February 2022
The platinum rule of adventure: If an off-road alternative exists- take it, so we were thrilled to find that the Baja Divide trail kicked back up from Punta Abreojos leading into San Ignacio. An alternate route that also happens to bypass an infamously intense military checkpoint? Well that’s just the cherry on-top. Cue the worst beating Mako has ever taken, with the added anxiety of a ticking clock.
The trail began exactly as expected, mildly bumpy, predictable desert landscape, then all of a sudden the radio blinks out. Headlights flickering, Austin follows a hunch out to the battery and finds we’re at a whopping 8.3 volts, our 4 month old alternator had failed. We unplug and turn off everything in sight, if the trail continues as it has, we should be there soon enough, and we might just make it to camp before the car dies completely. Almost as though the trail is mocking us, it morphs rudely into an intense, level 7, rock crawling exercise that I would never have wanted Mako on period, let alone when she had no real batter power.
Every time we crest the top of another technical hill I feel my hopes inflate, this has to be it, the trail must flatten out, and each time I’m bitterly disappointed. This feels personal. When at last the trail does level out its in a bizarrely mixed jungle of cacti, palm trees, and rocks, so thick that I need to take the wheel while Austin walks in front cutting down the low slung branches doing their best to impede us. Cringing with each branch that screams through Mako’s paint job, and neck aching from glancing back at the voltage reading every few moments, it’s with massive relief that we see the trees thinning. A light at the end of the tunnel, and it only took four hours solid off-roading to get there.
Luckily, Los Petates, our campsite for the night is only a few minutes away, and when we park it’s with the exhausted air of two people who never want to move again. But anything is possible with the promise of tacos, and the Tsavos offer to drive us around the corner to a Baja Racer hot-spot called Rice and Beans.
Even without the previous tip-off, one look inside the Rice and Beans dining room is enough to tell this restaurant is highly trafficked, stickers cover every conceivable surface and signed posters hang proudly from the walls. A particularly dramatic telenovela playing softly in the background distracts me as I peruse the menu, I order mine and Austin’s food plus a couple margaritas while a tearful woman on the tv drops to her knees and wails at the sky. The margaritas arrive shortly and I’m watching a man with the most magnificent mustache scheme in a dark library, when my absorption is at last broken by what is truly the most incredible margarita I’ve ever had, bigger than my head, the perfect flavor to alcohol ratio, exactly what I needed after spending the day being shaken like a popcorn kernel.
After dinner, Austin and I spend some time googling parts stores and the only ones google deemed worthy to show us were located in San Felipe and Loreto. We posted to the Baja Overlanding Facebook page to see whether anyone was heading our way from either of those towns only to find that our search was laughably incomplete. A group member in the know helpfully informed us that a huge Autozone is located a mere 41 miles away in Vizcaino, a distance our friends @tsavotouring were willing to embark upon with us.
I refuse to get my hopes up until we’ve called to confirm that they have our alternator in stock. Forgetting for a moment that I’m in another country and my Spanish does not extend to the technical world of Toyota info, I dial up the part store. “Buenas Dias” A woman greets me, I stutter in broken spanish about needing an alternator, wishing desperately that I had rehearsed this call and maybe wrote down some flashcards before hand.
The woman gives up immediately, passing the phone to a man who repeats “buenos Dias”. Better prepared now that I’ve already used this sentence, I tell him in espanol “I’m looking for an alternator for a 1999 Toyota”. “Esta Bien” Yay! he understands me! He asks if I know the part number, I grab Austin’s phone and after my attempt at saying DLG5568-4-4 in spanish (it came out like: dehlehgeh cinco cinco seis ocho oh-shit-how-do-you-say-dash-in-spanish?)he apparently loses patience and a third, now female, voice booms; “Buenas Dias”. How could he just give up on me like that without warning, I thought we were connecting? After a moment of stunned silence on my part, I utter a flustered “Siento” and just hang up, not terribly interested in embarrassing myself for a third time in the course of one phone call. In the end, a fluent spanish speaking friend of @tsavo_courtney simplifies matters by calling and deducing for us in seconds that, yes, they have our alternator.
Friday morning we pass through the checkpoint we’d been so eager to skip, prepared for the worst. Friends and aquintnces have described this checkpoint as intense, based off our previous experience with the Mexicali-Tecate checkpoint we’re anticipating a 30-40 minute wait outside the car while they open and inspect every square inch of Andrew’s jeep. We pull up to the checkpoint and speak to the intimidating, dark eyed man dressed for action in beige fatigues, he asks us all to step out of the car and to declare where we’re going, I sit on the concrete step, ready to settle in for a while, when the man looks up and says to us “okay, you can go”.
Barely a minute has passed, arguably one of the easiest checkpoints we’ve been to, our intel could clearly use a refresh. An hour later, newly purchased alternator in hand, we begin discussing with each other, “hmm, maybe it’s only incoming traffic they give a hard time to” That theory is soundly discredited as our return trip doesn’t even require hitting the breaks, and the smiling man simply waves us into town without so much as asking our names.
San Ignacio is Baja’s beautiful date filled oasis and one of our favorite towns so far. Dates rule over the Pueblo, they litter the ground, flavor the shakes, top the pies and fill the bread, I may still be suffering the effects of a mild date overdose. The impressive facade of Mision San Ignacio Kadakaaman (1728-1840) steals the show, standing proudly at the head of the picturesque square.
As we arrive in Santa Roselia the next afternoon, it’s immediately evident that this town is steeped in history. We squeeze through streets, bustling vendors on one side, the towering remains of a booming copper mine on the other. As we wind through town I read about it’s past between glances out my window, regaling Austin with each fascinating new tid-bit. Santa Roselia boomed in the late 1800’s after the discovery of copper drove miners and wealth seekers to begin staking claims in the area, this was further reinforced when, in 1884, the Mexican government sent a formal commission to provide a full mineral evaluation of Baja. In the years that followed several international mining companies would take interest in Santa Roselia but none so thoroughly as France, who were primarily responsible for the mining ruins that still stand today, the remnants of their massive base of operations and, briefly, the most productive copper mine in all of Mexico. Predictably, as with any town who earns its roots in mining, Santa Roselia would see many years of poor treatment, forced labor of the Yaqui Indians, uprisings, degrading policies (company employees were forbidden from marrying Mexicans), and decimating illnesses. In the center of town sits an intricate church, acquired in 1897 by the owner of the mine during a visit to Brussels, Belgium. Originally slated for a town in Africa, and the wood eating ants that call it home, the church had been constructed entirely of metal and was designed by none other than Gustave Eiffel (yes, as in responsible for the Eiffel Tower, Eiffel) Ironically, this purchase would stand as an iconic reminder of Santa Roselia historic entanglement with France. From the window of the local coffee shop I can see the small black locomotive, resting peacefully in the center of a small manicured park, a sentinel reminder, and the last vestiges from the French mine that gave rise to what is now a beautifully busy, town in its own right.
I couldn’t wait to discover the historic easter eggs hidden throughout Santa Roselia, but alas, the weather had other things in mind. Free camping close to town was nothing short of an oceanside wind-tunnel/dumpster, stepping outside to check whether it was too much for our pop-top to handle, the door was instantly torn from my hand by a ripping gale as I dodged a flying juice bottle turned air Bourne missile. Nope, this wasn’t going to work. Reluctantly, we bid farewell to my new favorite town in Baja and headed toward Mulege.
Our morning in Mulege began at the crack of dawn, we’d spent the previous night scouring Ioverlander for a worthy welding shop and had set our sights on Taller Oscar’s to get the broken cab mount on Mako repaired. A burly man walks out to greet us as we ease into the narrow street and he gestures for us to just pull right into the shop. We hop out and exchange some buenas Dias’s and move to show him the issue, Austin asks me how to say “our cab mount is cracked, can you weld it?” In spanish, but thankfully Oscar waves his hand with a smile and assures us he understands.
Oscar bends to take a look at the damage and without a moments hesitation tells us he’ll need some time, but it’s no problem at all, they can do it. Delighted, we fill a backpack with supplies for a day of walking around Mulege, and promise to return between 1 and 2 p.m. thanking him repeatedly as we make our exit.
A flawlessly sunny day stretches before us and we explore every inch of town, we walk into nearly every shop, purchase a beach blanket, visit the Mulege Mision, and most importantly, finally track down a locally made tres leches cake, sold by the slice. Tres Leches is my favorite dessert ever. When planning this trip, I had pictured myself sampling the delectable treat in every town until I found the definitive best-in-existence. The reality was a devastating let down: bakeries only selling the cakes in full 4-pound sheets, and Austin repeatedly having to reason with me that it would not fit in our fridge and did I really want to eat something like 3,000 calories in one sitting. So I am not exaggerating when I say that the tres leches at Mago’s was a top three highlight of our entire stay in Baja
Around one, we begin walking back to Oscar’s, figuring we’d arrive at 1:30 and that would be perfect, a few blocks away from his shop, Oscar comes riding up on his dirt bike and says our timing is indeed perfect, he was just on his way to come find us. We follow behind him, back to the shop, and Mako is pristine, he charges us 1900 pesos ($97 US) for five hours of work and as we’re getting ready to leave I practice my spanish, and he his English discussing which restaurants he thinks we should check out and our plans to visit the interior states of Mexico. He warns us to be careful, the people of Baja are nice, but that is not so in interior Mexico, and we must keep on our guard from the cartels. A mere week away from boarding the ferry to Mazatlan we try not to dwell on this as we continue south to La Paz, after all, people had said the same about Baja.
Our time in Loreto, and then La Paz is dominated by the undeniable contrast we see between ourselves and tourists. Our few interactions with the cruise ship set make me feel more alien than ever. We feel more comfortable in the company of locals, despite the steep language barrier, than we do with tourists from our home-country, who have a habit of shouting at waiters as though they’re hard of hearing, rather than bothering to learn the tongue of the country they’re in.
Our time in these spanglish cities is likewise uneventful, the only thing of note to transpire being the Super Bowl, our first spent away from family, was instead enjoyed in spanish at the best sushi bar I’ve ever been to, an odd culture collision that works none-the-less, highly recommended. Fast forward a few days, a clear blue morning two months into our Baja journey, we officially sign the paperwork for our TIP and prepare our good-byes to the state that launched our international adventure.
One of the most bewitching aspects of Baja lies in the sheer magnitude of ecological diversity that exists on this small peninsula. A week ago, as we wandered among the knarled roots of a mangrove forest, we took inventory of our previous weeks in Baja: forest, desert, ocean, jungle, mountains… not to mention the urban influence in cities like Ensanada, La Paz, Cabo, etc. There’s a little something for everyone, it’s no wonder every overlander we’ve come across has repeated “I’ve been coming here for years!” A decade from now I’m sure we’ll be saying the same thing.
In every local interaction, we met nothing but open friendliness, the business owners we patronized were genuinely pleased to show tourists what they had to offer and it hardly needs to be said that the food rarely fell short of amazing. Settled snuggly aboard our ferry, San Gorge, we watch the sparkling outline of La Paz sink into the horizon, the familiar excitement of exploration tugging at my gut as we look toward the enigmatic beauty that waits for us in mainland Mexico. First stop: Mazatlan.