Boojums, Monster Cactus and Elephant Trees

Tom meets the Boojum

Jan and the giant cordon Cactus

12/8/10  San Quintin to Mulege.  Our second day on the road was a long but a beautiful drive.  Fog had rolled in on our campsite and we thought it prudent not to drive on the highway with limited visibility so we waited until about 9:30 in the morning before leaving the campground.  The road headed inland and up along the western side of the mountain range which follows the peninsula, continuing along through an amazing and fascinating landscape; home of the Boojum tree. The plains shifted up into huge hills which had their tops lopped off into mesas.  Then it became rocky and we started to see our first Boojums.  This is a plant right out of a Dr. Seuss book with it’s tall (up to 50 foot), fat trunk covered with small, prickly green sticks and a top with tiny yellow branches.  They look like huge, green carrots stuck upside-down in the ground.  These were sprinkled across the landscape of boulder strewn desert hills and in-between giant cordon cacti which reached to 60 feet tall . This seemed like the quintessential Baja desert that I’d imagined.  Other wild looking plants were also abundant here: A cactus that looked like it wore fur and the Elephant Tree, a relative to the sumac with a short, gray trunk and limbs that appeared to have been blown up with a tire pump.  It would have been fun to explore the area, but we have decided to blast on to Southern Baja and get set up for when we meet up with Tyler at Christmas break.  We plan to take our time with some of these places that we’ve passed through on our return north.

Along the Boojum trail

We passed the border station between North and South Baja and after having our wheels sprayed with insecticide for $20 pesos (go figure... I guess we could pass go then) we camped our second night behind Mario’s restaurant in Gurrero Negro. A lot of “campgrounds” here are connected to restaurants. Usually it is just a big lot with hook ups, which we don’t really have to use, but the campgrounds seem to be the safest option for sleeping overnight.   Tourism seems to be down here, and again we were the only people camping in the RV lot.  After another foggy morning, we headed inland again and crossed over the mountains to the Sea of Cortez.  The water seemed extremely blue after our few days of rolling through dry, subdued colored desert. We are camped in a nice little campground in Mulege tonight and we even have internet and a hot shower for once.  Mulege is a small town in a palm oasis setting and is quite the welcome respite for the weary driver (Tom). A nice bike ride to loosen stiff sitting muscles and a gin and tonic has taken the stress away as we are enjoy our fish tacos in Tortuga under swishy palms tonight.