Traveling down the Transpeninsular, part 4

If you want to read the previous posts about this journey, here's part 1 and part 2 and part 3.

Boy, I'd never be able to be a professional writer, having to write every day. I'm good for about 3 days and then I need a break. But I've got one final installment of the Transpeninsular journey to share with you all. This was our last day on the road: Saturday. By mid-afternoon we'd be home! We started the morning driving for a couple of hours along the Sea of Cortez.

Mulege (where we stayed the night before) is at the head of a large bay, Bahia Concepcion, which has several campgrounds strung along its length, but no towns. If you click on the link you'll see that it is a favorite destination of many, mostly people with RV's since there aren't really any other facilities available.

Just driving along the bay evokes a deep sense of peace.


As you get nearer to Loreto, the site of the first mission in the entire chain of California missions, the Sierra Giganta range rises up on the right.

These mountains are expecially wondrous - the layers of mountains behind mountains is breathtakingly beautiful!



Although you can see plenty of cacti in the photos, this is primarily "deciduous tropical forest", marked by lots of small trees (mesquite, palo blanco, etc.) that lose their leaves in the spring and summer, when the weather is hot and dry, then grow them again in the fall after the summer storms.

Once out of the mountains the road is on a high plain which looks like the Central Valley of (Alta) California. It's HUGE, and the largest agricultural region of Baja Sur. There are dairy farms, corn, and citrus visible from the road, and other crops as well.


It takes about 2 hours to drive through the plain, and then the road begins a long descent down toward the Sea of Cortez (again) and the city of La Paz. On that too long stretch there is a small community with a shop that sells objects made by rancheros who live in the (very large) surrounding area. Here are a few of the things that caught my eye:

I especially like the table and chairs made with cowhide with some of the hair still on it. There's a bed behind them made the same way. The price isn't $6500, it's 6500 pesos (they use the same sign for money that we do), so about $550 US dollars. You can also see knife sheaths, but I didn't take a close-up of the actual hand-made knives that go with them. They've got intricate tracery on them - flowers and vines. Beautiful!

And that's as far as this photo journal goes. About 45 minutes after this stop on the road we got to La Paz and another hour later we were home, with enough daylight left to unpack everything. Then dinner at a new restaurant in town that specializes in Argentinean meat dishes. Yum!