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Baja 2007

The Baja peninsula is one of life's great adventures.  It's a mystical place, largely undeveloped, with awesome roads and incredible scenery.  I've been lucky enough to have traveled through a lot of the world, and I think that nothing compares to Baja.

This particular Baja adventure was one of the best road trips I've ever taken, and I hope the photos below will convey how much fun I had.  I and three of my good friends at Layne rolled south into the Baja peninsula on our motorcycles to see the whales, soak up some scenery, give the bikes and the cameras a good workout, and generally just have a great time.  There's nothing like a good road trip to toss aside the trivial things in life, and in my opinion, Mexico does it better than any place else.

I shot all of the photos on this page using my D200 Nikon with an older 24-120 Nikon lens and a 12-24 Tokina lens.  Nearly all of the shots used a circular polarizer, and nearly all were shot at ISO 100.

I have to warn you up front...there a lot of photos on this page.  This was a great trip, though, and I wanted to include all of the highlights.  

Paul rented his Harley-Davidson in San Diego, as he had done a couple of years ago when we did the Pacific Coast Highway ride.

I remembered the lizard at Eagle Rider's the last time I was in their shop about two years ago, so I asked about him when I entered the store.

"Yep, he's still here," Natalie told me (you'll see more of Natalie in a minute).

Meet Harley, who hangs out in the back.

He didn't seem at all bothered by me taking his picture.  

The people who work at the rental shop told me that Harley hangs around like a house cat, but they warned me not to try to pet him.  

I needed no encouragement.  This thing looked like something out of a 1950's monster movie.

Check out the detail in Harley's eye.

I'd say that 24-120 lens did a pretty good job.

Natalie, who rented the Fatboy to Paul.

She has pretty eyes, too.

You meet interesting people on a trip like this.  We hadn't even left the Eagle Rider rental place and the trip was shaping up nicely.

Luis, who kept an eye on our bikes while we visited La Bufadora.

You can buy any of these medications over the counter in Mexico.

La Bufadora's claim to fame...the blow hole.

There's an underground passageway in the rocks that vents to the atmosphere.  When the waves come crashing in, this passageway channels the water straight up.

See those clouds in the background?

We were going to get up close and personal with them a bit further down the road.

Clint Eastwood, on a velour painting at La Bufadora.

The D200 Nikon and my old 24-120 lens did a pretty good job picking this up.

I guess people buy this stuff.  

What would you do with something like this?

We grabbed some fish tacos for lunch in La Bufadora, and then we continued south.

We didn't know it yet, but we were in for some rough weather that afternoon...

Paul's red leather gloves did not have color fast dye.  

The rain soaked through Paul's leathers, including his gloves, and turned his hands bright red.

Mama Espinosa's specialty, lobster burritos.

The boys tell me these are really good.

Dave getting his camera out of the trunk on his FJR1300 Yamaha.

This is a wonderful motorcycle, possibly the best one I've ever owned. 

We stopped in Catavina at the La Pinta hotel for a cup of coffee and to top off the bikes.

Here's Paul standing by his Harley-Davidson.

This is a great motorcycle.  It can easily cruise at over 100 mph, it has plenty of ground clearance, it has a comfortable seating position, it gets between 40 and 50 miles per gallon, and with its 6.4-gallon gas tank it has a cruising range well over 200 miles (which is a good thing to have in Baja).  I bought it from Doug Douglas Motorcycles in San Bernardino.

Paul and his Fatboy Harley-Davidson, somewhere between El Rosario and Guerrero Negro.

We spoke to a surfer couple for a bit while we were enjoying Tony's fish tacos.

They had a Sharpai, who made me a little nervous sniffing around the motorcycles (especially when he went near my Tiger).

A long time ago, I had a 1979 Electra Glide, which was easily the worst motorcycle I ever owned.  The Harley dealer in those days had a St. Bernard, who one day decided to relieve himself on my rear wheel.  I thought that was a pretty bad thing to do, although that motorcycle was so bad I often thought about doing the same thing myself. 

That St. Bernard set a canine precedent.  After that mutt did his thing, wherever I parked that old Harley, it would attract other dogs and they would do the same.

Anyway, this Sharpai had much better manners, or he realized Triumph is a much better motorcycle, or both. 

They served it in a hollowed-out pineapple.  It looked pretty good.

We sure weren't hurting for food on this trip.

We rolled over to Malarrimo's early the next morning.

I grabbed this shot of the Fatboy's 88-cubic-inch Twin-Cam engine while we were waiting for Malarrimo's restaurant to open for breakfast.

Malarrimo's runs a first class operation.

They offer whale watching trips, and they have a hotel and a restaurant in Guerrero Negro.

They do a great job.

You could feel the excitement in the air.  This was going to be a lot of fun.

The mature whales are actually about twice the length of these tiny boats.

Here ya go....what we came down to see.

A California gray whale, up close, but not as close as we would get in just a bit.

This gray whale is a baby.  It's only about 12 feet long.

That's its momma in the foreground.  

You can only see a little bit of both animals here.  

The momma whale was huge.  She looked like a submarine.

Here's the little one, coming in for a closer look.

Momma never strayed far away.   She kept an eye on things making sure it was safe for the little one.

The whales took a few minutes to warm up to us.  

After that, they were very playful.  

This one in particular was like a puppy.  

Another shot of the baby.

Here's the mother whale and the baby.  The mother was huge.

A couple of us actually got to pet the whales.

Mama, coming in for a closer look.  Sometimes they stand straight up in the water.  They call this "coning."  Check out the barnacles.

The whales are huge, and if they wanted to, they could probably do serious damage to our boat and to us.  

We never felt threatened, though.  We felt a connection to the whales, and we felt entirely at ease being this close to them.

The baby whale, giving us one last look before calling it a day.

After seeing the whales, we made another quick stop at Antonio's for a fish taco, and then we were back on the Transpeninsular Highway headed south.

Our next stop was in San Ignacio, an oasis in the Baja peninsula's Vizcaino Desert.

This is the lagoon in San Ignacio.   That's a dormant volcano in the background.

Those palm trees are date palms.  The Jesuits introduced date farming to San Ignacio several hundred years ago.

One of the figurines inside the San Ignacio Mission.

A stone cross outside the church.

Dave, taking a break in front of his room in Santa Rosalia.

The copper played out back in the 1970s, but there were still numerous pieces of equipment scattered throughout the town.

More mechanical equipment in Santa Rosalia.

In front of our rooms at the Frances Hotel.  Everything was made of beautiful wood.

I asked the policeman who was wearing it in Santa Rosalia if I could take a picture of his gun.  

He was happy to let me do so.  

I asked what caliber it was and he took a single corroded cartridge out of his pocket. 

I couldn't help but think of the old Andy Griffith show...I was talking to Santa Rosalia's version of Barney Fife!

I'm always amazed at people who ask me if I'm afraid to ride in Mexico.  The typical question is something along the lines of "Aren't there banditos down there?"

I've never seen a bandito, other than in a few Frito Lay commercials a couple of decades ago...

This is the church in Santa Rosalia.  It was designed by Gustav Eiffel, the same guy who did the Eiffel Tower.

The famous El Boleo bakery in Santa Rosalia.

We stopped in for cookies after having a dinner at the El Muelle restaurant. 

The cookies were great. 

These nice ladies graciously allowed me to take their picture.

We were up early the next morning, and we left Santa Rosalia just after sunrise.

On the Transpeninsular Highway, between Santa Rosalia and Catavina.

 We saw a few guys on dirt bikes while we were down there.

A close up of one of these wild cirio plants.

A typical shot along the Transpeninsular Highway.  The scenery was awesome.  We didn't always obey the signs...

Our final night was in San Quintin, and we had to take a dirt road for a few miles to get to the Old Mill Hotel.

I'd never stayed here before (in fact, I didn't even know it existed prior to this trip), and it was a very pleasant surprise.  I know I'll be back.

The rain from a few days earlier had left a few monster puddles.  Here's Dave after rolling through one of the big ones.

I probably could have passed on the butter, though.

It was delicious.

Dave's dinner was this magnificent shrimp linguini.

Incredibly, that very night, we saw another whale cavorting just beyond this railing in San Quintin Bay.

This is at the Old Mill Hotel in San Quintin.

What would Mexico be without Mariachi singers?  These guys sang for us for awhile.  We gave them a good tip and called it a night.

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