Ephemerica

It’s been a pretty wild last couple of days. We started our ascent into the Central Baja Desert on Saturday the 27th. The climbing went slower than expected, as we made our way up to 500 meters elevation. We wanted to make it to the oasis town of Catavina (120 km from El Rosario) in two days. Having only gone 40 km the first day, that left us 80 km for Sunday. I didn’t think we could do it, but we put together a record day (for us) that got us into Catavina with a couple of hours to spare before sunset. Part of the reason for our record speed besides the more favorable terrain (relatively flat) was that I decided to actually do some work and pedal in front

Saturday night was also our first wild camping experience. We started looking for suitable sites a couple of hours before sunset. While I was running to and fro to see whether or not various sites were visible from the road, I got stung by a couple of cacti, which actually caused me a bit of swelling. Finally, we found a good place to pitch a tent (i.e., flat and nothing prickly too close by).

After arriving in Catavina, we knew we had 240 km ahead of us to get to the next major town (Guerrero Negro), and we wanted to try to do it in 3 days. Once we had made it up to the level of the desert, it had been pretty flat, so we figured that we could do three big days in a row if we took a rest day in Catavina. We stayed another night at the hotel and hung out in Catavina, which consists of two hotels (we stayed in the cheaper of the two), a cafe, a grocery store, and a gas station. We did venture out on our rest day to find some nearby paintings by some of the indingenous people of Baja.

This morning we decided to head out under some ominous looking clouds. This turned out to be a bad idea. Not having seen TV or papers, we had no idea that there was a major storm system moving in. After getting about 20 km south of Catavina, the skies opened up and poured on us. We managed to get another 15 km or so before we were soaked and despondent enough to try to flag a ride. Within about 10 min, we managed to flag down a bus on its way from Ensenada to Guerrero Negro who was willing to give us a ride. Although the ride was a bit scary, we were happy to be leaving the rainy desert behind. Guerrero Negro is one of a couple of towns where there are tours to see the grey whales that come into the lagoons to give birth to their calves. Our original plan was to stay a day here and see some whales before heading south. I think though we may stay until we can be assured of more decent weather.

Posted by Matthew on January 30th, 2007 | Filed under: Mexico