BAJA : Opening of Mexico 1 Has Opened the Doors to Wondrous Frontier

You stand on a sun-blistered, rocky hill next to the Baja Highway just south of Mulege; look at the aquamarine-deep blue waters; jagged, cactus-studded little islands; blindingly white sand beaches, and you wonder how all this could have remained a secret for so long.

But until 1973, the eastern coastline of Baja California was virtually an unexplored frontier for vacationing American motorists, and particularly for sportfishermen. A relatively small number of yachtsmen had anchored in its quiet bays and lagoons since the 1930s, and small-plane pilots have used the peninsula’s chain of dirt strips for decades.

As early as the 1950s, adventurous types, driving prototypes of today’s off-road vehicles, had reached places such as Mulege, Bahia de Los Angeles, Bahia San Francisquito, Bahia San Luis Gonzaga, Loreto and Puerto Escondido.

But until 12 years ago, when Mexico completed its 1,000-mile Baja Highway, stretching from Tijuana to the tip of the peninsula at Cabo San Lucas, more was known about the surface of the moon than about many regions of Baja California.

Since the highway was opened, tens of thousands of American fishermen, many towing boats down the highway, have visited the shores of the gamefish-rich Sea of Cortez.

Highway is a generous term. The San Diego Freeway, it’s not. The transpeninsular road, shown as Mexico 1 on maps, has two lanes, no shoulder, no lights, lots of potholes, many service stations without unleaded gasoline, and range cows on the road at night.

As the sign says, about midway down: “The Transpeninsular Highway Is Designed for Economic Development--not High-Speed Driving.”

Mexican truckers and bus drivers, of course, ignore that admonition. But Americans have found that by driving only in the daytime, to minimize the risk of running into a cow, difficulties can be kept to a minimum--if they either (a) have cars with large fuel tanks or (b) carry spare gasoline containers.

The building and maintenance of the Baja Highway cost Mexico millions of dollars and was a Herculean effort. In addition to the obvious benefits from tourism dollars, the road brought many Baja Californians into the 20th Century. However, the Mexican Government still hasn’t figured out how to provide reliable supplies of unleaded gasoline ( extra on Pemex station pumps), especially in the mid-peninsula region.

There are stretches of up to 345 miles (San Quintin to San Ignacio, to name one) where Pemex stations frequently have no unleaded gasoline.

Translation: If your car doesn’t have a big fuel tank, and you’re uncomfortable traveling with gasoline in containers, fly.

Along the highway, the government has built a chain of hotels, each called an El Presidente. They afford the motorist lodging at strategic places like San Quintin (200 miles below the border), San Ignacio (532), Loreto (699) and La Paz (922).

Most fishermen who drive to the Sea of Cortez headed for three types of fishing destinations:

--Hotels with fishing fleets at Mulege, Loreto, La Paz or Cabo San Lucas.

--Any place they can launch their own boat.

--Any of hundreds of remote lagoons, bays or beaches, often at the end of a long dirt road, where they can set up a surf-fishing camp and, using long surf rods, cast metal lures into the early morning sun rising over Mexico’s mainland, or into the evening’s fading light and onto dark waters that sparkle with starlight.

A reporter and a photographer recently came upon just such a camp on the dirt road a few miles east of San Jose Del Cabo, not far from the peninsula’s tip. Four young men from Idaho had set up camp on a sandy bluff, 100 feet above a half-mile-long beach. They had it all to themselves.

“We’ve been here a week and we’ll probably stay another couple of weeks,” said Blake Barrymore of Ketchum, Ida. “We surf-fish part of the time and surf the rest of the time. Look at this view. We might not go back at all if we didn’t have to work.”

The Baja Highway also brings other kinds of visitors:

--Those who come to watch the peninsula’s world-renowned gray-whale calving lagoons--Scammon’s, San Ignacio and Almejas.

--Those who come to tour the picturesque Baja towns that were centuries old before anyone ever thought of a paved highway. San Ignacio, halfway down the peninsula, is one. Todos Santos, just above Cabo San Lucas, is another.

--Mission aficionados who come to search out the Jesuit and Franciscan missions, either relatively intact or in ruins, that predate Alta California’s. Some, such as the first mission in Loreto and another in Mulege, are still active churches. Others, such as the San Fernando mission located four bumpy miles off the highway near El Rosario, consist only of a crumbling adobe wall and a few graves.

--Many beachcombers head for Guerrero Negro, halfway down the Pacific side. By four-wheel-drive vehicle or small plane, they can reach remote Malarrimo Beach, called by some the world’s best spot for beachcombing. Carcasses and skeletons of marine mammals, refuse from ships, logs, wrecked boats and the flotsam and jetsam of an entire ocean litter its shores.

A reporter and a photographer traveled the length of the peninsula and back recently, looking at some of Baja’s better-known fishing sites, a dozen years after the highway:

MULEGE

Bahia Concepcion is one of the world’s most beautiful bays. It is deep blue, 25 miles long and 3 to 5 miles across. Centuries-old Mulege sits astride Baja’s only freshwater river, Rio Mulege.

Where the highway passes along the bay’s shore, just south of Mulege, motorists are treated to probably the grandest view of the entire peninsula.

According to legend, some fishermen discovered snook in the Rio Mulege several decades ago and kept it a secret as long as they could, but the fishery in the little river (it’s only two miles long) couldn’t sustain heavy commercial fishing pressure once locals learned of the snook. Occasionally, reports of a holdover catch from those days are heard.

Besides having the peninsula’s only river, Mulege (pronounced Moo-lay-HAY ) has another unique feature: a prison where inmates are freed daily to work at jobs in town but sent back to the fortress-like prison on the hill for nightly lockup.

Mulege also has good yellowtail fishing, at times as good as any on the peninsula. Anglers in private and hotel boats often look for diving birds near two islands just north of town, Tortuga and San Marcos.

Mulege, like Loreto to the south, offers a blend of the best of the Sea of Cortez--frequent visits by schools of yellowtail, yellowfin tuna, dorado and wahoo. A popular fishing locale is Isla Tortuga, where runs of yellowtail in the 20- to 25-pound class have occurred this spring.

The best hotels are the Serenidad, which has its own airstrip and is known for its Saturday night pig-roast fiestas; the Vista Hermosa, and the downtown Las Casitas, which is small and inexpensive ($25 per night in May).

LORETO

In the late 1960s, Shay Hackford first went fishing at Loreto. For about a week, he caught so many yellowtail and dorado, he could barely lift his arms.

“I couldn’t believe it--I never knew fishing could be that good,” he says today.

For Hackford, from Vernal, Utah, once- or twice-yearly trips to Loreto weren’t enough. So he moved there.

From the outset, the locals have called him “Colorado” because of his red hair, now mostly gray. For fishermen who are first-time visitors to Loreto, Hackford is a good man to know. Leave word at the Oasis Hotel bar, where he stops by for an occasional beer. Ask for “Colorado,” the only name he’s known by.

“I’ve fished every part of the Baja peninsula and I can guarantee you, for year-round fishing you can’t beat this place,” he said, tapping the bar for emphasis.

“People think of Loreto as strictly a yellowtail area, with sometimes some tuna and dorado, but that isn’t entirely true,” he said. “We have marlin here, contrary to what a lot of people think, but the reason you don’t hear much about them is the guides hate fishing for them.”

Hackford knows something about Loreto marlin. In 1969, he caught a 444-pound blue, a fish that he believes is still the largest billfish ever caught there.

“See, Mexican guides are very competitive with each other,” he said. “If five guides are taking Americans out fishing, and four of them are fishing for tuna or yellowtail, and you tell your guide you want to fish for marlin . . . well, they hate that. There’s nothing they hate more than coming back with no fish when the other guides come back with bunches of yellowtail.”

It has been said before that Loreto is a place where, when the fishing is at its best, you can catch yellowtail from the beach, with surf rods. And Hackford has seen it like that.

“I’ve caught 10- to 15-pound yellowtail off the pier with a casting rod. I’ve also seen yellowtail chase baitfish right out of the sea, onto the sand. The yellowtail fishing here can be tremendous sometimes.

“In April, 1983, my son and I fished every day of that month but two, and we caught fish (yellowtail) every time out but two. We did the same thing every day: We went out behind Isla Carmen and tried to catch a big grouper for an hour or so. One day, we got two, both over 100 pounds. Then we’d go over to Isla Coronado for yellowtail. On most days that April--which normally isn’t our best month for yellowtail--we had all we wanted.”

More from Colorado’s greatest hits:

--”One day in the first week of July, 1983, my son and I caught 32 dorado, casting red-and-white feathers next to a kelp paddy. We kept a half-dozen, the ones that were gut-hooked.”

--”I’ve got home movies of days when we had 15 to 25 dorado, all four feet high. Unfortunately, the best dorado fishing down here is in July and August, when the humidity is awful. In July and August, I go back to Utah, for deer and elk hunting.”

Hackford said mid-December to mid-January is the prime yellowtail period.

“That doesn’t always hold up, but that’s when I’d come if I didn’t live down here,” he said. “Fishermen should really plan to spend two weeks here, too. One thing we have a lot of is wind, and it’ll blow here for two or three days, then lay down for a week or two. I hate to see guys come down here on those five-day packages, then sit at the hotel, watching it blow for three days.”

Loreto has its history, too. It was first settled by Jesuit friars in 1697 and later was the first capital of all the Californias. When the Jesuits built a mission at Loreto, it was the first of what would become a chain of 56 missions stretching north to present-day Sonoma, Calif. The first missions were built by the Jesuits; the Dominicans built one, at San Fernando, Baja California, and the Franciscan Father Junipero Serra built the first nine of the 21 missions in present-day California.

Loreto’s mission, believed to be the third built on the original site, is located in the center of town, just two blocks from the beachfront hotels.

Loreto, since the late 1950s, has built up a loyal following of fishermen who regard it as their oasis on the Sea of Cortez. But in the late 1970s, many of them began to fear that Loreto was about to lose the small-town character they’d come to cherish.

It was then that Mexico’s tourism agency announced plans for a major resort just south of town, at Nopolo. A major hotel, an elaborate El Presidente, was to be constructed and promoted as a fishing/tennis resort.

Said Loreto aficionado Bill Fletcher at the time: “It’s very sad. I love this place the way it is. I’m going to have to look for another small, remote Mexican fishing resort, but I don’t know if there are any left.”

However, Fletcher and a lot of other Baja anglers who had come to regard Loreto as their little slice of heaven were not uprooted by an Acapulco-type environment. The big hotel was built, but little has changed in the sleepy, dusty, 400-year-old seaside town.

Said Hackford: “The hotel is a half-dozen miles south of here, and it’s not really a high-powered fishing resort. I mean, no serious fishermen would go there to fish. For one thing, to go fishing out of the El Presidente, you’re looking at running six or eight miles into the wind just to get to where we are now.”

For fishermen seeking mid-size gamefish, the Oasis and Mision de Loreto hotels, both on on the beach, are where most of the fishing activity is centered. Both are small, inexpensive and close to the action at Carmen and Coronado islands.

For those who don’t fish, there are two other activities in Loreto:

--The smaller of the two offshore islands, Coronado, is a popular, shallow-water scuba-diving area. Fishing guides transport divers two miles to the island in the morning and pick them up later in the day. Remote bays and beaches are also available on 20-mile-long Carmen Island.

--One of the best-preserved and most picturesque of the Baja missions is at San Javier, a small agricultural community in a high valley in the Sierra de la Giganta range behind Loreto. It’s about a two-hour drive on a dirt road.

LAS ARENAS

Bill Payton, 62, and Tim Train, 65, have invested countless years of research into the subject of fishing. Here’s what they’ve come up with: The heck with fishing.

Payton and Train, both from Sacramento, are pilots. Once a year, they fly down to Baja and spend a few days at every fishing resort they can find with an airstrip. But they never fish.

What’s going on here?

Payton: “Basically, our program goes something like this: We take several naps during the day, we sit by the pool a lot, we drink cocktails and we never miss a meal.”

A reporter and a photographer touring Baja recently had the feeling they were being followed. At Loreto, they first met the Payton-Train team. A day later, at Las Arenas, the two pilots were waiting by the pool. Two days later, they turned up again at Punta Colorada.

Train (His middle name is Swift): “We learned a long time ago that good Baja fishing resorts have three things in common--good food, good bartenders and pretty scenery.”

As he said that, while sitting on the shaded pool deck at Las Arenas Hotel, whales were passing by, less than a mile off the desert point that juts into the Sea of Cortez. Las Arenas offers one of the most spectacular sea views available at any site on the entire peninsula, almost 180 degrees.

Completed in 1980, the 40-room hotel is relatively new on the Baja fishing front. It was built by a pair of Southland trucking company owners, James Cardwell of La Habra Heights and William Brady of Long Beach.

“The original idea was for the two of us to build a nice vacation home and a nearby airstrip someplace down here that our families could share,” Cardwell said. “The hotel concept came later, after our builder, George Escodero of La Paz, found this spot. We fell in love with it.”

The Las Arenas Hotel is about 40 miles from La Paz, at the end of the road running off the Baja Highway to the small town of Los Planes. The road is paved for about 25 miles, to Los Planes, then is hard gravel to the hotel, which rests spectacularly on Punta Arenas. It’s an astonishing sight, to drive through miles and miles of a rocky desert wilderness, then crest one last small hill and come upon the only structure for perhaps 10 miles in any direction, the Las Arenas Hotel.

Six miles off the beach is Cerralvo Island, the last and one of the largest of the nearly 30 islands hugging the peninsula’s Sea of Cortez coast.

“A lot of our guests have great interest in Cerralvo beyond fishing,” Cardwell said. “We’re going to build a shaded area over there for a barbecue, and start some ‘island safari’ trips. There are some plants on Cerralvo that grow nowhere else, and they’re of interest to botany-oriented people.

“Most of our fishing occurs over there, and it’s a natural windbreak for us. When it’s blowing, we just get on one side or the other.”

Cardwell and Brady are both pilots, as are roughly one-third of Las Arenas guests. A 6,200-foot dirt strip is nearby. A 50-minute taxi ride from the La Paz airport costs about $80.

Las Arenas is a desert hotel without air-conditioning, and it was designed that way. The hotel’s two hacienda-style, two-story wings were designed so that each room catches the Sea of Cortez breezes.

Yellowtail, yellowfin tuna, wahoo, dorado, roosterfish, jack crevalle and billfish are the main gamefish. The most productive waters are close at hand for anglers fishing from the hotel’s 20-foot skiffs or 28- to 32-foot cruisers.

May and June are rated good months, when warming waters bring in blue and striped marlin, wahoo and dorado.

Cardwell and Brady inadvertently constructed a bird sanctuary when they built Las Arenas. In the spring, the palm-planted areas are a riot of raucous small birds--sparrows, finches and orioles--building nests in the palms and atop iron lanterns. The area is also home for numerous species of marine birds, such as frigates, and the always-present pelicans, sailing lazily over the surf line.

RANCHO BUENA VISTA

For marlin fishermen, these are hallowed waters. The cocktail coasters say: “Marlin Capital of the World,” and if you challenge it, they’ll fight you.

“Going to The Ranch,” more formally known as Rancho Buena Vista, has been a tradition with Southern California marlin fishermen since 1958, when the resort’s first owner, Herb Tansey, had a photo of himself in a hammock, being served a margarita by a senorita, published in the Saturday Evening Post.

The Ranch was given another boost in the 1960s when an old Hollywood screenwriter and free-lance outdoors writer, Ray Cannon, wrote reams about the place.

More marlin are caught every year at Rancho Buena Vista, its followers say, than at any other marlin resort in the world. They also insist that more marlin are released there than anywhere else, too.

“The average marlin fisherman who comes to Rancho Buena Vista is more of a skilled billfish angler than you see anywhere else,” said Jack Woolen of Cardiff-by-the-Sea, a regular for 20 years.

“It’s a light-line resort. You rarely see anyone using anything heavier than 30-pound test. And I’d say most of them are conservation-oriented fishermen--about 70% of the marlin hooked there are released. But it also should be said that a beginner would feel comfortable. The guys I fish with would be happy to help beginners.

“It’s the best. I mean, for sheer abundance of striped and blue marlin, nothing beats The Ranch. I’d bet anyone that more blues are hooked in the month of October out of The Ranch than anywhere else in the world.”

The Ranch’s small, white buildings are shaded by palms and front on a beach. But the tranquil setting is deceptive. It can be an exciting place, where the marlin fishing can be so good that it is life-threatening.

Chuck Knox, when he was coaching the Rams, was nearly speared by a striped marlin one day on a Rancho Buena Vista boat. While he watched a deckhand tag and release a marlin he’d just caught, another, an unhooked fish, leaped completely over the transom, narrowly missing Knox as it passed through the air.

In July, 1978, The Ranch logged perhaps its greatest-ever day--88 striped marlin were caught by anglers on 16 boats. On a June day in 1983, 26 blues were caught by fishermen.

July, according to Woolen, is the most likely month.

“Sailfish, roosterfish and striped marlin are around in July, and the blues (marlin) are just starting to show then,” he said.

January, February and March may go on The Ranch’s calendar, too, but not for fishing.

“The windsurfers have discovered our place,” said Mark Walters, the resort’s owner. “They like the winds here from January to March. Luckily for us, those are our slow fishing months. We’ve already had one competition here, with Americans, Canadians and Europeans.”

But the windsurfer set will never supplant the marlin fishermen at Rancho Buena Vista, not if Allan Beard has anything to say about it.

“This is one of the great marlin spots, and I’ve fished Hawaii,” said Beard, of Canoga Park. “You can find bigger marlin at a lot of places, but for numbers you can’t beat this place. For marlin fishermen, this is something special.”

PUNTA COLORADA

Bob Van Wormer was worried. Over lunch at his Punta Colorada Resort, near the Baja peninsula’s tip, he spoke of a problem mentioned frequently by many at Sea of Cortez fishing resorts--the increase in commercial fishing.

Punta Colorada, a popular roosterfish resort for California and Arizona saltwater fishermen 15 miles south of Rancho Buena Vista, had been quiet when a reporter and photographer stopped by.

“I’ve had this place 20 years, and this is the slowest fishing I’ve ever seen over a period of several months,” Van Wormer said.

“A lot of us in the sportfishing business down here are worried about long liners (commercial fishing vessels employing long-line fishing gear) in the Sea of Cortez. I don’t think they’re responsible for this lull in the fishing here, but I think the Mexican Government ought to take a long look at what it’s like right now, because this could be permanent if they keep letting long liners in here. Sportfishing dollars are a big part of the total Mexico tourism picture, and they could lose that.

“The government says they’ve prohibited foreign commercial fishing boats in the sea, but we keep seeing them. I’ve heard there are seven Japanese and Mexican long liners in here now.

“Hey, it’s a real worry. In the late 1950s, you could catch all the billfish and yellowfin tuna you wanted 2 to 3 miles in front of Rancho Buena Vista (15 miles to the north), and the same was true for us, right here. Now, sometimes our boats go out 20 miles to find fish, and sometimes 30 to 40 miles up and down the coast.”

Van Wormer, a San Diegan who moved to Baja’s tip 25 years or so ago, operates a place he calls “Roosterfish Capital of the World.” It’s a motel-like lodge on a bluff, 10 miles off the highway.

Roosterfish--powerful, close-quarters fighters--are closely related to the jack family. They’re distinguishable by long, spiny dorsal combs. They’re inshore fish, sometimes reaching 100 pounds, and are most commonly caught in and around the surf line. When hooked, they often head for the beach.

One of the most exciting Sea of Cortez fishing sights is the sudden appearance of a big roosterfish chasing a trolled live mullet. First, the seven-spined black comb is seen on the surface, the signal that a “rooster” is chasing bait. The big comb slashes in a circle around the bait in a swirl of splashing water, then the roosterfish engorges the mullet.

Of 16 line-class world records listed in the International Game Fish Assn.’s record book, 10 were set in Baja’s East Cape region. Punta Colorada’s world mark is a 43-pound 8-ounce roosterfish caught on six-pound test line in 1977 by Pat Snyder. And Dr. Buz Guentner made the record book in 1981 at Punta Colorada with a 396-pound blue marlin on 12-pound test line.

Van Wormer played host recently to a group of about 30 Orange County fishermen, called “El Supremo,” who hold a gamefish tournament every summer at Punta Colorada.

“Basically, our rules are that anyone bringing his wife is slapped with lifetime banishment from the club, and for anyone caught discussing business, it’s a mandatory $50 fine,” said El Supremo member Jim Murray of Newport Beach.

The fishing was slow during El Supremo’s stay, and the event disintegrated into a cocktail tournament.

Van Wormer, grousing about the poor fishing, longed for the days of fall, when some of his guests come for fishing and dove hunting.

“I get some guys in September and October who fish and hunt every other day,” he said. “Most of them hire a cab driver to take them to water holes in the arroyos or by grain fields to hunt. The doves usually leave in November, when it starts to cool down.”

CABO SAN LUCAS

This is Land’s End. The pavement runs out at the Solmar, a beach hotel just a few hundred yards from the picturesque cape rocks, where the land stops.

Beyond the sand-colored, arched rocks at the bottom of the 650-mile peninsula, there is no land in a due-south direction for 13,000 miles, to Antarctica.

Pacific waters meet the Sea of Cortez here, at a picturesque point where, for centuries, mariners such as Cortez and Cabrillo pulled into the natural harbor at Cabo San Lucas. So did pirates. Even today, marlin fishermen sit and drink at beach cantinas, and wonder on what point or in what arroyo, chests of golden doubloons are buried, hidden for centuries.

“Want to go fishing, mister?” a small Mexican boy cried, scurrying about the city dock, trying to recruit a fisherman from the crowds watching marlin anglers depart.

By 7:30 a.m., the harbor dock was alive with the activity of fishermen, guides and skippers. Idling diesel engines rumbled. Ice chests, rods and tackle boxes were loaded onto boats. Skippers arranged last-minute deals on charge-card validating machines with credit card-bearing fishermen.

Solmar and Finisterra (Tortuga) hotel fleet cruisers lined the dock, along with independently owned skiffs and cruisers. You could tell which fishermen were fishing out of which hotel by the color of their lunch boxes. An hour or so later, on a Finisterra cruiser, Darryl Primrose watched his marlin lures splash along the surface behind his boat, about 10 miles due-south of the cape. Squinting into the bright morning sun, he watched an angler on a boat a quarter-mile away battle a hooked striped marlin. The fish leaped crazily in the air, shaking off spirals of spray.

“Good, it’s one of our boats,” he said.

Primrose, from Orange, is a new member of a growing colony of Americans living in Cabo San Lucas. He’s part-owner of the Finisterra fleet.

“I’d fished down here for eight years, coming down several times a year, and wanted to live here the first time I saw it. Finally, I sold my business in Southern California and moved. I wouldn’t go back now on a free ticket.

“It’s hard to say, but I love the colors of the cape--the deep blues of sky and water, the brown rocks. There’s a certain peacefulness to the place. I don’t think anyone in Cabo has ever died of a heart attack.”

Ashore, the morning sun reflected off the white Hacienda Hotel and the white boats in the harbor. A cruise ship was anchored just outside the harbor.

On a slow fishing day, Primrose was experimenting with a new marlin rig, a lure called, “Super Squid.” It consisted of nine rubber squid, attached to a wire frame and one stainless steel hook. He watched it ride in the boat’s wake, splashing busily on the water, like a squid riot on wheels.

“Does that look impressive, or what?” Primrose asked, grinning.

“They catch thousand-pound bluefin tuna in the Atlantic with these things. I saw it in a magazine and ordered it.”

There were no takers this day, however, and “Super Squid” would have to wait for another day for its first strike.

Later, at the Hacienda Hotel, Mark Parr talked about a maturing resort city. Two decades ago, his father, Bud Parr, pioneered tourism in Cabo San Lucas with his Hotel Cabo San Lucas. Five years ago, the Parrs purchased the Hacienda.

“When my dad was starting out down here, it was almost totally a marlin fishing resort,” he said.

“But Cabo is growing into a full-blown resort. Now, I’d say fishermen make up no more than 30% of the tourists. Just look around. We’ve got parasailing in the harbor, scuba diving, horseback riding, dove hunting . . . We even have groups who go out to a fossil bed to dig up teeth from prehistoric 50-foot sharks.”

At the Hacienda scuba shop, John Fox was checking out scuba gear to two guests. He talked about diving at the tip of the peninsula.

“There’s an old freighter just off the tip that went down about 30 years ago,” he said. “All that’s left is part of the stern, about 50 feet down. Just inside, on the harbor side of the tip, there’s a vertical drop of 900 feet. You can do a whole series of wall dives there.

“Last December, a group of us dove with a humpback whale here for about 40 minutes. That same day, I was down 30 feet or so when the sun was suddenly blocked out. I looked up and saw about 14 manta rays, all with 10-foot wingspans, gliding by above me, almost in formation.”

The road home: You see it all again in reverse--the white beaches, blue bays, sunrises and sunsets, jagged mountains, unworldly looking cactus, dramatic views of the Sea of Cortez, the magnificent Bahia Concepcion--and you wonder if maybe author Joseph Krutch had it right 20 years ago, when he wrote:

“Baja is a splendid example of how much bad roads can do for a country. It must be almost as beautiful now as it was when Cortez saw it, in 1533.”