Jamie Elmer Yoga: Jamie's blog on Yoga, Life and Travel

Scorpions, Goats and new Friends in Baja

*If you’d like to read blog posts prior to November, 2013, please visit my past blog site at www.jamieelmer.wordpress.com. Thanks!

*This post written over a week ago....

Last week we had an unexpected, and fun turn of events. We were camping just for one night in Ciudad Constitution after leaving San Juanico/Scorpion Bay, and the only other people at the camp site were a couple we had met in Loreto. We got all set up for the night, the wi-fi didn’t work, so the four of us got to talking. Hours passed with our new friends, Lesley and Yves. From there, we traveled together for a number of days down the west coast of Baja. Having two rigs we felt safe to travel off road in to a couple of camp sites that aren’t “official” or on a map. We all had some fun times…...one memorable night in particular, as we were sitting around the campfire, Lesley was bit by a scorpion. Yes, a scorpion. Afterwards, we joked about the next person who had a scorpion on them couldn’t move until one of us was able to get a picture. Well, about 20 minutes later, Yves had a scorpion on his leg! He DID move fast, brushed it off and killed it. Sorry scorpion - and unfortunately, no picture of either scorpion was taken that night.

Its not every day that you can find people that you can travel with for days on end. We hope to meet up with them again, perhaps in Los Barilles.

We flew through Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo - too “big city” for us. Came up to Agua Caliente hot springs campground in the Sierra de la Laguna park yesterday. Its a massive park with a landscape that is very different from what we’ve seen so far in Baja. There are still cacti, but they’re bigger, and there are also many kinds of trees, shrubs and greenery than we haven’t seen any place else. We immediately had a good feeling about it as we approached. We arrived, and were the only ones camping. There is a hot springs, flowing down from rocks that pools in to a good size area with a little beach, and huge boulders and dry river beds around. There’s even a small zoo down the road. This is definitely one of our favorite camping spots so far. In addition, we can ride our mountain bikes in this terrain because it isn’t too sandy and there are a TON of natural trails made by the bulls, cows and donkeys here. Instead of the sound of waves to wake up to this morning as we’ve had often here, it was the sound of cow bells. It was a surprisngly nice change to be off the beach, in small mountains with foliage again.

*For more pics and writing, visit Tobin's site at www.velomountain.com