Scorpions

We found the first scorpion in the house a few days after we arrived. I was in bed arranging books on the night table when I bumped the small, wooden lamp; a scorpion dashed out from beneath the base and disappeared over the back. I moved the night table, but the scorpion was gone. In the morning, we moved the furniture, but couldn't find it. A couple days later, Rande saw a scorpion on the wall in the bathroom similar to the one on the night table. I dispatched it with a fly swatter. Rande identified it on the Internet as a bark scorpion (Centruroides exilicauda). So far, we've found seven bark scorpions (five in the house) and two unidentified scorpions outside.

Bark scorpion about 2.5 inches total length on the wall in the living room

Unidentified scorpion about 3 inches total length outside the house

Santuario de los Cactus

In 2011, Rande and I drove a rental car from Todos Santos on the Pacific side of southern Baja to Punta Colorado on the Sea of Cortez. Passing through the foothills of the Sierra de la Laguna, we saw a small sign pointing down a dirt road to the “Santuario de los Cactus.” We stopped for a short visit and returned to the cactus sanctuary this year.

El Santuario de los Cactus is 6 km off the Transpeninsular Highway between La Paz and San Jose del Cabo at about KM168. The 6-hectare (15-acre) forest-like sanctuary is surrounded by 50 hectares of protected land in ejido El Rosario, a small village of 25 families in the northern foothills of the Sierra de la Laguna [ejido is communally-owned farmland]. At an elevation of 425 m (1400 ft), the sanctuary is part of the dry forest ecoregion, the transition between the lowland xeric scrub of the southern Baja peninsula and the pine-oak forests of the mountains (link).

UNESCO designated the Sierra la Laguna a global biosphere reserve in 2003; 23% of the nearly 1,000 species found in the sierra are endemics. Human activities within the biosphere reserve include extraction of timber and other forest products, farming and cattle raising (link). 

Road to the cactus sanctuary with Sierra la Laguna in the background

Octave

While Colorado was bracing for snow, we experienced tropical storm (chubasco) Octave. Octave was a tropical depression on Saturday, October 12 and a tropical storm about 300 miles SSW of Baja the next day. By Monday (10/14), Octave was less than 200 miles from southern Baja with maximum sustained winds of 60 mph. NOAA’s National Hurricane Center predicted 3-6 inches of rain, storm surge with large waves and coastal flooding on the west side of the peninsula (www.nhc.noaa.gov). Octave made landfall Monday night (10/14) and early Tuesday (10/15). It was downgraded to a tropical depression as it passed over Baja north of us; by late Tuesday, it was a “remnant low” over mainland Mexico.

NASA Terra satellite image of Octave October 14 at 2:40 PM (NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team (www.nasa.gov)

La Mordida

La mordida, “the bite,” is a bribe in Mexico. While we were waiting for the ferry in Topolobampo, an American couple in line behind us told their story of being stopped by a municipal transit policeman between Los Mochis and Topolobampo. The policeman read a prepared text about their violation of the 60 kilometer/hour (km/h) speed limit. He showed them a radar gun displaying 80 km/h and said they were speeding. The driver, a recently-retired federal contractor, said that he was moving along with traffic, implying that everyone was speeding. The transit policeman told them that the place where they had to pay the fine was closed until the following morning. In the end, the couple gave MX$1,500 (pesos), about US$120, to the policeman so they could catch the ferry. La Mordida.

Sea of Cortez

We left northern Colorado early on September 28; it seemed fitting that the temperature was below freezing and there was ice on the truck. We arrived in Topolobampo, Mexico the afternoon of September 30 to catch the ferry across the Sea of Cortez to La Paz on the Baja peninsula. We were early, so I walked around the commercial fishing docks. Most of the boats were rigged with paired-trawls for shrimping.

Commercial fishing docks in Topolobampo

The ferry (California Star) sailed around midnight and arrived in La Paz about 7 AM on October 1. It took an hour to get the truck off the boat (we were almost the last vehicle loaded and the last to get off) and two hours to get through federal customs (even though we left from mainland Mexico). I drove the truck through a large "gamma ray" scanner and it was inspected cursorily by two young officers searching for contraband. 

California Star (from: Baja Ferries)

We arrived in Los Barriles ("The Barrels") on the East Cape in early afternoon. In all, it took us 3.5 days, 1,580 driving miles consuming 85 gallons of gas and a 7-hour ferry ride.

Arriving in Los Barriles