The Baja Paddle

The next morning, though, when Martijn is asking some fishermen about the conditions to be expected on the water today, I decide to tell him about my decision that the trip cannot continue with the Galene. I suggest to him that we hire a panga (an open small coastal fishing boat) to take us and the boats through the Canal de Ballenas, to Bahia de los Angeles. This channel is notorious for its strong currents, heavy winds and virtually no places to get off the water. About 45 miles of this coast is all rocks. A recipe for disaster if we tried to paddle it with the current equipment.

Martijn: “ I think that this is a very good decision”.

Martijn goes back to the fisherman to try to arrange a ride to where we can hire a panga. The fisherman, though, suggests he takes us in his truck. After a little negotiation we have an agreement with Caetano, the fisherman, who sends his buddy home and happily drives off to fill his tank with gas. He has an agreement with us which gives him probably the equivalent of about one week’s income. He knows he got a great deal, but… we were not in a position to negotiate very much; he had clearly figured out our predicament. We were not sure whether Caetano’s truck would get us to Bahia de los Angeles. This rig looked like he just removed it from a junk yard and was still trying to find some missing parts. After about one hour, Caetano came back with a spare tire in the truck bed, a lot of rope and a big grin on his face. Thirty minutes later we were on our way; first due west through the desert, then south and east on tar to finally get us to Bahia de los Angeles. Caetano started the engine with a screwdriver; wrestlede the passenger door open and offered Martijn a seat behind the passenger seat, barely big enough for a small kid. I had the luxury seat next to Caetano.

Initially the road was not too bad. We had heard from some people in the little Punta Final community that the road is normally very much like 30 miles of washboard but that there had been so much sand blown into the road lately that whole stretches were not bad to drive on.

Fortunately they were correct and we made good progress initially. The scenery was beautiful; there had not only been much wind, but also much rain and the whole desert was in bloom. We went through some arroyos with standing water in them and the surrounding desert was totally green. An unreal sight seeing tall cacti growing amidst greenery.

The road later became stony which slowed us down quite a bit. We needed to stop twice on this thirty mile stretch for Caetano to refill the radiator. At one point he wanted to clean the window for me because salty water had run from the boats onto the windscreen. He went out of the truck to wet the windscreen, then came inside to hardwire the wipers and let them clean the windscreen, after which he disconnected them again and used his screwdriver to start the engine; all of this with a big grin on his face and a shrugging of the shoulders as if to apologize.

Caetano made a sudden stop just before we got to the tar road; he had done this before when he needed a sanitary break, but this time it was different. He pulled out a long strap and proceeded to stretch this over the hood. He then tightened it to keep the hood in place, because now we were going to do some speed and the hood had none of its normal anchoring points left.

So far, Caetano had kept the car together and running. We needed to go another 90 miles or so. Would we get there?

Caetano did not seem to have a worry in the world. He got his rig onto the tar road and took it up to about 60mph. The engine seemed to be running well, but the gears made very strange, grating and screeching noises. I looked at Caetano; he looked back with a big grin on his face. No worry in sight.

It was not long before I started to hear strange knocking noises from the rear wheels. They would come and go, and sometimes there were no noises. Caetano was concentrating on his driving because by now there was a strong side wind and the boats caught a lot of wind.

We stopped a few times to tie the boats better and after about four hours we got to Bahia de los Angeles, the truck still going, although we wondered how strong.

We called home that afternoon and made arrangements to exchange boats; Galene was going home and we needed to get a kayak in its place to continue our trip.