Feliz Navidad

After some mellow days spent in San Ignacio and Mulege, we´re now in the town of Loreto to experience a Mexican Christmas. This will be one of the last times we´re on the Sea of Cortez, a sea with constantly changing scenery. The Sierra de Giganta are finally dropping into the sea here, dolphins oftentimes come into the sea for breakfast, and the water has been torquise green.

Baja Peakbagging

Volcan Tres Virgenes was on our radar as our first Baja peak to climb, and it shut us down. If you´re considering going off trail in Baja (there are no trails!!), be ready for lots of bushwacking. We had been warned, but with enough desert hiking under our belts this year in Utah and Arizona, we assumed it´d be no big deal. Wrong. Both of us pulled chunks of cactus out of our legs, multiple long cactus spines, thorns thorns thorns. This is the type of stuff that everyone likes to warn you about in desert hiking, and usually it´s avoidable and never thick enough to complain about. All of that changed on this volcano and for every mile of forward progress, we had to make about 3 miles of winding walking around cactus to get there. After realizing that we hadn´t really made any elevation gain whatsoever, we made the decision to kill the summit attempt. We were lucky enough to climb enough the night before to give a nice view of the desert surrounding the summit, and it was beautiful. Mtn ranges following the sea, and huge black swaths of volcanic flows on the ground around. Can´t wait for that next big view...

Back on the Sea

Santa Rosalia was an old copper mining town with cool wooden buildings, Mulege was a quaint town that was hit hard by a hurricane this fall, the beach at Isla Requeson wasnt really sandy, but was all tiny seashell fragments. Here we hiked across a spit that was only accessible at low tide to get out to an island just off the coast. Camped away from the RVs on the island, read books, took photos, etc etc. Life is sooooo stressful...

In Mulege we had someone buy us lunch after we fixed a flat tire on his townie for him, then that night a pilot was fascinated with us being crazy enough to ride the highway and bought us beers and the best food of the trip. I love ceviche these days.

People here start celebrating Christmas at midnight, so we plan to stay awake and catch the services, listen to some singing, see more happy people, then crash in the RV park, or possibly even a hotel room, the first hotel room since Mexicali.

Merry Christmas to everyone.