Friday, January 9, 2009

Solstice Blitz to Baja

Unless you really love highway driving, San Francisco to Loreto is a grinding, exhausting, long, ass, road trip. The soul-drag first starts to hit when you find yourself crawling at 10 MPH through the smoggy greater Los Angeles area. Then, if you manage to escape Tijuana without slipping off the road and into the very maw of existential despair -- it's just that kind of town -- then you still have to get through Colonet, Camalu, Lazaro Cardenas, and several other dusty, crowded holie places where you're better off not stopping even for a piss (my uncle did so some years back, and someone immediately stepped into his running car and drove away). On December 20, the second day of my Christmas vacation, as I started the climb from the Pacific coast up into the desert, I found myself thinking, "what the hell were you thinking?"

Settling into a camp later that night and looking up at the sky, I got the answer. In a beery reverie, I decided that I would have made the entire three-day drive just to witness that one desert night sky. Viewed from a high and dry desert standpoint, far from any electrified population center, the stars look very different. You can't look at them without wonder. As Emerson said, "If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare." But then, Emerson is the same guy who wrote, "solitude is impractical, but society is fatal." What a kook.



I saw similar skies and beautiful sunrises and sunsets every one of the twelve non-driving days I spent down there. That, plus all the fish, did indeed make the drive worthwhile. Conditions were good, mostly; when I touched down in Santa Rosalia, a stiff breeze was blowing and gringos at San Lucas were complaining of the lack of yellowtail, so I moved on to a relatively less breezy Loreto area and stuck a few barracuda and sand bass before the sun set (since I got to paddle, I count that as a non-driving day). The next morning the Sea of Cortez was like blue glass, perfect for paddling out to Isla Danzante for a look around:



That first day kept me busy with triggerfish, small yellowtail, and a decent size skipjack that had me thinking "big mossback" right up to the end. People on the beach were talking about big yellowtail at the sound end of Danzante, so I went down there the next day and found lots of gringo boats, a nice promising current, and zero yellowtail of any size. So I stuck with my nice peaceful north Danzante fishin hole, which kicked out plenty of 3-4 pound firecrackers, a few big mystery snapoffs, and then a few mystery snap-ons:



I bounced back and forth between the Loreto camp and my favorite camp on the Pacific side, spending the holidays alone behind the dunes. Christmas on the Pacific brought terrific fishing for corvina, pompano and snappers. I got my first glimpse of a snapper when three or four big reddish shapes came swooping after a small pompano that I had hooked. Aha, I thought, and tossed a streamer into the mangrove roots. Snap on! They also snapped at crease flies and topwater plugs:



On the second day there I noticed with some alarm that the higher high tides were coming up far enough to swamp my road out with saltwater. It turns out the best camp is basically an island half the time, and I did not want to end up like the guys back in my 2007 post. With this in mind, I picked a low tide, threw the truck into 4L, and escaped back to Loreto for a few more days hanging out with friendly gringos and their dogs. Overall, the little spot where I camped was delightfully free of big RVs, generators, and motorboats. Here my neighbor Ron and his yakdog, Chopper:



On New Year's Eve the tides were back down under two meters and I was back on the Pacific, having more great fishing and starting my "blood run" to fill the cooler. Obligingly, decent-sized grouper joined the snappers and corvina in the general snap-for-all -- which of course means that I immediately started losing lures in the mangrove roots. Snappers hit like a truck and run out for deep water; grouper hit like a truck and run for the roots, creating awful tangles. I maxed out at about a ten-pounder to hand, but I'm pretty sure there are a few bigger ones down there either dying in a tangle of line and hooks (a depressing thought) or who managed to get free and start gobbling down pompano and sierra again.

I got a couple of snook and the odd sand bass, and overall it couldn't have been better kayak fishing if you had scripted it. My spot on the Pacific is nowhere near as classically scenic as the Sea or Cortez side, but it definitely has its special charm. There is solitude, near-pure most of the time, and 100% pure during New Year's Eve and Day. There is the constant white-noise boom of the breakers against the dunes. There are big wide open spaces filled with birds and their lonesome calls in the wind. There are coyotes lurking in the bushes and sneaking around your camp at night, occasionally breaking into a sort of sonic fireworks of barks, yips and howls. All together, it creates a unique and wonderful atmosphere that I love to sit and drink in. I hope that this clip showing dolphins at sunset on New Year's Day can illustrate some of the unique sense of this place:



As for the long, ass, drive, I'm not so sure that I'll make it again for a mere two week window. Getting back in at Tijuana, sitting for two or three hours in a traffic jam so that some guy can take two or three minutes to scan your passport, is just too frustrating and futile. At the least, I will always, always come back in through Tecate or some other place. Wrapped inside that vow is the very safe assumption that I'll be back in Baja before too long. It contains a few of the remaining good places in this crowded, used-up world of ours. If you think I'm whining, check out 2009's first issue of The Economist and read the special report on oceans -- a sad tale of pollution, overfishing, and mass extinction. In one way, fishing with the dolphins on the beautiful lonely coast only makes it seem sadder. But in a more fundamental way, it makes the heart gladder and life richer. Viva Baja!

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