Our shaky little plane swerves up out of the LAX runway, over Dockweiler beach, and south along the cerulean Pacific coast. We buzz over the lumpy dry beasts of the Channel islands that loom out an endless blue mirror sea, and over little cottonball clouds clinging to Catalina’s arid ridges. Soon, the Sea of Cortez splits the desert landscape to the east and SoCal gives way to Baja California – we're headed to Mexico.
Were heading down to Baja in the Name of Science! We’re a hodgepodge group of ex-army and navy soldiers, 30+ year old undergraduates, semi-pro skaters, young giddy environmentalists and three white haired Kansas City professors, all involved in undergraduate geology programs. We’re flying down to Baja to live in a giant copper mine’s (El Minero Boleo) barracks for three weeks, to map uplifted marine terraces, decipher ancient sea levels, hunt for the age of mysterious hidden volcanoes, fly drones, sniff out hydrothermal vents, and research the nature of Mexico’s actively widening rift, the Gulf of California.
Our trip is a “Research Experience for Undergraduates” program, or REU, funded by the National Science Foundation. In REUs, professors who are undertaking a substantial research mission take undergraduates under their wings to be trained in the process of scientific research and help with various aspects of the project. The primary goal of this one is to map and understand the nature of Santa Rosalia Basin, a sedimentary rift-related basin on the East Coast of Baja el Sur facing the Gulf of California.
Out of the plane window we’re floating over endless, empty brown hills. Baja is arid and desolate and seemingly devoid of all life– human civilization, animals, and any traces of water. What lives down there?
The Baja peninsula was even more isolated before 1973, when the first major highway was built– Highway 1. The first airport was built in the same year, and since then tourists have flooded hotspots on the peninsula like Cabo. But vast stretches of land, like the central desert, are untouched and pristine. Baja California is split into three major climate zones: El Norte, with a Mediterranean climate similar to Southern California; the central desert, and the dry tropics in Baja el Sur. Baja’s skinny waist is made up of the Vizcaino Desert, which is home to unique vegetation and abundant wildlife; it’s a biosphere protected by the Mexican government.
It’s also teeming with fossils– until the last ice age, large Pleistocene animals like mammoths and sabertooth tigers roamed the peninsula’s plains, which had a cool and moist climate at the time. Anthropologists have also identified three main cultural groups which occupied the peninsula after the last ice age, and correlate roughly with the three climatic zones. Native Americans with a culture contiguous to those in the Southwest occupied the north, the Cochimi made camp in the desert, and Guayora and Pericu were in the south.
Were going to Loreto, a sleepy beach town several hours north of Cabo and its drunk frat stars. Loreto is packed with forty-plus gringo expats who have a soft spot for fishing and sun-scarred skin. Most of the plane was filled with these types; I boarded the plane with a geezer who bought a condo down on the peninsula when he realized the rent is $200 a month for beachside property, and now pops down there during the cold winter months and stays until he runs out of tequila.
Far below, Loreto suddenly appears as a cluster of ant-sized houses at the edge of a foamy beach. Our little plane drops us off in a sparse runway surrounded by distant palms, desert hills and 12-foot-tall cacti. We pile into rented 4x4 suburbans and trucks, lash our backpacks to the truck beds, and take off through the dust. West of town, a sharp cordillera ‘El Gigante’ follows our path, running in a rugged, undulating cacti-encrusted spine.
Fresh fish tacos at a local restaurant occupy us until three. We flip through the “Gringo Gazette” and a have couple more Coronas. Loreto is charming and colorful, and many of the houses have tiki-style thatched roofs. Colorful strung paper lanterns hang from awnings.
Around four we begin the three hour ride to Santa Rosalia, the mining town that grew off of El Minero Boleo. A few minutes out of Loreto a group of stern Mexican soldiers in full camo holding six-foot-long machine guns pop out from behind cactuses and order us out of the car: A military checkpoint. Since Mexico isn’t currently involved in any wars, the country uses its military essentially as a police force. Their guns, hand-me-downs from Germany’s military, are probably mostly for show. The idea is probably to catch vans full of SoCal college students driving with a van full of weed or roadtripping hippies with heads full of acid. Nothing too serious– cartels and gangsters seem to stick to the mainland. Nonetheless they send us sprawling onto the sand and rummage through our things. Luckily our rock hammers and compasses must seem to indicate pacifist intentions.
We drive north along the Sea of Cortez on the Highway 1. It’s well-paved but not lit, and savvy travelers don’t recommend travelling at night. Cattle from desert ranches in the area tend to wander across the highway without fear, and apparently locals and crazy gringos will tear down the strip like maniacs without lights.
For the remainder of the ride, the sun starts to set a dusky purple-blue haze. Deep violet craggy, roughly textured mountains on the mainland across the Sea of Cortez are like a misty mirage from a far-off dream. Between us and them, the sea glows a searing, luminescent cobalt. Our view of the ocean appears and recedes with the flows of the land as we pass behind dusky brown hills and along bays and inlets. Giant cactuses, hundreds of years old and taller than any man, create a spiny pattern of silhouettes against the glowing sky. Patches of blood red clouds like bleeding wounds were smeared everywhere along the horizon.
In some inlets, white camper vans park along the beach, some decked in Christmas lights, some with fires glowing oceanside to match the sun’s last rays. Occasionally thatched-roof tiki huts bustle with festive tunes and soft lights. The landscape is quiet, mysterious, fantastical. It’s strange dreamlike collage of dark desert hills dry as bone, a shining blue sea, and the majestic purple mainland range like a sleeping dragon’s back. Above, a deepening fuchsia horizon and a splay of colorful ribbons and painted confetti clouds, a celebration of the days end and our arrival in Mexico, in Baja el Sur.
Eventually the stars peek their way out of a darker sky, clear and sharp, and we coast into Santa Rosalia and our new home in the mine; more mystery to come tomorrow.
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