Driving Like Crazy by P. J. O'Rourke

Author:P. J. O'Rourke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books

On the morning of Saturday, May 12, we left San Ignacio by the back way, driving up to the most spectacular view of the oasis, which is from the dump. Then we went across the remaining volcanic highlands to Santa Rosalia, the old French mining concession by the Sea of Cortés. On the town square was a sheet iron church designed by Gustave Eiffel. It was created for the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris as an example of a “manufactured building.” It won second prize and was shipped to Baja by mistake.

Twenty miles south, on the lip of Bahia Concepción, was Rio Mulegé, one of the few Baja rivers that reaches the sea. Mulegé canyon was filled with palms and mangroves backed by naked hills. Man-o’-war birds, whose shape in flight mimicked a pterodactyl’s, hung on the thermals. The effect was a museum diorama of the Mesozoic era blown up to horrifying size. The beauty, like so much of Baja’s beauty, was hard to bear, a physical assault. It was a relief to look down the highway and see litter and more burned-out, overturned cars.

Under the cliffs along the Bahia Concepción the surf was police-flasher blue. The bay was twenty-five miles long and five miles wide and didn’t have a single home on its shores. At the foot of the escarpments, though, if your car would make it, there are campsites on small parabolas of beach.

The water was the temperature of love. The breeze was the temperature of beer. Two kids in a dinghy sold us a kilo of big, perfectly round scallops—the best scallops I’ve ever tasted. The sun lit the cliff tops purple. Cormorants dove in formation. Pelicans skimmed the tide. It was a moment to justify the whole trip. And a moment was how long it lasted, followed by biting gnats, a soaking dew, and me kicking over the camp stove and setting fire to the beach towels.

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