The Road through Baja California

      As you drive into Baja California you shall cross over the Rio Tijuana – a black stream of water coursing through an immense aqueduct where thousands of displaced migrants live in tents and without shelter.  The men and women and children comprise a chain of dispossessed masses stretching along the concrete embankment of the canal.  Beyond this dark latitude of squalor and poverty lies greater Tijuana, the Pacific Ocean, and the shining city of San Diego – a place so close geographically yet so far removed socio-economically that only the drug addicts and Mexican immigrants may be able to relate to the level of destitution endured by those people struggling to survive in the effluence of the canal. 

      After you pass through a third-world realm of collapsing infrastructure, dilapidated soccer arenas, and desolate schoolyards – a nomansland where vagabonds dart across deteriorating highways which are flanked by staggering valleys brimming with tin huts and shanty town shacks – you may find yourself along a grey and hazy coast.  The panorama of this bleak dead zone is cleaved by the intermittent ruins of condemned hotels, abandoned resorts, and the skeletons of billboards rusting in the salty air.  The decaying buildings and billboard shells are the jettisoned remnants of a society that has folded on a blind march toward modernization.  The shattered economies of these tumbledown towns offer little to the residents whom cannot be blamed when they move on in search of a better life that they know to exist, for it is increasingly displayed before them on the television and computer screens that have infiltrated their lives.  

       Past this series of depressed coastal towns lies the substantial port city of Ensenada.  This is a place to drink with Mexican transvestite prostitutes and Crimean sailors whom will rejoice in their newfound Russian nationalism and express their appreciation of you coming from a town that sounds likes theirs (Sevastopol) by attempting to unsuccessfully drink you under the table.  Once you have replaced all the Mexican and Russian flags with Americans ones, the urge to leave this cesspool of self-destructive debauchery will soon take hold, and if you’re lucky you will have the funds to continue your journey southeast toward the Sea of Cortez.

        To get from Ensenada to the Sea of Cortez one must cross the Central Desert of Baja California.  As you drive deeper into the heart of the high desert, the barren mesas begin to morph into a colorful landscape of dazzling cacti and desert flowers that are strewn across the painted hills like gumdrops.  The psychedelic spectrum of green, pink, and purple cacti vary wildly in their appearance: the saguaro cactus (carnegiea gigantea) grows upwards of seventy-feet tall and provides housing for woodpeckers and arachnid colonies; hot-pink barrel cacti and spindly ocotillo plants capable of ejecting spines into your soles are scattered low throughout the desert floor; the lofty boojum tree bends and curves its shaggy arms and appears as though it has paused in motion and will carry on once your back is turned or beneath the light of a full moon.  The desert is an ever-changing and surreal setting of cacti so rich in color and plants so bizarre in shape that they appear artificial – it is like some fairytale diorama or toontown backdrop where little devils with pitchforks leap upon the earthen crucible and dance on the alters with their shadows.  Lightly dreaming clouds shaped like pale horses and ferris wheels and dragon boats drift through the boundless sky, and on the horizon electric storm clouds generate cells of rain that careen across the badlands like cyclones. 

        From the Transpeninsular Highway 1, Mexico Highway 12 cuts east across arid moonscapes of white boulders, vast expanses of stone and sand, and sleepy ghost towns where buzzards peck at grinning skeletons donning summer hats and antique dresses.  Roadside memorials and tumbleweeds litter the sides of the desert highway.  Once past the barren mountains, the desert valleys open up and the air is cool and windy.  The steel blue Sea of Cortez and surrounding islands are visible.   You have arrived in Bahía de los Ángeles, a cerulean bay and remote fishing outpost where the donkeys and chupacabras outnumber the men. Lizards dart across the sandy beaches which are covered with marvelous shells and the stripped bones of giant sea creatures.  The water is cold and pristine, and as you swim amongst the sting rays and curious fish that stir in the bright kelp forests, you will thank your lucky stars that you are alive and a part of this incredible world.