Baja Adventure!

By Jim Hendrickson

 

The author describes an adventurous bus trip from San Diego, California to San Lucas, Baja California. He includes descriptions of all the places, people, terrain, cultures, and dozens of fascinating activities in which he participated. This is a perfect book for armchair travelers plus intrepid travelers heading to the backroads and small towns hundreds of miles into Baja California--from tip to toe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim Hendrickson
• Release date: Feb 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215179765

Jim Hendrickson

Jim Hendrickson is a retired Professor of Spanish and English as a Second Language. He speaks English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Portuguese. He has taught elementary school, high school, adult education, community college, college, and university in seven states. He worked as a Teaching Fellow at Harvard University, a Senior Fulbright Lecturer in Bolivia and Chile, and a Language Consultant for the United States Peace Corps in Belize.  Jim has received many teaching and publishing awards including the Distinguished Faculty Award at Lansing Community College in Michigan, the Stephen A. Freeman Award for authoring the best article on teaching techniques to have appeared in a professional journal in 1980, and an award for writing the best article published in The Modern Language Journal in 1978. Jim has traveled in over 150 countries and is an avid long-distance tour bicyclist. He has cycled extensively in the United States, as well as in Europe, Africa, Australia, and on various islands in Oceania. He has presented over 500 travelogues in many schools, churches, libraries, museums, senior and community centers, city auditoriums, as well as on radio and television shows, and has been featured in numerous American and international newspapers. Jim has published more than 60 foreign language textbooks including The Spice of Life (Harcourt), Our Global Village (Harcourt), Poco a poco (Heinle & Heinle), Intercambios (Heinle & Heinle), Nuevas dimensiones (Heinle & Heinle), and Nuevas alturas (Heinle & Heinle). One of his best-selling books, Poco a poco, has been reconfigured into a best-selling book, Plazas: Lugar de Encuentros (Heinle & Heinle). He is also the author of another best seller: Spanish Grammar Flipper (Christopher Lee). Jim has also published articles on psycholinguistics in Foreign Language Annals, TESOL Quarterly, The Modern Language Journal, The Canadian Modern Language Review, and Hispania. Jim has published the following thirteen travel ebooks about his adventures and misadventures: Like a Leaf on a River, North to Alaska!, Vagabond on a Bicycle, Travel is my Passion, Shalom, Israel!, RVing to the Land of the Midnight Sun, Heaven on Earth, Around the World in Thin Slices, South Pacific Odyssey, My Endless Pursuit of Travel, Baja Adventure!, Strange Tales of Jefferson County, and Footloose in Southern South America.

Book preview

BAJA ADVENTURE!

San Diego to San Lucas

––––––––

Jim Hendrickson

Copyright © 2023

All rights reserved

Distributed by Draft2Digital

E-books by Jim Hendrickson

LIKE A LEAF ON A RIVER (Travels of a Young Man)

THE RESTLESS GLOBETROTTER (Germany, Greece, India, Thailand, Malaysia,

Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Cook Islands, and Marquesas Islands)

NORTH TO ALASKA! (Montana to Alaska by Bicycle)

SHALOM, ISRAEL! (Washington State to Israel by Bicycle)

VAGABOND ON A BICYCLE (100,000 Miles and 100 Cultures on a Bike)

TRAVEL IS MY PASSION (Memoirs of a World Traveler)

RVing TO THE LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN (Washington State to Alaska)

AROUND THE WORLD IN THIN SLICES (From Asia Through the Northwest

Passage)

SOUTH PACIFIC ODYSSEY (Marquesas and Mariana Islands, South Australia,

American Samoa, Samoa, and Indonesia)

HEAVEN ON EARTH (Travels of a Restless Soul)

MY ENDLESS PURSUIT OF TRAVEL (Western, Northern, and Central Canada,

Minnesota, Colorado, Germany, Switzerland, Portugal, Slovenia, Croatia,

Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia, and Kosovo)

BAJA ADVENTURE! (San Diego to San Lucas)

STRANGE TALES OF JEFFERSON COUNTY (Stories from a World Traveler at

Home)

FOOTLOOSE IN SOUTHERN SOUTH AMERICA (Argentina, Chile, Paraguay,

and the Falkland Islands / Islas Malvinas)

WANDERLUST IS IN MY BLOOD (Sardinia, Corsica, Malta, Sicily, Germany,

Ukraine, Republic of Georgia, and Armenia)

COWBOYS, INDIANS, AND ME (Montana, Minnesota, South Dakota, Wyoming,

and North Dakota)

ISLAND-HOPPING IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC (Fiji, New Caledonia, Vanuatu,

Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Kiribati, and Samoa)

WORLDWIDE ADVENTURES BY BOAT & SHIP (Europe, Arctic, North

America, Oceania, Australia, and Antarctica) 

RVing AROUND FABULOUS FLORIDA (From Tip to Toe)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

E-BOOKS BY JIM HENDRICKSON

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

Prelude to Adventure

South of the Border, Down Mexico Way

3. Ensenada and the Guadalupe Valley

4. On the Road to Cataviña

5. A Desert Paradise

6. Bird and Whale Watching

7. A Whale of a Day!

8. Down the East Coast of Baja

9. Excursion to Sierra de la Giganta

10. Along the Coast to a Peaceful City

11. The Aquarium of the World

12. On the Road to Los Cabos

THE ART OF TRAVELING

TRAVELING SUCCESSFULLY ABROAD

About the author

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank my friend Bill Pennington for allowing me to use his excellent photograph for the cover of this ebook. ¡Muchas gracias, Bill!

I ALSO THANK ANDIAMO Travel of Ensenada, Mexico, for permitting me to publish the article The Art of Traveling, which appears at the beginning of that agency's booklet entitled Welcome to Baja California, Mexico.

I am also grateful to my cyclist friend Bill Weir for editing the final manuscript, which he greatly improved.

INTRODUCTION

DURING MY WORLD TRAVELS, I have never visited Mexico's Baja California Peninsula, except for the border town of Tijuana. Fortunately, Road Scholar, a non-profit travel company with which I have made over two dozen trips, offered a tour of that arid slice of land which resembles a long loaf of French bread when seen from outer space.

The name of my tour was Mexico's Baja Tip to Toe: Landscape, Heritage, People & Whales. When I was a teenager, I read about Baja in one of my favorite books: Enchanted Vagabonds by Dana Lamb. Now, I was about to explore it by bus for nearly two weeks. This book contains a description of that adventurous journey.

1

Prelude to Adventure

AFTER RETRIEVING MY suitcase at the San Diego International Airport, I hopped on a city bus and rode to downtown San Diego. I wanted to take another bus to Fashion Valley but discovered that the trolley ticket machine was broken. In desperation, taking a chance that I wouldn't be caught stealing a ride, I jumped on a trolley headed that way to check into my hotel. After taking two more trolleys on the sneak, I couldn't find it, so I took a taxi there. Because it was less than a mile away, I felt ripped off when I paid the eight-dollar fare. I thought, Well, at least I didn't pay a cent on those last three trolleys! In hindsight, it would be wiser to have taken a shuttle bus at the airport for $15－just a 10-minute ride to my hotel, rather than wasting two frustrating hours to arrive there by bus, trolley, and taxi, and saving only seven dollars. Live and learn!

My Road Scholar tour began at five o'clock in the afternoon when I met the thirteen other people in my group, plus our Mexican leader Luka. She is a 45-year-old single mother living with her two teenage identical twin sons