A bittersweet reunion with an Old Friend.

Any of you who saw my photos from my road trip to Arizona will remember my mild obsession with Ocotillo (fouquieria splendens), and you’ll probably be very happy to know that I won’t be coming back from this trip with several dozen “Self Portrait with Ocotillo” shots.

Three species of the Fouquieria genus grow in Baja California, according to Baja California Plant Field Guide by Norman C. Roberts. The f. splendens variety of Ocotillo, with which I fell in love in Arizona, doesn’t grow quite as prolifically here by Mulege. It’s apparently quite useful architecturally, culinarilaly (its beautiful red flowers are edible), and medicinally. The f. diguetii (Palo Adan, or Adam’s Tree) is often used as a living fence or corral, and its bark may be cooked to make a wash for cuts. These two are the most common in Baja California, although they do have one rare cousin.

The f. burragei, which resembles the f. diguetii in that it’s more like a tree and less like a gorgeous spray of slender thorny whips (swoon!), is a rare endemic species found south of Mulege down to Bahia Concepcion. The book says little more than that about it, but I learned something else yesterday.

It hurts like hell when you step on it.

After our relaxing layabout at the beach of Playa Santispac, Rob and I struck out for Mulege. Being ornery, we decided to take a different route back to the highway, and we ended up on the old road that connects Playa Santispac to another beach (Playa Naranjas, I think). The road had a few shoeprints and a few ATV tracks, but otherwise we were alone, just us and the birds and the waves crashing onto the rocks below.

We hadn’t made it more than halfway when I stepped on a dead branch and one of the two-inch long spines went unchallenged through the sole of my shoe and the bottom of my foot. It came out clean, although it still hurts plenty today.

Oh, Ocotillo! How deeply I have loved you, and how deeply I feel the pain of your betrayal!

Although gravely wounded both in flesh and heart, I trudged on. We figured that this road would link into the main highway like all the others seemed to, but when we rounded the last bend the highway was nowhere in sight. There were two houses on the beach, both occupied by gringo couples. An older man told us that the highway was about two miles away, and that it would probably be dark by the time we reached it, and his wife came out to offer that we could stay for the night. “We’re showing a movie tonight,” she said. “We have a theater here.” We thanked them, but having already paid for our hotel we decided to try to make it back.

As luck would have it, less than a hundred meters away we ran into a surveying crew that we had seen working on the old road a half-hour or so earlier. We flagged them down and they waved us into the back of their pickup where we sat while they finished marking the boundaries of some land for sale. They only had one more to go, which they planted with the aid of a hand-held GPS dead square in a spiny patch of cholla. They were headed up to Sta Rosalia, so they offered to drop us off in Mulege. The bed was more comfortable and contained 100% less scallops than our last ride with the fishermen, and once we arrived in Mulege we bought them a six-pack of Tecate in thanks.

Cheers, Jessie!