Baja Odyssey Bleak Or Beautiful, Land Of Few Fences Gateway To Intrigue

There are few fences in this jagged land, even fewer shadows, no shade at all.

Only 40 miles separate Todos Santos, near the Pacific Coast, from Los Barriles on the Sea of Cortez. Yet in that brief grid of earth, mountain peaks reach altitudes of 5,000 to 7,000 feet, cactus grows six stories high - both fulfilling the vertical imperative of a sun perpetually overhead.

In poetic language, they call this region, and points south, the Torrid Zone. Tropic of Cancer is more specific: 23 degrees, 26 minutes north, delineating the northernmost point at which the sun can be seen directly overhead at noon, particularly during the summer solstice, usually June 22.

Best way to cross this imaginary line is to get an early start and an air-conditioned car with a full tank of gas. Take Highway 1 out of Cabo San Lucas and head toward San Jose del Cabo.

Between the two Cabos, in what is called the Corridor, the road encounters golf courses, resort hotels and two snorkeling beaches: Santa Maria and Chileno.

At San Jose the route turns inland toward the mountains, passes the airport, then leaves the 20th century behind. Unruly cactus and stray livestock take over from there.

These giant, multi-armed cactus, called “cardon” (Pachycereus pringlei), can weigh in at 10 tons and sprout golden-yellow fruit as round and spiny as sea urchins. Millions of them make up forests as densely rooted as any in the East Texas Piney Woods.

Beneath the cactus grows a tangle of desert scrub where gaunt-ribbed cattle forage - you couldn’t call this grazing - for sustenance. Equally thin goats lope up hillsides, accompanied by the dull clank of bells tied round their necks. They, like sheep, horses, donkeys and stray pigs, roam this unfenced byway, or stand stock-still in the middle of the pavement.

The road itself is a two-lane blacktop of hairpin turns through the dry washes of the foothills, of steep bar-ditches and no shoulders, of up-hill-and-down-dale grades that skirt the mountains known in Spanish as Sierra de la Laguna.

On this, the eastern or Sea of Cortez side of the range, the nearest slopes are a solid, velvety emerald, the desert vegetation is that lush. Distant peaks smudge the horizon a smoky blue-green. Except for the occasional microwave tower, the rare line of telephone poles and a middle-of-nowhere billboard for Tecate beer, it’s easy to think few human beings have come this way.

But someone was here long enough to put in that enormous concrete ball, 6 feet across, that marks the Tropic of Cancer; long enough to paint it green and add a smiling red and yellow cartoon sun on its surface and scrawl “Viva El Agua” in bold yellow strokes.

Someone built the adjacent Catholic shrine, paved its floor with pink tiles, entrusted its open-air altar with sprays of silk roses.

Someone had to build the road to get here, before zigzagging on to points north: back to the Cortez coast resort of Los Barriles, then inland again through the pass.

The village of San Bartolo straddles the route as the highway weaves through a shallow canyon, the floor of which is a narrow Eden of haphazard vegetable plots, palms and fruit trees. What little traffic there is on this stretch of road has to do with farming - flatbed trucks with old wooden railings and new ice chests in back.

San Bartolo has made a cottage industry of fruit, turning guavas and mangoes into candy and scenting the breeze with a pungent citrus tang. At one of the roadside stands, 83 cents buys a handful of bite-sized pieces, individually wrapped in red or green cellophane. Cheese is another village specialty.

Here in the heart of the Lagunas, the mountainsides are still verdant, their contours better appreciated because of the vegetation’s consistent height - the way an expensive paint job shows off the curves of a sports car.

Through the old gold and silver mining towns of San Antonio and El Triunfo, cactus are fewer but scrappier, growing straight out of solid rock overhangs that threaten to avalanche, or so signs warn.

Then, just short of San Pedro and just through the pass, the drive takes up Highway 19, heading south. These are the same mountains, but the Pacific slopes - rendered a rain-starved gray-brown by the carpet of dead or dormant flora.

The “cardon” forest takes hold farther on; and the (by now) late-afternoon sun makes silhouettes of the many-limbed branches. Buzzards perch atop them this time of day.

Closer to Todos Santos, the farm trucks thin out, only to be replaced by portage of a different sort. VWs, Jeeps and vintage GM convertibles bristle with surfboards. The waves of the Pacific Ocean break just over the hill from town.

If it hadn’t been for the Eagles’ hit song, Todos Santos would have remained known only to beach boys and the 3,400 villagers who live here. But “Hotel California” became an anthem of sorts, and its namesake, located “on Desert Highway since 1928,” became a tourist stop.

The 2-story landmark is right in town, finished with sand-colored stucco. Its arched-front porches run the length of both floors; actually, the facade wouldn’t look out of place in an Old West movie. Yet true to the song, things are bit odd here. There’s a gift shop, but you have to search, two doors down, at the hotel’s bar, for the cashier to tell you how much the T-shirts cost ($20) and take your money.

As long as you’re in the bar, a Corona is about $1.40. The bartender (alias the gift shop’s cashier) will throw in some lemons - ran out of limes. You can ask for a menu to the hotel’s restaurant, but they won’t show it to you if they’re not serving that day.

And maybe the reason guests have trouble leaving is that the desk clerk (aka the bartender with the lemons) is unversed in room rates: anywhere from $20 to $50, depending.

Better never to check in.

Besides, the drive from here on back to Cabo San Lucas covers some of the day’s most striking landscapes: giant cactus growing right down to the beach, framing a molten-orange sun as it dips into the Pacific.

Details: (800) 446-3942.

The following fields overflowed: DATELINE = TROPIC OF CANCER, BAJA PENINSULA, MEXICO