The Road to Baja Page 10

As the road in to Bahia de Los Angeles neared town, we drive through two detours in what appeared to be river beds. The main road had washed away in those areas and were being worked on.  In town we learned that the rains that were brought in by the hurricane that struck Los Cabos last year, ended up as a flash flood that wiped out the sections of road along with 77 houses in parts of the town, washing it all, with cars, trucks and anything else into the bay.  Miraculously, no one perished.  

The town has largely repaired itself leaving little evidence.  Must come back here to go fishing.  It's a beautiful place and people come from all over world to fish here. 

We decided to continue our journey this morning.  Up in the mountains above Bahai de Los Angeles is an old Mission built in  1762, San Francisco de Boria.  We decided to pay a visit.  As is expected for Baja and most of Mexico too, is that any road that is not a major road, is not paved.    Such is the case here.  We had thought we knew what non-paved roads looked like after traveling south from San Felipe. Nope, but we do now!  One rough son-of-a-gun.  It looked like dry riverbed most of the way and probably was.  It took 2-3 hours to travel the 20 something miles up to the Mission.  

Well worth the trip however.  We took a guided tour through the Mission and surrounding structures.  It seems the first Mission built here was an Adobe building, constructed in 600, according to our tour guide and our best understanding of the language. 

We faced an option as we left the Mission.  We could flog our way back to the road we left and continue on to the main highway (#1).  A 60 or so mile option.  Or, we discovered that a "road" exists to El Nuevo Rosarito, on Highway 1, closer to Guerrero Negro, our intended destination.  We chose option "B".

The road to El Nuevo Rosarito appears to be a road less traveled.  Also a road less civilised.  It occurred to me shortly after we were pretty well commited, that when we asked the people at the Mission if the road goes through to Highway 1, we neglected to ask: "is it passable?"  Just barely, it turns out.  Lots of 4WD deep sand.  Rocks that could have broken us down if not careful.  A slow go, past a roaming donkey that was angry that we impeded his path and vacas (cows) that didn't know what to think. 

Finally on the paved road to Guerrero Negro it was about an hour to town.  We checked in to Hotel Cowboys, a place I have stayed on the past two visits.  Then, it was off to explore the town. 

Tomorrow we are going to arrange a visit to the Sea Salt production and see if we can view some of the whale calving taking place this time of year.