A friendly wild gray whale gently noses up to greet humans boating on San Ignacio Lagoon.
In late February 1989, my brother Dave and I rented a sedan at the Tijuana Airport for an 8-day road trip through Baja California, Mexico. As we went to claim the car, the rental agent drove up a bright red Volkswagon Beetle. This was a bit smaller than what we pictured for a "sedan!" However, the "Bug" nicely sufficed, especially with its high clearance for driving through treacherous sand traps on back roads. Our goal was to car camp in the wild central desert of Baja and to see gray whales in one of the four lagoon sanctuaries. Desert palm canyon oases also invited hiking. By the end of the trip, we drove 1200 miles round trip, going as far south as Santa Rosalia, half way down the long Baja peninsula.
In the central desert (near Catavina) grow spectacular gardens of weird Boojum trees (cirios) and giant cardon cacti (world's largest cacti). Here I was impressed by the world's densest concentration of cacti species. Of the strange flora found here, the thick-trunked elephant tree commands attention. In contrast to the leaves of higher latitude deciduous trees, the leaves of the elephant tree turn yellow in the spring, then drop, baring branches during the blistering hot summer. In the fall, new green leaves emerge to be nourished by light rains through the short winter. As a result, we witnessed yellow spring colors! Lupines, prickly poppies, and brittle bush flowered at the same time.
Below right: Dave steps out of the Volkswagen Beetle and admires lenticular (lens-shaped) clouds at sunset, Baja California, Mexico.
Despite being in Mexico, I discovered few bargain prices in Baja. I was surprised by a large number of expensive satellite television dishes, even on ramshackle homes. The economy of Baja is very influenced by California USA prices directly across the border. However, frugal campers like Dave and I like Baja for its back roads where you can pull off and set up a tent.The highlight of our Baja trip was San Ignacio Lagoon, where friendly gray whales congregate to mate and bear young. A rough 3-hour drive on a dirt road plus serendipity led us to a van stuck in the sand driven by Francois Gohier. Francois had published the photographs in "Comeback of the Gray Whales," in June 1987 National Geographic, a magazine which has long inspired me to travel and photograph the world. We helped Francois extract his van from the sand and joined him the next day photographing gray whales from a panga (fishing skiff). Several whales swam to us, allowed themselves to be touched and seemed quite friendly and playful. We met a mother and calf, and whales twice the size of our small skiff. Few places in the world allow such an intimate and touching experience with whales.
Happily, in March 2000, environmentalists won a five-year battle to stop Mitsubishi from building a giant saltworks at San Ignacio Lagoon, which lies within the Vizcaino Desert Biosphere Reserve (which was declared by UNESCO in 1993). Worldwide overpopulation (6.2 billion people in 2002) continues to pressure governments to develop Biosphere Reserves and other natural areas. In fact, according to National Geographic Society in 2002, humans have already transformed 40% of the land area on earth through planting grazing, paving, and building. Half the forests that stood 8000 years ago have been destroyed. "70% of major commercial fish stocks are depleted, overfished, or exploited beyond maximum sustainable yield." Global human impacts are "on par with volcanism or tectonic shifts." We are all responsible to nurture the earth and live in balance with the natural world that sustains us.
A windmill helps charge batteries in this recreational vehicle.
Abandoned train car.
Plastic sheeting reduces evaporation for desert agriculture. Northern Baja California.
Left: The cardón cactus (Pachycereus pringlei) is the world's largest cactus. American botanist, Cyrus Pringle, named the species in Latin: ''pachy'' which means thick and ''cereus'' meaning waxy. ''Cardo'' means ''thistle'' in Spanish. The cardón is nearly endemic to the deserts of the Baja California peninsula. Some of the largest cardones have been measured at nearly 21 meters (70 feet) high and weigh up to 25 tons. These very slow growing plants are also extremely long-lived, and many specimens live well over 300 years. [Published in "Bizarre Blooms of Baja", April 2006 issue of Americas, the official magazine of the Organization of American States, or OAS.]
Below right: Silhouette of a cardon cactus, world's largest cactus species.
Above right: Atop cardon cacti, turkey vultures warm themselves in the morning before soaring aloft in search of carrion.
Many palm tree oases invite exploration in the mountain canyons of Baja California.
Left: The boojum or cirio (Fouquieria columnaris, synonym Idria columnaris) is a bizarre-looking tree in the family Fouquieriaceae, whose other members include the Ocotillos. It is nearly endemic to the Baja California peninsula, with only a small population in the Sierra Bacha of Sonora. A fifty-year-old specimen might be a foot thick at its base, and less than five feet tall. It's one of the slowest growing plants in the world, at the rate of a foot every ten years, which means a mature fifty-footer may be more than 500 years old. An Arizona botanist, in 1922, applied the name boojum, after the imaginary "boojum" that inhabited "distant shores" in Lewis Carrol's poem Hunting of the Snark. The early Spaniards called it cirio, or candle, probably because of its resemblance to the handmade tapers that decorated the altars in the Jesuit mission churches. The flowers bloom in summer and autumn; they occur in short racemes, and are creamy yellow with a honey scent. [Published in "Bizarre Blooms of Baja", April 2006 issue of Americas, the official magazine of the Organization of American States, or OAS.]
Left: A mature boojum tree (Idria columnaris) towers above Dave. The boojum tree is not a cacti, but a relative of the ocotillo.
Left: Boojum trees growing out of a clump of prickly pear cactus. Below right: more cirio.
Left: An osprey sculpture marks the border between the Mexican states of Baja California and Baja California Sur (South), Mexico.
Creative locals have crafted a living fence from ocotillo, other desert plants, and barbed wire.
Above: San Ignacio Lagoon: A gray whale touching humans.
Left: This friendly whale nuzzled our small boat at San Ignacio Lagoon, allowing me to closely photograph barnacles on its skin. I knew that whales are mammals that evolved on land and later returned to the sea, but I was still surprised to see mammalian hair every inch on this whale's skin.
A gray whale swims in San Ignacio Lagoon.In 1993, UNESCO listed the "Whale Sanctuary of El Vizcaino" as a Natural World Heritage Site and International Biosphere Reserve, and described it as follows: "Located in the central part of the peninsula of Baja California, the sanctuary contains exceptionally interesting ecosystems. The coastal lagoons of Ojo de Liebre and San Ignacio are very important reproduction and wintering sites for the gray whale, harbor seal, California sea-lion, northern elephant-seal and blue whale. The lagoons also offer shelter to four species of the endangered marine turtle."
Left: A gray whale spouting on people. San Ignacio Lagoon, Baja California, Mexico.
Left: Don't get too close to that spout!
The playful whales seemed to aim for my camera lens and exhale with a blast.
Above: Moisture from the Pacific Ocean condenses into standing-wave clouds perched over the mountain spine of Baja California. These stationary lens-shaped clouds add to the other-worldly atmosphere of the surprisingly diverse desert ecosystem of Baja. [Published in "Bizarre Blooms of Baja", April 2006 issue of Americas, the official magazine of the Organization of American States, or OAS.]
Left: Lenticular (lens-shaped) clouds catch the last rays of sunset in Baja California.
Below right: Lenticular (lens-shaped) clouds catch the light of sunset.
Elephant Trees:
Baja California grows two different “elephant trees” which look remarkably similar yet belong to entirely different plant families. Elephant trees are very common in the drier desert regions of the Baja California peninsula and also in the western parts of mainland Mexica (Sonora). “Elephant trees” are large shrubs or small trees, characterized by thick, swollen trunks which serve for water storage. The elephant trees of Baja have pinnate leaves that typically turn yellow and are shed in drought conditions, but the plants can still photosynthesize through the stems of the trunk and major branches, which have a white, papery bark overlying the green photosynthetic tissues.
The elephant tree known as Bursera microphylla (below) belongs to the torchwood family (Burseraceae), which has many representatives around the world, including the trees used to produce frankincense and myrrh. The range of Bursera microphylla extends into the Sonoran desert of the USA, unlike its look-alike elephant tree known as Pachycormus discolor which is found only in Baja California and Sonora, Mexico.
The other common elephant tree of Baja California is Pachycormus discolor, named “pachy-“ or “thick” for their gnarly trunks which look like elephant legs (elephants are pachyderms, meaning “thick-skinned”). This plant is in a totally different family (the cashew family, Anacardiaceae) and yet looks almost identical to B. microphylla. The main features that help to distinguish it are the grayish twigs and the pinnate leaves with larger, irregular leaflets. The two elephant trees often grow together in the same habitat and look almost identical when not in leaf. This is a classic example of convergent evolution - two organisms that have evolved the same adaptations to cope with particular environmental circumstances.
Above: an elephant tree, which I believe is a Bursera microphylla. [Published in "Bizarre Blooms of Baja", April 2006 issue of Americas, the official magazine of the Organization of American States, or OAS.]
Above: This coastal fishhook cactus is a member of the Ferocactus family, meaning fierce cactus. Armed with heavy spines, it usually blooms April through June. Although I photographed this one in Anza Borrego Desert State Park in California, it also grow further south into Baja California. [Published in "Bizarre Blooms of Baja", April 2006 issue of Americas, the official magazine of the Organization of American States, or OAS.]
Left: Interior of one of the many churches in Baja California.
Above right: Car camping at sunset. Baja California, Mexico.
"Gracias! Return Soon" sign, Baja California.
See also: Mexico Page
1: Yucatan
Peninsula.
Copyright 1989 by Tom
Dempsey. Photographs or text may not be copied without permission.
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