The Baja peninsula stretches just more than a thousand miles from Cabo San Lucas to Tijuana. Some of it is even paved.
Motorsports fans know all about the annual Baja 1,000 off-road race that occurs every November over less-traveled reaches along the harsh expanse of desert mesas and arroyos lined with spiny saguaro cacti. Our own version would take place on the skinny two-lane road known as Mex 1. And, technically, it wasn’t a race.
It was more like a mission: Help haul a buddy’s Ram 2500 back home to Colorado after he’d used it to move into a new vacation home on the peninsula’s East Cape. Choose to accept it and be rewarded with the bounty of the surrounding seascape – more than a week’s worth of surf, sun and sand included.
Mexico has been getting a bad rap lately. Once renowned for its climate, culture and abundance of outdoor activities, these days our neighbor to the south has developed a reputation as a tourist hazard rife with danger and ripe for American abandonment.
Visit Mexico, we’re told, and death or dismemberment are ever-present possibilities. Rather than fishing and surfing, kidnapping and carjacking are allegedly the norm. A reconnaissance road trip was overdue.
Certainly there is some to truth to the tales. But while a few border town locations such as Ciudad Juarez have suffered the depredation of drug cartels accounting for the majority of negative publicity, after spending the week traveling the length of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula, I’m pleased to say that the reports of the nation’s demise are greatly exaggerated.
The Mexico I know has always been a bit ragged around the edges, serving up the finer things in life covered in a coat of dust and comingled with the occasional case of Montezuma’s revenge. But in more than 15 years of visits, it’s never proved any more threatening than most major American cities. And, as a rule, considerably less so.
So it’s a shame so many have turned their backs on this nearby diamond in the rough, watching television reporters wearing bulletproof vests on the streets of Cabo and deeming the entire 55,000-square-mile peninsula too dangerous a place to drive to and cast a fishing rod.
Armed with nothing more than an ancient Rottweiler named Greta, we stacked surfboards and packed a tackle box into an unlocked truck bed for the zigzag tour between the Pacific Coast and the Gulf of California connecting East Cape to Tijuana. Four nights of open-air beach sleeping yielded the type of torment that only campfires, meteor showers and spectacular sunrise surf sessions can tender.
The worst casualties outside of a nail in the tire were a few lost fishing lures and a pair of worn flip-flops pinched from a city beach. But mostly it amounted to friendly folks and tasty fish tacos.
Like much of Mexico, the road itself is a perpetual work in progress, a patchwork of pavement, cobbled construction and occasional outright confusion. It’s also an opportunity for discovery.
New beaches, pristine bays and mountainous enticements all conspired to distract our attention from the task of returning to Colorado. Fortunately, the Mexican military marked our progress with a series of more than a half-dozen checkpoints searching for drugs, guns and contraband along the route.
The sweet disposition of the big black dog in the back seat made it easy to forget she’s a preferred breed of many gangster types. Her presence raised a red flag among a few of the soldiers, but also raises the question: Had they considered that training a few beagles could solve all their problems? It works pretty well at the airports.
The cardinal rule among veteran Baja drivers is never at night. But it has less to do with banditos than with the black cows grazing along shoulder-less roads and big trucks that move 6 inches closer to the center line after dark. An early bed time also makes dawn patrol on the beach a bit easier.
A little common sense goes a long way on the road through Baja California. An open mind will go even further.
Scott Willoughby: 303-954-1993 or swilloughby@denverpost.com
