Is the theme for this trip. I did manage to get some decent pics, however. I've also copied the bulk of the article I posted to Amigos de Baja, for those of you who don't frequent that site. When we got to the casa, it was intact. No return of the band of thieves from last year that plagued the entire coast from Gonzaga to Los Delfines. Rumor has it the policia finally came over from Ensenada and ran `em off. Oddly enough, this jurisdiction (ayuntimiento) is a precinct of Ensenada rather than Mexicali. Someone probably had to bribe them to DO their job, rather than not do it, for a change. We got in Saturday night. The winds were calm. We watched lightning in the thunderstorms to the east. We hit the hay, anticipating a good few days fishing. Until about midnight, that is. The north wind caused by the Santa Ana up north blew in. The trailer was a-rockin' and a-rollin'. When we woke up Sunday morning, the Cortez looked like the north shore of Oahu.
It whipped up so much spray, that you could feel the water hit you all the way up on the cliff.
Out on Isla San Luis, the dust storm off the south end was....well, dusty.
They may not have been the biggest waves I've seen here, but I've seen none bigger. It blew so hard that the sand hurt when it pelted you in the face after being kicked up by the gale-force winds. Monday, it got a little more civilized. It was still too unpleasant to spend much time out side, but the sand quit pounding you. Eddie was brave enough to stand out on the cliff by his campo.
While Cathy soaked up some sun in our new hammock.
Oh, well. I spent the 2 days indoors fixing all the stuff that the thieves broke. Tuesday it quit blowing, but not enough for the waves to diminish and allow boating. It's always nice to be in Baja though, at least when the ladrones are gone. Plenty of cold cervezas and good food sure beats working in San Diego. The pre-dawn toward the point was pretty, as usual.
It looked even cooler with Venus as the morning star.
The winds were calm, like I said, but the rollers were way too high to launch. Here's an Island view.
And a view to the north.
A Magnificent Frigatebird soared over head. Too bad I missed the parade over the cliff when the wind was blowin'.
A couple of Yellow-footed Gulls kept him company.
I got a shot of the updated campo, looking south.
That night, a nice sunset appeared over the Sierra after some clouds blew in.
I forgot to switch on the "Panorama" feature of my new digital camera. It would have matched the exposure and gotten rid of the "seam". Meanwhile, Bruce filmed Eddie with his new digicamcorder.
Finally, before I left, I had to film the new additions to the "Rafter of Fame", in memory of all those beloved critters that gave their lives for Baja and became mummified in the process. Left to right, a Common Ground-dove, a Sicklefin Smoothound Shark, a Sea Urchin, a Spotted Bay Bass, and an unidentified Marine Turtle.
Whoops...forgot to shrink it down to size. One accomplishment during this trip was I burped the refrigerator. In the meantime, Cathy has a new reefer to put into our main trailer, while the old one will go into the old trailer. Fascinating, eh? This was just a lead-in. I surfed the web trying to figure out how those infernal propane reefers worked. I found this really cool animated GIF that explains it all. I guess you have to be a fellow techno-geek to appreciate it, but I know that there's at least a few of you out there.
Some (repeat some) good news here. They've actually done some work on the road between SF and Puertecitos. Consistent with what's posted on the San Felipe Live website, the road is in good shape down to about Km 30, near Campo Santa Maria. After that, it goes to hell for about 2 or 3 miles, then, remarkably, another 5 - 6 miles appears to have been repaired, although not resurfaced. The job that they're doing when they resurface seems reasonably good. It appears as if they've regraded the entire roadbed and repaved it. Where the road has merely been repaired, i.e. potholes filled in, etc., expect it to go to shit quickly. After that final shot at repair, at about the 33 mile point south of the "Laguna Chapala" turnoff down by the airport, the road naturally gets worse every day. It's still hammered on the big straight-away and for quite away thereafter. It then gets decent again for a number of miles, along the stretch that they fixed reasonably well, pre-Nora. At the end of that recently fixed stretch, it is completely destroyed all the rest of the way to Puertecitos. Nothing new there...that stretch has been destroyed for a number of years...pre-Nora I think. More good news on the way back...they were working on it, working their way south from Campo Santa Maria. It would be nice to see this job done. It's been a real pain-in-the-ass driving down for the last two years after Nora. If they'd have fixed it quickly after the storm, it would have cost much less. They wasted their budget money fixing the vados. It took me 1 hour and 25 minutes to go from the south Pemex station to Puertecitos. Better than the nearly 2 hours it took last time (Memorial Day).
As for the stretch between Puertecitos and Encantadas, it's deteriorated significantly since Memorial Day. This seems to be typical. Whatever storms they get during the Chabusco season do whatever they do. This year, the rain appeared to have rid the road of most of its ballast. The bedrock roadbed was exposed in many places. This made for a very cautious drive across the mountains. The good news was that there weren't any washouts. It was even quite bumpy down the first 6 miles to Campo La Costilla. I always figured the rich guy with the big house there bribed whomever needed bribed to keep it graded. When you dropped from Huerfanito Grade at the 20 mile point, down to the flats below, it changed from rocks to serious washboard. Not too uncommon. After the flats, the trip through the hills wasn't terribly bad, but not good either. Nothing too extraordinary. The washout at Arroyo Las Palmitas still detours...why bother fixing it. I never did understand why someone would install a puny culvert in a awesome wash like that. After the trip through these low hills, the road again hits the flats at a place I call the Yorgo turnoff. There used to be a sign there that said "Yorgo", but it's no longer there. In any case, it's 32 miles south of Puertecitos. From there south, it was more washboard, but you could "fly" it reasonably.
See y'all after Y2K, but it's not the turn of the millennium. That's next year. For the record. Now, go back to
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Web page design and all images contained herein, except where indicated otherwise, are © 1999 Dean R. Charles and are the exclusive property of the author/photographer. Limited license is granted to download these images for personal use, or to use these images on a non-commercial basis. Any other use is prohibited without express written permission of the owner. Violators will be mounted on the beam of the veranda after you dry-out and quit stinking.
The animated gif was copied from somewhere else. It didn't say it was copyrighted. If you own it...sue me.
