A Cosmic Journey Into The Past In Contemporary Baja: Part of the great Rock-Off
Written: Jul 20 '01 (Updated Jul 20 '01)
Product Rating:
Pros: Duh, it was The Baja
Cons: Duende & Eggs aren't in this one
The Bottom Line: Oh, the book Hidden Baja is a pretentious travelogue for white people who are afraid of Mexicans, but who want to pretend to "rough" it.
Fez_Monkey's Full Review: Hidden Baja: Including Tijana, Ensenada, Mulege, L...
A "Rock" write-off. That was what the invitation said, and, damn my bloody hide, that is what I accepted. A "Rock-Off." Just what the hell is this supposed to be about? Jesus, am I in trouble now. When I said yes to this thing I thought to myself that it would be a soft option. But then I started to take notice of not only who else was participating, but what they would be writing about. There's some big league stuff here, Slim. This is the kind of party where people like me should be serving the drinks and mopping up urine puddles in the bathrooms, not strolling around like they belong. I am in way over my head. I'm no geologist - I'm an ex-biologist who hasn't seen the business end of a theoretical ecology model in over ten years, much less have any knowledge or background in rocks of all things. Still, I accepted, and for good or ill, I will submit something, and likely thoroughly embarrass myself trying. I may be a sleazy, low-life bastard, but at least I have my honor!
Well, the clock is ticking and here I am manically working to try and come up with some sort of focus for this piece. Think, Monkey, think. Am I seriously expected to become aroused and wax poetic about actual rocks? (Shall I compare thee to an Olivine Igneous Rock? Thou art more lovely and more temperate …). Is that what others are doing? Good god, then I am in trouble. Do you think it would be stretching things a bit far if I was to bag entirely on this geology angle and instead write about which of the Epinions babes I would like to get my rocks off with? (YOU know who you are, sweeties -- heh heh heh.) Now the research for that one would be fun.
Oh, who am I kidding. The time has come for me to face this like a man and move on. I've go to be true to myself and go full-on indie here. After all, the others are going to kick out the jams in their entries and I don't want to look like the doofus with the orthopaedic shoes trying to play tetherball on the school playground. The die has been cast and the fat is in the fire. Too late to back out now. All I can do is just stuff a ramrod up my rectum and brass it out … just like that time the UC police caught me drunk on campus, urinating in the bushes in the Faculty Club Glade. You know, I may even want to experiment with this - take a new approach toward composing the great Epinions review. After all, I am so woefully overmatched that I may as well just pop a beer and let "The Force" take me. Hell, it certainly couldn't be worse than more of this insane rambling I've been doing. Yeah. That's what I'll do: Put on a blindfold and start typing. After all, if a million monkeys at a million typewriters working for a million years will eventually come up with Henry V, and one Hollywood monkey at one typewriter working for one day will come up with Pearl Harbor, then one Fez Monkey at one computer after one beer should be able to do better than the average SAHM! It's time for me blindfold myself and release that fezzed monkey within, so stand back, Pilot, this could get messy.
God, that was awful. Well, better than Pearl Harbor, but not quite Henry V. Rats, I guess it's on to Plan "B." Now all I have to do this think up what Plan "A" was, so that I can then come up with Plan "B" (a plan so diabolical in it's simplicity, it would fool even you, Mr. Bond!)
Maybe I should open with a joke? Hell, it worked for the first Bush administration (think about it for a second). So, this horse walks into a bar and the bartender says, "Hey, buddy, why the long face?" [rimshot] Thank you! I'll be here all week, and be sure to tip your waitresses.
Nah, that didn't work either. And up to this point, right here (no, the word right before this parentheses) I've already wasted a total of 725 words (well, technically 706 since that experimental thing really didn't have any actual words). Do you think anyone noticed?
Okay, back to the Write Off. Yes, I remember … rocks. Where's my goddamn beer? I've got a review to write!
It was Zokie who set the whole thing up. We were going for a two-week excursion of tramping in the Baja, so we could see and photograph the Hale-Bopp comet. Trying to check this thing out from West LA was a mugs game, what with all the particulate matter clouding the Los Angeles atmosphere and the light pollution from millions of homes and businesses. So Zokie figured a trip to the desert would yield some great views. And give us a good excuse to get away for a few days.
This was in June of '97 (after the comet's closest approach to earth), and it was hot. We had just passed Cataviña and were on our way to the ruins of the Mision San Francisco de Borja which meant about 100 miles of driving over goat trails, river washes, and some intensely hairy switchbacks and washboards into the Sierra La Libertad range, along the spine of the Baja. This is some seriously brutal terrain, Chavo - I mean this is hardcore country, and you are lucky if you hit 20MPH for any length of time. Then there is the intense punishment your kidneys take, being shaken and abused by the constant vibrations and bouncing. Yessir, this is easily some of the most inhospitable and remote mountainous territory on the entire peninsula. But we were on a mission to see a Mission, and even if a huge part of our time was spent backtracking after what seemed to be a promising path suddenly became either overgrown with giant cholla or saguaro cactuses, or ended in impassable boulders and crags, we were determined to see it through, or end up desiccated corpses trying. A break-down there and it is curtains.
Did I mention that it was hot? It wasn't even 9 in the morning yet and already close to 105 stinking degrees outside. I mean it was hot with a capital O. I was in the car with Paddy, while Norm was traveling with Razer and Zokie. Paddy was a good driving companion, but he had an odd sense of musical taste. His flavor tended toward Tom Waits, which in and of itself is fine, but not at 9am in the stifling Baja heat. He sifted through our musical library and eventually popped in a compilation tape featuring a wide range of tunes suitable for driving along treacherous paths on a gruesome Baja morning. The tape began with Bob Marley extolling us to Get Up, Stand Up before The Dickies proclaimed how they would love to be (Stuck In A Pagoda With) Tricia Toyota (and who wouldn't want that, eh?), eventually moving to selections from the likes of Screamin' Jay Hawkins, X, James Brown, Marillion, Frank Zappa, Dramarama, Elvises Presley and Costello, David Bowie, Louis Prima, Ian Hunter, Iggy Pop, Los Lobos, Howlin' Wolf, Robert Johnson, REM, The Clash, Frank Sinatra, The Beatles, and Tito Puente. There may have been others as well, but I forget. Besides, this was a good number of years back, and we were driving in intense, brain-boiling heat, so you'll excuse me if I get a bit confused. Who are you to criticize me anyway, you damn perfection expecting swine? Get bent, the lot of you. Now get me another beer or I swear I won't finish this story.
We eventually reached the ruins, and realized that these mountains contained caves that the original Baja inhabitants used for shelter. After we rested and re-hydrated, we came to an informed and democratic decision that a side trip to see these marvels was definitely in order, and we resolved to take it ASAP. The problem was, we needed a guide. Luckily for us, there was a small rancho near the Mission ruins, and after bartering a few tee-shirts, about a case of beer, and a zippo lighter, we got one of the men to agree to take us to see the caves and marvel at their paintings. He told us that this part of the Baja had a lot of indigenous caves, and that the people who used to live here before the Spanish came were called Guayacuras. Our guide's name was Oscar, but we didn't feel that was an appropriate name for a Mexican guide, so, borrowing a page from Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad, we had taken to calling him Ferdinand (it fit better than Ferguson, which is what Twain named his guides).
Ferdinand took us high into the mountains, and eventually led us to a level area with a lot of scrub brush and very high rock walls. Most of the caves at this location were really more like overhangs, forming little pits in the side of the mountain, and they faced north, so they provided ample protection from the heinous sun. The walls of the caves were decorated with magnificent totemistic paintings of animal-human hybrids, hand prints, abstract forms of men, bizarre shapes and designs, and detailed images of local fauna, such as deer and mountain lions. Unfortunately much of the art had been chipped away, both by time and by souvenir hunters, so the paintings were a bit patchy. But even in their incomplete state they were impressive. Some of the figures were near 10 feet high, and still retained an amazing degree of color - black, red, and brown. It was after we returned home that we learned that the cave painting in the Baja are more complex and more numerous (if not as old) as the famous paintings of Lascaux and Altamira. Compared to this both the comet and the Mission ruins would look like huge buckets of rancid pus. We ate lunch there with ghosts, and felt really good.
Okay, so this story had very little (if anything) to do with rocks, and neither Duende nor Eggs made an appearance. So sue me. Hell, you people knew what you were getting when you invited me to this thing. I mean, what were you expecting, a thousand words of this:
The Sierra San Fransico range (of which the Sierra La Libertad is a part) is a mountain wilderness eroded out of large volcanic outpourings. These rugged mountains rise from the surrounding desert plains to heights of more than 1,500 meters, and stretch northward for 50 kilometers. The Sierra San Francisco range was once a rather simple basalt plateau, roughly circular in outline. It is now folded into a broad westward-tilted arch crowned by Pico Santa Monica (2,144 m). During the last few million years, erosion has produced the rugged landscape seen today. The volcanic Volcan las Tres Virgines lies to the east, on the way to the seaside town of Santa Rosalia. - From The Baja Highway, J, Minch and T. Leslie
Nah, that just isn't my style. So take what you can get, folks. In the mean time, I gotta get back to that list of Epinions babes I wouldn't mind getting my rocks off with. If only I had some bikini pictures of them …
Hasta la Rock Off siempre!!
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This entry was part of the Rock-Off, featuring the following collection of premier Epinions contributors listed below. Compared to them I am little more than an incompetent buffoon who hides my lack of actual relevant knowledge behind an onslaught of clever sounding phrases and far too many words. My eternal thanks to the co-hosts of this Write Off, hypotenuse and scmrak, for their gracious invitation, and for allowing me to ramble on. Their hospitality is far more than I deserve, as is their indulgence. I urge all of you to read the contributions of the other writers, as they will undoubtedly be vastly more entertaining, well written, and informative than my weak effort.
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