2

Saturday

Third world habits and inefficiency must be contagious – if the state of American borders is anything to go by. The more direct the frontier, the worse the INS's level of service. At JFK, I've been sworn at (that's right, the f word); at San Ysidro, we had to go searching for an INS official to please accept our I-94s so that one of his fellow-officers wouldnt harrass us on the way back. Actually, it took us a while to get a hang of the level of confusion at this border, all our previous experiences with immigration being at airports, where a veneer of order prevails. If you want a drive-thru immigration, you crawl in a backup. To cross on foot, you go over a long walkway. When we stopped on the walkway to take a picture of the border, a voice from a hidden speaker went off, it seemed, right behind our ears, and shooed us off.

Arrangements are so informal here that before we knew it we were in Mexico. This didnt strike us as right. So we went looking for a Mexican official to go through our passports and visas and put the necessary stamps. It was then that we realized that our I-94s were still with us, even though we'd left the US. It was funny, we had to drive immigration officials of both countries to go through the necessary procedures so that we didnt get into trouble later.

Finally, having flown diagonally across the continent, from a New York still in the grips of winter to the mild temperatures of the south-west, we were in Tijuana, the point where "Baja California, the peninsular pinkie of Mexico hanging tenuously off California" is attached to the United States. The Pacific ocean lies to the west of this narrow, 800-mile long strip of land; wedged between Baja and mainland Mexico is the Gulf of California, called Sea of Cortez by Mexicans, in perplexing honor. The waters off Baja are sprinkled with islands, some uninhabited and protected from the human hand, some used as bases to exploit the resources of the seas. The seas snuggle up to the land in lagoons and bays once bloodied by harpoons of whale-hunters, now used for kayaking, diving, whale-watching. Escaping the freezing Arctic waters, grey whales return here every winter to mate and rear calves, staying till the young grow enough blubber to withstand the cold northern waters.

The vast amount of water that we naturally assume with the notion of a sea, inviting, cooling, possibly even teeming with life in its depths, makes it difficult to imagine a barren desert only a hundred yards inland. But that's exactly how Baja is, with its uninterrupted deserts climbing up and down ranges of crumbly mountains that disintegrate to powder under the climber's boots. The mountains hide deep canyons with arroyos, mostly dry, the least hint of a secret trickle of water eagerly marked by lush palms in a region othewise monopolized by several kinds of cacti. And in these inaccessible canyons, ancient man has left drawings on rocks. I had visions of the charging bulls of Altamira.

The single most important thing that has made this landscape, its flora and fauna accessible is the Transpeninsular highway. Way up north, the highway teeters on the edges of cliffs affording lovely views of the Pacific; for most of its length it is negotiating the desert, dipping, climbing, dropping, making alarming bends to avoid mountains; roughly halfway through its journey south, it touches the Sea of Cortez at Santa Rosalia before heading inland again on the road to La Paz and Cabo. Innumerable dusty unmetalled tracks lead off the Transpeninsular to ranchos, isolated farms for whose occupants goats and cattle extract a poor living off the land.

Majority of tourists crossing into Mexico at San Diego are weekenders from California, driving their gas-guzzling SUVs into Tijuana, venturing possibly even as far south as Ensenada. Cabo, at the southern tip of the peninsula, seemed another tourist trap. Avoiding both the seedy north and sleazy south, we decided to confine our explorations to the middle of Baja. La Paz, a city on the Sea of Cortez a hundred miles north of Cabo, has both anthropology and cartoon museums, and a port with ferry-services to mainland Mexico: where we had our eyes trained on the Copper Canyon and the famous railway line that runs through it.

One of the taxi-drivers hawking for passengers at the border managed to convince us that at $8, he was not fleecing us for the ride to the Camionera Central, the main bus station of Tijuana. He even put in a pitch for Baja tourism – muy caliente (very warm), mucha cerveza (beer), mucha margarita, señoritas, …

The peculiarty of bus service for the thousand miles between Tijuana and La Paz is that buses originate only from these two places – there arent any that run between intermediate towns. Starting from Tijuana and La Paz at reasonable intervals during the day, they touch the towns in between at odd hours, leaving inconvenient gaps in daytime service for these smaller places.

The previous bus had left at eight in the morning; the next bus south was at noon. Not yet inured to our cumbersome and onerous backpacks, we were hot and tired, and decided to relax in the fresh juice kiosk at the bus terminal. Jugo de naranja natural. Fresh squeezed orange-juice. Awaking distant memories of orange-juice as we had known it in India, not the beerish aftertaste, preservatives laced, possibly pips and rind mashed liquid from A&P that we've almost "developed a taste for".

This bus-terminal had airport-like airs, with luggage being formally checked-in and baggage-tickets handed out, and passengers being walked through metal-detectors. To carry the impression into the bus itself, movies were shown during the trip – old Spanish stuff that uncannily resembled black & white operetta-style Hindi films (not that the newer Hindi movies are much different), the leads launching into passionate arias at regular intervals.

The journey was plagued by innumerable stops along the way and a ponderous driving style, with the result that we reached Cataviña at nine, well past the evening light I had hoped to use to shoot the "VW sized-boulders" strewn about the desert there. In case a prospective traveler has any illusions about Cataviña, all that is there by way of civilization is two hotels, two gas-stations (one of them derelict and abandoned), and a grocery-cum-cafe. When we had decided to lug a tent along, it was as much for multi-day hikes as to save on the cost of accommodation. However, so late at night, having done a nine-hour bus ride, our resolve was weakening. Hotel La Pinta, the semi-luxury chain offering a $50 room seemed an attractive deal. Little were we prepared for the NO VACANCY sign at the reception. Even the other mini-motel, with its ramshackle box-like rooms, was full, a parked tour-bus explaining the situation. The campground seemed totally deserted and dark, inspite of a painted ABIERTO (open) sign. The elderly, dapper manager of La Pinta had been overhearing us talk to the receptionist and kindly offered to let us use the grounds at the back of the hotel for camping.

Sunday

We had hit the gap in the bus-service from Tijuana, and there was nothing to do but have lunch at La Pinta, then look to ways of killing time till the four o'clock bus arrived. The afternoon sun wasnt the greatest thing for taking landscape pictures, but I went out with the tripod nevertheless, and managed to see and photograph an interesting cactus.

Traveling by the Transpeninsular-1 is almost constantly interesting – desert; cacti; how cacti would almost vanish in one part, and reappear in droves in another; different kinds of cacti monopolizing different parts of the desert; unmetalled roads leading off to some lonely rancho; occasional carcasses of dead automobiles, dehydrated cattle; mountains near and far. It would be an interesting road to drive on too, a single winding lane providing all the exhilaration you want (I call these "video game roads"); unfortunately, the scenery is rarely straight ahead, which might make driving frustrating, dangerous, or both. As we were heading towards Guerrero Negro from Cataviña, the sun was setting, and the inconsistently replaced tinted windows of the bus allowed us to evaluate the scene through various filters.

Guerrero Negro is nearly halfway down the length of the peninsula and just inside the northern border of the state of Baja California Sur (south); the land bends eastwards, and here the time is an hour ahead of Pacific. I guess this dusty little town has gone through a number of incarnations – first as a whaling town, with grey-whales being mercilessly hunted in Scammon's lagoon; now as a tourist-spot where every winter people come to see the greys; whales are allegedly in danger again as a salt-making industry develops along the coast taking advantage of the hot dry winds to precipitate the salt. The half of the town developed by the salt-factory is less dusty – endowed with divided roads and a Banamex branch.

Reaching Guerrero Negro at about eight in the evening, we found we had been wise to have booked a room in Motel Ballena (Whale Motel) by phone from Cataviña. I suppose Baja sees much more tourist than commercial traffic, with the result that budget hotels were twice as expensive (averaging $20) as in Mexico City, and hardly as good.

Monday

Having the day on our hands, we had no option but to go on a whale-watching trip. Most of the tour-operators, apparently, were having difficulty finding enough customers to make a trip viable; Mario's seemed to be the most enterprising, with Hans scouting the hotels of the town for victims. Mario's restaurant used to be in the town, but now it has moved away next to the highway just outside, where it has more spacious quarters, having set up a large, circular thatched roof structure in the middle of the desert.

A box-lunch was a part of the whale-package, and we had to tell them that Revathi was a vegetarian. This would invariably have a response like – Aaah...siii! they dont eat vaja (cow) in India! Do you eat fish? Then we'd have to go into intricate detail – Revathi was a pure vegetariana, no carne (meat), ni pescado (fish), ni marisco (seafood), whereas I ate todo. The waiter said he'd seen cows on streets in India on Discovery Channel – here, they'd have their throats promptly slit and made into carne asada. What were the different festivals we celebrated in India? he asked, suddenly launching into a cultural exchange. Well, different ones in different parts... Seeing that we were not playing the role of cultural ambassador too well, he took it upon himself to list, month by month, the fiestas of Mexico. Do they dance in India during celebrations? Only in imitation of Hindi movies, I felt like saying. Here they dance a lot.

He said he'd name his next daughter Revathi. Unbeknownst to her, in one distant land, some day, she'd be having a goddaughter, the rest of whose life would be spent between spelling her name at windows and on phone, and cursing her father for not baptizing her a regular Maria.

Besides the two of us, there was an Italian couple on the tour. Spanish was a breeze for them, but they spoke no English at all. Hans Davila would have to go over the same material twice – in English for our benefit, and once more in Spanish for them. We drove past the salt works, and they were really beautiful – huge shallow tanks where sea-water was being evaporated, and snow white, gleaming, salt was crystallizing into circular lumps. Mountains of salt were being loaded into ships – from a photo it's impossible to tell if it's salt or snow. These ships make a 12 hour journey to Isla Cedros where the salt is transferred to larger ships to be exported to Japan and the US.

We arrived at a small jetty where we had to put on lifevests and get into a panga, a nimble little boat that takes about eight people; fitted with Yamaha outboard motor, it does really good speed. Unfortunately, this also creates a lot of vibration, which makes it difficult to take sharp pictures on board. Wearing lifevests was mandatory, in case a friendly whale decided to gently tip our little panga over.

The boat raced towards the deeper parts of the lagoon, towards the open sea, and soon we could see could see signs of whales in the distance: here the splash of a tail disappearing into the water, there a spout of water blown out by a whale that must have been holding its breath under the sea for god knows how long (imagine a whale with bursting lungs).

I have had the humbling experience of returning from a national park with a roll of pictures showing mostly sky/water spotted with a dark speck. This speck would have been a large animal or a colorful bird that I would have seen outside of TV for the first time. The reason almost every newbie takes this kind of pictures is the human eye's treacherous ability to zoom into the most interesting part of a scene, even through the dim confines of a viewfinder. With these pictures haunting me, I was able to restrain myself (and Revathi) for a while from being shutter-happy. Also, when I'd raise the 100-300 lens to my eye, the guides would tell me – dont shoot these, hang on, we'll get nearer.

For me, this was the first trip where I encountered wild animals within photographing distance, and when I was carrying equipment that could give me a reasonable chance of getting a sharp image at respectable magnification. I did not come back with spectacular images. What I came back with is the knowledge that it requires a little more than a) the animals, b) the equipment to get successful images. It requires certain amount of familiarity with the animals themselves. Some amount of thinking devoted to figuring out which specific aspects of the animal really excite our senses and how to bring them out on film. As I perform my post-mortem, I realize that a whale is not a particularly photogenic animal per se. When it swims close by the boat, it looks, more often than not, like a large piece of barnacle-crusted flotsam that could do with a good scrub. Its most exciting and oft-seen act, that of leaping straight into the sky from the depths of concealing water, when frozen on film is simply the image of a shapeless cylinder sticking out of the sea. How does one convey the wonder of such a large animal, that breathes up fountains through its blowholes, being so gymnastic?

Not that it wasnt exciting scanning the waters with a telephoto lens glued to the eye, and swinging around with a harpooner's alacrity whenever somebody would let out the characteristic whoop of another spotting. It was contrived adrenalin. The narrow angle of a long lens and the interruption of a firing shutter arent the best conditions for whale-watching. Every now and then, a pair of dolphins would taunt us by frisking in smooth, synchronized leaps out of the water right next to our boat (hey! your lens is too big for shooting us. Get a life! grab a point-and-shoot!!), disappear under it, and resurface on the other side, while another whale would jump somewhere in the horizon of my vision. The dolphins, with their slick, clean skins and co-ordinated actions were really the picture of elegance.

Il depiende de suerte del dia – it depends on the luck of the day. The whales had given us some spectacular performance, but they hadnt really trusted us with any intimacy. Alice and Philip (whom I'll introduce later) had caressed a mother and baby pair that had pulled up next to their panga. I imagine their point-and-shoot has taken better pictures than my fancy SLR.

On our way back to the jetty, we had another peek at the sea-lions basking on a buoy; evidently, they didnt like the intrusion and externalized their feelings by spitting on us.

The town of Guerrero Negro is no tourist attraction. Unless jalopied taxis and flying dust excite you, you'd want to stay away from the town itself as much as you can. The surrounding area is the Vizcaino Peninsula Biosphere Reserve, and I imagine that with a vehicle at our disposal (and, possibly, some knowledge of flora and fauna) we could have explored the swamps that separate the desert from the sea. As things stood, the whale trip was over by afternoon, and scouring our guide-books for something interesting to do, the only accessible place we found was the Don Miguelito beach, named after the founder of the town.

Don Miguelito, being a combination of sea, beach, and sand dunes, is a very beautiful place and a photographer's joy. We timed our visit to what we thought was an hour before sunset, and our estimate was pretty accurate, but we should have allowed ourselves more time. An hour before would still have been pretty interesting light, but our movements were constrained by our lack of wheels. We tried renting bicycles from a tour agency in town, but the lady at the counter (with crisp American accent) seemed more concerned about our safety (and playing "grown-up") than doing business; the Transpeninsular being a narrow single-lane affair, and the soft surface off the road not being a viable option to bike on, she opined it would be dangerous to ride the ten miles back after dark with only the red gleamers to warn speeding truckers of our existence.

We decided to try a taxi. The driver would wait for an hour at the beach while we explored the place; I wonder if he would have agreed to stay there for longer without charging us some astronomical amount. To get to the beach, one has to drive past the turn-off to the Guerrero Negro airport for some distance, and then onto an unmetalled track.

Dunes in slanting light is a heavily photographed subject but this was a first-time opportunity for me; with more experience and time to explore the shapes and shadows formed by the setting sun, I should be able to get more originality into my pictures. From the boat on Scammon's Lagoon, I'd taken a shot showing the foam from our outboard motor, the blue sea, and the dunes at the beach in the background. Unfortunately, the light was not right, and you could hardly make out the shapes of dunes in the overhead sun. I wish I had the luxury of going back to the lagoon at sundown to have another go at the subject. Who knows if the picture would have come out right even then? I have not yet reached that exalted level of expertise where, armed with a compass (yes, serious landscape-shooters do carry compasses, and even topo maps!), I can confidently predict how a scene would look at what hour of the day. Besides, on a two-week whirlwind vacation, you cannot afford to revisit a place just to take a picture. Maybe I should look at this trip as a mere reconnaissance effort; some day, I'll go back, hire a panga at sundown, bully the panguero into floating within photographing distance of the beach and switching the motor off so that I could have a real steady shot. After all, the dunes will not fly away, and the sun will always set over the lagoon.

Or is that misplaced complacency? The salt-industry is doing well along the coast, and expanding. In the opinion of some environmentalists, this is going to disturb the grey whales. Might we even see earthmovers shifting the sand to make way for evaporation tanks some day? Dunes seem such fragile and transient things, made by wind out of sand, that even walking over them, legs sinking in, planting tripods (again, legs sinking in) opens gashes into them and spoils their smooth, sculpted surfaces. I reassured myself that a night's wind would return the sand to its regular pattern.

Close to sundown, the light changes very rapidly and in many interesting ways, which is what makes it so much fun and such a challenge to take pictures. If you have animate objects against the landscape, things get even more interesting. There was this group of four or five people standing at a sandhead projecting into the lagoon, indigo blue sea and a gorgeous sky in the background; and there was this pair of gulls perched on a silhouetted dune. I gambled that humans would linger longer, birds were more capricious, so I set up my tripod for them, changed the lens, measured the light, got my shot, while the people decided it was getting too late for them to hang around and walked away from the beach. The gulls stayed put contentedly.

We were very nearly at the end of our one-hour limit, it was almost dark, I'd had to switch films from Velvia to the less reciprocity-prone and faster Astia; I realized that the long exposures would make the waves look like solidifying lava; we were a little nervous about getting lost in the dunes. Revathi, always fearing less desirable outcomes with her conservative world-view, thought the cab might simply leave if we got late; I was confident that the guy wouldnt budge without being paid.

Our taxi had been parked behind some dunes; while getting off, we'd spotted an SUV parked some distance away in more open space. We started walking towards where we thought it was. Fortunately it was still there to give us a sense of direction, and the explanation was not far to find – looking back towards the beach, we saw a tent against the failing light. Man, these guys were having the beach all to themselves. Our driver had spotted us, and switched on the headlights so that we could locate him easily. Elaborately, he checked the time on his watch as we got in.

Next Chapter: Vanished Fishermen and Friendly Sailors