Baja 2009: The KLR Khronicles Part III

When I left off with the last post about our 2009 KLR Baja trip, I had a dog hanging onto my leg on a dirt road just north of San Jacinto.  It was terrifying, and what I was mostly scared of was that the thing might have managed to sink its teeth into me.  If that had happened, there was no question but that I would have to undergo the rabies shots.  In order to avoid doing that, I’d either have to know that it hadn’t penetrated my leg or I’d have to kill the dog and get its head to a lab to be tested for rabies (gruesome, I know, and don’t ask me how I know about such things).   That second option wasn’t going to happen, and in any event, I had no idea where I could go in Baja to get the head tested.  Nope, all my bets had to be on no penetration, or I’d have to go for the abdominal rabies shots.

When the dog finally released its grip, John and I slid to a stop a half mile  further down the road and I frantically stopped to check my leg. I didn’t know if the thing had actually bitten me or if it had just got a mouth full of denim and boot leather. I didn’t feel the dog’s teeth penetrate me, but I was too adrenalized to feel anything.

It’s a good thing we were out in the boonies, and it’s a good thing no one was there to see what happened next.  And what that was, well, let’s just say it was picturesque.  It was me frantically undoing my motorcycle pants, and then my blue jeans, and dropping both, with John kneeling in front of me to look for bite marks.  Anyone seeing this might get the wrong idea.  I know, we’re close, but not that close.

I checked my leg and I didn’t see any bite marks. John examined me and it was official:  I was unharmed. Had I not been wearing boots and my motorcycle pants, that probably would not have been the case.  All the gear, all the time.  It’s an adage that holds true.  Dodged a bullet, I did.

So, toothmark-and-rabies-free, we rolled past another little cluster of dwellings, made a sweeping right turn as the dirt road followed the coast, and there it was…

We hung out by the Isla Del Carmen for a while and I took a bunch of photographs.  The Isla Del Carmen sank right off the San Jacinto coast during a storm in 1984.  I’d seen the wreck in another photograph, and now I was seeing it in person.  It was awesome being there.

I like these photos, partly because of what we had gone through to get them (the rough roads and the canine assault), but mostly because it was a shot I had framed in my mind before we arrived and the actual photos turned out better than I had imagined.  Indulge me.  I’ll show you a few.

After spending a while taking photos, we took the direct route out of San Jacinto heading east. It was another sandy dirt road, but it was hard packed and it ran relatively straight to the Transpeninsular Highway north of Camalu.

We stopped in Camalu for lunch.  John and I opted for the chicken fajitas at the Las Brisas, a small restaurant, and our mid-day meal was amazing.  Octavio, the owner and chef extraordinaire, took good care of us.  We had a two-hour lunch, and we spent a lot of that time chatting with Octavio.  It was fun.

We got as far as El Rosario that second night, and we stayed in the El Sinahi hotel. It was an inexpensive, no-frills kind of place (exactly what I like in Baja).

We ate at a restaurant adjacent to the El Sinahi, and it was great.  I don’t think it had a name, other than “Restaurant.”  It didn’t need one.  It was wonderful.  You know, folks tell me I spend a lot of time talking about the cuisine in Baja.  Guilty as charged.  I love that aspect of exploring the peninsula.  I guess there are bad restaurants in Baja.  In 30 years of exploring the place, though, I haven’t found them.

I didn’t know it yet, but the rear window to my El Sinahi hotel room faced a neighbor’s yard. A neighbor with roosters. Lots of roosters. The kind that start cock-a-doodle-doodling at 4:30 a.m. Right into my window.
I had visions of making rooster fajitas, but I decided not to. Truth is, those things sounded so strong I didn’t know if I could take them in a fight.

There’s another abandoned mission west of El Rosario about three miles down a dirt road that winds through more small villages. We tried to find it that next morning, but we couldn’t.  While rolling down that road, we encountered more Mexican dogs, and sure enough, the dogs came after us again. We outran them that time. We could have poked around longer trying to find the mission, but the dogs unnerved me. I reckoned that we had gone far enough to pass where the mission should have been, we never saw it, and I turned around.  On our return through the area where the dogs chased us, we blitzed by at 60 mph.  No dogs, no bites, and no problems.

Ah, but the day was just starting.  A little further down the Transpeninsular Highway, in Baja’s Valle de los Cirios, we would be chased yet again.  But this time, it would be by a titanic tarantula.   But that’s a story for the next installment of our Baja KLR Khronicles.

Stay tuned!

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