4

Friday

The loading/unloading procedure happened, and took ages, as usual; when all passengers and their belongings appeared to be safely in the plane and the pilot was about to lock the door, a woman came running, huffing and puffing up the steps. There werent any free seats; this did not seem to bother the captain; I was wondering if I would be witness to a real novelty – a standing passenger in a plane! when a chivalrous man gave up his seat to the lady, and moved to the back of the craft to squat on the floor.

The 4pm southward bus from Guerrero Negro was sold out; we took a taxi for the 100 miles to San Ignacio; considering that it might not get a return passenger, the 800 pesos on the government rate-chart seemed reasonable. Taxis here are all '70s dinosaur-proportions American models; the cosmetic condition of the car belied the speed it showed itself to be capable of.

San Ignacio is a starting point for trips into the canyons that boasted of both spectacular scenery and ancient rock art. The Archaeological Department has an office in San Ignacio, where it issues permits for visiting the rock art sites; we were hoping to make it there by six and have the formalities done so that we could start off early next morning.

San Ignacio is a lovely oasis fed by the San Ignacio river, sitting bang in the middle of arid desert all around. The turn-off from the Transpeninsular highway leads you into a completely different world. All of a sudden, you have thick groves of palms, like you were in Kerala, small ponds like in Bengal, and a tropics-style campsite surrounded by greenery. A narrow winding road led us into the village plaza – a paved square with benches shaded by sprawling trees that reminded me of banyans back home. The little commercial activity (near 100% tourism) that there is in San Ignacio takes place around this plaza.

The INAH (Archaelogical Department) runs its office out of a small room next to the church. It was still fifteen minutes to six, but I guess the official simply gets bored of sitting there all day and usually leaves early. Not quite in the camping mood, we headed for the Motel La Posada, a five-minute walk along a lane leading out of the village square. Twenty dollars seemed the standard for budget hotels in Baja, and La Posada was definitely the tidiest place we stayed in during our trip.

The practicalities involved in visiting the rock art sites were not entirely trivial. The only site accessible by vehicle is the Cueva del Raton at the remote village of San Francisco de la Sierra. This was about 80 km from San Ignacio, half the route being along the Transpeninsular and half along a dusty track that leads deep into the mountains. From San Francisco, we planned to go down into the canyons to visit other sites. We'd have to hire an INAH-approved guide, who'd act as much as a guide as a chaperone to ensure that we did not vandalize the sites; we needed to carry along camping equipment to spend a night in the canyon, and bring enough food to last us and the guide two days; all of these (guide included) would be put on mules, which was a relief – my shoulders would have to carry only photographic equipment this time. Actually, we could get mules for ourselves too, but I felt my trekking-friends would pooh-pooh me for behaving like a proper married man if they came to know of this; besides, on the precipice of a canyon, I'm more comfortable trusting my fate to my legs than a dumb animal's.

A very convenient price-fixing duopoly operated in San Ignacio for transport to San Francisco. These guys ran vans that took upto six people, and on the pretext of the unmetalled road, charged US$120 (1200 pesos – a small fortune in Mexico) for the trip. If there are enough like-minded crackpots around, you can split the fare six ways; or else you're pretty much on your own. This was when we ran into Alice and Philip, who were in the same quandary as us – fired up by Lonely Planet enthusiasm for rock-art, they too were looking for ways to get to San Francisco without burning holes in a limited budget. Our plans for camping in the canyons infected them – ah! the donkey thing! cried Alice in her pucca Brit accent, cute and tuneful to our ears after a year in the US.

The problem of transportation more or less solved, we set out to gather provisions: gallons of water, canned fruit, meat, tortillas, burritos (chicken for me and the guide, bean-burritos for Revathi), paper plates – a sackload. When we came back, Alice and Phil were crestfallen – they didnt have tents, so the "donkey thing" was out for them; San Francisco and back would be all that they could do.

Saturday

At the INAH office, we realized that going down into the canyons was a more complex affair than simply lugging along provisions. These are remote places, and conventional means of communication hit the end of the road at San Ignacio. The INAH official radioed to his counterpart at San Francisco to find out about the availability of a guide for us. The radio here is quite interesting. There is a single line, ie a single frequency assigned to an entire area. People in remote villages have small solar-powered transceivers in their homes. No conversation is private; everybody gets to hear the activity on the line, but at least the message gets through: a clever solution for the difficulties of communication in poor, sparsely-populated, mountainous country, I thought.

The villagers in the Sierra take turns to guide tourists into the canyons, and in the process, earn some money. It turned out that the person whose turn it was to take the next group lived in a rancho four hours (by mule) away from San Francisco; we ought to have informed the INAH a day in advance about our plans – something we could easily have done by phone from Cedros or Guerrero Negro, if only Lonely Planet or Joe Cummings had had the gumption to advice us accordingly. Instead, we'd have to camp the night at San Francisco – another precious day in our compressed itinerary wasted.

A French-American couple formed the fifth and sixth members of our group, and the INAH chap struggled with all these passports for his paperwork. Indian passports are a rarity here – he asked me if I had any Indian currency on me – he could use some for his collection. Sadly, we were unable to oblige.

Formalities over, we climbed into a minivan driven by a grandfatherly figure. With his checked, soft hat and large, swimmy eyes behind thick glasses, he looked like the widower in Everybody's Fine played by Mastroianni who journeys through Italy visiting his dispersed children who never have time to come home to Sicily. Our man looked much stronger than Marcello though, and his minivan exuded a similar dusty ruggedness. Dust would simply rise in layers out of the carpet whenever we hit a pothole; sunbeams would light up in shafts thick with Brownian particles; I'm quite sure that with a few grains and a bit of water, you could harvest a good crop from that carpet.

While Revathi and I discussed our itinerary in terms of days and weeks ("next week we'll be in Copper Canyon"), Alice and Philip talked months and years – "we were thinking of renting a hut for a month in Batopilas (a remote village in Copper Canyon with a population of five hundred) … maybe next year we'll be in Chile". They were financing their world trip by teaching English to non-native speakers – so far they'd been to Australia, Thailand, and bits of Africa, their Merchant Ivory accents very much a part of their livelihood.

Our two weeks were squeezing in on us – already, La Paz, a ten hour bus ride south of San Ignacio appeared very distant; the cartoon museum would have to wait for another trip; the ferry-timings from La Paz to mainland Mexico didnt seem too convenient either. The guidebooks were hopeless here – the ferry days and times had changed beyond recognition, and the toll-free numbers never worked – we had to do our own research. Maybe we could catch the Tuesday night weekly ferry from Santa Rosalia, an hour south of San Ignacio? And, if we got back from the rock-art/canyons on Monday night, could we squeeze in a day's snorkelling at Mulege? Boy! you're going to need a vacation after this, Alice commented.

At the end of two bumpy and dusty hours, we reached the home-cum-office of Señor Rodriguez, the INAH custodian at San Francisco de la Sierra. Our old driver quickly got down to business, buying homemade mountain-goat cheese from Rodriguez. Settling himself smugly in Rodriguez's chair, leaning back with hands behind his head, he revealed himself to be a character way different from the hobbling, vulnerable Mastroianni – So how do you plan to get back to San Ignacio when you return from the canyons? Well, if we're lucky, maybe there'll be some tourists that day and we can share the ride with them. Or you could walk down to the highway. It's forty kilometers! Well, it's downhill… Sarcasm and rudeness take a little longer to penetrate in a foreign language …why dont you roll down?

Being slow in the uptake in Spanish, it was easier for me to pretend some dignity, and arrange that he'd come at 4pm on Monday to pick us up. The figure of $120 was not negotiable, of course, and was never brought up.

Rodriguez delegated the job of opening the gate to Cueva del Raton to a village urchin, and we all piled back into the van to get there. It turned out to be a fairly disappointing experience. The American gentleman in our group had crammed some book on Baja rock art, and kept spewing information for our benefit, while twisting himself into all kinds of funny angles to get shots of what appeared to my untrained, uncharitable eyes to be fairly mundane doodling: a deer-head, couple of spread-eagled stick-like human figures. This was no Altamira or Lascaux. Alice and Philip sat down to make sandwiches (after the dusty ride, the moist tomatoes and green cucumber looked far more attractive than the art) and pass snide remarks about our art-scholar's analysis of the pre-historic scribbles – I shared their annoyance towards a person completely immersed in a thing we found hopelessly bland.

The boy who'd opened the gate placed himself strategically near the entrance, and our American friend hinted that we ought to tip him; while I meekly complied, Phil asked – What for? He unlocked the place. O my god, what a strain!

As we came out, our driver patronizingly placed his hand on my back and pointed up to some water-stains in the rockface: with some imagination, it was possible to make out a human figure in a cassock. That's St Francis, it's natural, nobody made that. I could imagine missionaries landing up in the village three hundred years ago, and telling the Cochimi Indians – stop your pagan doodling, St Francis is here. There was some confusion about the name of the village – we found it called both St Francis of the Mountains and The Mountains of St Francis. Come to think of it, if you're devout enough, both are plausible names. Even today, with the transpeninsular running through the length of Baja, these places are fairly inaccessible. One has to be amazed at the perseverance of the Jesuits who would have had to trek for days and days through inhospitable terrain to bring their version of the truth to the natives. Not for nothing is extreme zeal described as missionary.

The old man refused us a ride back to the village, and disappeared with the remainder of his passengers in a cloud of dust, back towards San Ignacio. A. and P. were going to catch the Tuesday ferry across to Guaymas too, so we'd probably be traveling with them again. A pickup truck soon caught up with us and gave us a lift to San Francisco.

"The visitor is expected to feed the guide" – the rule seemed a little strange, and the remark "the guide will eat anything you give him" (Joe Cummings) a little unkind. What you have to realize is that these are extremely poor people. Nothing but cactus grows here; the only industry is grazing goats and selling cheese to some blood-sucking cab-owner from San Ignacio. Roberto Rodriguez might have the mouth-filling title of INAH CUSTODIAN, but at the end of the day, he is only an impoverished villager lucky to have the part-time job. He had a rusting camper parked next to his house, and suggested we rent it for the night instead of taking the trouble to set up a tent. We had a reluctant look at its much-slept-in beds, and it was easy to refuse the offer. We asked if he could tell us where we could set up camp, as we wanted to have lunch; his wife promptly offered the use of their table. Feeling trapped, we laid out our paper plates, nachos, salsa and burritos; the burritos that we found hard to wash down with water they gobbled up at alarming speed. Poverty does sad things to people.

We killed the rest of the afternoon trying to set up the tent to get maximum breeze and minimum sun in it; realizing it would always be cooler outside; climbing a hill to catch a glimpse of the Sea of Cortez; and (as usual) photographing cacti. On our way back, we ran into Alberto, our guide. We decided to leave at seven next morning.

Sunday, Monday – down in and out of the Canyons

After all this, what did we see? Some more straightforward, basic line-drawings of deer in profile and humans face on. If a tourist-trap there ever is in Mexico, this is it. A small team was shooting an IMAX movie at the Cueva Pintada, but their cameras were trained on the canyon rather than the paintings. As I was taking the obligatory send-home pictures of rock-art, one of the IMAX guys came and stood near me. Maybe he wanted to see the master at work, I thought – Never seen a point-and-shoot on a tripod, have you? – You're meticulous... Timing your exposures? – No, just using the self-timer in lieu of a cable release. Umm... we're taking shots of the canyon, you're in the way...

Cueva de las Flechas wasnt much better, and after that we had the two-hour hike back. We made it to our camp just before dark. A carpentaria (woodpecker) had punched holes in the bread and tortillas in our absence. Alberto lit a fire, and made himself some tea; very strangely, he didnt offer us any. Most of the canned food tasted really bad; the only exception was some diced fruit. Alberto didnt seem to have a tent with him; Revathi repeatedly nudged me to ask him how he was going to sleep, but I didnt want any uncomfortable answers. The fire was warm enough for him, I guess.

The climb out of the canyon was more tiring than the descent, but it felt a much safer exercise. Alberto stopped at a village to exchange banter with one of his friends; this man remarked about Alberto – esta un hombre muy malo; no le paga (he's a very bad man, dont pay him). They found my reply — El, y tu tambien, los dos son malos (he, and you too, both are bad men) — to be the height of humor, and Alberto nearly fell off his mule laughing.

We reached Roberto Rodriguez's place in San Franciso at noon; since the Old Man would be coming only at four, I asked Roberto if it was possible to get a vehicle locally. We paid Alberto 500 pesos (as per INAH rates), and he got this job only once a year (there were too many guides and not enough tourists) – 1200 pesos would be good money for any villager with a truck. Roberto stubbornly insisted that he was radioing San Ignacio and the Old Man would arrive in an hour – how this was physically possible, given that San Ignacio was two hours away, he refused to divulge. Alberto left with the money and the considerable remains of our provisions, while we sat at San Francisco, waiting for the Greedy Old Man With The Sharp Tongue to show up.

We had a few visitors at Roberto's parlor/office. The first was a fifty-plus hefty couple, natives of Seattle. They extolled the virtues of their camper — it's got a bed, kitchen, fridge, TV, everything — to an open-mouthed Roberto. I wonder why they bothered to leave Seattle at all. Americans obsess to be self-sufficient and independent even when they travel; is it a desire for independence, or insularity, and insulation from the local population? You dont want to eat the food they cook, you dont want to rub shoulders with them in a narrow bus-seat, why travel? I remember once when we were traveling in Sikkim, we thought our fellow passengers smelt funny. We went on to do a week of hiking, and on the way back, we found that we were smelling exactly like them – the result of accumulated sweat, dust and woodfire-smoke of seven days without a shower. Well, maybe lot of tourists dont want that kind of visceral understanding of foreigners.

The next person to provide me with material was a young, plump man from San Jose, Calif., driving down Baja in his brand new Ford truck. He would be going down into the canyon that day. I thought of warning him that his shorts were probably not the best things to wear in cactus country, but decided againt affronting the American national outdoor costume. See you at the Easter Party in Cabo, said our jolly San Josephite, as he drove off in his truck towards the Cueva del Raton.

The first thing the Old Man did after getting off his van at three-thirty was to point to his watch and make the point that he'd actually made it half an hour ahead of what we'd agreed upon. This might have irritated me, but I had anticipated it. What really rankled was that he'd brought along a full load of passengers — his wife, a teenage granddaughter, two tourists whom he claimed to be giving a free ride — while the two of us would be paying the full one-twenty dollars. Tired, young man? he patted me patronizingly. "Only of waiting for you." The granddaughter's involuntary chuckle was small revenge.

Shampooed, washed, wearing clean clothes freshly laundered at San Ignacio's sole wash-dry-fold, we limped into Réné's for dinner that evening. At our neighbouring table was a French couple and an American animatedly discussing prehistoric art. Naturally, I asked them if they'd been to Lascaux. Ahh, we were just talking about Lascaux. I found the stuff here kind of disappointing compared to the pictures of Lascaux and Altamira I've seen. Oh, you wont find anything like that in the New World. I had wandered into specialists – the Frenchman had been to the Baja caves twenty years ago – it would be prudent to choose my words with care. But there are cave-paintings in your country too... Luckily, the name Bhimbhetka came to my lips, and saved the day.

Next Chapter: Across the Sea of Cortez