The desert is coming alive. Summer is here for sure and I’m using my house fans already. We had such a cold winter. Well, at least it was cold to those who live here full time. I love the lazy, quiet summer, even with the humidity and heat. It’s like taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. Sweet, sweet summer.

Couple days ago we went to La Paz to run errands. Stopped at the Bravo Market for bacon (for Greg) and bones (for our dog). I can barely stand the smell of the meat, so I wandered around looking at all the fruit and veggies while Greg waited his turn. In the various juice stands they must make a least 20 different types of fresh fruit and vegetable drinks. More my speed.

After our errands and shopping, we headed out of town toward the pretty beaches–Balandra Bay, and Tecolote Beach. Stunning views. Big city, desert and water and mountains all in one day.

So many shades of blue. It was pretty quiet where I took these photos, but not too far away people were speeding around in jet skies and you could hear the screams of delight from young kids. I prefer the quiet lapping of the water on the shore, but to each her own.

Today’s walk in the neighborhood was fun. Isabela and I have a couple different walks in the hills around where we live. She loves to chase rabbits and she is always stopping to smell something. It’s what dogs do. They have such a sense of smell.

The following is from

 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/dogs-sense-of-smell.html

It says, “For one thing, they possess up to 300 million olfactory receptors in their noses, compared to about six million in us. And the part of a dog’sbrain that is devoted to analyzing smellsis, proportionally speaking, 40 times greater than ours. Dogs‘ noses also function quite differently than our own.”

That is an interesting site if you are interested in dogs, and who isn’t?

We saw lots of things today, but I only took a few photos. The desert is alive with flowers this time of year.

Oh, and a dead rattlesnake. Poor guy. Isn’t he beautiful? Call me crazy, but I like snakes, though I have a healthy fear of this kind.

 

The photo below is a neighbor’s place. He must pay for a lot of water.

Going to leave you with a photo of my favorite peak– Sierra de La Laguna:

These photos should show you some of the reasons I love my life here in Baja Sur. We live on the “right side” of the wall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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It all started when my dear friend Dori and her daughter, Lily and Lily’s girlfriend, Annabel came from the US to stay in their home nearby us for a week. They wanted to go to Cabo San Lucas and hike to the iconic arch. Dori said they had done this before, so I gladly accepted the invitation to go with them. I have hiked a lot in my life and think it’s fun. Just because I’m 71 doesn’t mean I can’t hike anymore, right? But I wore flip flops? Really? What the heck was I thinking?

I drove us to Lands End in Cabo by the marina and after parking and avoiding several annoying salesmen trying to get us to buy a boat trip, we got to the beach on foot. That’s where this hike was going to start. But it has been quite a few years since Dori had gone to the arch. The pathway she’s sure they took back then is fenced off.

 

No stopping us though, and we decided to follow the path up Mt. Solmar and see if we could drop down onto a trail to the beach where the arch is.

 

Doesn’t look like much of a trail, does it?

 

This wasn’t a problem for quite a long way, but we realized early on that this wasn’t going to be ending well. The beach is not in the direction we were going, and it got pretty steep without much of a trail. We sent the teen-age girls up alone to see if they could see a trail going down to the beach.

My flip flops made this a tenuous experience. Also, every time I reached for a rock as a hand-hold, there was a little cactus waiting to greet me. Oops. The views from where we were made it worth it though.

 

 

After the girls had gone higher and checked it out, we realized this wasn’t what we wanted to do and we started back down.

I definitely rue the day I didn’t wear my hiking boots or my tennis shoes at the very least. Without support and traction, I was not doing that well. I started to lose my footing at one point and reached out to hold onto a rock, but there was a cactus in that very spot, so in a split second I decided to jump, instead of fall. I landed on some loose rocks, jarring my knees and fell on my butt. Ouch. Not only was I trying to hike in these stupid shoes, I hadn’t had breakfast. It was about 11:30am at this point. The fall made me feel achy and woozy.

I would have kicked myself if that had been possible. Stupid me. At least I brought water along, but it was already half gone.

Turned out that we could see a better (level) path after we got down that headed in the direction we wanted. Dori remarked that she should have listened to her intuition in the first place, as it was pretty obvious that going up this rocky mountain wasn’t going to get us to the arch.

Taking this nice path made for a sweet adventure that ended with more splendid views, but we never made it to the arch. One would have to be a mountain goat to get down the rocks to the beach. Or be wearing better footwear. And maybe being a little younger would have helped me. At any rate, we decided to get back to the beach where we started.

 

We had the privilege to see lots of jumping rays as our finale.

 

We left the beach to the local children and headed to the restaurant to meet our spouses for lunch.

Maybe I’ve learned my lesson too.

Flip flops do not make good hiking footwear.

 

 

 

 

 

When I was a kid I thought the desert was ugly. Really? What was I thinking? Now I get so excited about how many species of cactus I see here in The Baja.

Cactus dreams are mine.

 

Cactus Sunrise

 

Cactus Sunset

 

The one on the right above is from an agave that puts out this last bit of fun before it dies. We used it for a Christmas tree last year and we like it so much we kept it in front (without the lights). The one on the left is a yucca.

Below are two agave “trees” that are coming out of a couple small agaves.

 

 

 

Speaking of lights, we took them from the agave bloom and put them around our cardons in the front. Pretty cool, huh? Cardon cactus (scientific name: Pachycereus pringlei) are native to northwestern Mexico in the states of Baja California, Baja California Sur. (“Sur” means “South”)  It is the tallest cactus species known, with a record height of 63′ tall. It is similar, but not the same as, the saguaro cactus found in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona.

The ones below are on the side of my house. We have several cardon in our yard. They make great perches for the birds too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lately I have been painting little pictures of cardon. I was inspired by one of my photos to do this one:

 

Here’s the photo I used:

 

The ones below are growing into quite a clump, which is very common around here.

 

The first time we drove down The Baja, seeing the cactus was mesmerizing to us–the shapes, the sizes, colors, how they grow in such a desolate landscape. The varieties of cactus are endless, and I know only a fraction of what’s out there. The next few photos are from Cataviña on our drive on The Baja.

 

 

 

 

 

This last one in Cataviña is my favorite. It looks like a water color to me. Maybe I’ll attempt to paint this one.

Several of the cactus grow into funny shapes. We say they are “morphed.” I have no idea what causes this strange thing to happen to them. Diversity is everywhere. The one directly below is a pitaya that has morphed into this funny shape.

The next ones are morphed cardon.

 

Cactus are like people. Some of them are pricks and the next thing you know they blossom.

 

 

Here are some of my tries at painting these amazing plants.

 

The ones with the orange flowers are called tuna cactus. The ones with yellow blooms are nopales. I’ve had the paddles from them in salad. So yummy. You can eat the fruit too.

 

This gorgeous flowers above are growing on a pitaya, or organ pipe.

 

It always amazes me how cactus can grow in such rocky places.

Above is a cardon standing alone at Balandra Bay in La Paz.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I no longer believe the desert is ugly. It’s full of the most crazy, cool cactus and critters. My life is full of cactus dreams.