Camping Amongst the Prehistoric Paintings of Sierra San Francisco

When planning my Baja California trip I looked at a map of tourist attractions on the peninsula and saw these cave paintings in the seeming middle-of-nowhere. After researching how to get there and realizing the need for a multi day expedition involving cowboys, pack animals and camping I reached out to several companies in the area until I I found one running a trip there. The following account is what this simple look at a map inspired where the journey was as good of a memory as the destination.

The Oasis of San Ignacio

After back and forth calling and messaging with Kuyima Tour Company (not sponsored) I had made it to the small oasis town in the middle of Baja California known as San Ignacio. I arrived roughly at 8:00pm after a 14 hour bus journey from San José del Cabo. A full day on the bus meant I was starved and tired. Luckily the tour company had contacted and set me up with a budget guesthouse. The owners even met me at the bus stop and took me to a gas station torta stand which was duly appreciated. Due to my late arrival I had missed orientation for what was to come which was one of my most memorable trips yet.

At the 6:30 wake up call the guesthouse owner came to get me and realized that I may have underdressed for my expedition. She was kind enough to lend me a heavy coat without which I shudder to imagine how I would’ve felt; my mistake for assuming Baja California never gets cold. We collected 3 more well-seasoned travelers who had a lifetime of travels behind them from the old town.

The Journey to Santa Teresa Canyon

Once we left the town and just as we passed the Mexican military checkpoint north of San Ignacio trouble began. It almost seems like a travel cliché that transportation overheats and breaks down especially with adventure travels. Using a long-distance walkie-talkie the driver and our guide were trying to contact home base in San Ignacio but the signal was spotty and they had to walk back and forth trying to get a signal out. They even had us volunteer water jugs to pour on the engine to cool it off.

Instead of repairing the current van we had taken, we got a new, smaller van and unloaded all the equipment from the old one to the other (tents, sleeping bags, kitchen supplies, etc). Then finally we were on our way to Santa Theresa Canyon and the cave paintings of Sierra San Francisco. After winding up a sometimes paved, sometimes not road we made it to a sort of base camp. The cold morning invited coffee, warm beans and eggs with tortillas from a cook of the registration office there. This would be the last semblance of society for the next three days as we headed off further down the road which continuously deteriorated in condition.

Since we had changed vehicles unexpectedly, this new van did not exactly have the clearance needed with all the people and equipment it had to pass some of these roads which by any standard were some of the worst I’ve been on. From time to time the group I was with debated walking the rest of the way to lighten the load but ultimately we persevered.

Where the Real Adventure Begins

We finally parked our van and I was relieved to get out and stop worrying about the chances we become stranded without a signal in the deserts of Baja. Our destination was a ranch owned by two brothers who came to greet us: José and Carlos. They would be our “drivers” from here on out as our old driver headed out on the van that bounced around liberally, relieved of carrying the equipment through the mountains.

Later I would ask about the how the numbers stacked up. José and Carlos were two people, our guide three and us four tourists made seven people total. Now for the animals we were taking with us came in the form of seven mules for riding and 8 donkeys for the equipment we would be taking with.

The vaquero (cowboy) brothers saddled the mules and packed the donkeys fairly effortlessly and got us set up. This was my first riding trek ever but I didn’t have any difficulty on the ride. José and Carlos spoke only Spanish and I would consider myself at the very least fluent in listening to the language but the rural ranchero accent is very difficult for me to grasp, even with my own family so I tried my best. Mostly the guide Manuel was the interlocutor.

I mentioned I did not have a problem on the ride but that was not the case for everyone on the trek as one of the other tourists had issues as the trail began to decline. I had been warned that 4 hours on a mule would be physically painful but I never really felt anything; it certainly wasn’t comfortable but definitely bearable for me.

What proceeded was a mule trek through some of the most off-the-grid virgin wilderness I had ever really visited. The trails only get a few hundred people a year which translates to limited infrastructure and those that visit truly have an admiration for travel that comes with the dedication needed for visiting the San Francisco Cave Paintings. “Leave No Trace” seems to be taken seriously here. While I knew the destination was some interesting cave paintings, one thing that I was not expecting was the natural beauty of this canyon. Imagine the Grand Canyon but with palm trees and no other people than those in your group.

The mules are definitely necessary as their four-leggedness allows them to maneuver a rocky surface that would be tough to impossible to walk on. This is doubly appreciated when you realize the descent is mostly adjacent to the canyon wall. The more-than-halfway mark was a small outpost on the canyon floor where a sack lunch of machaca burritos and other snacks helped refuel us for the final push as well as give the animals some rest.

Finally Reaching the Campsite

After the sun passed the horizon of the canyon sun we made it to the camp spot. Each member of our group helped set up camp with lawn chairs, a small kitchen and fold-out dining area and tents. We each had a tent to ourselves except for the vaqueros who just had cots and slept outside which they seemed content with but I felt slightly guilty about since the temperatures dropped below freezing at night. The donkeys and mules were released into the nearby wilderness to relax and run free but corralled outside of camp. That night Manuel cooked dinner and José even surprised us with a bottle of wine.

I mentioned how the other three travelers were veterans of the trade, so that night we traded stories of past ventures. I heard about how it was done in the past with monthly postcards to calm the nerves of family members across the globe, travelers’ checks and what pre-internet travel was like. The world must have seemed so unknown and large back then compared to now. In addition to the mundane there were also those fantastical stories that travelers collect over time that were traded.

Actually Visiting the Cave Paintings

Yeah, I’ve gotten this far without even talking about the subject of the tour: the Sierra San Francisco Cave Paintings. That is because in the end the whole experience is what I bargained for and the cave paintings were just a part of that in my opinion. Waking up at 8:00am to the cold canyon floor was an experience in of itself — just being reminded of the setting I was in that morning. After breakfast we were told the plan where there were 4 cave painting sites and a pictograph site that we planned to hike to from camp.

While not exactly a particularly long hike the loose terrain that is sometimes dozens of feet above the canyon floor makes getting help from a guide necessary at some parts. The caves themselves have walkways constructed with railing which is amazing considering the remoteness of the area and limited number of tourists that visit. The informational signs are faded but their existence is equally as impressive.

A little backstory on the paintings themselves. The oldest radiocarbon dating places their creation at 5,500BC but they had been made until Spanish contact and colonization. Yhe Cochimi people of Baja California are attributed to their creation with Spanish Catholic missionaries adding crosses as well and they depict hunting and local fauna mostly. The cave paintings in the order our group visitors is: Cueva las Flechas (Arrow Cave), Cueva la Pintada (Painted Cave), a pictograph rock that José and Carlos’s uncle discovered, Cueva la Musica (Music Cave) and Cueva Boca San Julio. The highlights were Cueva la Pintada because it is by far the largest collection of the prehistoric paintings and Cueva Boca San Julio because by the time we reached it we only had a group of 3. As others had dropped out from the group due to the difficult terrain it added to the exclusivity that I felt as part of the experience. Upon returning to camp I took a nap and only awoke when the dinner of flounder burritos had been started.

Return

Another cold night, another morning I was grateful for the loan of a heavy coat from my guesthouse. The sound of cowbells from the donkeys returning to camp meant it was time to pack up. The same way we came from was the same way we would exit the canyon. First a climb and then the path back to José and Carlos's ranch where we said our goodbyes to the hard-working vaqueros (something I cannot overstate enough) and after a short wait, the seemingly repaired van from the first day came down the 4wd road to the ranch. We stopped at the registrar office and had a lunch consisting of soup and tortillas and then we stopped at a final cave painting site that was open to day-trippers. This was by far the most faded cave of the lot and it was named Cueva el Ratón for its depiction of a rat. This stop was at the request of one of the other travelers I was with and it was the last stop before returning to San Ignacio.

I returned my coat at the Kuyima tourism company's office on the town square and since I had discussed my plans about needing to take an overnight bus to La Paz that evening, the travelers I was with offered for me to use their shower in their hotel room. This was much appreciated by me and I'm sure anyone else on the bus that night and goes to show how building relationships while travelling among locals and other travelers leads to random acts of kindness and goodwill. I walked around the town of San Ignacio which has a real isolated but also paradoxically well-connected feeling as it has all modern facilities and amenities but the small town of less than a thousand people is also just in the middle of a desert.

To sum it up this was one of those travel experiences that I'm proud to say felt like an expedition where no one else really goes and beyond that the journey was as important to me as the destination. Despite exceeding the budget of most things I do while travelling, with all of the logistics of the adventure I felt it was money well spent. Everything from the mule riding to the camping with vaqueros on a canyon floor surrounded by palm trees in the Mexican desert was memorable. This overlooked activity is something that I hope never gets ruined by mass tourism as I feel like that will defeat the spirit of why I specifically have such fond memories of it all. Although that is a travel paradox: we write and tell people stories to inspire them to do the same and in a way what made it so special to begin with withers away.