notes from baja – looking for the coast

A felicitous mistake, we take the turn off Route 1 to Santa Fe, thinking maybe we’ll be able to reach the coast and head south from there. Our maps are bad for this kind of adventuring.

•

There’s the hippie van we followed out of La Paz, parked right off the road, we stop and chat for a long while with Catherine and Pete, kayakers who live in WA state, moving to NM to build a house. We talk easily about politics and food and travel experiences. Their adopted Mexican dog is car sick. A gift of tangerines.

•

Ok road to Santa Fe, washboard and dusty, but pretty wide and well traveled. Santa Fe has a church and ranches, but no people. We are wanting to get to the Pacific, so we try to head west out of town. Deep into the desert, deep sand in the roads, hard to navigate, little forests of light green foliage, many cows, twisty – difficult travel.

•

Road to the Pacific
Through a desert basin, examining some kind of water project – a canal? A giant pump, some concrete spillways, no water. We examine roadside cuts and find the dirt is full of shells. Sam finds a crab-like structure in the dirt. A chunk of what looks like diatomaceous earth. Pretty, tiny flowers. Finally, a spit of greenish muddy water appears in the canal, some fish, a cormorant.

•

Encouraged by the sight of water, we follow the canal. The ranches seem to have boats and fishing nets, also large piles of oyster shells dot the roadside sand banks. Over each little hill, each curve, we expect to see the coast. When we finally do, it’s a large outlet with a complex array of sandbars, lagoons, bays, surf – and no way south. Some fisherman in a panga try to help us with directions, but we don’t share enough words in common. North to Chales? The road is too sandy, not compact. No way south. Little gas. No choice but to retrace our steps back to La Paz for one more night.

•

The fisherman are sorting through their catch, tossing fish, crab bodies. They give Sam a lobster – we hold it gingerly by the antenna, then take it back to the car and give it a ride on the floor mat until we get to the top of the canal, where we throw it back.

•

Retracing steps to Santa Fe, we stop to check directions at a ranchito. Four young children, laughing. Sam asks their names. I remember Ricardo and Ernesto, the smallest. Ricardo asks for chocolat, but we don’t have any. They laugh at everything, and as we’re leaving one shouts out in English “Thank you!”