Whale Watching Part 4....San Ignacio

Mid afternoon came around and all 14 of us piled into a 12 person van and took off on our 50 mile road trip to San Ignacio where we would spend the next coupla days.... 

Hasta luego Santa Rosalia.....

It's about a 1 1/2 - 2 hour drive because of the mountains that we have to drive through to get from one side of the Baja to the other....the roads were excellent all the way and traffic was almost non-existent but the grades were steep and the blind curves were peligroso, dangerous. 

Good road....beautiful views...not much of a shoulder though..!

Kinda blurry...but will give you an idea of the grade and curves..!

Gorgeous panorama views going through the mountains...!

Pretty cool view....don't ya think???

Down in the desert again.....

San Ignacio is a desert oasis so we knew we were getting close when we started seeing the palm trees....

The palms indicate that we're gettin' close to our destination

Can you believe we are surrounded by a ginormous desert??

This is what a desert oasis looks like if you've ever wondered...!!

Desert?  What Desert??   Blows your mind....doesn't it... wait until you see whats coming in the next installment.... but I'm not done here yet.....cmon' my friends I've got a little more for you today.

 A fire rolled through here a few years ago and burned alot of palms....no one is sure as to what started it....?

While out tromping around we came upon this little shrine or chapel or tomb or something...we never did find out what it is but you've got to admit ....it's pretty cool! 

I guess it's time to end ZW for today but before we adjourn, I wanted to give you a peek at our hotel set amid the palms in this spectacular desert oasis....until next time.....

.......peace to you all my friends....don't forget to hug your loved ones today....seeya

Whale Watching...Part 3...Santa Rosalia's 2nd claim to fame

Everything in the Baja is constructed of concrete....why? you ask...
simple answer....no lumber grade trees. Even today lumber is difficult to find and expensive when you do locate it. The lumber department of our local Home Depot has a few warpy 2x4x8's and a few 4x4x8's and a sparse collection of assorted pieces of plywood and osb and that's it!! 

As I mentioned in the post right before this one, the French built Santa Rosalia and they didn't like concrete structures. They wanted what they had in France.....homes and structures constructed from wood!!! So they had structural lumber shipped in from Oregon and built a town of wood!! The only one in the Baja and hereto lies Santa Rosalia's second claim to fame.....the town constructed of wood....

This hardware store building is over 100 years old......!

Some of the buildings are a little ramshackle...!!

Local neighborhood restaurant .....

A coat of paint and good as new....!!

Penthouse apartment in the middle of town....!!

Scenic street in the downtown area.....

Don'tcha just love that Bougainvillea ....?

Tana in the town square.....

A quiet neighborhood side street......

The fancy neighborhood up on a hill overlooking the town....

Another hilltop swanky-enda.........

The Regional Public Library of Mahatma Gandhi and we presume there are at least 735 of them....! I haven't seen an Indian person since I've been here..??? Go figure!!!

This is the old French Hotel that we stayed at on the return trip back home from our whale watching expedition. It's constructed of, you guessed it, wood!!

We had a cervaza or two or three sitting here overlooking the scenery and the Sea of Cortez.....

View from our room........

Front desk.....incredibly termites are a big problem in Baja and in our home state of Sonora as well. The wood in these structures is oiled every few weeks with a special concoction that wards off the little critters.....that's why the wood is so dark in the interior views..

The lobby oozes Victorian Europe......

Sitting area in dining room for having tea....

Well, that's pretty much our trip to Santa Rosalia. When we meet again I'll take you guys across the Baja Peninsula from the Sea of Cortez on the east to the Pacific Coast on the west and to our final destination San Ignacio and the Laguna San Ignacio which is the home of the mighty Eastern Pacific Gray Whales and their babies for a part of the year......which is now!!!! 

You're gonna like the trip...seeya soon...peace to you all my friends

Whale Watching Part 2.....Santa Rosalia

Once customs and immigration were done all 14 of us jumped into a 9 person van with all our luggage......claustrophobic!!! It was about an hour ride into Santa Rosalia BCS.

We were having lunch and spending a couple hours in Santa Rosalia before heading out to our ultimate destination of the day, San Ignacio about 1 1/2 hours away by van......

Santa Rosalia was founded in 1884 by the French mining company 
Compagnie du Boleo. They operated the El Boleo copper mine until 1954. Unlike most mining operations which are far removed from population centers the industrial facilities for this mine were located in the middle of town. The metallurgical converter (smelter) and the reverberatory furnace (another type of smelter unit) were spewing deadly gasses and pollutants all over the town. A Santa Rosalia historian told me that about 7 or 8 people died daily directly due to the operation of these furnaces.....evidently the stacks were not high enough to properly disperse the pollutants from the melting processes and it all fell back into the town. 
After the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in the United States in 1869 many thousands of the Chinese immigrant workers who built the railroad went to Santa Rosalia to work in the El Boleo mine. Sadly many thousands died here because of the deadly working and living conditions. There is a huge cemetery on a mountain ridge overlooking the town and thousands of the white crosses up there have Chinese names on them. We didn't have time to visit up there this trip.....next time! 

   French train engine relic from the old days....notice the name of the mining company painted on the side....

 Old abandoned mine from the glory days .....right in the middle of town!!!

French influence still here.......

Currently, a Korean consortium is in the process of reopening the mines.....

Santa Rosalia has two claims to fame. The first is a metal church that was designed by Gustave Eiffel, built in France and dismantled, then shipped here and reassembled. This church, the Iglesia de Santa Barbara is beautiful in a plain sort of way. I was expecting something along the grandiose design of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. 

Iglesia de Santa Barbara

There was a wedding going on.....

Interior shot of the Eiffel Church....

Another interior view....you can see the metal construction of the structure above the wood facade ...pretty cool!

I regret having to leave you on the edge of your seats but you'll have to wait until next time to explore Santa Rosalia's second claim to fame.

Until then .... peace to you all...

Trip To Baja Sur....Whale Watching Part 1

There is a local guy here who runs a nonprofit organization called Oceancamp. He organizes trips throughout Mexico and solicits people who are interested in taking them. Besides being a great host and wonderful conservationist, he is also a Sonoran historian and has encyclopedic knowledge about this part of Mexico. We all learned alot from him on this four day trip. His name is Mark Morelli. He and his partner Miguel Valdez operate this wonderful organization. If you're interested their website is http://www.oceancamp.org. 

We flew out of the Guaymas airport on a Saturday at around noon. There were 12 of us who signed on for this adventure....the maximum number passengers that our airplane could accommodate.

We arrived at Guaymas International Airport around 11am ..... 

Guaymas International Airport...

Parking was a breeze.....free too.....

International departure waiting room after customs check out...we were the only ones in there...Tana never goes anywhere without her pillow!!!!

Our plane...it's about an hour flight across the Sea of Cortez from Guaymas to Santa Rosalia....

Guy on the right is the pilot....first thing he said to us when we were all aboard was..."don't worry amigos you won't die...ha ha ha"

No co-pilot....is that even legal in the states??

All aboard...its about 41/2 feet headroom inside!!

Goodbye Guaymas....next stop Santa Rosalia BCS....we hope!!

There's supposed to be a landing strip down there somewhere??

Santa Rosalia International Airport...! It wasn't crowed at all..

Waiting for customs in the international arrival terminal..!!

The drug dog came by and hung around our luggage for a minute then came over for some lovin'......

Well, we cleared customs no problems. Our van showed up and we got in for our 45 minute drive into Santa Rosalia....next time we'll go on a tour of this old Baja California Sur town with an ominous history.....until then....take care my friends and peace to you all...