Photo of the Day: Why We Had to Stay in San Ignacio, Baja California for More Than We Planned

Camera: Canon 5D | Lens: EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM | Setting: f/7.1, 1/80th sec, ISO 400

You can't tell, but the site of this palm-clad playsite is a genuine oasis in the Baja desert.  You drive toward the middle of the peninsula through the Vizcaino Desert, a fiery land sheathed in solidified lava and marked with a number of species of succulents and cacti.  You'll crest a hill at one point and see these date palm trees, thousands of them, down below in a valley standing in utter contrast to the waterless wasteland in which they illogically grow.

What, in all of that, affirms, "Sure, bring your kids here to play in the sand?"

A real freshwater spring spills from the pores of the Vicaino Desert right here and forms a pond. Date palms grow, providing cool shade and a perfect reviving sensation of a real oasis. Somewhere in the middle of this oasis is the town of San Ignacio, perhaps a mile from where this picture was captured.

Campo Los Petates is this perfect camp on the pond and under the palms.  This sand rolls right into the water and the temperature remained some 80°F even in June. The family operating the campo had this brown-eyed little girl, she's wearing the white tank top in the picture, and she didn't wait too terribly long to make her presence known when she saw our daughter Chloe and Chloe's cousin Samantha.

These kids hardly need language at all - what with there being these totally awesome digging toys for the sand.  Even though Samantha once complained to me that, "I can't understand her.  She talks weird" about this little Mexican girl. Sam is only seven years old, so this turned into a teaching moment.

We only planned on staying here one night, but I'll tell you that we all knew - Brooke, Greg, myself - as we saw these girls strike up some solidly fun playing that we'd be staying put for a couple of days.  Toss the itinerary away, we're at an oasis.  That's what we did.  Traveling can wait another day, as this was really what we'd come for.