December 23, 2005

Baja California Sur

In Nov./Dec. Anja and I went to Baja Calif. Sur, traveling with backpacks. We traveled 16 days by bus, and hitchhiking, north to the Sierra de la San Fransisco to check out the 10,000 year old Cochimi rock art, a UNESCO world heritage site, simply referred to by the locals as La Cueva Pintada, (The Cave Painting). The rock art is geographically spread around a bit. The area we traveled to was in the bottom of a canyon called Canon San Pablo near the village of Santa Martha. Stone huts where the people live the way they must've lived 1000 years ago. Herding goats, making their own leather products like shoes and saddles for the few mules the village owns, goat milk, goat cheese, etc. The government authority, INAH (Instituto Nacional de Antropologia), strictly controls who enters the canyon. The pristine nature of the sites shows how effective the restriction is! You gotta hire an INAH approved guide to escort you the few days, down a single track, it takes to go there and back. We tried to stop at most of the towns along the 400 miles between Cabo and Sierra de San Fransisco mostly because it sucks to ride the bus for more than 3 or 4 hours at a time, and there's tons to see along the way.