Baja Travesia 2008
Day 1: That desert is hot!
Jacqueline Windh / 24.03.2008
Beware, for the moment don\'t trust the leaderboard - it seems to have some issues of some checkpoints not registering. I\'ll do my best to update you on team positioning.From CP3, in the town of San Felipe, teams started heading inland on foot, under the scorching early afternoon sun. I headed out with my buddy Gary in his deluxe 4x4 van (where I will be most comfortably spending the rest of this week!) to catch them between CPs 4 and 5.
They would be walking along the hot and nearly windless flats, skirting the flanks of a small mountain range that rises abruptly from the plain. So even though there is no trail here, it was easy to predict where we could catch them, where they turn in from the flats and start to follow a small ravine into the range.
Gary and I four-wheeled in cross-country as far as we felt comfortable (there are lots of spiky plants out here, and we only have on spare tire) and then hiked in the rest of the way to the ravine entrance. The desert is in bloom – though I have to say that Paul’s comparisons to the Irish countryside are a bit, well.... imaginative. The ocotillos are tall spiky treelike things that rise like a pile of tentacles, with bright red blooms on the end of each spike, and on the desert floor are all sorts of tiny little flowers, if only you can bring yourself to approach the scorched earth and get your nose down to the rocks.See All Event Posts
