Still from "27 Hours to La Paz." It started out as little more than a lark, an informal competition among off-road racers to see who could make it from one end of the Baja peninsula to the other the quickest. And while big sponsor dollars - and big-money race rigs - have become part and parcel of the Baja 1000 over the intervening 50 years, it still remains one of the most grueling races on the planet. As described in the mid- to late 1960s, whatever roads ultimately connected Ensenada, about 35 miles south of