Where is Ralph?

We’ve written before about there being “only one road”, referring to the fact that to travel the 1000-mile-long Baja Peninsula, everyone spends a lot of time on Mex 1, the only highway to run the full distance north to south. As a result, almost everyone who travels the Baja has some shared experiences.  One of these is staying at Rancho Santa Inez in Catavina where we camped last night.

When we traveled the peninsula in 2009 and stayed here, we posted about Ralph, an unusual gringo living up the canyon from Rancho Santa Inez in an off-grid house (see that post HERE.  Ralph was known by essentially everyone we met in Baja who ever stayed at Rancho Santa Inez for his habit of driving through the campground multiple times daily to chat and share his knowledge of the Catavina area.

On this stop, no Ralph! What does that mean? Could this iconic part of Baja have moved on, become ill, died? We may never know.  But we sort of miss him in a weird way.