Back on Baja Roads

View of our homes from Cactus Corner; croquet, anyone?

We've been housebound, or at least town bound, for awhile…my son Owen and I, along with Aunt Lois (89), who came to live with us in Baja California, Mexico, in late 2015.  Lois broke her hip three months ago, and adjusting to new limitations while orienting caregivers has kept us close to home.  

This month marks two years since our move to Vicente Guerrero, 185 miles south of San Diego, and a book recently loaned by a friend prompted an anniversary adventure!

Land's End, Cabo San Lucas, March 2016

God and Mr. Gomez by Jack Smith--popular columnist with the Los Angeles Times--was first published in 1974, sparking interest in Baja California among North American readers.  Just a year earlier "the forgotten peninsula" had become more accessible with completion of the Carretera Transpeninsular--the 1000-mile highway linking Tijuana on the U.S. border to Cabo San Lucas at the peninsula's southern tip.  Owen and I drove the Carretera to Cabo last year, enjoying the beauties of deserts, mountains, and coastlines.

When Jack Smith began visiting Baja, however, the road south was paved just 30 miles beyond the up-and-coming city of Ensenada to the village of Santo Tomas, founded in 1791 as a Jesuit mission.  Among other interesting things, Smith described the delights and dangers of the 18-mile drive on a dirt road from Santo Tomas to the Pacific coast where, at La Bocana (Spanish for estuary or mouth of the river), he and his wife Denny had a vacation home built in the late 1960s by Romulo Gomez, a man whose charm, trustworthiness, and colorful history gradually emerge from the book.

"Let's do it!" said Owen, when I suggested a trip to La Bocana.  Reptile-phile from an early age, he anticipated encounters with rattlesnakes, and I wanted to explore the shoreline's volcanic coves, both a la Smith's adventures.  We were drawn too by a sense of kinship with the Smiths, empathizing with risks they took and challenges they faced as per our own experience of building in Mexico…in our case, a house for Aunt Lois, raised on the circular foundation of an old palapa.  

A 90-minute drive north on the Carretera--through olive groves, vineyards, and mountainsides clad with nopale cactus and yellow daisies--brought us to the La Bocana turnoff, just opposite the entrance to one of Mexico's oldest and finest wineries.  Santo Tomas wines have medalled in international competitions and we rarely pass the bodegas without stopping to buy some of our budget-wise favorites.  The Smiths too enjoyed the local wines, although cerveza (beer) and tequila--liquid icons of Mexican culture--were the social lubricants between Smith and Gomez, especially when mini-muddles, which were fairly frequent, arose.

Santo Tomas winery

A lush valley flanked by high green hills beckoned as we headed west.  Owen drove (unusually!) slowly, no doubt remembering that the Smiths suffered several blown tires, two cracked transmission cases, and a ruptured gas tank on this route.  Plus he was looking for snakes and other wildlife.  His hopes were soon realized as we came upon a rattler (dead, minus rattles) and then a roadrunner, it's black and white feathers vivid for a fleeting moment as it sped across our path. The roadrunner's prowess as a rattlesnake fighter has apparently been exaggerated, but they can leap straight up from the ground to catch birds!

Road to La Bocana

The Smiths' early travels to La Bocana took them via the Santo Tomas River which runs through the valley toward the Pacific.  Heavy flooding over several years, however, sent road builders up along the mountainsides, leaving the lower road to farmers who grow chard, squash, onions, and melons on the valley floor, their homesteads nestled among Pirul and Eucalyptus trees.  The mountain road seemed well maintained, with newer cement drainage ditches flanking the steepest, narrowest stretch.  

We encountered more cattle guards (five) than vehicles...or cattle.  Owen got out to check a couple iffy-looking guards as Smith's car had gotten stuck in one.  He also sighted and stopped twice for snakes (non-rattlers) but both slithered into the bush before he could make positive identification.  

Nearing the Pacific a gentle mist floated into the valley and we arrived at La Bocana with a sense of wonder, as though passing through a thin veil into another world.  There was the store (a rebuilt version) where Señora  Gomez fed Denny and Jack fresh fish and tortillas in the back kitchen.  And behind the store lay the lagoon from which water was trucked up the hill to fill a reservoir that supplied the Smith's home, though not consistently.  How did water get into the lagoon, Jack wondered.  "From the well," replied Romulo.  And the water in the well? asked Jack.  "The water," said Gomez, "it comes from God."  

No-one in sight, we drove past the closed store and up a steep, narrow cobblestone-cement road to the cliffs overlooking the sea, muted grey-blue under a cloudy sky.   A series of red brick homes stretched out along the seafront as we headed to the north, but, disappointingly, none looked like the photos of the Smith home, and most were shuttered.  A few small house trailers were parked among the homes, along with several cars and pickups.

La Bocana lagoon and store, from the cliffside parking lot

"I think their house is further along the cliff," said Owen, "but let's eat!"  We backtracked and parked in a dirt lot overlooking the small bay.  The bay is separated from the lagoon by a wide sandbar; there a man and woman strolled, holding hands.  They ventured down toward the water and then--having second thoughts--ran from the waves.  The sound of their laughter drifted upward as we enjoyed a packed lunch with car doors open, watching the rhythmic roll of the sea, absorbing the peace.

Sated, with God and Mr. Gomez for reference and iPad in hand for photos, we walked back along the cliff road to where it declined slightly toward the north.  And there it was, with distinguishing chimney and arches, just as on the book cover.  A simple gate, padlocked, blocked the lane to the house, but an attached barbed wire fence running down to the cliffs was partially flattened, having yielded, perhaps, to the boots of previous trespassers.

"I'm not sure we should go beyond the fence line," I said, though the place was boarded up and obviously unoccupied.

"No one's here; let's go look," said Owen eagerly.  

We scrambled down a slight incline covered with ice flowers--a hearty succulent that has spread rapidly on our own land--and stepped over a low brick wall onto a tile patio that wrapped round to the front of the house.  The sweeping view from the front veranda took in the Bahia Santo Tomas to the north and the string of neighboring homes to the south--silent sentinels to an earlier era.  Or perhaps the owners just happened to be away during our visit the day before Palm Sunday.  

"Look at these solid old beams," said Owen, reaching for the wood supporting the veranda roof.   Tile and brick had stood up well to almost five decades of sea air, sun, and wind, but rusted iron bars securing the boarded windows and doors betrayed the age of the place.  We circled the house and looked for the oleanders Denny Smith planted as a privacy hedge.  They were gone, and the somber sky seemed to echo: "They're gone, they're all gone."

"There's something forlorn about it all," I said, as we returned to the front veranda.

"I know," said Owen, "they put so much into it, and now they're gone."  

Jack wrote in 1990 that he and Denny had sold the house "…to two young couples who, we hope, will enjoy it as much as we did.  It had been a great experience for us; it was something we shared; perhaps it helped hold us together."   Four years later he wrote of the death of Romulo Gomez, from cancer, at age 83.  Jack died in 1996 of heart failure; Denny survived him by eight years.

Owen working on his first guitar 

I thought about the energy Owen and I have expended renovating our place.  And the weeding and pruning and planting.  And building his guitar-making workshop.  The investment has been worth it, in my eyes, given my six-year lease, and then, God only knows.  Meanwhile we're delighting in the creation of a little Eden to share with friends and family.  

Jack, while walking the beach in front of his Baja home one day, had the intuition that "God's name is Random Chance."  But I embrace Saint Paul's assertion that "in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."

Looking to Bahia Santo Tomas from below the Smith house

The wind dislodged my hat as we made our way from the house down toward the ocean, enjoying the spring flora and peering over the volcanic cliffs at a pebbled beach below.  An old boot, a shoe, and a sock had been abandoned by previous explorers, and someone had tied a rope round a large boulder as a means of easing down the cliff face.  Owen and I found a safer way, though he cautioned me on the rugged descent which had, as Jack wrote: "that agonized look of rock thrown up from volcanoes when the earth was new; a memento of God's wrath, or perhaps His ecstasy."

The surf swirled and frothed just feet away as we stepped over encrusted barnacles to inspect a couple tide pools.  I was glad to have worn my hiking boots; Denny Smith broke her leg on these rocks!  Owen dislodged a small mussel and dropped it carefully on top of a sea anemone at the bottom of one of the pools.  We were on the lookout for larger creatures too.  The Smiths had sighted sea lions here.

As we climbed back up the rock "…so hard that even the sea would make little progress against it in a thousand years," I remembered Jack's concern about the erosion of the "soft and chalky" earth just below his house, above the volcanic rock. 

"Someday, Romulo," I (Jack) said, "our mansion is going to slide right into the Pacific Ocean."

"Oh yes," he said.  "Of course.  Someday.  But not too soon.  Five hundred years from now, Jack, you will still be living in that house."

"Maybe so," I said. "But isn't there something we can do about it now?"

"Well," said Gomez, "would you like to try a little tequila?"