Page 77 - WINE DINE AND TRAVEL WINTER SPRING 2022

ow let’s head for the snow!” ex-
claimed our guide, Mike Essary, of
“NBaja Custom Tours (www.bajacus-
tomtours.com) as we drove away from Guerrero
Negro and the “friendlies,” baleen whales of
Scammon’s Lagoon, to continue on the second leg
of our trip.
A few hours later, two distinct vistas
stretched below me as I balanced on a rocky out-
crop high in the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir in
northern Baja California. To the west, an azure
stretch of Pacific Ocean painted the horizon in
shades of stone-washed denim. To the east, dis-
tant glimpses of the Sea of Cortez played hide
and seek with pine tree limbs trembling in the
breeze.
The jagged peaks of the 10,000-foot high Pica-
cho del Diablo (Devil's Peak,) rose before me like
a row of monstrous shark teeth. “You often see
condors landing here,” explained Mike, as we
stood atop a rocky ledge overlooking the gorge
below. Re-releasing condors bred in captivity
back into the wild is an ongoing project between
Taiwanese conservationists, San Diego Zoo’s Cali-
fornia Condor Project, and Mexican authorities.
Falcons swooped overhead, but not the California
condors we had hoped to see. But the landscape
dusted with snow mitigated regrets at not seeing
the majestic birds of prey.
Snow in Baja? The desert peninsula is not ex-
actly known for its ski slopes. Yet, on this glori-
ous, pine-scented afternoon, we were throwing
snowballs in the Parque Nacional de San Pedro
Martir, in an area first explored in 1701 by Father
Eusebio Francisco Kino, who was the first to
prove that Baja California was not an island. At
the time of his death, he and his fellow Jesuits
had established 24 missions up and down the

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