Whale Watching and Spanish Missions

As we headed south of San Felipe along the Sea of Cortez we were continually amazed at the amount of flower blooms all across the desert landscape. The road (Mexico Hwy 5) was also amazing, right up until we reached our first ‘out of order’ bridge. Fortunately, we were expecting this! Having been advised by Susan and Chuck that a hurricane last year had damaged many of the bridges south of San Felipe. The solution to the problem was fairly simple; drive off the road and through the dry (for now) river bed and back up the other side and continue onward. Most of these detours were short and simple, but a few were quite challenging – very steep and covered with dirt ‘moguls’. As it turned out, this was just the beginning of some of the most difficult off-road riding we have done since the Dempster Highway. We survived it all mostly unscathed, with a few low speed spills and one broken ‘tool tube’ (repaired roadside with my trusty Leatherman and a large pipe clamp).

Over the last month we have had the pleasure to visit a number of beautiful Spanish missions (San Borja, San Ignacio, Mulege, San Javier, Loreto, and Todos Santos). The oldest mission we saw was over 300 years old and still holding services for the faithful. The Masses are well attended since 85% of Mexicans are practicing Catholics. The pride and joy that the Mexican people take in sharing their history and culture is a wonderful experience for outsiders such as ourselves! In addition to the many churches we also made a side trip to see cave paintings that are dated at 5,000 BC. The pristine condition of the colored drawings after so many years was incredible! Though I did have a hard time not fixating on how painful it would have been to spend hours drawing on the underside of a large rock outcropping – my neck hurt just looking at them for 20 minutes!

We were immensely fortunate to be able to go ‘whale watching’ here in Baja. I used quotes because it was like no other whale experience we have had in our lives. We had forty foot Grey whales swimming under our small boat and less than five feet from our eagerly outstretched hands! We saw whales breaching and crashing back into the lagoon in an explosion of white water. We had a mother and her fifteen foot ‘baby’ swimming around our boat for almost twenty minutes. Sometimes we had whales visible in every direction around our boat. All in all…an absolute jaw dropping experience! And one that can only be had in Baja. The whales here have been interacting with people since the 1970s and the mothers even ‘introduce’ their calves to people.

A succinct weather update for our time in Baja would be: Windy! Not every single day, but most days the wind has been blowing around us or blowing us around (on the bikes). Because we are on motorcycles and camping we are effectively always ‘outside’ which means there is no escaping the constant wind. One especially windy night (35 mph sustained with 50 mph gusts) prevented much sleep as the side walls of the tent would partially collapse inward and then spring back into place! Fortunately, our tent weathered the storm marvelously (better than my sleepy-eyed self) and the eight extra tent lines I ran out didn’t hurt either. In addition to the wind the temperature has also been colder than the seasonal norm and definitely colder than we would like. We aren’t wearing as many layers as we were in the arctic, but more than we would prefer. So much for succinct :).

A continued high point has been our many positive interactions with the Mexican people. They have been extremely friendly and very helpful! Navigating a foreign country can be challenging and stressful but the people we have met have reduced that significantly. Everyone, from the tour operators (thank you Luis and Alberto), gas station attendants, food vendors, and the many people we have just met on the street or visiting churches, have all gone out of their way to answer our questions and help us in any way they can. As we have said over and over – Muchas Gracias!

Lastly, we wanted to mention a couple that have already found a special place in our hearts…Jim and his wife Carol. They are also traveling on motorcycles to Argentina. We originally met them ‘by chance’ in the town of San Ignacio. Then we were pleasantly surprised as we continued to encounter people who knew them along the road and eventually walked right into them in the town of Loreto! We are even booked on the same sailboat out of Panama that will take us and our bikes to Columbia around the Darien Gap. Baja is a ‘small world’, but the amount of connections and cross connections seems more like divine intervention. By our second encounter it felt like meeting up with old friends. We look forward to seeing them again in Panama!

We are currently at La Paz in Southern Baja and plan to take a ferry to mainland Mexico on March 5^th to continue our adventure.

Chris and Sharon