23-Dec-2007 --

My first confluence visit! Cool.

It was an easy 3 hour drive on pavement from La Paz north. Had it all checked out on Google Earth. Long 300 km travel on black top, 10 km farm road, about 4 km of an abandoned trail plus a possible Indian trail right up to the location.

The confluence is located south-west of the Mission town of San Miguel de Comondu in the foothills of the Sierra Giganta. Finding and driving the abandoned trail (hadn't been used in many years, but wasn't overgrown too badly) was an exciting off-road adventure. The last kilometer on foot I followed a well used animal trail. Cacti and thorny bushes just waiting to leave their marks on my body. I dodged most of them. A few left painful marks.

The first 2/3 of the hike was in a small canyon, when turning uphill for the finale, the trail had all the telltale signs of an Indian trail. And the confluence was just about a meter off the trail to the left. Even though the exact location to zero out my GPS was right at the center of an Ocotillo bush, the general area was a bit more open than the rest of the terrain.

I brought two cameras and two GPS - just in case something should go wrong. Good decision. I took two sets of pictures. Shortly before reaching the confluence one of the cameras showed an error message. Got it fixed, but some images turned out later to be unreadable. The second camera kept me from doing the trip twice. No errors to report on the two GPS (the older unit showed slightly different numbers though).