A Walk on the Wild Side : After 3,000 Miles, Seven Pairs of Boots Traipsing the Rugged Baja California, Englishman Is Believed to Be First to Conquer It in a Grueling Two-Year Trek

If ever a movie is made about Graham Mackintosh and his historic walk around Baja California, sure to be included is a scene involving the diminutive red-headed Englishman and a rabid burro.

Mackintosh, sunburned and sweat-soaked, stumbles into a remote fishing village. The locals are startled but walk out to greet him.

They are their usual hospitable selves but warn Mackintosh of danger, should he continue his walk.

He has been warned before.

But this time, the danger is not from impassable cliffs or crumbling canyons, snakes in the grass or lions in the shadows.

The danger here is a deranged donkey, foaming at the mouth, terrorizing villagers, chasing fishermen down the beach.

Mackintosh asks why nobody has shot this dangerous beast. The villagers look at one another and decide that the Englishman has a point.

Two Mexicans don cowboy hats and grab their guns--dilapidated rifles from another era--and another motions Mackintosh to board a skiff.

The bold hunters shove off, landing a few minutes later on the burro’s beach.

Mackintosh doubts the existence of such a creature but has his camera ready, in case.

“We walk into the brush, calling this animal, and sure enough out steps this black burro,” he recalls enthusiastically. “And it charges straight at us. The guys are looking down the barrels of their guns and I’m looking through my camera, waiting for shots to ring in my ears so I’ll know when to [take the picture], and this burro is getting bigger and bigger in my viewfinder.

“Finally, I turn to see why they hadn’t fired, and there is nobody there! These guys are running back to the boat!”

And so follows Mackintosh, splashing through the water and eventually jumping to safety inside the little boat.

From there, the not-so-bold hunters, noticing that the burro has stopped, open fire, dropping the rabid beast, making the beach safe for Mackintosh to continue his journey down the coast.

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Mackintosh is believed to be the only person to have walked around Baja California. The two-year trip was completed 11 years ago, in four grueling stages during which he covered most of Baja’s sun-baked and often forbidding coastline.

The first stage was from San Felipe to Bahia de Los Angeles, the second from Ensenada to Laguna San Ignacio, the third from Bahia de Los Angeles to Cabo San Lucas, and the fourth from Laguna San Ignacio to Cabo San Lucas.

He estimates the distance he covered--he wore out seven pairs of boots--at about 3,000 miles. He walked across some of the most brutal terrain in some of the most intense heat on the planet.

His accomplishment earned him celebrity status among Baja aficionados and in adventure circles.

The book he wrote upon his return, “Into a Desert Place,” (W.W. Norton & Company, $14) is treasured by many in that it looks at Baja through the eyes of someone who, in a way, has become part of Baja.

A former teacher in England, Mackintosh, 45, now lives in San Diego with his wife, Bonnie, writing articles on Baja, leading tours into Baja and entertaining schoolchildren and travel groups with slide presentations on his now-legendary walk around Baja.

As for the movie, Mackintosh says he has sold the rights to his story to a production company specializing in, well, off-beat flicks.

“The way this film company works,” he says with a laugh, “they’ll probably get a black lady to play the part of me.”

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At a recent slide-presentation, Mackintosh is explaining to about 70 viewers in the Discover Baja travel club office the events leading to his journey. His first visit, in 1979, was supposed to be a mere border crossing so he could check out Tijuana but it turned out to be an extended hitchhiking trip the length of the peninsula.

It was from atop a mountain overlooking scenic Bahia de Los Angeles--about 400 miles down the 1,000-mile peninsula on the Sea of Cortez--that he fell in love with Baja.

“And at the top of the mountain there, I heard a voice in my head saying, ‘You are going to walk around Baja and you’re going to write a book about it,’ ” he recalls in his British accent.

“And I’m looking up saying, ‘Whoever is saying this knows nothing about me. I’m not going to walk anywhere; I don’t like walking to the store.’ So I thought I’d go back to England and forget about this thing.”

But he couldn’t forget.

“I kept hearing this voice: ‘You are going to walk around Baja and write a book about it.’ It was like I was really being called. I didn’t believe in this type of thing but it was like: ‘This is my destiny; I have to do it.’

“So I bought a backpack and take my first-ever hike across the Moors [range] in England. I’m walking across the Moors and I say, ‘OK, Lord, if I’m really being called to do this, show me a sign. As I said that, all these sheep appeared in front of me saying, ‘Baahaa, baahaa.’ That convinced me that I should do this trip.”

Laughter fills the room. Mackintosh continues the show, explaining that his plan was to stick as closely to the coast as possible and not to accept any rides--by boat or automobile--around any obstacles.

He began with hardly any money and a pack containing only a tent, some basic supplies and a couple of stills to turn saltwater into fresh water.

“I needed a gallon and a half every day,” he says, showing a slide of a still. “I had the stills and they made a few pints. I also boiled seawater--the steam flows through a tube and condenses and I got distilled water. I could make several gallons a day.”

He also dug holes in the ground, put receptacles in them and covered them with plastic. Water in the ground condensed on the plastic and dripped into the receptacles.

Clicking to a slide showing one such hole, Mackintosh points to a large iguana. “He fell in and he couldn’t get out,” he says. “It tastes a bit like chicken. Rattlesnake tastes like chicken . . . In fact everything I tasted seemed to taste like chicken.”

Next slide: a buzzard perched on a cactus.

“This vulture probably thought I would taste a bit like chicken,” Mackintosh says, provoking more laughter. “I think he followed me around the entire coastline, because every time I turned around, there would be a vulture on a cactus, looking at me.”

He became dehydrated and delirious on several occasions but tourists were generous with food and drink, and Mexicans in the fish camps treated him like family, feeding him, taking him fishing, tending his wounds.

While on his own, though, Mackintosh learned to make do with what Baja offered him.

Showing a slide of himself fishing from the rocks below La Paz, Mackintosh explains: “If I couldn’t catch 40 pounds of fish in one hour on the rocks like that, I felt like it wasn’t my day. Also, seaweed, shellfish . . . gonads of sea urchins were pretty good, sea slugs, sea cucumbers . . . whatever you want to try. . . . Basically there is no excuse for starving to death if you’re willing to try this stuff.”

Mackintosh tried nearly everything.

“I thought, ‘Let’s try the flowers of the ocotillo.’ I would wander across the desert just grabbing handfuls of these bright red flowers, and chewing them and thinking, ‘Well, they’re quite juicy and quite crunchy and not too bad,’ ” he says.

“And I’d been doing that several weeks before I felt curious enough to look inside one of these red flowers, and when I opened it up I discovered they were full of maggots and ants and all kinds of stuff. Needless to say, I didn’t eat too many of those after that.

“My favorite cactus fruit was the fruit of the pitahaya cactus, which is about the size of an apple. When they were in season, September through December, that was about all I wanted to eat. I would just wander from one pitahaya to another. I couldn’t get enough. It’s like a really sweet Kiwi fruit. I carried a spoon in my back pocket and just went looking for lunch.”

Another slide shows Mackintosh holding a rattlesnake, which he says became his desert delicacy.

“I’m being really careful because I’ve carried a headless snake for maybe a half an hour, and this thing wrapping itself around my arm, striking at me,” he says. “It’s really easy to get bitten by accident. The first thing I would do is cut the head off and throw it away. You cut head off, then skin it, rip that skin back, pull the innards out in this really convenient sack. This is nature’s ultimate convenience food.

“So apart from the first rattlesnake I saw, when I nearly jumped out of my skin, every rattlesnake was like a dinner bell when I heard that [rattling]. My only fear was that it would get away.”

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In each stage of his journey, Mackintosh encountered obstacles--cliffs or impassable boulders--that would force him deep into the desert.

Often, he would have to backtrack, through cactus and shrubbery that shredded his clothes and cut his skin. There were times he became lost and disoriented. His fair skin burned and his lips blistered and cracked.

But rather than getting discouraged he became more determined. Something was happening to him. He was beginning to think and act as a creature of the desert.

Coyotes kept watch on him and he on them, using their trails to lead him around obstacles and, eventually, back to the coast.

“They may be only three inches wide, they may branch and disappear, but coyote trails can do a lot of thinking for you,” Mackintosh says in his diary. “I hardly noticed them at first, but now I think like a coyote.

“My advice to anyone lost off the beaten track in Baja, especially if you want to parallel the coast, is to find a coyote trail, and think long and hard before leaving it. Go with nature. You might come face to face with the occasional coyote. If so, thank him. He will almost certainly guide you safely around cliffs, through steep arroyos and difficult brush.”

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Beginning the final stage of his journey, Mackintosh had become a wary traveler. And a weary one.

He decided, given that the terrain from San Ignacio to Cabo San Lucas was flatter and more hospitable, he would find a companion to help carry the load.

He bought a white burro from a rancher for $30. Mackintosh named him Bonny and introduced himself. Bonny wanted no part of this red-headed stranger.

“This burro was a walking disaster,” Mackintosh recalls. “Well walking is not the right word. He did not walk anywhere--I dragged him. It was the only way he was going to move.”

But he and Bonny eventually developed a relationship and made their way precariously down the coast. As time passed, Mackintosh grew fond of his burro. He saved its life, pulling it out of the mud at Magdalena Bay. He brushed its coat, stroked its ears.

Finally, they made it to the outskirts of Cabo San Lucas. Mackintosh experienced all sorts of emotions.

He realized that his long adventure was almost over. He lay down in the sand, looked Bonny in the eye and whispered goodbye.

“I muttered something about him being the best burro in the world, and thanked him for all his help and assistance over the past difficult months,” he says in his book. “He looked at me as if I was an idiot.”

OUTDOOR NOTES

Catfish Confusion: Things are somewhat back to normal at Irvine Lake, and at Irvine Regional Park for that matter.

But there was total chaos last week, when the stocking truck from a private hatchery inadvertently dumped 5,000 pounds of trophy-sized catfish into the shallow regional park ponds instead of the lake.

Word spread quickly and the park was inundated by fishermen with rods and reels racing hatchery workers with nets to get to the fish.

Jim Niemiec, who took over as manager of the Irvine Lake concession July 1, said the last of the catfish have been pulled from the ponds and that Irvine Lake--not the ponds--has received a new batch of catfish.

“It’s one heck of a way for me to start as new manager,” he said. “But the publicity did us more good than bad. I was hired to let people know that we have fishing opportunities in Orange County and it seems I accomplished that in a week instead of a year.”

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Tuna, Tales and Whales: With a June as last month was, it ought to be a heck of a July as the water heats up south of San Diego.

According to Paul Morris, manager of Fisherman’s Landing, June yellowtail and tuna catch totals for one- and 1 1/2-day boats at all landings were: 4,492 yellowtail, 1,385 bluefin tuna, 265 yellowfin and 159 albacore. The largest was a 128-pound bluefin.

North of Los Angeles, meanwhile, off Morro Bay, huge schools of albacore have reportedly been spotted by commercial fishermen about 100 miles offshore, which could indicate an impending beginning of a central coast sportfishing season.

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Noteworthy catch: a 115-pound striped marlin caught by 9-year-old Nick Korzenecki of Pasadena on his first deep-sea fishing trip out of Hotel Punta Colorada on Baja’s East Cape.

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Whale of a project? A massive cooperative effort, headed by the NOAA ship David Starr Jordan, will be in the Santa Barbara Channel this month studying the biggest mammal to roam the earth: the blue whale.

The 100-plus ton leviathans have been showing in the channel the last few years, much to the delight of whale watchers.

Capt. Fred Benko of the Condor, out of Sea Landing Santa Barbara, has capitalized on the whales’ presence more than anyone else, and treats passengers to such tidbits as, “The blue whale’s tongue is as big as an elephant.” But researchers hope to learn more important information, such as how many whales there really are, where they go and what they feed on.