Pinturas Rupestres

With the boat safely tied up in Santa Rosalía, Indigo's two-man crew caught a bus last week to travel forty miles south to the village of Mulegé, where we met up with a guide in order to visit the painted cliffs in the nearby Guadalupe Mountains.
There are hundreds of sites of prehistoric rock paintings in this central area of Baja California. Further north, there are caves with displays so tall and wide that they are called murals. Although there are some similarities between the art in all regions, there are variations that continue to challenge interpretation. What is constant among all the rock painting sites is that there are very few artifacts or traces left from the civilization that created the art. Dates suggested for the paintings range from 7000 B.C. to 1000 A.D.


The other commonality among the sites is that they are very remote. To reach the paintings near Mulejé, we drove for an hour up a sandy wash into the Sierra, hiked and scrambled over rocks for another hour, then hiked and swam through a narrow river canyon. The paintings we encountered were not murals, but individual paintings, often layered one over the other, as if they were painted at different times. The "Trinidad Deer" shown above is one of the best preserved paintings. Besides game, these painters certainly treasured the fish they took from the Sea of Cortes, about fifteen miles distant from this cave.


If you are interested in seeing more of these paintings, click on the link on the right hand bar which reads "Photos from Indigo's Travels".