We didn’t have to worry so much about water on the road south of Ensenada or at the Beach camp yet we were still very glad that we stopped at Estero Beach for the night. There was major construction on the road south of Ensenada – the trip to Colonet, about 180 km took us about 4 hours!! So much for the wheel alignment on the motor home that we got in Fremont, California!! There were some massive car eating and wheel wrenching pot holes. These were of course not marked. There was a flag man in one very difficult spot however, he was madly waving everyone on – even though there was only room for one vehicle to drive through.
We did manage to make it to Rancho Santa Ines at Catavina in time for a nice dinner. There was only a bus full of young kids, a couple on motorcycles and another motor home here for the night. It was very cold – there was frost on the car in the morning! This is the high desert and does get very cold at night in the winter.
We stayed for 2 nights as we wanted to drive into El Marmol, an old abandoned onyx quarry. It was very interesting; there is the ruin of an abandoned school house built entirely of blocks of onyx. They also used onyx blocks for their well. We saw no ruins of old houses, the people likely lived in small huts.
The school house is very small - the triangular pieces out the sides were built as supports I guess. The opposite side of the building has fallen down.
There were huge blocks of beautiful onyx just laying all over the ground. Yes thats a touque on my head and my winter jacket (without the fleece) it was very cold!
There was also an old graveyard (apparently there are two but we only saw one). Most of the graves were piles of onyx, marked only with a wooden cross and nothing to say who they were. According to the rancher at Santa Ines the mine ran for around 100 years and the onyx was mined completely by hand. He also said a lot of people died from the hard work at the mine.
The 15 km drive into El Marmol was such a very rough road that it took us at more than an hour each way in my little 4x4.
We returned to the ranch for lunch then drove back up the highway to another arroyo that we had been wanting to hike in to. We found a well marked trail up a cliff to a cave that had paintings done by the local Indians many years ago. It had a very small opening ..... yikes...
However, the paintings were very interesting. What they mean is anyone's guess. Maybe Lorne loves Catherine or Lorne was here....
No comments:
Post a Comment