Graham in the Sierra San Pedro Martir
In 1983 Graham Mackintosh was a lecturer at West Kent College in England, teaching social sciences and special education to unemployed teenagers. In the hope of showing his students that a shoestring expedition could be the adventure of a lifetime, Mackintosh, who described himself as the "least adventurous person in the world," set out to walk around the beautiful but dangerous coastline of Baja California.
The two-year, 3,000-mile trip changed his life. When Mackintosh emerged from the cactus-strewn wilderness, he returned to England to write Into a Desert Place and there received the prestigious "Adventurous Traveler of the Year" award. Mackintosh was soon drawn back to Baja. After years promoting Into a Desert Place in the USA and Baja California, and scores of trips below the border, he eventually decided to walk down the rugged, mountainous interior of Baja, visiting many of the old missions along the way. Journey with a Baja Burro, his second book, was the result. It describes his arduous thousand-mile journey with a pack burro from the US border to Loreto -- a trip that began exactly 300 years after the October 1697 founding of the Loreto mission, the first permanent European settlement in the "Californias."
In 2001, Graham spent four months in Baja’s Sierra San Pedro Mártir with two street dogs, which became the subject of his third book – Nearer My Dog to Thee."
His fourth book, Marooned With Very Little Beer, appeared in April 2008, and tells of his two months kayaking and hiking the second largest island in the Sea of Cortez -- Isla Angel de la Guarda.
Graham Mackintosh now lives in San Diego, California. He continues to give lectures and slide shows on his trips, writes articles on Baja and has guided tourists south of the border on various tours. He is married to Bonni, a nurse, who shares his love for Baja and nature.
Keeping cool -- south of Mulege