The Search for Swell

South of Ensenada is where the real Baja seems to begin, and the real Baja evoked in me an often contradictory and conflicting set of feelings. It would be easy to focus only on the natural beauty: stunning desert landscapes, sweeping deserted coastlines with cool clear water, and cloudless night-time skies filled with tens of thousands of flickering stars. But this would give an inaccurate impression of the place as it would fail to mention the uncountable piles of trash and unfinished and seemingly uninhabitable semblances of shacks and residences scattered alongside the roads and highways. It would fail to mention the crushed shards of glass that encrust nearly every dirt path, road, and campground and the unburied dead dog we passed by, lying down on its side, jaws locked in a permanent growl, not more than fifty feet from people and inhabitation. Never before have I seen such a stark and immediate contrast between raw natural beauty and the crush of humanity.

We made our way west the the coast, traveling almost exclusively on uneven dirt roads that the Eurovan negotiated quite admirably, if a little bumpily. We spent the afternoon and early evening driving up and down the coast, searching unsuccessfully for a section of the coast that was capturing the weak NW swell. We had been driving for nearly 12 hours, the surf was looking weak, and to be honest I think all of us were a little bit disappointed and depressed. There were record low temperatures in Los Angeles (in the 30's), and along the windy coasts of Baja it felt even colder. We parked alongside a cliff near K-181 and spent a chilly night sleeping in the back of the van, hoping that the conditions would improve in the morning tide.