ANNA BRENNA

Baja California, a peninsula stretching for 1200 km in the Pacific Ocean south of the border between California and Mexico, was defined “the forgotten peninsula”. A remote frontier remained largely unexplored, because of its geologic structure and of its hostile territory, mainly made of uninhabited deserts. Still today, for hundreds of kilometres along the Carretera Transpeninsular 1, the sole presence is given by cactuses, scattered on the entire territory, and by flocks of frigatebirds and vultures, twirling high in the sky. For the great part of the year the territory is a deserted land, American tourists appear only during winter months and are mainly concentrated in the extreme south of the peninsula. Travelling along the Mex1, one has the feeling of being in a world apart. Geographically, the land is very similar to the deserted states of the American West, though being politically part of Mexico, but differently from both, the impression is of being in a space-time limbo, where nothing happens

Originally Baja California was an integrated part of the American continent, from which it detached because of the shifting of tectonic plates and of the continuous earthquakes caused by the underlying faults.

During the 16° century, Baja California was even believed to be an island, separated from the continent by a strait - today known as Gulf of California -  a sort of terrestrial paradise, like Eden’s Gardens or Atlantis

The peninsula is still drifting, at the pace of some 4 cm per year, and probably in some millions years the legend will become reality.