Thursday, May 16, 2019

Baja Memories

I'll extend my theme about forgotten files from last week. For that post, I was complaining about how difficult it is to organize digital files, and how easy it is for great photos to slip through the cracks and get lost. This week, I'm focused on the pre-digital age. Remember that? Dealing with film, developing, prints, slides, etc. Yup, the good ol' days!

For four years in a row, our summer adventure was to drive down the Baja peninsula. We would camp on the beach and spend our days fishing, snorkeling and diving. It was just rough camping... no showers or electricity, and it was usually a group of us guys that went down (although wives went down one year). This was in the late '70s and early 80's, so a long time ago. Baja and Mexico in general was a different place back then.
The single road (Highway 1) that went down the Baja peninsula was always in bad shape back then. 1000 miles as the crow flies of huge potholes, washed out areas, detours, and cattle on the highway, which made travel at night a bad idea. Keep in mind, this road wasn't even paved until the end of 1973, so tourist travel down the peninsula was just developing and still relatively rare. Blown tires and even broken axles was a common occurrence. We would drive all day at slow speeds to dodge the potholes, and as it got dark, just pull over to the side of the road and make camp. I can't imagine doing that these days, but sleeping on the side of the road seemed perfectly acceptable back then!

For the first two trips we traveled about half way down the peninsula to a remote location called Punta San Francisquito. I haven't yet scanned slides from those trips. Almost nothing there at the time other than some beach cabanas for shade, a dirt runway and a small bar/restaurant. There were a couple locals that lived in the area full-time. It was mainly a destination that gringos would fly to for some of the best fishing on the peninsula. Very few people drove to the spot because it was 50 miles of nasty, difficult dirt road from the main highway. There was not gas station, but there were barrels of aviation fuel. If you got in a real bind, you could beg on of the locals to sell you some for your vehicle. You may or may not be successful! Driving there was not recommended, but when we heard how good the fishing was, there was no stopping us.

Even back then, I was interested in photography, so I was the unofficial photographer for our adventure travels. I also had an underwater housing and flash for my camera that I took along. I would shoot mainly Kodachrome so we could all get together and have a slide show party after getting back home. The photos I'll be posting today were scanned from slides from my Baja archives (of which there are many!). Kind of cool that the technology makes scanning slides easy, and the quality isn't too bad. The plastic slide sleeves are breaking down, making the slides sticky and attracting dust, so there's a bit of urgency to scanning them now before they are too far gone! 
Stops at the llantera (when you could find a town that had one) was not uncommon. Here you can see my wife and our friend Dave getting a tire repaired. I think this was in Guerrero Negro.

I think this was the hills above Bahia de los Angeles. This is Ron's dad, Ray, who joined us on one trip. If I had to guess I would say that's an old Super 8 video camera. Remember those? Quite a view from this spot! I remember we stopped and camped here for a couple days on one of our trips. It was nice because the side road leading into the area had just recently been paved, so we made good time getting in and out. This area had wide open beaches and very undeveloped back then. I'll bet that's not the case anymore!

My wife in front of an old funky trailer. I have no idea where this is.

My friend Ron, who was really the spark plug behind these trips, learned that there was only one place in the entire Sea of Cortez side of Baja with coral reefs. That place is called Cabo Pulmo, and the rumors back in the day (remember this was before internet) was that the fishing and diving were incredible. So after two summers visiting Punta San Francisquito, our third trip was all the way down the peninsula to check out Cabo Pulmo (yellow arrow on the map).

Ron's dad Ray with a freshly caught yellow tail! It never occurred to me at the time that it was unusual to catch these big yellow tail while fishing right off the beach. I think those days are (unfortunately) long gone.

The entire area was beautiful... very scenic! The beach was rocky, but we had the whole place to ourselves during the two trips we went down there. We simply pulled all the vehicles up on the beach and set up camp! Such awesome memories. That was my "Baja bug" that we used for exploring the beaches and other areas. It would go pretty much anywhere!

A couple of the locals chatting with Stu (blue shirt) at Cabo Pulmo. I believe this is looking down the beach to the south (ocean would be just beyond the cars on the left).

The view up the beach at Cabo Pulmo looking north. I think that's "Pulmo Point" in the photo. Not sure why the sky looks purple!

This image looks blurred on the edges for some reason, but that's me holding what looks to be a gargantuan lobster. I just remember the lobster were plentiful, as were the fish, and we ate like kings!

A simple beach campfire... Ron getting ready to grill fish and lobster for dinner as I look on. I'm trying to remember the story behind why he was wearing socks with flip flops. I think it had something to do with going barefoot on the rocks too much and having sore feet!

A late afternoon shot watching the sun set into the Pacific Ocean. Stu, Ron, Ron's dad Ray, and Dave. I would have been in my late 20's and remember thinking of Ray as "the old man" who seemed to know everything there was to know about camping and fishing. I'm older now than Ray was in this photo, so it certainly changes my perspective. I love the fact that he's the one using the sling shot. You can't take the boy out of the man, or whatever that saying is!

I'm somewhat saddened that when I google Cabo Pulmo now, the first things that come up are adds for Airbnb and beach resorts. When I look at the area on Google Maps, it looks very different (and much more developed) than "the good ol' days" when you could camp on the beach and have it all to yourself. On a more positive note, in 1995, Cabo Pulmo National Park was established. It's a national marine park that was established to protect this incredible marine ecosystem. Below is one of many, many photos I took while diving and snorkeling the reefs at Cabo Pulmo during our two visits.


"The complexity of the life pattern on Pulmo Reef was even greater that at Cabo San Lucas. Clinging to the coral, growing on it, burrowing into it, was a teeming fauna. Every piece of the soft material broken off, skittered and pulsed with life, little crabs and worms and snails. One small piece of coral might conceal 30 or 40 species, and the colors of the reef were electric."

John Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez

Thanks for sticking with me for this long, rambling trip down memory lane! I've only scratched the surface of my slide archive, so I will be busy scanning away. I'm curious if others have scanned and organized all their old photos, slides, and negatives?

Linking with Skywatch Friday.

45 comments:

  1. Love your photos! That lobster is gigantic!

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  2. It looks really beautiful.

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  3. Keep on scanning those slides. You are telling about a very different world.

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  4. I found this fascinating. My husband has scanned all our slides, and there were many, and turned them into digital files. He also took the time to edit many, bringing colors to what they should be and so on.

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  5. Fish and lobster looks and sounds delicious. Especially cooked in fire. Good ol´ analog way. Analog photography I did few hundred rolls. It would be mammoth task to scan and post process them. Most of them are probably not that good anyways. Maybe sometime in the future? Thank you for sharing. :)

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  6. Wow, what adventures you had! Thanks for sharing your slides and stories.

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  7. Lovley photos on your site. I'll be back to scroll around in older post. Thanks for your comment on my site. Happy friday.

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  8. So interesting to see these old photos. Baja always interested me when I was a small boy with a brand new picture atlas; it seemed such an unlikely shape. Although it looked interesting to me I found I was in a very small minority and few seemed to have visited or have written about it - till now!

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  9. I don't like fishing, but I like this kind of memories and pictures of times long ago.
    I'm affraid my pre-digital archive is a big mess. I only dive into it when I am looking for something special ... :-)

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  10. Those were the days. Great memories here.

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  11. Awesome photo memories ...
    How happy to have a vacation together.

    Your expression looks very happy.

    Greetings from Indonesia.

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  12. I see some times in serious need of repair! :-)

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  13. Hello, wonderful memories of a beautiful place. The sky and scenery are lovely. That is a huge lobster. It is sad to hear about the condition of the reef and marine life. Enjoy your day, wishing you a happy weekend.

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  14. awwww, how many did you just make feel incredibly nostalgic?

    Millions!!

    :)

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  15. Wow, great post with some great memories. I have an efficient scan device myself and it is a lifesaver. Lots better than using a flatbed scanner.

    Most of the great areas from when I was a kid are now overrun and overexpensive also. Jackson, Wyoming, the Utah desert around Moab, Arizona. All are for rich people now. Oh well. Life moves on.

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  16. My brother sent the old family slides away to a place that was able to scan them all. (There were thousands.) It's great to digitise the images, but it takes so much time and effort. Are you still in touch with those friends? Did you alert them to the blog post?

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  17. Looks like we hav e been doing the same thing though I've been scanning my films and this week blogs have been from my trips to Japan. I love the Baja but and seeing the VeeDub in the background you make me long to hav ebeen there with you then.

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  18. Wonderful pictures! I still remember learning how to use the darkroom in high school. That humongous lobster made my mouth water... LOL

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  19. I feel like nowadays people are taking pictures without even thinking what's in front of they cameras. And then they want to show you 3000 pics from one week vacation. Your photos are really pretty :)

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  20. Some wonderful memories, photos brings them back to life.
    Thanks for sharing them!

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  21. I totally loved your flashback. Yo were in the right places at the right time. Isn't it strange, the paths that life leads us down. You were a great photographer even then. I hope you have the time to scan those slides. Just imagine all the young people who don't even know what slides are.

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  22. What beautiful memories and photos you have ~ what a life ~ ^_^

    Happy Day to you,
    A ShutterBug Explores,
    aka (A Creative Harbor)

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  23. I'm loving the photo of the old VW and that fish is a monster size.

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  24. In the early 70's I was working for CBS in San Francisco and one of the engineers was locked up by the police in southern Baja for some obscure reason. A number of the guys went down with some money and got him out--- driving day and night to get back to California. Camping by the road is not something I would have done then-- but you survived! Nice pictures. Thanks for sharing.

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  25. Absolutely wonderful pictures
    my scanner has been broken for a long time but i am thinking of shooting them instead of the digital camera

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  26. The old photos look great and it good to scan them to keep for sweet memories. That was a big fish, a prize catch!

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  27. Beautiful memories, love the tides.

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  28. Your past adventures are amazing. While you were driving down to Mexico and camping on the beach, I was in Florida and going with friends to Fish Eating Creek in central Florida and "rough camping" (I stayed in a van, Ha! I'm not a rough camper.) on the wilderness side. I would have never been brave enough to do what you did.

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  29. The retro touch to the images is so beautiful.

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  30. aww...a gargantuan lobster.... I love the flesh of lobster...
    Thank for sharing series of wonderful images

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  31. Hi SP&P, You are one of the best I've found when it comes to getting the light just right in your photos. I was going to say … You've been at it a long time and your experience shows. But, that can't be the whole story because you took great pics way back when. I enjoyed the narrative in this post too. Great to hear about your trips down the Baja. I do still have 3 metal boxes full of 35mm slides from my early interest in photography. I recall going to a little local drug store where they would send my film in for processing (to Kodak?) and pick up the slides a few days later. Smiling now but I do remember the disappointment when pics came back under- or over-exposed. I threw a lot of those away ... if I still had them I might be able to save them with the software we have today. As for organizing ... I'm smiling again ... I wish I could give you some tips but I'm at a loss for that. I have considered going through all my pics and setting tags for them in some sort of database but the thought is overwhelming. It would literally take days to get the job done. Right now almost all my pics are simply organized by date taken. But that is far from helpful when I want to find that certain photo from a trip long ago when I am not even sure what year it was. Anyway, great post, thanks for sharing. I'll be looking forward to more from your archives. John

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  32. That was a fun memory lane! The fish and lobster -so big! The beautiful landscapes are worth the trip! Yeah I have some boxes of Kodak pics, but I have crammed the negatives of all the undeveloped ones in one box! Just in case we have a nuclear fall-out, lol.
    To answer your question on my post, have no idea if the story of the storks bringing babies started in the Netherlands. Maybe Afanja.blog would know...

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  33. Beautiful! Thanks for sharing your trips down memory lane. I can relate to the going through the archives. Good for you to rescue what you've got. I'll look forward to seeing more of them :)

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  34. I enjoyed reading about your early escapades very much SPP. They kind of reminded me a bit of our camping days growing up in Africa. Gosh even back then you took amazing photos, you catch the most beautiful skies ✨

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  35. Great post. Sometimes pictures get more valuable as years go by.

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  36. Great memories ..and it’s a great idea to scan those photos. We should work on that. . we camped along the Baja Coast one Christmas vacation . our three sons who were teens went with us, ...they slept in pup tents while we had a pickup camper. Can’t imagine doing that today.

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  37. I too have many wonderful memories of Baja from the early 70s to the early 90s. In the early 70's my friend John and I would drive down that old highway in his Mercedes of all things. We'd drive as far as it would go, then camp on the beach. Often to be awakened by clam digging locals. Later Errol and I had a place, just leased land, at Punta Banda, on a cliff outside Ensenada. We could have run into each other on some beach in Baja. It must be so different now.

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  38. I was mesmerized by this story and the accompanying photos - I didn't want it to come to an end. So it's good news that there is more! I am in the midst of organizing our old photos and DVDs, but most of my "stuff" only goes back to the early 80's! (smile)

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  39. I'm late to this party but absolutely loved it! Such happy photos, it looks like a youth well spent.

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