Mariano's Ranchito in San Luciano

Esperando told me on Saturday, “Francisco wants to take us to see his father’s ranch tomorrow, to see where the soil for our flower beds came from.” I was right in the middle of something that seemed important on Sunday when Francisco showed up to take us over there. I was annoyed that I had to stop doing whatever it was that seemed so important and go on another jaunt on some cobbly road.

Francisco is one of our employee’s at the guesthouse who is alternately a vigilante and a gardener, and a helper here for us at Casa Abeja. Before that he was Esperando’s main dude in helping him rebuild Casa Abeja. He cares for our garden. He is a kind man.

The road we took was another one of those bumpy tumbled rock affairs that Hurricane Jimena left behind in all the arroyos. She did a number to his ranchito, wiping out a lot of stuff and reorganizing the entrance to his place—there isn’t one now. We reached a high point and Francisco said we would have to walk from there as the road was gone. Not much of a walk though he said. To me it looked miles away and since I didn’t expect to walk, I had on reasonable shoes but not ones that were good for walking, sort of a flat mule-type shoe. By the time we got the ranchito I had stopped to empty the sand out of my shoes several times.

"See, it's not far, just a little walk," said Francisco.

Mariano at his ranchito

Francisco’s father is named Mariano and he is 84 years old. His ranchito is located in San Luciano, just down arroyo under the big bridge south of Santa Rosalia. You can’t really see it from the highway as it is tucked under some high cliffs. He has a big orchard full of fig, mango, and citrus trees. He grows chard, chiles, onions, cilantro and all kinds of plants. He has pots full of different cactuses, and a pen with geese, a duck and four peacocks. His ranchito is watered from 60-foot well that was hand dug and blasted by him, Francisco and another brother. When I asked Francisco how his father knew where to find water, he said he just knows these things and he used a water diviner. He has owned the ranchito for 20 years, before that he was a miner in the old mine in Santa Rosalia. But he came here from Todos Santos near Cabo.

We had a nice tour. It was quite a spread with large lovely trees that kept it cool. We probably spent an hour wandering around looking at stuff. There was a big swimming pool, but I don’t know that it was ever swam in, it was full of leaves and debris. Still it looked refreshing. There were several rusted antique cars, one from 1929 that the two men referred to as ‘the Pancho Villa’s car’ for its age, and a newer 50s truck that had seen better days.

Fig trees bearing fruit

We came home with a handful of green chiles picked by Francisco, which neither of us could identify on the internet. All I found out was that Mexico grows over 100 varieties of chile peppers. Esperando made a killer salsa from them, they had a hot bite to it which diminished rapidly. New Cook called them Bolitos, Francisco said they were kind of a Serrano, but they are a mystery chile to us.

Esperando’s Killer Salsa Recipe

Mystery chile, maybe a Bolito, about the size of a quarter.

4 Bolito chiles (substitute 2 Serranos)

1 medium tomato

½ white onion

4 cloves garlic

1 meaty roasted Anaheim chile roasted, peeled, veins and seeds removed

½ c water

Salt to taste

Boil all together in water until soft. Puree in blender.

Did I learn my lesson about being ready to go on unanticipated drives across the country? I hope so.

With regular watering it grows rusty.

San Borjita Cave Paintings

Baja is home to more than 300 hundred known sites of ancient cave paintings that are the oldest on the American continent. The paintings at San Borjita have been carbon dated to 7,500 years. This Great Mural Rock Art consists of prehistoric paintings of humans and animals, often larger than life-size, on the walls and ceilings of natural rock shelters in the mountains of northern Baja California Sur and southern Baja California. San Borjita is part of this group included in the UNESCO World Heritage list. We are lucky to be living in this area so close to so many sites, even though they are often remote and difficult to access. Many of them take several days of traveling by mule. An excellent book has been published on the subject by Harry W. Crosby, The Cave Paintings of Baja California.

Yesterday we drove to San Borjita—a nearby site of pinturas rupestres or cave paintings. We have driven past the turnoff sign on the highway countless times, wondering what we would find at San Borjita. The government requires that anyone wishing to see these caves hire a guide. So at 7 am we were waiting by the highway at Palo Verde to meet up with our guide Salvador Castro Drew of Mulege. He had told Esperando that the whole trip and back would take 7 hours. Once he arrived we started on a marathon drive across a bumpy rocky back road—the kind that should take several pounds off but never does. Although the site was only 21 miles from the highway, the road was so horrid that it took 1 ½ hours to get there. In places we drove across wide arroyos of compacted scattered stone that chattered as the truck bounced along. Prior to Hurricane Jimena these arroyos had been studded with forests of Palo Verde and Palo Blanco trees. Now they were scoured rivers of rocks washed devoid of any vegetation. You could see the remains of broken and uprooted trees that had washed down the arroyo to stack up like trash against the canyon walls and the few stronger trees that had remained standing.

We passed several ranchitos of ranchers eking out a living from their cattle and goats. Finally we arrived at the ranchito whose owner had the property on which the cave was situated. After collecting a key from him, our guide told us that this rancher had come there many years ago from Sinaloa. This rancher was a tiny blonde man of some forgotten gringo descent for he was Spanish speaking and not a recent immigrant. He was quite wrinkled and had lost all of his teeth. His grandchildren hung around listening to him discuss the road to the archeological site with our guide. Surprisingly there was a granddaughter, a blond little girl of about 8; and a grandson, a handsome green-eyed young man of 13 years, both with very gringo features and paler skin. It would have been interesting to know their long history. I wished I had thought to bring a bag of candy along for the children, but I didn’t know there would be any children way out here in the middle of nowhere.

Now we had to go to sign the government registry book that was kept at another rancho. So on we bumped on another 15 minutes. We came to a beautiful but empty rancho that the government had constructed, complete with a cute little restaurant and baños (yay!), but the whole place was deserted except for blooming fruit trees and cooing doves. It was so lovely and peaceful we both just wanted to sit and stay forever. Esperando signed our names in the book and we got back in the car and to drive another 15 minutes back to the cave site.

Next we spent about 30 minutes hiking up to the side of a canyon, initially criss-crossing a lovely little stream decorated with tiny little frogs, skimmer spiders and cow pies, then finally climbing over scree and boulders to get up to where the cave was. I was sure I was going to break my ankle, or worse my neck.

Finally around a bend we approached a deep cave. It had a low ceiling but was quite spacious and there was enough daylight to penetrate to the back of it. There on the ceiling of the entire cave were figures of men in red or black or less frequently white, many superimposed on one another, juxtaposed at various angles. Some of the figures were divided lengthwise with one side black and the other side red. There were a few paintings of animals, but mostly they were of men, many of them pierced by arrows. Once sensed the drama of warfare in these paintings. Were the figures of the people they fought against and killed; or were they members of their own group that had been attacked? Who did they fight in this empty land and how did they live?

They would have had to erect scaffolding here to paint on the ceiling, it was too high to be reached by hand from the ground. The camera captures the pictures better than our eyes can because of the glare coming from outside. Even though the images were well protected from the elements in this deep cave, they had eroded substantially. No one seems to know who these ancient people were or what the meaning of the paintings is really about. It is just one of the many hidden and intriguing mysteries of ancient Mexico.

Cave Guide for Mulege area (includes San Borjita and La Trinidad)
Salvador Castro Drew, based in Mulege, speaks English
215 161 4985

San José de Magdalena

What strength possessed the Spanish people to struggle through the steep arroyos and climb the craggy mountains and to find the hidden valleys with water so they could stay to make a life here in Baja centuries ago? Some of their descendents stayed on, even though water was more plentiful in other places, such as California proper. They make a living from their cattle and goats, becoming experts at curing and tooling leather, and making cheese. The live in isolated communities and plant their crops in the arroyos. When the hurricanes come and the arroyos flood, they are wiped out, but still they stay on eking out a living from this harsh and unforgiving land. Initially it was the missionaries that found the places here with water and tried to establish communities with the Cochimi and Guaycura Indians in this part of Baja. None of the indigenous people ultimately survived the arrival of the Spanish, succumbing to disease over time. Later even Anglo settlers came to Baja, settling in this area just after the U.S. Civil War.

According to Wikipedia: "the Visita de San José de Magdalena was founded in 1774 by the Dominican missionary Joaquín Valero to serve Cochimí Indians associated with the Misión Santa Rosalía de Mulegé. Building a visita, or subordinate mission station was initially proposed by the Franciscan missionary Francisco Palóu prior to the Dominicans' assumption of responsibility for the Baja California missions. The visita was terminated when the mission at Mulegé was closed in 1828. Ruined walls of stone and adobe brick survive at the site. (This is excerpted from the book Las Misiones Antiguas: The Spanish Missions of Baja California, 1683–1855 by Edward W. Vernon 2002, Viejo Press, Santa Barbara, California)."

Esperando and I knew nothing of this last weekend when we took the bumpy narrow dirt road 15 kilometers west of Highway 1 to follow the sign pointing to San Jose de Magdelena. We were just curious to see what was there since we drive by the sign on the highway often and now were looking for an afternoon’s diversion. Though a mere 11 miles from the highway, the drive to this little community took about an hour as the road was so rough. After 45 minutes of bumping along the first sight to greet us were little green pockets of water, winding down a deep wide arroyo, and strung together like pearl beads. The water nourished small well tended fields of green surrounded by rugged barren hills of naught but cactus. The first indication of a town is the cemetery, a little village of tombs and mausoleums in various bright colors, some new, some old with the ornamental iron crosses of a century ago. The dead have a sweet little city densely packed up against each another. It has a convivial feel to it, and one senses community and not desolation in the cemetery.

San Jose de Magdelena is known for growing garlic and selling the braided strands locally, so that is supposed to be what you come up here to see and to buy. We found an old almost toothless man (Esperando tells me he has read that these people are addicted to piloncillo-an unrefined brown sugar produced in hard cones of various sizes; they suck on them and over time rot out their teeth)  engaged in the so Mexican past-time of mixing up a batch of concrete. Since we have moved down here, I have come to realize the Mexicans and concrete go together like soap and water. Everywhere they always are building and improving on their structures. He seemed to be the only person in town. Everyone else must have been taking a siesta.

We inquired about the garlic, but it was still too early to buy any. He wasn’t sure when it would be available, but his neighbor across the way sells it when it is. He told us the road to the coast from here was impassable. We didn’t go any further down the road to see the old mission which apparently is quite ruined. On our drive back through town we passed a sweet little shrine to the Virgen de Guadalupe set by a spring. As we got back even with the cemetery, a man was in the field saddling his mule. (Mules are preferred to horses here; they are tougher and more sure-footed). The mule was saddled with a particular kind of saddle that the ranchers make here which has the chaps built into it so that you are not destroyed by riding in the thick cactus. He wanted to know if we wanted a photo, and then put his little dog up on the mule’s back and smiled at us. He, too, had a lot of missing teeth--too much piloncillo!

A cave adventure

Lately it’s chilly and windy which means dust accumulating in the window wells and creeping in under the door jambs. Today it has warmed up quite a bit outside, but it is still quite cool in the house with these thick concrete walls. Esperando and crew are busy working on Casa Abeja.

Yesterday we had a nice break from remodeling. For the sake of a kind of romantic and earnest young Mexican man that is a landowner, I will call yesterday’s host of our adventure, Don Diego (Zorro’s counterpart). Well Don Diego had arranged a visit to his family’s ranch for us near Mulege yesterday, which meant a 40 minute ride through the desert across washboarded dirt roads. I still think when I jiggle that much I have to be losing weight. We went to see the cave paintings on his property that were made by people some 10,000 years ago. They must have been thinking in the same manner as those guys from Lascaux in France, as the paintings similarly showed men and animals, mostly deer or fish in ochre or white. For me the stunning piece was of little white handprints grouped together on the wall. But I am getting ahead of myself.

First there was the hike to get to the paintings. It was not far, but it was a little hilly up and down and in some places required climbing on larger boulders. How silly I felt not springing around like some spring lamb like I used to do, but creeping cautiously across the rocks. For this I somewhat blame my hiking boots as my feet are much less flexible in them. We came to a deep clear pond which was fed by spring—how amazing to see water like that in this land of desert. What a joy that pool would be on a hot summer day! Esperando and I both were reminded of Sitting Bull Falls in New Mexico. Alas the stream had to be crossed so we put on our water shoes and waded in water about 2 feet deep, and though we had rolled our jeans up to our knees, the water siphoned the rest of the way up our pant legs. Fortunately it was not icy water and it wasn’t too cold outside. So we walked on a little further and came to where we could view the paintings, in a high cave that was not significantly deep. Sadly much of what must have been there has fallen down over time, but it was still something to see those simple line paintings so alive with the knowledge of those animal’s shape and movement spoken in every turn of the line.

Afterwards we returned to Don Diego’s kitchen, a simple concrete block house still under construction. A simple but delightful meal of tortillas, machacha (shredded beef), and refried beans with some farmer’s cheese (similar to feta) was served to us. Then he gave us a tour of the ranch and we came home with an armful of cilantro, zucchini and radishes and lots of pleasant memories.