Making new friends

Rupert, a would-be friend

Well, we’re back in Santa Rosalia without mishap in our travels. In San Diego at Junior Birdman’s house we discovered that Lupita likes cats. While she was napping in my lap, the Manx cat Rupert was overcome with curiosity and jumped up on the couch to get a better idea of what this intruder was. Lupita woke up immediately to the cat breath on her face and tried to French kiss Ru who had almost accepted her until then. Cole, the outside cat could see Lupita through the sliding glass doors. He was enraged and wanted to come in and kill her. When Ru went outdoors you could see him whispering in Cole's ear that it wasn’t worth it to be so hostile and to lighten up. Cole kept darting annoyed glances over his shoulder as the two of them walked away into the garden together.
Cole, a fiesty dog hater

Getting ready for our departure in San Diego we read Baja Insider’s road reports that the highway had been damaged in several places in Baja due to the heavy rains last week. We had some trepidations starting out. And though it’s true that the road had been cut by the storms, the bad places had been repaired or detours made. At San Vicente de Ferrer, south of Santo Tomas, traffic was normal though the road had been undercut. Just past that we saw extensive low lying areas where L.A. Cetto’s vineyards were standing in about 3 inches of water. I imagine those vines will not survive with that much water covering their roots for such a long period. Too sad. Between there and Colonet three washouts had occurred but all were repaired, temporarily, and traffic moved along fine. At San Vicente Guerrero, north of San Quintin there was a major washout of the ramp to the bridge and it looked like the bridge foundations were damaged as well. Traffic bypassed into the arroyo and moved normally. At El Rosario there was another major washout of the ramp to the bridge and traffic was diverted into the arroyo, but again was moving well. They are still constructing the southern part of that bridge. A lot of water had come down but no further problems were encountered on the way to Cataviña where we spent the night. We saw a lot of large ‘standing lakes’ of rainwater in the desert's flat areas all the way to Guerrero Negro where we crossed over of the peninsula.

Newly formed lakes in the desert

As we drove along we continued to wonder how Lupita would adjust to our other animals. After reading some internet advice, we decided to leave Lupita up in Casa Abeja (our here-to-date unoccupied house that we plan move into this month). Then we both went to Casa Boleo and spent a long time greeting Sweet Pickle and the cats before bringing Dash up to Casa Abeja to meet to Lupita. The minute Lupita saw Dash, she screamed and barked in a frenzy as though her life were about to end, and she was going to be eaten. Dash just stood around looking embarrassed. After about 5 minutes of this she finally realized she wasn’t going to die after all. We took Lupita (in her crate) and Dash back to Casa Boleo and set the crate on the living room floor so the cats could sort it out too. Frida wasn’t interested but Winnie was quite curious. After 5 minutes of crate time we let her out and Winnie kept coming over to her to sniff her. Frida was terrified of Lupita and hissed and growled at her. Every time Dash thought a cat/puppy altercation was going to occur he would step between the cats and Lupita. He was amazing.

Last night Dash lay snoring on the floor, the cats slept on top of me, and Lupita stayed under the covers near Esperando. I had worried that Frida who likes to chase hands that are under the covers might pounce her, but she knew exactly where that puppy was under the covers and kept her distance. At 3 a.m. out Lupita popped and crawled out to sit on my face, quite concerned about the sounds the seagulls were making in the harbor. Did you know they squall and squabble all night long? I thought birds went to sleep at night until we moved here. The thing about Lupita is that if she is worried by a noise you can’t just say, ‘oh, it’s fine, go back to bed.” No, she has to figure it out for herself and that can take hours. Frida was about a foot away from the emerged Lupita, and was handling that face-sitting better than I was until Lupita decided she needed to bark and growl at the seagulls right in front of Frida. So Frida left but came back later.

This morning Winnie is still completely fascinated with Lupita. They have touched noses multiple times except Lupita always blows it with the French kiss thing and when Winnie tries to leave Frida wants to smell his butt. He really thinks she is rude, but just bats her away gently, although as she gets more a aggressive his bats become more hard. Frida now ignores Lupita the best she can, but is no longer a serious danger. And Dash is becoming jealous. Fortunately, Dash has a lot of other admirers in the house to make a fuss over him and get him through this. As long as we can minimize toy throwing arguments and food robbery attempts we will probably make a go of it.

Exploring Baja

It has been quite a weeks vacation whirlwind. We completely filled up our camper shell in San Diego with purchased construction supplies and food goodies; retrieved the Brainy Blonde at the airport; and started our trek back down Baja via the Valle de Guadalupe, Mexico’s answer to Napa Valley. We sampled the wines at Monte Xanic (best whites) and Adobe Guadalupe (fantastic reds) and had dinner at Laja, a touted gourmet restaurant. The night was spent at Adobe Guadalupe (http://www.adobeguadalupe.com/), Don and Tru Miller’s beautiful winery, inn and estancia in the heart of the valley. The next morning we had a lovely breakfast with Don Miller as he cajoled and scolded his six Wiemerriner dogs to eat their respective breakfasts and not go stealing one anothers. Then we trouped out to the stable for a viewing of week old Wiemerriner puppies (very cute!) followed up with a horseback ride through the vineyards. Just an hour on horseback reacquainted me of lots of muscles I hadn’t used since the last time I got on a horse twenty years ago.

The next destination of Catavina allowed us time to stop and eat lunch at El Rey Sol, a French Bistro of long standing and shop for more wine in Ensenada. We overspent our shopping time and had to step on it to get to Catavina before it was seriously dark (no night driving here, too much livestock on the highways!) The next morning we spend wandering around the desert taking cactus photos, visiting an abandoned marble (alabaster) mine— and our big adventure of the day, an excursion to Coco’s Corner, a jaunt off the highway on an “improved” dirt road that ate tires. We never did find Coco’s Corner (we think a pit stop for the Baja 1000 race) as the map was misleading, but we did get a flat tire and were delayed for several hours while Esperando ate dirt and bashed himself with the tire jack. He finally got a very uncooperative tire off the truck; it had looked like we might not be going anywhere soon.

On we traveled to Guerrero Negro for organized whale watching at the Ojo de Liebre lagoon, only to be blown away by strong winds that canceled that part of our itinerary. That did give us time to get the tire replaced and purchase some Pacific scallops. We also discovered the splendid Malarrimo Restaurant at Guerrero Negro which showcased a terrific meal and walls of used fine wine bottles autographed by passing Baja 1000 participants from previous years. That afternoon we drove on to San Ignacio hoping the winds might not be so awful and that we could see whales there. In fact, they had also cancelled their whale watching, so we came home to spend the night and unload the truck and went back to San Ignacio the following morning.

Luck was with us and we were able to go whale watching at last at Ecoturismo Kuyima. It was a little disconcerting to be in such a small boat and be surrounded by so many whales, most of them mothers with babies swimming and blowing. Some of the bolder adult whales would skyhop, raising there heads up out of the water about 12-14 feet so they could view the boats following them and lure us on to keep after them. Another favored antic was blowing large bubbles near the surface and leaving a trail of them for us to follow as well.

We spent a few days here in Santa Rosalia, then had another fine meal at Ray’s Place in Mulege, this time spending the night in his cute and comfortable cabins. Finally we drove on to Loreto and eat some good dinners at Canipole and Pacha Mamam. We cooked our bodies in the sun at the Inn at Loreto Bay. As the Brainy Blonde pointed out, with all that inactivity we were reducing our carbon footprint.