{"id":4553,"date":"2019-05-28T06:19:15","date_gmt":"2019-05-28T13:19:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=4553"},"modified":"2019-05-28T06:19:15","modified_gmt":"2019-05-28T13:19:15","slug":"baja-2009-the-klr-khronicles-part-iv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2019\/05\/28\/baja-2009-the-klr-khronicles-part-iv\/","title":{"rendered":"Baja 2009: The KLR Khronicles Part IV"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The view, peeking out from the Mission San Velicata de Espana ruins.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Read Parts I, II, and III of the 2009 KLR Baja foray here<\/a>!<\/p>\n

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When the Transpeninsular Highway continues south after leaving El Rosario, it crosses a long bridge across the dry Rio El Rosario<\/em> and then winds into the mountains on the northern edge of the Valle de los Cirios<\/em>.\u00a0 The wilderness starts here, and it is awesome. \u00a0 I love this area. It\u2019s the first place you encounter cardon cactus and the cirios. These things grow only in Baja (you won\u2019t find them anywhere else on the planet). The Cardon are the giant cactus that look something like the saguaro cactus in Arizona, but the cardon are much, much larger.\u00a0The cirios are the weird-looking thin shoots that grow to heights of around 30 or 40 feet (maybe even more). Someone once wrote that they look like a plant that Dr. Suess would have designed, and I think that’s a good description.\u00a0 They have this kind of weird, whimsical, goofy look…the kind of thing one might create when under the influence of, well, whatever your preferred mind-altering substance is.<\/p>\n

I grabbed a few shots of our KLRs a few miles into the mountains.\u00a0 You can see the cardon and the cirios in the background.<\/p>\n

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My KLR 650. I had the Kawi soft luggage on it and a Nelson-Rigg tank bag.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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John’s KLR. These bikes just keep going and going. They’re perfect for this kind of ride.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Baja cacti. It’s one photo op after another in Baja.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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A shot along the Transpeninsular Highway in the Valle de los Cirios.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Baja John standing by my KLR. The background almost looks like it’s been painted into this scene.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After rolling along the highway a few more miles, I saw something out of the corner of my eye on the road.\u00a0 At first I wasn’t sure, and then as I was playing back the image mentally, I decided I needed to turn around and take another look…<\/p>\n

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Yep, my eyes weren’t playing tricks.\u00a0 I had seen what I thought I saw.\u00a0 Is that correct grammatically?\u00a0 Whatever.\u00a0 The spider was huge.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Wow, that was one monstrous tarantula!\u00a0 We parked the bikes and started taking photos. \u00a0 This spider was easily double the size of the tarantulas I\u2019ve seen in California.<\/p>\n

John got down in front of the tarantula. \u00a0 He squatted to get a closer look, and then something wild happened. The spider ran straight at John. We were both shocked at its speed. They normally seem very deliberate and slow, but I have to tell you, that one moved terrifyingly fast.<\/p>\n

John jumped up, screamed, and propelled himself backwards faster than a Democrat mistakenly wandering into a Trump rally.\u00a0 John was paddling backward so fast he looked like an old Warner Brothers roadrunner cartoon.<\/p>\n

We both laughed after it happened.\u00a0 Here we were, two guys old enough to know better, screwing around with a ginormous tarantula in the middle of the Baja peninsula, laughing like a couple of kids.\u00a0 Baja does that to you.<\/p>\n

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Look at this fellow\u2019s little beady eyes. And his hairy butt. That\u2019s quite a hairdo. It kind of reminds me of Beavis and Butthead. Come to think of it, those might be appropriate names for John and me.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The tarantula crawled under a plant, I took a few more photos, and we were on our way.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I think I already mentioned that I had my\u00a0Nikon D200 on this trip and an older (non-VR) 24-120 Nikon lens. I mostly shot at f\/8 (the 24-120\u2019s sweet spot) in the aperture mode, which is a mode that works well for me. I also had the 12-24 Tokina wide angle lens along for the ride, but I never even mounted it on the camera. The 24-120 is not a macro lens, but it did an acceptable job here.\u00a0 The Tokina lens does a good job, too, but the 24-120 Nikon was handling everything for me on this ride.<\/p>\n

Our next planned stop was the Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana Velicata. We almost didn’t go. I had been spooked by the dogs, and I told John the night before that I wasn’t too keen on rolling through any more little villages with dogs. John waited awhile and casually mentioned that he really wanted to see some of the sights accessible only by dirt roads. I acquiesced and I’m glad I did. \u00a0 We saw some amazing things…things we wouldn’t have seen if we hadn’t wandered off road.<\/p>\n

Further down the Transpeninsular Highway, we saw the sign for the Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana Velicata and a dirt road veering off to the west. \u00a0 I took the turn first, and son of a gun, a dog materialized out of nowhere and started chasing me. \u00a0 This time the dog was so small it was funny.\u00a0 It was a little Chihuahua, and he looked anything but threatening. \u00a0 The little guy was behind me yapping up a storm and I was enjoying the chase. \u00a0 Those little legs were pumping for all they were worth and he still couldn’t keep up.\u00a0 It was me, the Chihuahua, and John (in that order) rolling down this dirt road.\u00a0 The pup was struggling to keep up, barking all the while and trying his best to be intimidating.\u00a0 I could hear John laughing behind me.\u00a0 I should have grabbed a picture.<\/p>\n

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On the road to the Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana Velicata<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana Velicata was the only one in Baja founded by the Franciscans (the Jesuits did all the others).\u00a0 It only lasted from 1769 to 1818. It was built to convert the local Cochimi Indians to Catholicism (that was how it was advertised; basically, the missions were labor camps with a touch of that old time religion).\u00a0 Unfortunately, the Spaniards brought diseases for which the indigenous people had no immunity, and disease soon ravaged the area. The entire mission system in Mexico ended in the early 1800s, when Mexico gained its independence from Spain.\u00a0 It’s not a pretty story, but there’s a history here and it’s intriguing to visit these ancient places (especially when they are well off the beaten path).<\/p>\n

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The Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana Velicata. This is all that’s left of it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Our KLRs parked in front of the mission ruins.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The place was amazing.\u00a0 I’d seen the sign and the dirt road to get to the mission on each of my prior Baja visits, but I had never been to see it.\u00a0 Getting there and taking it all in was fun.<\/p>\n

After visiting the Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana Velicata, we rolled south along the Transpeninsular Highway a few more miles and took another dirt road (this time to the east) to see the ruins at El Marmol. El Marmol was a world-famous marble and onyx quarry 50 years ago. Like the mission, we’d seen the signs for it on our earlier travels through Baja, but we had never made the trip out there to see it. I always wanted to see what El Marmol was all about, especially after reading about it in several Baja references.\u00a0 Carole Lombard had a bathtub made from El Marmol marble, you know.<\/p>\n

The ride out to El Marmol was exciting.\u00a0 The road was rough and had deep sand in several spots. My friend Bob had previously told me that the best way to take this stuff was at high speed, and that’s what we did. It made an enormous difference. I could see the rough road beneath me, but the KLR’s long-travel suspension let me fly over it. It was almost an out-of-body experience. \u00a0 I enjoyed it.\u00a0 I was in the zone, and suddenly, we were there.<\/p>\n

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El Marmol. There isn’t much to it, other than a pile of big rocks.\u00a0 Folks still come out here to get the marble.\u00a0 We saw a few Mexicans loading some into a tiny pickup truck.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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I bottomed the suspension in a few spots on the ride out to El Marmol, and this is what it did to my KLR’s license plate.\u00a0 Many first-gen KLR owners relocate their license plate up on top of the rear fender. Now I know why.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Two KLRistas at El Marmol. That’s my yellow riding jacket on my KLR.\u00a0 It seemed to aggravate any dog who saw it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The KLRs at El Marmol.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We stopped for a break on the way out of El Marmol where the dirt road rejoined the Transpeninsular Highway.\u00a0 We had a good conversation with Jose, a police officer from Catavina who consented to a photo.<\/p>\n

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Good buddy Jose, my tocayo.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There were two dogs hanging around the place watching John, Jose, and me.\u00a0 They seemed friendly enough when John gave one of them a snack.\u00a0 Then we got on the motorcycles and it was as if someone had flipped a switch.\u00a0 The dogs instantly turned mean, snarling and going after John, who was accelerating sharply way (a relative term, to be sure, when you’re on a KLR).\u00a0 There’s a rule in Mexico, I guess.\u00a0 If you’re a dog and you see a guy on a motorcycle, you’ve got a reputation to maintain.\u00a0 This time, though, both dogs went after John and ignored me. \u00a0 They chased John all the way back to the highway, with me following. \u00a0 Hey, that’s was okay by me.\u00a0 I’d already earned my combat pay.<\/p>\n

The dogs chasing John, though, didn’t seem to have their hearts in it.\u00a0 They were chasing John like it was part of their job description and the boss was watching.\u00a0 Going through the motions.\u00a0 Phoning it in.\u00a0 You know the drill.<\/p>\n

I thought about that as we continued south.\u00a0 I reasoned and hoped that as went further into Mexico (and we were about 350 miles into Baja at this point), the dogs might be nicer.\u00a0 Our next destination was Guerrero Negro, 500 miles south of the border.\u00a0 We would soon find out.<\/p>\n

\n

Check out our other Epic Motorcycle Rides<\/a>, and watch the ExNotes blog for the next installment of the Baja KLR Khronicles!<\/p>\n

Like what you\u2019re reading?\u00a0 Sign up for our automatic email updates, and you\u2019ll be eligible for our quarterly drawing to win one of our adventure motorcycle books<\/a>.\u00a0 Want to read about our other Baja motorcycle adventures? \u00a0 Order your own copy of Moto Baja here<\/a>!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Read Parts I, II, and III of the 2009 KLR Baja foray here! When the Transpeninsular Highway continues south after leaving El Rosario, it crosses a long bridge across the dry Rio El Rosario and then winds into the mountains on the northern edge of the Valle de los Cirios.\u00a0 The wilderness starts here, and … Continue reading “Baja 2009: The KLR Khronicles Part IV”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[654,235,63,57,96,89],"tags":[3,716,101,622,214,315,715],"class_list":["post-4553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventure-motorcycle-books","category-amazon","category-baja","category-baja-cuisine","category-feel-good-stuff","category-motorcycle-adventure-ride","tag-baja","tag-el-marmol","tag-el-rosario","tag-guerrero-negro","tag-kawasaki","tag-klr-650","tag-valle-de-los-cirios"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4553"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4592,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4553\/revisions\/4592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}