#2: [13-Nov-04]

#3: [13-Nov-04] (incomplete)

23-Mar-2003 -- When we decided to go whale watching in Baja Mexico we noticed 3 undocumented confluences close to our planned itinerary.

The first opportunity for a visit arouse on the second day when we passed from Baja Norte into Baja Sur. The border between the two states follows the 28 parallel. The spot where highway 1 crosses this border is marked with a big monument of an eagle and a giant Mexican flag. There is also a military checkpoint.

We stopped at the La Pinta Hotel on the western side of the highway to get oriented. At that point we were about 1.3 km from the confluence, which is located east of the highway. There was a big fenced area on that side of the street, but we noticed a faint 2-track road paralleling the fence right in the direction of the confluence. We followed this road until we were 500m from the spot. It would have been possible to drive right to the point with our vehicles, but we decided against it since we would have damaged the struggling desert vegetation.

Following the GPS we walked straight to the confluence. This part of Baja is extremely flat and there was not much to see from the confluence, except the big monument to the west. As is often the case there was a dirt road much closer to the confluence. This road followed a north-south direction.

As we were taking our pictures we noticed some dark closed people approach our cars, so we cut our visit short and hurried back. As we got closer to the cars we saw that the people were soldiers who had come out from the near by checkpoint. They wanted to know whether we were dumping trash and we explained that we were looking for the spot where longitude and latitude lines meet. They seemed to understand, being aware of the their position on 28N. They told us that we should not be in this area and that we should leave. Which we promptly did.

We continued our journey south and saw some dirt roads that seemed to lead into the direction of the confluence and that probably connect to the road we saw close the spot. This approach would avoid any 'suspicious' behavior close to the checkpoint, even though we did not see any signs along the route we followed.