South of Tijuana by Joe Cummings

Before taking my first auto trip along the thousand-kilometer-long, two-lane blacktop known as La Carretera Transpeninsular Benito Juárez, I scaled a wall of guidebooks and travel literature on Baja - from the 1928 Mañanaland: Adventuring with Camera and Rifle Through California in Mexico to the latest edition of the American Automobile Association’s (AAA) Baja California Tour Book. Although it was easy to see on paper that road conditions on the Tijuana-to-Cabo drive had improved immensely since the construction of the Transpeninsular Highway in 1973, almost everything I read nevertheless conjured up varying degrees of potential calamity. The AAA guide, for example, enumerated a lengthy list of automotive parts and tools to be tucked into the trunk before departure. Driving at night sounded like jumping off a bridge with a half-severed bungee cord around your ankles.

So it was with some trepidation that I eased a Mexican-made VW bug out of the Avis rental lot onto Tijuana’s busy Boulevard Agua Caliente one bracing January afternoon not so long ago. I quickly became accustomed to Tijuana driving -if you’ve seen one gridlock you’ve seen them all - and confidence in my driving skills bounced back to near-normal levels. After all, didn’t Mexicans drive on the same side of the road as my countrymen in California?

Once I was south of Tijuana on the original Mexico 1 or ‘free road’ (the four-lane toll road to Ensenada, I was told, was tame and expensive), the bug was slinging its way around steep mountain curves with several layers of canyon and desert below. Seeing the rusting skeletons of ‘60s vintage Plymouth Roadrunners, VW vans, and Chevy pickups among the whip-like ocotillo and towering cardón cactus en route to San Felipe on Mexico 3, I thought “Must’ve been different in the pre-Transpeninsular Highway era - no problem now.” As signs of human habitation thinned to the occasional blast of wind from a passing truck, I began looking more closely at the roadside debris and noticed some of the decaying hulks had been built after 1973 - some were in fact ‘80s models. Back to square one, I thought. Take nothing for granted.

Like thousands before me, however, I made it to the tip of the peninsula and back, zigzagged back and forth across the peninsula several times, and managed to log 3,600 Baja kilometers in the first six weeks of driving. Total damage at journey’s end: a sun-burned left arm and a cracked oil pan, inflicted by a sharp, unseen boulder protruding from a red-dirt road between Mexico 1 and little-known Mission San Javier deep in the peninsular interior. I equalized my tan at Land’s End, the jumble of rock arches and sand beaches at Baja’s southernmost tip that form the coccyx of a cordillera that begins far north in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, and had the oil pan sealed by a village mechanic in Mulege for a mere $25.

Now that I’m an `old Baja hand’ I relish the drive, whether it takes three days of straight-ahead driving or three weeks of lingering in old mission towns and losing myself in Baja’s palm canyons. Even the touristy bits at the beginning - the rigged jai alai games at Tijuana’s Palacio Frontón, the docile burros painted with zebra stripes posing for photos along Avenida Revolución - help put me in the right frame of mind for the journey south.

Yet another initiatory step must be taken in salty Ensenada on the upper Pacific coast, just out of reach of border day-trippers but not yet the `real Baja’ for us old hands. Wedged between the waterfront tourist shopping district along Avenida López Matéos and a clutch of seedy red-light bars on Avenida Ruiz is 100-year-old Hussong’s Cantina, where we Baja-nauts stop for a ritual shot of tequila chased with a cold Tecate cerveza and squeeze of lime before confronting the no-nonsense middle part of the journey. If the pass-the-hat ensemble of acordeonistas and guitarristas are pumping out a particularly infectious norteña repertoire the evening I walk through the swinging doors, chances are I’ll be adding another half-day to my southward itinerary to recover from the after-effects.

Once past the hilly fishing-and-farming town of El Rosario the classic Baja scenery kicks in, splashing a montage of cactus greens, arroyo reds and rocky grays across the windshield. For roughly 200 kilometers below Arroyo del Rosario a whole pantheon of desert foliage peculiar to Baja California make appearances, including profuse stands of cirio, a tall, spindly succulent that reaches 50 feet in height from a base of only 13 inches or less; tiny green leaves sprout along its gray trunk like a coarse fur. After a desert rain, a flame-like orange blossom sprouts from the tip of the plant, hence the Spanish name, which means `candle’. Another endemic Baja oddity, the `elephant tree’, dots the central Baja landscape with its short, stubby profile, papery bark peeling from gnarled gray trunks - which bear a resemblance to elephant appendages - to reveal a spongy green interior. Cutting lazy circles over the extraterrestrial landscape is a minor air force of hawks, eagles, and ospreys; the occasional cactus wren darts from perch to perch below.

As the Transpeninsular Highway bounces from the Pacific Ocean side of the central peninsula to the Sea of Cortez side on its erratic journey south, there is plenty to feed the eye but precious little for the stomach. There are no automatic food vendors at the few-and-far-between petrol stations (one must top off the tank at every opportunity), no 24-hour Seven-Eleven stores. I like pulling off at ranchos tucked here and there along the highway, where ranchero families traditionally invite transpeninsular pilgrims to share whatever’s cooking on the wood-fired stone hearth that day for around $3 a meal. Rancho Ynes, just south of Cataviña in the center of the peninsula, is justly famous for chiles rellenos (batter-fried poblano peppers stuffed with melted, home-made cheese); at Rancho El Mesquital near the historic mission town of San Ignacio I’ve eaten venado guisado, a thick, spicy stew of wild venison culled from the afternoon hunt.

At the peninsula’s end, after I’ve crossed the Tropic of Cancer and passed the iron-shuttered, pastel-colored houses ringing the quiet Bay of La Paz, it’s back to `gringolandia’ at the fast-growing resort town of Cabo San Lucas. Time to lean against the bar at the Giggling Marlin, guzzle Pacíficos and swap lies with the red-faced North Americans who have flown in via Los Cabos International Airport to live out their Hemingway fantasies at ‘Marlin Alley’, a strait teeming with hard-fighting billfish. Sometimes I’d like to stay longer in Cabo, sampling the fish tacos at Chido’s and waiting in the dark, air-conditioned caverns of Cabo Wabo Cantina for Sammy Hagar y Los Gusanos to put in a surprise performance, but the curving Transpeninsular has a way of yanking on my internal compass. Before I’ve barely thought about it the hood ornament is pointing north and I’m reliving the journey bottom to top.