| described as the "prettiest desert in the world." Three days of travel brought us to the small, picturesque village of St. Ignacio, situated halfway down the Baja Peninsula and about 500 miles south of Los Angeles. We turned east and traveled over the world's roughest roads to the tiny village of Santa Marta. Here the road ended. We had reached our takeoff point, the rugged mountains of Sierra de San Francisco. Bleating goats, braying donkeys and the smell of dung greeted us. The village lay somnolent in the midday sun. Only the mule skinners were there to greet us. The trek to the cave sites and back would take us five days, over extremely rough terrain. Together, we were a conglomerate party of 15 people, 11 mules and a dozen donkeys. The donkeys carried all of our food, gear and water. Water, we learned later, would become critical to our expedition. Mounted on mules, we took off straight for the first canyon to search out the sequestered art of the murals. Two of our party refused to ride. Later, my sore bottom would attest to their wisdom. I learned a lot about mules and donkeys during those five days, most of it unprintable. I do |
know
this: Every time I approached "Ernie" (my mule), he eyeballed me with silent
disdain. He knew a tenderfoot when he saw one. Our expedition was a masterpiece of disorganization. The guide/interpreter had begged off at the last moment with a hernia problem. The five vaqueros with us to handle the mules and donkeys spoke no English. Only one of our party spoke passable Spanish. Undaunted, we pushed on. Now it was down and up over incredibly rough and rocky trails. Our first night was at Rancho San Francisco, a tiny village situated high in the mountains. It was typically rural Mexican - thatched huts with colorful flowers. One house served as the kitchen, another was the bedroom. A small church stood on the hillside surrounded by a field of hollyhocks. Only a few people were about; the rest were out herding the goats or tending the gardens. Goats, valuable as they are to the ranchers for milk and meat, are a serious problem; they strip the hillsides of valuable ground cover. We left the Rancho after a hasty morning breakfast of tortillas and coffee and started the steep downhill trek towards the Arroyo San Pablo. Our destination was Rancho Santa |
Teresa. Juan, our "Number One" vaquero, conveyed to us that it would take "una
huera." The 2,000-foot drop over harrowing, precipitous trails took us three
hours. Santa Teresa proved to be an oasis. Here we found plenty of water and a brief period of rest and shelter from under the blazing sun that had accompanied us all the way. It was a blessed relief and a chance to meet and visit with some villagers in this back-country community. Rancho Santa Teresa was in many ways different from other villages we had seen. Located at the bottom of a canyon and next to a running stream, it was surrounded by palm trees. Fruit trees were abundant - figs, peaches, lemons and grapefruit. These offered additional shade to the houses. Roses, geraniums and hollyhocks blossomed in the gardens. A primitive water pipe system running from an uphill spring supplied the village with a constant flow of fresh water. Here we replenished our diminished supplies. After a brief respite we moved on, following a sometimes appearing and disappearing river through the canyon to our campsite, an hour's ride below Santa Teresa. The cliffs on both sides |
