Mike and the Sea of Cortez

Coming back over the dunes, I asked Mike to stop for a second so I could shoot this photo of him with a great view of the Sea of Cortez. Pretty cool place we are, down here, eh?

Mom's in the Water

Artie perked up quite a bit when I was fishing. The tide was so low, that I walked out about 250 yards from the beach into the water, and it was still only hip high. Thousands of minnows swarmed all around me. Right smack in front of me was a school of mullet, or Lisa, as the Mexicans call them. About a foot long, but they are plankton eaters, so the only way to catch them would be with a net...not good to eat anyway, so there would be no point. I didn't catch a fish that day because the tide was wrong. Advice from Mike? Fish an hour before high tide until an hour after high tide. That's the best. Right now high tide is in the middle of the night, but I had a super fun time anyway....Mike sat on the beach, read and played with Artie.

Happy Dog

Mike and I rode past Garbage Beach (yep, there is garbage on that part), over the sand dunes, and horsed around on the pretty coved beach there. Cars can't get there, so it is pretty secluded and a nice place to shore fish, read, or play with Artie. Here is a shot of Artie resting in the shade of the ATV after chasing a ball, and just about everything else he could find.

Dinner at Ray's

Couple of nights ago many of the local gringos decided we would all go to Ray's Restaurant. Ray is a Cuban, originally from Havana. The food at his restaurant is fantastic, and the view at sunset is staggeringly beautiful...maybe we will get out there again soon and take some photos of the sunset, instead of corny photos like this one, well...I guess I am the only corny looking one.

Mike and Gary

Two goofy guys in the kitchen

Roadrunner

Mike and I drove out in the boonies a few days ago, and spotted a pair of Roadrunners. Mike said he had never seen two at the same time.

Yesterday took the big boat out with pals Tracy and Gary. Caught eight different types of fish. Usually it is one or two, so this was fun. Greenjack, Pinto Bass, Tile Fish, Red Snapper, Cabrillo, Cortez Grunt, Lizard Fish and Barracuda. A good time was had by all, except for Gary who only caught one fish, end of the day. Tides were low by 11 AM so we had to head back in pronto, and about ten minutes from home we saw an enormous amount of birds diving and swarming. Boy, did we want to get over there and see what all the commotion was about, but that darned tide forced us to just be good and get on in. Here is a photo of a couple of the fish we caught yesterday. They don't look too happy, but we were with some tempura, a fantastic spinach salad made by Tracy, and some baked French fries.

Junga's regulars and scary kitchen

Our local wateringhole is Junga's, or Jungle Jim's. Here is a shot of some of the regulars who mostly walk there from our neighborhood to swap lore, lies and fishing stories...am I being redundant? Mike made the mistake of going into Lupe's kitchen and taking a couple of photos. Not sure I am actually going to eat there anymore after seeing those photos, but if I do, I will be sure to top it with lots of hot sauce!

Maria's

Mike and I, along with Tracy and Gary, trudged up to see Maria's latest art glass/concrete creation. We had sort of committed ourselves to buying her latest piece last year when it was only about ten percent finished, but seemed to have great promise as being her most spectacular piece yet. Learning that it had now taken her about a full year, and with the economy in the youknowwhere, we began to worry about the price of this little art investment. Can't believe Mike didn't take a photo of it while we were there. Guess we are all too awestruck to remember that....meaning the piece was unbelievably gorgeous, and the price was about $20,000. We took a sad pass on buying it, but spent another hour being lectured by Maria on the care and feeding of cacti, and her garden is pretty impressive. That might just be Mike's new project, building a cactus garden here in Mulege

Heading Home

The tide was so high in the morning that we had only a little area of escape, so we loaded everything and took off over the dunes toward La Purisma, which turned out to be pretty much a ghost town, as well as San Isidro. Kind of creepy. We didn't see even one person in either town anywhere, and this was around noon on Saturday. The drive going home was pretty scary. We had to cross lots of water, thought we were completely lost when we came to the end of the road...or so it seemed. Backed up, turned around, and half an hour later came across an old slatted pickup truck with a Mexican couple in it. They had a tow-haired blue-eyed girl of about six years in between them...really seemed out of place, specially since these were the only people we had seen ALL day. Seems we had been on the right road all along, so we turned around again and reached the end of the universe where I had my only meltdown of the entire trip. Mike is a spectacular driver and managed to creep down that steep non-road hill and get us back home safely after another three hours of grueling driving.

All set up at San Gregorio

Here is Mike stoking the fire with driftwood we gathered on the beach. I stood in knee-deep in the water and finally caught dinner. A nice fat corvina, probably 8-10 pounds. Really yummy. We brought fresh green beans and little white potatoes, a bottle of good wine. Nothing like roughing it

Cool Camper on Beach

...or this lovely camper. Not very pretty, but a great view!

On the way to San Gregorio

Leaving San Juanico we drove down the sand for about half an hour, heading to the estuary in San Gregorio. The tide was super low, and we camped on a finger of land, had a ripping good time.

Sometimes the things you see at the beach are VERY interesting, like this land shark

Roy Rogers Sign

Roy Rogers

Climbing up the mountains, down into the riverbed, over rocks and finally into San Juanico. This is a small town with lots of Americans....well, old surfers (our ages), all very friendly. We stopped and talked to a couple of them about fishing. They suggested we try off a cliff, so Mike bravely walked out to the edge...mind you this is probably a hundred feet high, cast out one time, got vertigo immediately, and then backed away from the edge. That is when we checked into our enclosed palapa for the night in Scorpion Bay. The deluxe unit had windows, doors and even screens. We put down out king-sized pillowtop air mattress, our zipped-together sleeping bags, and headed up the walkway for an adult beverage. This is one beautiful place in Baja where you can see the spectacular sunsets, then wake up to another gorgeous sunrise without moving to another location. We passed a big sign with Roy Rogers on it. Cute weather info.

Shot of winding riverbed

Parts of the trip found up climbing higher and higher, then dropping down again to keep crossing the river. Here is a pretty good shot of the riverbed.

Crossing the riverbed

During the six hour drive it took us to get to San Juanico, we saw only two other cars. The trip entailed driving back and forth over a riverbed, sometimes dry, sometimes not.

Mulege, San Juanico, San Gregorio, LaPurisma San Isidro

Took off from Mulege and headed down Ice House Road planning on getting to San Juanico at a fair clip. Too bad we got lost trying to get out of town. Three-way dirt road split with no signage, so we doubled back to Ray's Restaurant. Fortunately, Ray was standing arounde and pointed us in the right direction. Down the same road we had been on, past all the cows, turning right where the electric lines crossed. Climbed through the mountains, so here is a shot or two of that.

Driving anywhere in Baja one often sees shrines along the roads to honor those who didn't quite make the drive home again.,

Me outside our room at Hotel California.

Finally got to the Hotel California in Todos Santos. Bright colors everywhere, lots of blown glass vases and light fixtures, art on every wall including the female image leading to the bathroom outside the bar

Up in the Sierra de Lagunas Mike took me to the most gorgeous area with pools of clear water and this enormous ficus tree. We thought we would do a little gold panning, but the sand was full of mica, and not gold.

Waterfall

Mike and I went into the Canyon La Zorra (Fox) to a stunning waterfall. There is now a fairly decent dirt path down there, and as a consequence there were about a dozen people horsing around in the water. We chose not to go down to the bottom, though we would have if nobody else had been there.

Santiago Zoo

Shot of the Zoologico sign. This was a tiny zoo in Santiago. They had two big cats. A scruffy old lion, and this tiger who appeared to be blissfully sleeping after a meal of...well, see all the white feathers next to his head? Near his cage was another cage with white rabbits, clearly cat food, and somewhere must have been a cage with white birds.

More shots of El Triunfo. An interesting wall with lots of different types of stone, and incorporated into the wall were test cones from the smelting tower. Just to give you an idea of the height of the tower here is a shot of me walking toward it.