Guerro Negro

I ended up staying Guerro Negro three days. I am having trouble shaking my cold and was not ready to leave yesterday as planned.

Now if you are trying to find Guerro Negro on googlemaps, or pretty much any other place I am now mentioning you will either not find them or get entirely the wrong picture. I looked on googlemaps today and Guerro Negro, instead on sitting on the second biggest of two very large lagoons in Baja Sur, is no where near the water on the map. Awesome!
The largest emplyer of the town is the salt company. Apparently Guerro Negro is the largest exporter of salt in the world, most of which is used industrially or on roads, but some is for table salt too. It is all seasalt that is dried in large pools. I was told that one day of rain puts the salt production back three months. But what might surprise you to hear is that it is not a very hot place, it is very windy and mostly cloudy. Paola told me there is three other places along the Baja with a similar climate, but of course she sould not remember where. I also was told that desserts of the latitude of Baja are all windy due to to the rotation of the earth. I recall once learning about the correalis effect and think this might have something to do with that, but really I have no clue.

While in Guerro Negor I was hanging out with Paola when she wasnt working. Paola is a friend of Betos, who I met in Enseada and went for a nice bike cruise through rural ensenada with. I had an awesome time! She hooked up me up to go whale watching with her friend Rebecca, who was one of the guides at a whale watching place. While all the other boats were hanging out together, we were alone and had a baby and a mother play with us the whole time, we even had a second set come a play for a bit, I even got a slight discount, which was really awesome.

I also got to meet one of her fellow teachers who is making recycled paper. She had turned the beautiful paper into a writing flip pad, so I thought I would show her how to make a book, a nice one with a spine, ect. She even video taped me, and of coure it was the superfast version I made, but she seemed really excited. I also pulled up some youtube videos of book making, though sadly none with the hard cover and spine came up. Oh well. It was also interesting because she spoke no english, but luckily, this was one of those times where showing worked way better then words anyhow. We also had banana chocolate pancakes ala Paola. Apperently Paola had made some fancy pancakes she posted on her facebook wall and had everyone different comments on the kinds they like to make.

I also got to meet a friend of her fathers. He works for the salt company and gave me a a large book on all the local birds and which ponds they can be found in, a book that isnt for sale, also a flora book and one of the salt mines. He also is involved with the caves in the Sierre de San Fansisco, which has cave paitings that are a few thousand years old, of course the carbon dating process is bequestioned but they are somewhere between 2,500-5,000 years old. He radioed them to let them know I would be by tomorrow on my bike and that I didnt have a lot of money. There is one close cave painting I will see. There is also five two days journey that are supposed to be phenomenal. I am not sure that I really have the money to see them, but I will see what happens, seems a little silly not to go, but I will see what will happen. Both Paola and her fathers friend raved about the food there, apprently the torillas and goat (shepps maybe) cheese is unbelieveable.

Paola and I also stopped for food, the place she wanted to go was closed, so we tried somewhere new. We got quessadillas with cheese, I forget the name, I will have to ask. They made very large thick corn torillas just prior to adding the cheese, then added the meat, salsa and guacamole. It was so damned good I am hungry now just thinking of it.