The Islands of the Sea of Cortez
Baja California has landscapes so unusual that they seem to belong to another world. Today we wandered through two such places, challenging and delighting our senses.
The islands of the Sea of Cortez, the usual haunt of the National Geographic Sea Bird, are spectacular. Their isolation and limitations have given us such extremities as rattleless rattlesnakes and dwarf giant barrel cacti. Yet to visit the peninsular mainland can be a release, and a chance to revel in richness and diversity. In the morning, we entered Puerto Don Juan, a tiny pocket at the entrance of Bahia de los Angeles. Once ashore, some followed their cameras around the bay’s perimeter, stalking drunken egrets or piloting stranded vessels. Others wandered the interior, startling indignant jackrabbits and suspicious coyotes. The land was covered in palo Adan, scraggly, spiny, chaotic, yet topped by scarlet blooms. Nearby we found its northern cousin ocotillo. An ocotillos’ arms radiate oddly from one spot in the ground, making it look like some desiccated cross of an octopus and an ostrich. More similarity and contrast were in store. Torote Colorado is an island’s usual extraordinary fat-trunked, tiny-leafed tree, but here we found, growing side by side, its less-seen look-alike, the true elephant tree. These trees, with their massive trunks, have the aspect of forest giants. But growing in dreadfully harsh conditions, they are stunted into forms only shoulder-high. Hikers, following coyote tracks, found a tiny slot canyon. It meandering through the bedrock, yet was only a few feet deep. How beautiful and how odd, to traverse a miniature canyon surrounded by natural bonsais!
Ocotillos and palo Adans rival each other in weirdness, but for rank peculiarity, practically nothing can touch their relative, the Boojum. Boojums, with their attenuated, tapering forms, inevitably call carrots to mind. Upside-down carrots. Green and bristly carrots. Carrots sixty feet tall! Boojums are not only weird, but they have such a restricted and isolated range as to become almost mythical. We set out to prove or disprove the myth. Going ashore at Bahia de los Angeles, we met an appropriately rag-tag collection of vans and taxis to take us to the Valle de los Cirios. The vans climbed over parched and rocky hills. And there they were! We wandered for two hours in what might be the world’s strangest forest. Boojums are ramrod straight or writhe in kooky undulations. They are perfectly tapered, tuft-topped or whimsically branched. Squat and dumpy or inordinately tall. Doctor Seussian. At our first arrival, the sun was high and harsh, accentuating the other-worldly impression of the place. But gradually it fell, washing even the strangest forms into warmth and richness. And at last, a tiny crescent moon appeared in the darkening sky.
Baja California is a place beautiful in extremity and eccentricity. How remarkable to have experienced the most extraordinary of an extraordinary place!
Baja California has landscapes so unusual that they seem to belong to another world. Today we wandered through two such places, challenging and delighting our senses.
The islands of the Sea of Cortez, the usual haunt of the National Geographic Sea Bird, are spectacular. Their isolation and limitations have given us such extremities as rattleless rattlesnakes and dwarf giant barrel cacti. Yet to visit the peninsular mainland can be a release, and a chance to revel in richness and diversity. In the morning, we entered Puerto Don Juan, a tiny pocket at the entrance of Bahia de los Angeles. Once ashore, some followed their cameras around the bay’s perimeter, stalking drunken egrets or piloting stranded vessels. Others wandered the interior, startling indignant jackrabbits and suspicious coyotes. The land was covered in palo Adan, scraggly, spiny, chaotic, yet topped by scarlet blooms. Nearby we found its northern cousin ocotillo. An ocotillos’ arms radiate oddly from one spot in the ground, making it look like some desiccated cross of an octopus and an ostrich. More similarity and contrast were in store. Torote Colorado is an island’s usual extraordinary fat-trunked, tiny-leafed tree, but here we found, growing side by side, its less-seen look-alike, the true elephant tree. These trees, with their massive trunks, have the aspect of forest giants. But growing in dreadfully harsh conditions, they are stunted into forms only shoulder-high. Hikers, following coyote tracks, found a tiny slot canyon. It meandering through the bedrock, yet was only a few feet deep. How beautiful and how odd, to traverse a miniature canyon surrounded by natural bonsais!
Ocotillos and palo Adans rival each other in weirdness, but for rank peculiarity, practically nothing can touch their relative, the Boojum. Boojums, with their attenuated, tapering forms, inevitably call carrots to mind. Upside-down carrots. Green and bristly carrots. Carrots sixty feet tall! Boojums are not only weird, but they have such a restricted and isolated range as to become almost mythical. We set out to prove or disprove the myth. Going ashore at Bahia de los Angeles, we met an appropriately rag-tag collection of vans and taxis to take us to the Valle de los Cirios. The vans climbed over parched and rocky hills. And there they were! We wandered for two hours in what might be the world’s strangest forest. Boojums are ramrod straight or writhe in kooky undulations. They are perfectly tapered, tuft-topped or whimsically branched. Squat and dumpy or inordinately tall. Doctor Seussian. At our first arrival, the sun was high and harsh, accentuating the other-worldly impression of the place. But gradually it fell, washing even the strangest forms into warmth and richness. And at last, a tiny crescent moon appeared in the darkening sky.
Baja California is a place beautiful in extremity and eccentricity. How remarkable to have experienced the most extraordinary of an extraordinary place!
