2-5-05 part 2

The AAA guy isn’t actually AAA he is Southern California Automobile Association. Big difference evidently. I mentioned all the cars on their backs along the highway and he laughed and said that they call them Mexican cockroaches. He said that the Mexicans don’t have any machinery so the strip them as best they can upright and then roll them over and take the rest out. I told him about the tire that they guy sewed up and fixed. He said that there were a couple of guys touring in an old Chevy Caprice that hit a rock right at the oil plug and it tore and rolled a strip out of their oil pan like opening a can of sardines. They figured that they were going to be there forever until they could get a replacement oil pan but the mechanic said “no problemo”  and proceeded to heat and roll the strip back out and he then welded a patch inside and one on the outside. He then drilled and tapped and installed his own special oil plug. He said that when the mechanic was done that they had a bulletproof oil pan. While the mechanic was at it, he fixed a leak in the radiator and a slow leak he found in one of the tires. Total bill was $30. He said that these mechanics are amazing and can fix anything with almost nothing.

While I was talking with the scaa guy a woman came up and said she had an adobe buildings and had a book store and guest houses and would like to be listed in the book. The guy was the road person but said that he would tell the word guy about her.

I wandered down to see this book store and talk with the gal. She said that she had bought the place a couple of years ago from someone else that had done all the work on the place. I had to go around the ally and enter through the garden gate to get in. The garden was a wonderful collection of trees and plants with water ponds, it had just all been wetted down and was so nice and cool. She said the main building is a two-room adobe with the addition on the garden side that was the work area originally. She has the place fixed up very nice and one of the rooms is a bookstore. She has one wall that has only Spanish language books and the other is English and a history photo collection on the wall. Originally the Franciscans came there and they found some little sand palms along the stream. The Dominican monks (they took over after the Franciscans left, after everybody died of disease) brought in Date palms and planted them along with the cultivated fields. She had old photos showing the nice field layout and not many palms. After the fields were abandoned (not sure exactly why) the palms took over. She brought out a dish of dates and said that they were trying to get the people to harvest them for $$$. (On my way out of town I stopped to make a cup of tea and noticed I was standing on dates that covered the ground. I picked a handful up and after washing the sand off they are really good, like living off he fat of the land)J She is originally from San Francisco and it has always been her dream to open a book store in Mexico. I  hope she is getting money from somewhere else as I think it is a nice place but hard to make a living. She is working on the history of the place and she showed me the photo of the guy that owned the place where my motel is. He was a Frenchman who got into a disagreement with his captain on a sailing ship and took a swing at the captain and had to literally jump ship. He made a life here by marrying a local woman and had a bunch of kids. He made a living as a blacksmith and latter as automobiles came in, as a mechanic.

She told me some about the cave paintings. There are two ways and one is a short drive and you get to see a few paintings. The other method is to drive up that road I talked about before and way up there is a ranch where you hire the rancher to pack you up in the mountains on mules for a three day tour, camping out along the way. That sounds very cool but you need to be in a group, so maybe we can get a group together and come down and do it, what ya say? She said the cave paintings were only part of the experience as the scenery was superb with mountains and canyons. She said that there is a small very nice cave museum next to the church and I should go over there and see it. There is no sign and you just have to know where it is as the people who restored the church didn’t want any signs junking up the view. I went over and took a few photos. They have interpretive signs but they are all in Spanish. There is a recreation of rock paintings in the rear and that is where these photos are taken.
 


 The girls have breasts under their armpits. No faces on these paintings



this is a photo of one of the displays showing size of paintings, note man at bottom.
 She also said that it would be ok to take photos inside the church as people do it all the time and the oil paintings are so covered with layers of smoke that it wouldn’t hurt them. So I went over and here are a few shots around the church and that fabulous garden.

 
The hinges over two hundred years old, handmade and still good. Of course they don’t have Roger going in and out all the time for confessions. J


Main alter. There are two others at the sides. The church makes a cross inside. This is the dome over the intersection where an angle hangs.



 Carved rock dude on outside of church. These carvings are really good. They must have brought expert stonemasons and artists over to work on these churches. The rock details that they made must have taken days to work out.


 

She says that the garden is the Fathers and he is American.

She said that she goes to church with everybody, but just doesn’t take communion, she is Presbyterian.

On my way back over to the car I saw a young girl picking something out in this other wonderful garden. It turns out she is picking very small peppers from that bush. I asked if they were hot and she nodded yes.

 The little map that the bookstore lady gave me says that this is Las Huerta’s Farm. They had a really nice drip irrigation system and as you can see it is nicely taken care of. Oh, the church is right across the street and the church was built in 1760’s so I guess that this farm goes back about that far too. When I look at these buildings I am so impressed with how old and well-kept most of them are. I can’t imagine that the buildings being built today will ever make it half the age of these. I drove around a little in town and the houses for the most part are nicely kept and painted in festive colors. I like this town.

I finally got out of town and made it down the highway looking for a place to hang out my laundry. I finally found a nice place with large greasewood bushes and got my clothes all ‘hung out’ and took a nap. After I woke up I turned the clothes on the bushes and wrote the above text.

Next on the road was Rosalia which is supposed to be an old French town built for the reason that they found copper here. As I came into town I saw huge old rotting mining structures. The lady at the book store said that the road come into town and at the steel church I should turn right and go to the top of the hill where the old wood mining headquarters building was turned into a museum. Well I never did see the steel church, which was designed by Eifel the same guy that made the Eifel tower in Paris. He must have made a small little thing because I never  did find it after making three passes all over town. I even made my way up high and couldn’t see it from up there. I did take a right turn and headed up this gulch and the  houses kept getting poorer and poorer. The guys hanging out were wearing hooded sweatshirts and walking pit bull dogs. I decided that it didn’t look good at all so I turned around and headed out of there. I did stop at the ferry and checked to see if it was running. It may be, a guy there said, and we looked at the price schedule. It looks like it would cost about two hundred fifty to get lil red across and another fifty for me. It was starting to get sundown and I really didn’t like the feeling I was getting around that town so I put her in gear and we headed south to Mulege. I stopped to rest on a little road and found this dumped out in the desert. It is corrugated tarpaper.

I have seen it used for both walls and roofs, it just has to be a cheapest way to build a shack. They use big fender washers or maybe tin circles to give support for  the nail.
 

Ah ha! I knew I took a photo of one of these shacks using the corrugated tarpaper.

I am camped not too far from town Rosalia and am on a beach in a small campground. I didn’t have time to check out a private place for the night and don’t want to be on the road at night.

2-6-05

There were fishermen in and out all night. This seems to be a very busy fishing access site. There are two bathrooms and two showers. There are directions on the wall to turn off the light as it is battery power (12 volt bulb from a backup light which is  plenty) and to turn on and off water heater if you take a shower. They ask to conserve water as well. I was way too much showered up to want to take another one. I asked one of the campers where to pay and he said that he didn’t know as no one had asked him for money yet.

I left early in the morning and never saw anyone to pay so I guess it was a free night. So far I have spent 30 pesos the night I stayed over to see the whales and 200 pesos to stay in the motel. This motor home camping is great!

I made it into Mulege still early on Sunday morning. I was able to find a market open and bought a quart of milk. This is the real stuff in a plastic jug and it tastes just like the store stuff in usa. Mulege is another one of those towns where the palm trees sort of got away from them. I was cruising the back roads when I came head to head with a big Ford pickup with a sea kayak on top. He had a Montana license plate that said ‘TNK WILD’ and he was in a hurry to get someplace and almost blew me off the dang road. The majority of license plates I see are from California and next has to be Oregon, British Colombia, and then Montana. There are a lot of us down here. I kept going out the road and made it to the beach finally. The road followed along the Mulege river and across the channel were some really nice houses.

On my side of the river was more low dollar stuff with quite a few signs offering lots for rent and houses for sale. Some people live in trailers and some in housed. There are a lot of boats and it looks like a good spot to come for the winter and fish, fish, fish.

At the end of the road was the harbormaster and lighthouse. There are a lot of fishing boats here, some Mexican and some American pleasure/fishing. As I was leaving Mulege I saw a sign for the Mission and took the road and ended up at a rather plain rock mission. It is no match for the one at San Ignacio.

 
The Mission was closed and they may use it for weddings or special occasions.

There was a path and I hobbled up it to an over look.

It is like a jungle down there with town in the background.

Jungle and then desert.
I am headed south along the Bahia Concepcion which is a big bay on the gulf side that opens to the north. I must be about half way down the bay and decided to take a small road down to the water. There is a development that dead ends a little further down the road that is advertising lots in the newest development. I saw a sign a little while back that advertised a house and lot starting at $22,000 with title insurance. These might be some of those parcels that are owned outright rather than renting a lot. This bay is well protected but I have no idea what the fishing would be like. From the looks of the banks along the shoreline there are plenty of shellfish to eat.

This went singing on in my head all day……
  

“Rocky Raccoon,

checked into his room,

only to find Gideon’s Bible.

Gideon checked out,

leaving it no doubt,

To help in our Rocky’s revival.”

Sgt. Pepper??

I decided to hang out here and walk the shore, write up the day’s travels and cook supper. There is hardly any wave action here in this bay. The water is almost calm with just little wind ripples. I got out my little radio at sundown and checked to see if I could get any reception in English. Much to my surprise I am getting the station out of Tijuana/San Diego and the Super Bowl is on. Paul McCartney is singing. What a coincidence, eh? This little radio is really something else. I have been able to get am radio all along the way from Denver, LA, Oklahoma, Huston, and Las Vegas after sundown. Late at night I can get the BBC, CBC and a host of foreign countries that broadcast to North America. Last night I was listing to Voice of America, China and this morning Taiwan, Australia, and Korea who all have English programming. There was an interesting program on the Chinese about their population is starting to use large quantities of cosmetics. The largest supplier is Avon and the leading products are those that make the skin whiter. The announcer pointed out that it made them look more wealthy if they were whiter, even though in the west a tan showed more wealth. Everyone wants to be like the other person. When I was young I wanted straight black hair and hated my curly blond hair.

The Korean’s had an interesting program on how the people use to live in dugouts that protected them from the cold winter. When they moved up and lived ON the land they had to come up with a system to keep warm. I guess the fire in the middle of the room didn’t do them so they invented a system of building a fire low and having the flue heat the floor. It seems like I remember my dad telling me about these, and maybe my brother too as they were both stationed in Korea while in the army.

 The world news is seen from a VERY different point of view. I can tell that most countries don’t like Bush and what our country is up to over seas. The Chinese and Australian Indonesian stations report some bird flu outbreaks and warnings. If that ever gets airborne it will be VERY interesting pandemic.

x

It is amazing the variety of languages on the short wave at night. For anyone traveling light (not ultra light, Barry) this radio is a must have. I actually bought it in Bishop, California when I was traveling on my BMW. Ken says that they discontinued building the radio but the public demanded that they start making it again. The radio is available at Radio Shack and is forty bucks as I remember. It is a Grundig, Mini World 100 PE. It has AM, FM stereo, and four or five SW bands and has a little tiny speaker that isn’t worth a shit but it also comes with a good pair of ear-buds. I have a very good pair of earphones and with those, this radio is about as good as it gets. Usual disclaimer; not affiliated or connected with the Chinese who made it, the Germans who designed it, or Radio Shack who sold it.

2-7-05

I was taking that photo of the shells on the beach when I heard a plop in the water not ten feet from me. Here is what made that sound.

These pelicans get really tame from hanging around the fishermen. When a small boat came along the shore this morning putting out a gill net, about twenty pelicans came over to check it out. I think they don’t understand the difference between putting out the net and taking it in. I am sure when the fishermen bring in the net and they find a fish that they don’t want, they toss it to the pelicans. These birds are fascinating to watch as they fly just over the tips of the waves, gliding for a hundred feet or so at this same height and then one will flap its wings for ten or so beats and then glide back down to just above the tips. They usually fly in a line and imitate the bird in front exactly.

I headed out to Loreto and saw these vultures sunning themselves on the cactus in the first morning sun. They spread their wings to get more solar exposure.

 I made it to Loreto somewhere around noon. Along the way I saw Barry parked along the road and stopped to chat and get his email address and quiz him about a few questions that I had about his system. We saw this flower and even though it looks like it is on a thistle plant, it has a flower rather than a thistle head.

 As I was coming into town I saw this great graveyard. It is so bright clean and almost festive in its colors and attention to detail.

The little houses are so cute and well constructed. There are usually lots of plastic flowers in them as well as small statues and often at photo of the deceased. These people go all out on their funerals. When I was in Bahia Tortugas there happened to be a funeral procession passing as I came out of the Internet café. I didn’t think it appropriate to be taking photos so you didn’t get any. The procession started with a cop car than a pickup with the casket in the back as well as a huge bunch of flowers. In the back of the pickup were three kids all dressed up. I suspect that they were the brothers and sisters of the body in the casket as it was a smaller casket. Following the pickup/casket were about twenty people, probably the immediate family on foot, followed by about thirty cars and trucks. I think they were headed to the church down by the bay where I saw lots of cars a short time later. The graveyard in that town didn’t have the expensive gravesites as here. There is money in this town.

I parked on the street and wandered around. I found an Internet café and checked my email and answered a few quick lines. When I came out I was lured to the next-door restaurant by a plate of food a guy was chowing down on. I went in and had the numero uno or number one special. It was great. I met three guys on BMW oil head GS’s. I said that I wished I had my bike with me, and one guy said, “that’s what we said last year.” I asked if they had gotten off the pavement and into the back country yet and they said NO. They had all the correct New gear and new bikes. 

There are a lot of gringo’s in this town and the place seems to cater to them for sure. After dinner I found a nice place to park and took a nap. After nap I went back to town and had a look around. It is a tourist Mecca and they can find all the cheap shit jewelry, tee shirts, pottery, etc that they could ever want. It is a fairly large town so there are the usual shops that sell basic stuff as well. No wall-Mart or Albertson’s, just little mom and pop stores. There are some smaller condos along the beach as well as some very upscale hotels. There was one down town I walked into, as I was rubbernecking around. It looked like it must be a very old hotel as the big doors looked like the church doors and were about four inches thick. It had wonderful rockwork as well as ironwork inside. The hotel guy came over to talk to me and answered my questions. It was actually a new built hotel and they brought in expert builders to assemble it. The cheapest room was 135 and it went up to 260 and that was in dollars. It was very nice.

I happened upon Barry and wife in town again and had an ice cream cone with them. I was so turned off by the tourist bullshit, I told him I had almost decided to head back up north. I did a little more wandering around town looking for a bike shop, but I never could find one. I did find a second hand store but the lady said no she didn’t have one when I showed her what I wanted. I decided to get out of town and happened on this jeep set up as a memorial to a priest who evidently saved this old mission and maybe had it reconstructed. It is a really well worn jeep and I can see the father making his rounds in it.

After taking the photos of the jeep and the church I started down the road and saw a couple of boys hanging around on their bikes along the road. I decided to see if I could ask them where I could get a seat. I couldn’t understand a word that this one kid said and finally nodded yes and thought I would just go down the road and get the hell out of town and get a dang seat for my bike when I got home. Well the kid must have seen the situation and motioned for me to follow him. Excellent! We went about three blocks and came to a small building with three boys out side on broken bikes. I handed my guide a ten-peso coin and thanked him very much. I motioned to the owner my problem and said ‘banditos’ and he went and got a new seat tube and pointed to the new seats hanging on the wall. I made gestures that I wanted a used one, like the gray beard, and he nodded yes and went out back and soon came out with a well used seat and tube. Total price twenty pesos. So for less than three bucks I have a seat on the bike.

I finally got out of town and decided to head south some more and see how it goes. I was just pulling down a little dirt road when I met Barry coming out. He said that the next road was the one to take where it was supposedly free camping on the beach. Well, they were all lined up fairly close but the far end of the beach was clear. The sand started getting soft and I got out to take a look. It was soft for a little ways but seemed to firm up after a short stretch. So, lil red took off and we made it in two-wheel drive but I think I may need four wheel drive to get out. The tide is way out now too but I don’t think I will have a problem, but am well stocked if I need to hang for a while.

2-8-05

My camp here is the last one to get sun so I lay in bed until late listening to the radio. When I got up I saw that the fisherman was just starting to pull in his net.

He had his trusty dog with him who turned out to be really nice but a ‘jump up on ya’ dog.

I walked up and was in the process of taking a photo of him removing the fish from the net when he said “No”. I asked if I could take a photo of the fish in the net and he said “no” again but he motioned that I could take a photo of the fish he had taken out of the net and these are the ones he has yet to put in the bag.

This aint a bad catch for an overnight catch. The net must be about 150ft long and about three feet deep. There are floats on the top and small lead weights on the bottom. He anchors it to the shore and takes his boat out and stretches it out  in this little protected bay. Any fish that swims along that goes into one of the holes in the net and cant swim through, gets caught by the gills and usually suffocate and are dead when he pulls the net. The pelicans showed up just after I took these photos. He did throw back a live fish and am not sure why. Maybe he had enough or he didn’t like  that  kind. I would guess he caught about 50 lbs of fish.  That  is my kind of fishing, none of the bait the hook and wait for the dang fish to come over and bite it. 

It was a beautiful drive over the mountains from Loreto to Cuidad Insurgentes. The mountains are called the Sierra de la Giganta and they are rough. They also happen to be very green as the rain that they had down here has turned the desert into a lush green cover. The cactus are all pumped up and the new leaves on the trees and bushes make the foliage dense. As I came down off the mountains onto a large plain I started to see agriculture. One of the first things I saw was intensive rotational grazing on alfalfa with dairy cows. How is it that they can be so far ahead of us in utilizing these ‘new’ agricultural ideas? The basic thing is that it makes economic sense and they don’t have the government subsidies here evidently and they have to make it on their own. Intensive grazing will maximize their forage production and animal productivity. I drove by a field of what I thought was asparagus and then some sort of row crop just about two inches high. I next came upon a field of corn just starting to dry down. I actually passed a man walking down the highway eating an ear of corn I am sure he copped from the field. It looked to be a nice fat ear of white corn. I think they use the white corn for the hominy that I see small plastic sacks in the grocery stores. I am on the outskirts of town now and stopped to make a cup of tea. I see from the map that this is called the Valle Santo Domingo.

This is  in the center of town and I would guess is built to honor the families that came to this area and built an agricultural community.

 Out of Ciudad Insurgentes the road heads south and is maybe 16 miles to Ciudad Constitucion. 

I made it into town and got my bike off the rack and had a look around. My knee is still a little tricky, but I did ok. One thing I don’t think I have mentioned is the traffic. There are occasional road signs for stop and maximum velocity or speed. These seem to be more suggestions rather than the law. The big guy has the right of way and pedestrians and bicyclists had better watch out. Stop signs are usually slowed down for but rarely stopped at. The way they keep the speed down is with speed bumps. Some of these speed bumps are truly amazing. If you are not paying attention it can be very bad indeed. They have them out on the main highway and not just in town. This town has about five semi main streets off of the main street. In all these town there are lots of street vendors selling food as well as lots of small restaurants. I don’t see how they all make a living at it. I couldn’t find any internet café so I finally had to ask a couple of guys and they figured that the internet must be down 5 or six blocks. I finally did find it and went in and checked my mail. When I was leaving I asked the guy if I could use my laptop and I think he said yes. I found a big grocery store at the end of town and it is like our supermarket. I have only gone in for a look around, but will be stopping by there on my way out of town to pick up some grub. I saw that there is a large table with maybe ten different kinds of bread on it. There is also an isle of baked goodies like cupcakes, cookies and what looks like banana type breads. Yum yum!!!

I made it back to the internet café and was bringing in my laptop when the kid that was running the place stopped me and said that they were closed. He closes from two until four. I didn’t want to hang around two hours so I pulled out for La Paz. I didn’t make it but did make it as far as the road to Punta Conejo or about 30 miles from La Paz. It started to get cloudy and completely overcast by evening. It even rained some. I drove down this road about two miles until I found a nice very little used side road that I am down about a quarter mile. I took a short walk down the road and just marvel at the desert. There are trees here I have never seen before as well as the bushes are different. Most everything will scratch our poke a hole in you so you must be careful.

Sent from La Paz on 2-9-05 where it is cloudy and  windy.

Well that turned out to be a pipe dream. I had another frustrating day with two different internet café’s. I thought I was going to be able to at least email everyone on the road log list but some how that got eaten and probably will not go out until I somehow hook up with wifi or back in the usa with my cell phone. I wish I knew more about how these things operate.

La Paz is a fairly large city with a main drag along the harbor. Along this road are quite a few hotels and nice restaurants, even a burger king. There aren’t the usual small handcart sellers on this drag. I parked lil red and took to the back streets on the bicycle in search of Mexico. It is interesting mix of very rich and not so rich. The land prices are high I understand. I was sitting next to a gringo in one of the internet café’s and he showed me a place he said was listed for $65K last year and he had made an offer of $59K, now the place listed at $119K and that is in one year.

It was cold, overcast and windy. The sail boats were all snuggled in for the day. I wasn’t that impressed with La Paz as it is like most of the towns down here, they have bars on all the windows and usually the doors. The crime rate must be horrific. I see the bars on even small houses where you know the people living there don’t have much to steal. There are  big places with high walls all around that have barb wire or broken glass on top of the walls. I am starting to see quite a few of the gated communities now around condos and private homes. I went by a few housing developments for I would imagine the poor. The homes are just as cute as can be. It reminds me of pueblo dwellings. Every one is painted a different color and all attached to one another. They all have what seems to be the requisite black plastic tank on the roof for water. I thought they might be using those tanks for solar heated water but I don’t know now as I have seen water heater tanks mounted to the outside wall in the rear of some of them. I am kind of leaning to the solar heated water use until I find out. Maybe they use the water heater if the sun doesn’t shine.

Before I left town I checked on the ferry to the mainland. It looks like it is much cheaper than I had heard. I think it is about $100 for lil red and 65 for me. that ferry goes to Topo and the one that goes to Mazatlan is more expensive. I also have to have the import permit but I got that at the border coming in which was thirty bucks. It is necessary to have the permit to have the car on the mainland either if I go by ferry or if I go by road.

I tried to find the road out of town to Todos Santos but the road signs are non existent for the most part. In my wandering around trying to find the dang road I came across a large grocery store. I went in to mostly look around but ended up buying some good food. I was at another store where they had a deli. There was some good looking food and some very questionable looking stuff that they were selling. One little old guy came up and ordered what turned out to be a half a rotisserie chicken and a small stack of tortillas, a couple of small containers of sauce, a small salad mix and something else. Before I could make it known that that is what I wanted too, the guy was gone and a bunch of other people were ahead of me. I gave up on that but today at this store I spied a half chicken and thought I would buy that and roll my own in my own tortillas. Well it turned out that that half chicken came with a bag of French fries,  bag of baked corn chips, cup of great sauce and a stack of warm corn tortillas. All this for about three fifty. I charged out of the store and started making some serious food. Wow it is really good and I will make two meals out of it. The fresh corn tortillas are excellent.

I finally had to ask people, cops too, which way to Todos Santos and they would point the way. I got there late and I can see that there is a lot going on there. I drove south of town a few miles before I found a road up to the hills and that is were I am camped tonight. It has turned warm and humid which is odd as now I am on the Pacific side and not the gulf side. I will head back tomorrow and check it out. I looked at one realtors listing on his wall and he had two hectors for $120K and five acres for the same price. This is undeveloped land with views!!!