The Baja 1000: An unforgettable race adventure
By Rob Siegel
There’s a reason that you have never heard of Baja 1000. Or as it is better known– Baja 1000: The Race That Rises From the Sands of the Road.
“But,” you reason, “why do you have to go on the Baja when you can just go to the beach? Or even just drive to a nearby town!”
The real answer is that the Baja is a once in a lifetime adventure that is rarely undertaken by humans. More than once I have returned from the Baja to tell friends about my trip, only to be greeted by a look of absolute disbelief from my friends.
The beauty of the Baja is that it takes place in a region of the world that does not travel by air and has a population of an estimated five million. What is more, in the most remote areas of the Baja, the road access can be as short as three and a half hours. The route is very rugged, and in some areas the road can be as rough as a railroad bed. The Baja is a place where no one else has travelled yet. And when you arrive, what can you possibly do but start your journey into the unknown?
The Baja is also like no other adventure of this type. No other extreme sports, no other extreme adventures, no other great national parks, no other great wildernesses have attempted the Baja. Nothing on a par with, say, the Sierra Club’s 10,000-mile Backpacking Quest Across the American Southwest. Nothing like the Baja.
How the Baja began
One day in 1957, a pilot was taking off from a remote airstrip when a storm came crashing over the runway. Within just a few hours, the plane was blown off the runway and had hit the ocean. Later it was determined that the pilot’s injuries were so severe that he would have died without the help of a hospital.
The pilot’s wife had been out on the plane that day with him when she suddenly fell ill. She told him that she was going to die,