Cave Paintings, Baja California Peninsula
At dawn the ship entered Bahía Conception, the launching site for a truly adventurous outing. Following an early breakfast, the trusty Zodiacs shuttled us to a sandy beach where a fleet of vans awaited. This was to be a day of exploration into the mountains of the Baja Peninsula, in search of ancient cave paintings. A well-maintained paved road paralleled the sapphire-tinted bay and then wound inland through an impressive landscape of rugged hills and good-sized trees and cardon cacti. Eventually, the vans turned onto a bumpy dirt road that carried us deeper into the mountains. Our vehicles parked at a dry river bed, or arroyo, for the next leg of our journey.
This is not a regular destination for those aboard the National Geographic Sea Bird. Without well-honed knowledge of the area from previous visits, the day became quite an exciting expedition. A truck with huge tires carried a full load of travelers up the stony stream bed, bouncing and tipping from side to side over the rough boulders. Hikers followed the same route for about 1-1/2 miles. After a few wrong turns, everyone reached a resting spot where we could help ourselves to Bloody Marys and other beverages and relax in beach chairs in the shade. From here, we expected a short walk to the cave paintings, but the stroll turned out to be a 25-minute hike farther, over terrain inaccessible to the truck. We all pressed on, not to be thwarted by hardship, to our final reward – elaborate paintings protected for perhaps thousands of years by their remoteness, the arid climate, and the overhanging rock walls.
Amazingly, the identity of the painters remains unknown. When Europeans first arrived in this part of Mexico, the native people knew nothing of the origin of the rock art. The locals did believe that the artists must have been giants, due to the distance that many of the paintings are above flat ground. Although found in other regions of the Baja Peninsula and even on several islands within the Sea of Cortez, the majority of the paintings are in the central mountainous areas of San Francisco, San Borja, San Juan and Guadalupe. Most are in remote locations as we discovered today.
Black pigments from manganese, red from iron oxides, and white from ground gypsum formed the main designs. The art at this particular location is unusual in also displaying green from copper derivatives and yellows from iron oxide and gypsum mixed together. Tiny red beetles clustered adjacent to human figures and geometric shapes that required close inspection. The paintings at this site have not been aged, according to our local guide, but there are others with preliminary dates of at least 7500 years before present. We will never know the stories associated with these pictographs, but for many of us, all the effort in getting here was worthwhile as we stepped back in time for a glimpse into the world of the artists who stood here so long ago.
We returned to the National Geographic Sea Bird dusty and a little later than expected, but there was no time for napping. It was such a pretty afternoon that the galley staff served lunch outside on the top deck. Even before the officers and crew lifted the anchor, our ship’s doctor spotted long-beaked common dolphins ahead. We sailed towards this active group and become enveloped by rising backs, bow-riding individuals, and churning water. If that were not enough, hundreds of seabirds hovered and whirled and plunged in a frenzy of feeding along with the leaping dolphins. Frigatebirds and blue-footed boobies hung overhead watching for opportunities, pelicans and yellow-footed gulls squabbled over their catch, and cormorants swam below the surface to grab their shiny prey. We lingered with these foragers until photo cards became full and everyone had seen their fill, and then the ship continued on her way towards Loreto, our destination for tomorrow morning.
