Road trip: Day 6

Started the day by picking some fresh grapefruit, oranges and pomegranates for the road.  Drove just south of town to La Parcela #12, a restaurant that was recommended by the guys last night.  It's all you can eat breakfast where they have about 15 different pans of food and they make you a plate with whatever you want.  Lots of choices and everything we tried was good.  As we were eating, the man who ran the place was filling jars with local honey.  He must have seen Brett drooling as he asked him if he wanted to try it.  Of course Brett said yes and he made Brett what would almost be considered a dessert.  He used a fresh hot corn tortilla (they normally use flour, but we let him know we needed corn) and filled it will fresh white cheese and honey and rolled it up.  Brett said it was delicious, although he did wish he could have tried it on a flour tortilla.  Lunch was 170 pesos ($13.60 US).

After breakfast we hit the road headed to Catavina.  We quickly got out of the farmland area and soon hit high desert where cacti was all you saw.  The landscape then changed to a mixture of cacti and boulders, then to just boulders and back to cacti.  We stopped at a model home on the beach.  Hey, we can dream, right?  If you're willing to be hundreds of miles from pretty much anywhere, this gorgeous view can be yours for only $250k US!

As we were driving along, we passed 3 bicyclists, one of which was on a tall bike.  We pulled over shortly after passing them so they could catch up to us and we could find out their story.  It's a husband and wife and a friend and they started in Canada and are headed to Panama.  Geez, just when you start to think you are adventurous, you meet up with these folks!  They have a little booklet they made up that tells a little about their bikes and their journey and they are passing those out for donations to help along the way. (7 years ago, we met Peter, an 18 year old from the UK who was bicycling from Canada to Argentina.  His bicycle and broken and we drove him a day and a half to Loreto where he could get it fixed.)  We exchanged information with them and they will be doing a performance about their trip in Las Ventanas and they'll send us the info in case we are in that area when they do it.  You can read more about them by finding them on facebook at Tall Bike Bobby.

I would have gotten out of the car for the picture but didn't want to have to find my shoes:-)

We hit a military checkpoint and our inspection took about 15 seconds. They asked us to roll down the back windows, took a quick peak inside and then okayed us to continue on.

Our plan was to get to either Bajia de Los Angeles or perhaps just Catavina depending on how long it took us. The drive isn't far, but the road is narrow and only two lanes so you have to be very cautious.  A general rule of the road is that if someone is behind you wanting to pass, you put on your left blinker letting them know when it's safe.  I still find it interesting that you trust the person in front of you with your life and that you'd better hope they truly aren't getting ready to make a left turn!!  The road is dotted with dozens of memorials to those who didn't heed the warnings of driving slow and cautious.  Many of the memorials are elaborate like this one.

We just passed through the town of El Rosario when we realized we should probably get gas as we didn't know when the next reliable place would be, so we turned around and went back to fill up.  In the end it was a good thing we did as it was 183 miles before the next gas station.

There's not much in Catavina and we still had some daylight hours so we decided to keep going and make it to Bajia de Los Angeles which is a side trip 42 miles off Hwy 1.  We were pleasantly surprised to find the road was paved and in great condition the entire way. While there weren't many other cars on Hwy 1 in this section, the junction to Bajia de Los Angeles was downright desolate. In the whole 42 miles, we only saw 3 other cars.  And of course as luck would have it,  one of those was as we were stopped on the side of the road for a potty break.  Hey, don't judge.  It's a long trek through the dessert with minimal facilities.  What we did see more of than cars, was cows.  This is why you don't drive the Baja at night. Animals free range and you certainly don't want to hit one of these guys.

We got into "town" (our AAA book says population is 800) just as it was getting dark.  We found a campground (120 pesos / $9.60 US) and got set up with the aid of our headlights.  There's only one other tent here.  We realized we hadn't eaten since breakfast so had a quick snack of cheese and crackers to hold us over till morning.

As we were eating, we heard the distinct sound of whales blowing, so we decided to take a walk down to the water.  What we found was spectacular! The tide was out and we could walk on the rocks and see all kinds of sea life in the tide pools. It was so cool to look closely and see everything alive and moving. We wandered around for about an hour before deciding we should get the camera.  We then went back out for another hour or so. We were like two little kids in a really awesome science class, oohing an ahhing.  If anyone on shore could hear us, all they heard was stuff like  "look at this", "come over here", "wow, so cool".  Brett said it was like snorkeling without having to get wet.

When our flashlights were off it was pitch black except for the stars.  At one point, we had our lights off and we saw what looked like little eyes coming from the rocks.  It took us awhile, but we figured out that in that area, the pressure of us stepping on the rocks would create a small fluorescent glow that would last for just a short while before fading away.  No idea what causes the glow, but it was neat to keep the lights out and see the path you just took glowing like little eyes. Nature is amazing.

Now we're back in our tent ready for bed, listening to the rising tide and the blowing of the whales, and knowing we are blessed.

Here's some pics from the sea.  We also saw lots of octopi but the sneaky little things didn't want their picture taken.  Each time we would shine the light on them, they would immediately bury themselves in the sand.