Baja Adventures
In 1967, when we moved from Kansas City to Aspen, we towed our old 16-foot inboard/outboard motorboat along with us. That trip was an adventure in itself. I decided to take the shortcut over 12,095-foot Independence Pass. At that time, some spots of the pass were extremely narrow, unpaved, and without guardrails to protect from 500-foot drop offs. Of course, the boat was useless during ski season and the nearest lake where we could use it was 45 miles away and ice cold, even in summer.
In 1976, Betty and I decided to have one last hurrah with the boat and were contemplating a trip to Baja, California, but were worried about the terrible Mexican roads. One day, as we were discussing this on the phone, it just so happened that Bernardo Quintana, one of our condominium rental guests from Mexico was walking by my office. I asked him if he had any knowledge of the Baja highway. To my complete surprise he told me he had quite a lot as his company had built it! According to Bernardo the two-lane road was fine, although it did not have shoulders. We decided to give it a try and were on the road the day the ski season ended.
Our first stop was San Diego for camping supplies and trailer repairs, then we headed south through Ensenada and down the narrow Baja Road. Our guidebook had told us about a fishing camp in the north part of the Sea of Cortez called Papa Diaz, so we took off east on an even cruder road to try it out.
Papa Diaz was primarily a fly in resort with an airstrip right next to the cabins. The cabins themselves were pretty basic with a single bare light bulb that went off when the generator stopped at 10 p.m. We had water, but the only time it was hot enough to bathe was late in the day when the sun had heated the water pipes that ran just a few inches under the sand.
But there was nothing wrong with the food, which was served family style at long tables and almost always featured huge piles of delicious turtle meat (this was before anyone knew about the turtles being endangered), refried beans, lots of salsa, and homemade tortillas.
On our second day we met a group of young people from Chicago who had chartered a sailboat for a four-day exploration of the islands offshore. One of the girls had left her sunglasses behind, so we decided to have an adventure and take them to her (at dinner, she had told us about the bay they were headed to).
The bay was at the end of an island, about 10 miles offshore. At our speed it was only three hours away. The sea was calm, and we found the sailboat just before dusk. We beached the boat to set up camp, intending to rejoin our friends for cocktails. What we hadn't counted on was a huge tide which went out so fast that by the time we realized what was happening there was not enough water to launch the boat. We were a bit panicked, but the captain of the sailboat told us there would be another tide at about three in the morning and, of course, the one we came in on would return the next afternoon. No worries!
Before going to bed we dug a trench around the boat to make it easier to float and took turns staying awake so we would not miss the next tide. We were very disappointed when that tide came in and did not even get the boat wet.
Our friends were gone at dawn, so we tried to relax while waiting for the afternoon tide. When it finally came in, we were able to easily relaunch the boat, but it was too late to try to return to camp so we moved to the next bay, anchored in plenty of water and swam ashore to spend a quiet night.
By morning, our cooler was almost empty and our water supply low, but we knew it was only about a three-hour trip back to camp, and we were in a beautiful spot teeming with sea life. What we didn't realize in our protected place was that the wind had come up strong from the south. As soon as we poked our nose out from behind the shelter of the island we were greeted by huge whitecaps, far too rough for our little vessel.
The rest of the morning and early afternoon was spent observing the sea life. Every hour or so we would stick our nose out to see if the wind had died, no such luck. At one point a whale sounded right next to us and when the air from his blowhole reached us, we discovered, for the first time, that whales have bad breath.
Late in the afternoon, I realized we were using up our gas making these exploratory surges so decided we had better go for it no matter what. Every wave was breaking over our bow and I knew that if the engine swamped, we would be swept onto the 150-foot cliffs off the island that rose right out of the water.
A bone rattling three hours later we made it back to Papa Diaz with only fumes in the gas tank, we were soaking wet and almost frozen. One of the campers saw the shape we were in, helped us get the boat out of the water and gave me a big slog of wonderful bourbon. Can't describe how good the turtle tasted that night.
The rest of our trip was pretty routine. We drove to La Paz, took the ferry across to the mainland and made it home to Aspen without incident.