In the first third of the 17th Century the Spanish crown sent Jesuit priests to establish missions in what is now Baja California Sur.  The fourth of these–Misión San Francisco Javier Vigge Biaundó–was active from 1699-1817.  What is amazing is that the installation has remained intact even centuries after its last priest left (abandoning the missions at the gun-pointing insistence of the crown as independence movements fomented, which is a story worthy of your further investigation).  Having found this particular oasis in the last third of the 17th Century, the priests cultivated grapes, dates, olives and other produce which, remarkably, still grow here today.

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It is visually and olfactorally stunning to be in a place with the cactus and other desert flora native to the region (on the day prior to our visit to this mission it had rained, so the desert smells were deliciously intensified) and simultaneously to see and smell plants associated with the Saharan Desert’s exquisite oases, and associated with the vineyards and orchards of southern Europe.  To eat a date in Baja California Sur is, so to speak, a trip.  With a glass of wine from one of these old-growth vines, it is a trip and a half.

These oases made the peninsula inhabitable then, and they (the oases) remain intact today.  We have not been able to find any evidence of hydrology studies ever having been carried out in these remote locations (though some were conducted in the central peninsula, where agricultural development was promoted by the Mexican government starting in the 1970s).  Our entrepreneurial conservation initiatives will pay special attention to water issues, while availing these now-ancient agricultural wonders left behind by the missionaries.