Seeing Baja like never before in just 4 days Seeing Baja like never before in just 4 days (April 01, 2005)

by Jeb Bing

I 'm back from a four-day, 1,000-mile trip, exploring many out-of-the-ordinary sites in Baja and mainland Mexico by air, land and sea - and all in just four days. From watching gray whales and their newborn calves in the Pacific to a cockfight in Mulege to joining the Baja Bush pilots' organization for a pig roast at the Hotel Sereinidad on the Sea of Cortez, it was a trip few have a chance to make to this tourist-friendly country on our southern border.

It started at 10 a.m. Friday when I joined my son Chris in his rented, modified Cessna 172 and cameraman Ryan Long from San Diego's municipal Montgomery Field a few miles east of downtown. For the next 4-1/2 hours, we flew at 7,500 feet alongside 10,000-foot mountain peaks, seeing spectacular scenery in this southern Sierra mountain range to a point south of San Felipe. From there we crossed the Sea of Cortez to Guaymas on the Mexican mainland where we went through customs, refueled and spent the night at the nearby city of San Carlos. Although not a resort like Cabo or Cancun, it's a popular destination for "snowbirds," the gray-haired RV travelers who head south in the winter months from Canada and northern states.

On Saturday, we flew west again across the sea to a private airstrip owned by the Hotel Serenidad, a favorite of hundreds of private plane owners who, unlike us, have both money and time to spare. More than 50 planes lined the narrow landing strip, including many there for several days of whale watching and just good eating. With the hotel's $65 a night suites sold out, we were invited to stay for the pig roast, and then paid $5 for a cab ride to spend the night at nearby Mulege, a small, historic town a few miles east and located along the only river in Baja. Later, we walked to the crowded town square and stopped briefly to see the Saturday night cockfight, hardly a venue for animal rights activists, or for the three of us who left before "Round One" was finished. Although called "historic," Mulege probably wouldn't impress Pleasanton preservationists. The Civic Center is a crumbling stone complex with no landscaping and large wooden doors locked from the outside with padlocks, and wooden benches inside for those who attend Mulege's equivalent of our council meetings.

A highlight of the trip came Sunday when we flew over to a small, officially-closed dirt airstrip at Laguna San Ignacio. There we spent the afternoon whale watching in a whaleboat advertised as accommodating eight. I was happy there were only the three of us on board and a driver. The small wooden boat's seaworthiness as it dipped from side to side in the choppy sea seemed about at maximum capacity. Operated by Kuyima, a Mexican company benefiting from emerging ecotourism in the San Ignacio area, the venture gave us the thrill of watching some of the thousands of massive barnacle-covered gray whales that arrive at the San Ignacio Lagoon from Alaska to mate and reproduce. We saw scores of these large mammals, some with their newborn calves, spouting and pitching headfirst as if for our clicking cameras.

With dusk approaching, we headed back for a flight to Guerrero Negro's military base off Highway 1, and the next morning to the small, isolated Alfonsinas lodge and restaurant, almost unreachable except by a small plane like ours at its short dirt airstrip on the Sea of Cortez beach. After a specially prepared lunch of fish and shrimp tacos, the main meal in Baja, we headed back to the States, clearing customs at Brown field just across the border, and then a 10-minute flight back to Montgomery Field. Although not inexpensive, the single-engine Cessna with its 180 horsepower engine and oversized 66 gallon tank (with fuel costing about $4.50 a gallon) allowed us to visit very remote villages and sites with extraordinarily cheap lodging and meals that made it all a reasonable price to pay for a trip you could take to Mexico no other way.

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