Iconic Baja

Most people we know have never been to Baja. But everyone has heard of the Baja 500 or Baja 1000, annual off-road races held on the Baja peninsula. Motorcycles, or specialized cars, cover either 500 or 1000 miles, alm360ost entirely off-road, in hopes of winning the offered purse. There are other variants on these races, and yesterday we attended a Baja 300 (kilometers, not miles, in this case), an off-road race that began and ended in Los Barriles where we’re camped, at the Palmas de Cortez hotel. 

An inflatable arch marked the start and end lines. Race cars lined up for blocks and blocks, revving their engines loudly, and every 30 seconds a race official slashed his green START flag, and another car took off, shooting gravel and dust over spectators 100 feet behind. The streets were lined with crowds: families, old people, and children.  It was a festive atmosphere.

We’d heard it would take 4 hours for the first racers to return, and we staked  out a spot to watch as they came through the Buenos Aires arroyo (dry river-bed) about 2 miles from the finish line. Armed with chairs, books, sandwiches and beer, we soon were surrounded by dozens of Mexicans with their friends and family doing the same thing.

 

Drivers all wore helmets and heavy-duty respirator-type breathing devices to cope with the massive dust they inevitably ate along the way. The vehicles were loud and could be heard coming down the arroyo before they were visible.

We decided observing the Baja 300 was more like watching a slow game of baseball, not basketball, as only one or two race cars passed our observation point on the hill above the arroyo about every 5-10 minutes. Jill, Doug and Lua (their German Shepherd) joined us for part of the race too.

At one point we saw a bright yellow pickup truck drive down the arroyo, not one of the race cars, watched its’ progress, and suddenly it FELL into an open gravel pit, flipped a somersault, and landed upside down. Eventually some men scrambled down the steep hillside where we sat, ran over to the gravel pit and disappeared below where we could no longer see the yellow truck or its’ inhabitants. A full 15 minutes later an ambulance came screaming down the arroyo, and promptly got stuck in the sand several hundred yards short of the accident site.  A police vehicle then arrived, and 3 policemen got out of their truck with their guns and “stood guard” (from what???) at the top of the gravel pit.  Eventually a race observer drove his pickup truck down into the gravel pit, and 8 men loaded a very large, limp figure into the back of the pickup truck, transported it to a waiting ambulance nearby, and off they went.  This was at least 30 minutes after the truck fell into the gravel pit. We’ll never know the end of that weird story, as we left half an hour later and went to “Smokey’s” bar and grill on the main road through Los Barriles, where we sat with Doug and Jill drinking a margarita and cheering the racers as they came through town on their way to the finish line.  It was very strange to watch race cars coming through a busy town while other traffic, pedestrians, cows and goats continued sharing the two-lane roadway too.  Never would something like that happen in the U.S. or Canada!  People don’t sue each other in Mexico, perhaps. Nor, apparently, do they place signage indicating a nearby open gravel pit!

Note added the next day: we heard later that one racer collided with a cow in the road at Cabo Pulmo, breaking both his arms and femurs, and killing the cow. Ouch!