cañon de guadalupe — december 2003

[nibot]

"Baja road trip? I'll call M and we'll leave right away—it will be just like Y Tu Mamá También! Wait a minute, who's the girl? D's the girl? Oh. It's too bad she has to get cancer." — K

Living for so long in southern California, it's difficult to believe how little I've traveled in Mexico. Part of the reason is a sort of fear—everyone I know who's been to Baja has returned with stories of having to bribe the police or get bailed out of jail. (I have a theory that it's like egypt.) It's daunting enough traveling in a chaotic country where I neither speak nor understand the language, but it hasn't stopped me before. Maybe with Mexico so close, the anecdotes are more numerous and seem more menacing. Moreover, taking a vehicle into a country opens up so many more avenues for things to go wrong.

I'm curious about Mexico. It's unexplored territory, right in my own backyard. Those stories can't all be true, and I'd love to one day drive down on a long trip and see the pyramids and the jungle, Copper Canyon in Chihuahua state, .. whatever there might be.

* * *

In December, Diane and I packed up the Vanagon and took a trip to the Cañon de Guadalupe hot springs, located some 30 miles south of Mexicali, near the huge dry lake of Laguna Salada.

A short way out of Mexicali, you turn off of the finely paved Mexico Highway 2 onto one of two dirt roads; one directly crosses the laguna salada, and the other skirts the 'shore' of the dry lake. We took the latter.

There were numerous skeletal remains of vehicles that didn't survive the trip.

Eventually the road turned into a canyon, clearly an oasis.

In the middle of the night we reached Arturo's camp. Here is Juanita and her mommy (and Lobos hiding):

Each campsite at Arturo's camp has a hot tub fed from a nearby hot spring, and a "palapa" (or "palupa") shelter made from palm fronds.

Comments

[easwaran.livejournal.com]

Juanita is so cute!

[thecolorblue.livejournal.com]

i went there with my dad once in our honda civic. it was almost one of the cars that didn't survive, due to the incredibly rocky nature of the road in. is it still that bad?

[roxymartini.livejournal.com]

the salamander lives!

that last picture, is it cropped? i think there was once more to see...

[once-a-banana.livejournal.com]

Yes those are exactly the kind of palm tree fronds you can use to roof a house. The kind that sort of fan out like a hand. Not the big long ones on coconut palms. Those ones are only useful as lightweight extra-long horizontal slats, after you cut off all the leaves.