had imagined.
The interior desert was also different than my visions. We were very lucky that recent rains had been drenching the desert so everything was green and in full bloom. While it was expansive, it felt more intimate to me – possibly because I have spent so much time in the desert. I had a lot of time to absorb it, because pretty soon after we turned toward the interior, we lost the pavement due to a massive civic project to repave the highway. We struggled over about 40 kilometers of rocky and very rough dirt roads – which was do-able, but took a long time. At this point, we still had our Subaru Crosstrek which was at its max towing capacity, so it was super stressful driving. Luckily, the desert was stunning; blooming agave with its bright yellow/orange flower clouds, ocotillo peppering the horizon with red-orange fireworks and Seuss-like boojum trees with chartreuse leaves climbing up to the blue sky. It seemed as though every turn we made boasted a new set of flora – many species that can only be found on the Baja Peninsula.
When pavement finally met us again, it was close to where we met up with Highway 1 and we followed that South to Guerrero Negro where it turns east to cross the Peninsula again.
Our stop for the night was a cute little town in the middle called San Ignacio. We arrived in the late afternoon, so sat outside at a café flanking the central square for our first meal “out” since we started the journey. The tacos were welcome and the cold beer even more so. Practicing our Spanish at the table, we showed the owner some of our flash cards and laughed about the phrases. San Ignacio is definitely worth the stop. In the 1700’s, a Jesuit priest built the charming mission pictured here and also planted hundreds of date palms to create a new form of income for the residents. We toured the Mission, got some ice cream at a local shop and then headed to a campground near the freshwater lake in town. A friendly duck, who was definitely used to being fed, hung around our camp and we were even able to pet it. We rigged up the sun shower to rinse off and turned in early so we could get on the road again bright and early.
