Baja, Mexico: La Paz (Day 4: 12/24, Wednesday, Part 2 of 2)

We arrive in La Paz shortly after dark. Our digs at the Hotel Plaza Real, though reminiscent of a 1970s college dorm room, is right off Paseo Obregon, and thus, the malecon (waterfront promenade). And cheap, something around $30 to $50 per night for two.

It's X-mas eve, and it looks like nearly everything is closed. Eric has a place in mind, I think it's La Costa, at any rate a place known for it's lobster, but we're also not convinced that the place'll be open.

So we wander, with Eric intermittently changing his mind, one moment charging ahead, another moment asking me whether we should give up. I'm starving, but shrug it off and suggest that we continue; we've come this far, a mile and a half at least, so we may as well see what happens--if we ever find the place.

And it's open. Open. Because it is our destiny.

The woman who greets us has a little puppy twirled around her stool. Shnorgle. Destiny, again.

We get seats that overlook, what is it? A sandy strip, where another dog wanders, sniffing, water, some docked boats.

And we can smoke cigarettes at the table. (Destiny.)

I order a pina colada, Eric, a margarita, and we consume masses of tortilla chips before our lobster appears.

And it is nothing short of espectacular. Three halves for each us (X-mas eve munificence, perhaps?), three halves of grilled perfection. The lobster doesn't need any garlic butter, though Eric keeps insisting that I use it. I mostly ignore him and continue tearing out the white, tender hunks with my fingers and eating it plain, simultaneously relishing the stuff while pondering whether it's "enough food."

Oh, it's enough all right. Eric and I spend the rest of the return walk groaning with our gluttony.

Even at the hotel, after E's stripped down to his skivs (moment he walks in the door), and I'm laying in bed, racked with pain, so much so that it occurs to me that I might have cramps, menstrual cramps, something, like PMS, I've bragged that I don't get.

I lie in bed with my legs propped against the wall, hoping that'll make my reproductive system change it's mind about participating in its monthly slough, moaning about the injustice of it all, bewailing the fact that I'd considered hopping back on birth control just so I wouldn't get my period while in Mexico but hadn't, threatening my uterus with immediate eradication with a rusty butter knife, telling Eric I needed to smell his balls so the testosterone emanating from them might forestall my imminent visit from Aunt Flo.

Turns out it was just indigestion from eating so much.

Yum.

Baja, Mexico: Mulege -> Bahia Concepcion -> Loreto (Day 4: 12/24, Wednesday, Part 1 of 2)

Breakfast in Mulege at Las Casitas, a hotel and restaurant. It's freezing this morning, and Las Casitas a) is open and b) has a cracka-lackin' fireplace.

The whole place is covered with souvenirs that range from interesting to the "I bought this same thing when I was 17 and in Cancun" to completely baffling. I'm looking but not buying--my days of irresponsible consumption, I think, finally behind me.

I dine on huevos con pescado--hey, fish for breakfast? We're in a coastal city, there's an open patio area with chirping birds, I'm warming by the fire, let's try something new.

Wrong and wrong.



The fish tastes like something out of a freezer bag, cooked, put back in the fridge, then reheated...but less fresh. Again, I find myself worrying down unpalatable food down cuz you shouldn't waste perfectly, um, "good" vittles. Oh, well. Here's hoping the next meal will be better.

Our next destination is Bahia Concepcion, an area dotted with clear-water beaches. We stop first at Playa El Burro, but it's more of a weigh station for RVs, a beachfront "resort" of presumably rich, old Americans who have chosen to winter, in their massive conveyances, at this particular beach. I'm not overly troubled, am neutral about whether to stay or go, but Eric is not impressed, and we move on.

Our next stop sounds promising; El Requeson's attraction is a tombolo, a spit of sand surrounded on two sides by water. When we arrive, though, the beach is another RV wonderland, and while pointing out the mangroves in the distance, Eric has a minor conniption about how the RVs most certainly are negatively impacting the fragile beach ecosystems and insists (to me) that the Mexican government should be charging a fee (greater for tourists, smaller for citizens) to help conserve its beaches. I'm less (really, not at all) disturbed, as I haven't considered such things--I'm too absorbed and stimulated by the newness of what I'm seeing, my travels. I'm looking at a sand spit, I'm dabbling my toes in water and fish are flickering away, there are mangroves in the distance. Those RVs don't really exist.

I'm content to pitch the tent here, but, again, Eric's not having it--the weather's still shite--and we head back towards the car. Just before we drive off, though, Eric points out what looks like two birds sunning themselves atop massive cacti. They're both facing the exact same direction, completely immobile, with wings outstretched, like flashers, like men in trenches or wool overcoats selling fake Rolexes attached to the interior lining of their outerwear.

I, like a good Asian, want to take pictures, but Eric laughs, saying, "They're not real."

"Oh," I say. "Okay."

Further down the highway though, what should I see, but another one of these birds sunning itself in exactly the same way. Only, this time, it's perched on a garbage can. We stop for photos, but I spend some moments muttering, "Not real, my ass" at Eric.

Cuntsticks.

Loreto and it's here we finally experience some of the subtropical climate we've been promised. But after checking out the beach-side camping grounds, we are not impressed--it's merely a strip of rock and pebbles--so we make a quick decision to grab a bite, then head for La Paz, a town Eric's friend Rosie prefers to Cabo.

We stop at La Palapa, Spanish for a palm-leaf shelter, for lunch. No walls, just a roof thatched with palm-leaves, and it's mostly gringos with a smattering of locals. I hoover two types of ceviche, fish and pulpo (octopus), and a fish taco.



Mm. Que rico.

I don't know why I'm having so much ceviche, probably because it's one of the more unconventional items on the menu (relatively speaking), particularly the octopus, and I'm unusually receptive to the new and unfamiliar. This is only partly conscious, the other part, something more enigmatic, ineluctable.

And then, we're outta there.

Baja, Mexico: Guerrero Negro -> San Ignacio -> San Rosalia -> Mulege (Day 3: 12/23, Tuesday, Part 2 of 2)

On our way back out of the salt-marshes, we come across some ospreys, one adult perched eye level to us, driver and passenger in a car, tolerating our gawking, the others, young ospreys in nests atop power lines. We've stopped and pop, a tiny head comes peeping over the sticks. Eric has a photo.

Despite my usual, somewhat impetuous, some may deem reckless, hurtling after one of those EcoTour buses--"let's just see where it goes; maybe it'll lead us to their office"--we decide against staying the night in the hopes of whale-watching the next day. The weather, after all, was, if evocative and appropriate for a jaunt into the salt marshes, not exactly what we'd envisioned for a trip down the Baja peninsula.

We drive on, towards San Ignacio, and I, once again, send Eric into a holy terror with my driving. Passing is difficult when there are only two lanes, one coming and one going, and when the entire road is a serpentine curling, blind curves and hills in an endless, tortured gray ribbon.

Passing is also difficult when, rather than using rational and spatial reasoning to make decisions re: "to pass or not to pass," I rely on my level of impatience with the cars ahead of me as well as my refusal to listen to any imperatives--no matter how justified, panicked, and non-patriarchal--from a person bearing XY chromosomes.

Absurdly low and impossible to abide by speed limits are also problematic. The consensus, easy to come by between two, is that if Mexico were to increase speed limits to something approaching reality, drivers would actually heed them, and there wouldn't be all this needless passing at high speeds and, um, head-on collisions, and signs that read, "Mas vale tarde que nunca" (Better late than never.).

Also: more lanes would be nice.

At any rate, in my leg of the drive towards San Ignacio, I make an ill-conceived attempt to pass two ATVs, a vehicle appears in the oncoming lane (that I'm currently in), I have my typical "changing of the mind" when Eric screams, "get back," which I do, but then change my mind back and decide to proceed, after having lost several seconds for having changed said mind. There's honking and a hitting of brakes, and later, as we arrive at a military checkpoint, Eric tells me we better hope we can get the fuck out of there before the ATVs arrive behind us because he's sure--sure--they're pissed.

Which is reasonable, since I did nearly kill us all.

San Ignacio is an oasis of palm trees (dates) in the midst of cirio cacti and desert. It's lush lush and charming and sunlit in a way we haven't yet seen, something out of a guidebook, but hotels are expensive and we're told there have been no whales, so we're onwards again, to Santa Rosalia, what used to be a mining town, where we pass the Eiffel-designed church, pass Panaderia El Boleo despite the review of "obligatory" by Lonely Planet, and stop by an unidentified taco stand for ceviche and a shrimp taco.



Yum. Here, Eric frustrates my attempt to add some concoction of sour cream or mayo (indeterminable creamy white food stuffs) to my shrimp taco, murmuring something about it sitting out all day. Gotcha.

We bust out of town again for Mulege because we are not--not--traveling at night. The stupefying and stupefied cattle grazing on the side of the road (or crossing it), the skid marks in the asphalt, the mangled metal barriers, and the shrine after shrine to the accidental dead are each reason enough to stay yo' ass at home when darkness falls.



When we arrive in Mulege, we do a quick turn around town in the car, looking for digs to stay in overnight and find a room at La Noria for cheap. The exterior is a buttery yellow and hummingbirds are still helicoptering around a row of sugar water feeders.

Inside is a different story. Our room smells like mold, reeks of it, but we're both too exhausted to discriminate, and head back out to town for dinner. I force us to stop at the local internet cafe, and again, we ignore LP for what looks like a popular taco stand. Beets still hanging in green and red bunches sit next to container after container of condiments (creamy guacamole, salsa, pico de gallo, pickled onions, cabbage, jalapenos). They serve only carne asada here, and I take two with a side of Coca Cola and a cigarette while Eric has four and jimaica. The metal cafeteria table we're sitting on overlooks a deep, litter-filled ditch, but the food is delicious and makes up for the less than picturesque setting.



"Maybe we can have this for breakfast tomorrow," I say to no one in particular, more of an invocation than a query.

Returning to our room at La Noria, I step out to get away from the stench and smile at a kid, screeching back and forth on the concrete platform in front of our first floor room, a benevolence born only from being well-fed and fatigued.

Baja, Mexico: Catavina -> Guerrero Negro (Day 3: 12/23, Tuesday, Part 1 of 2)

We get the hell outta Catavina and head for the mountains, heading like southerly birds looking for warmer climes. It's gray gray gray; we drive about half of Baja California over the course of one morning, and make it to Paralelo 28, just above Guerrero Negro, our next destination.

Paralelo 28 divides Baja California from Baja California Sur, and it's just a gas station-looking structure with small buildings mushroomed around it. It's here we finally get our tourist cards--we're legal--though Eric ignores the fee that I notice on the paperwork; we'll pay for that later, in worry and fees, on the flight out.



Breakfast for me is chilaquiles, corn tortillas cooked in some kind of salsa, covered with cheese, I think cream, and finally topped with an egg (there are alternative versions with scrambled eggs and meat and what have you). I'm sure Eric had huevos con chorizo, as that became his breakfast food of choice over the course of our travels.

Over the meal at Puerto Viejo, we decide to head towards the salt-marsh and bird sanctuary; okay, so it's really Eric who makes the decision, while I valiantly hide my dyed-in-the-wool-city-girl-skepticism about how interesting water and birds could be. I'm not impressed as we drive over unpaved roads, the CD skipping in the player, and the sky overcast.

But soon, maybe it's Eric's excitement, maybe it's the necessary confluence of mist and fine rain, and a well-chosen CD (Portuguese...folk?), and the solitude, just our two pairs of eyes and egrets/herons winging into flight, things seen "blurr'dly and inconclusively," and I'm taken, too, from the world outside to somewhere in between.


Move Your Fucking Hand

Baja, Mexico: Catavina (Day 2: 12/22, Monday, Part 2 of 2)

We return from the second mini-hike hungry, and head into town--where earlier we'd gotten gas on the side of the road because the PEMEX station there, for whatever reason, isn't running. I use the term "town" loosely, essentially a single strip of corner stores selling Coca Cola and cigarettes and chips, and a road, with its lavish distribution of speed bumps, that slows you to 40 km/hour (25 mph).

Gas from cans and a tube that the gentleman huffs into.

"How does he know when to stop pumping?" I ask Eric. "When it comes squirting out the..."

Ding, ding, ding. Yes, he knows he should stop pumping gas when it comes streaming down the side of the car.

Anyway, we're back in town for what Eric claims will be amazing Mexican hot dogs, something wrapped in bacon, which I've seen outside clubs in L.A. and which I've always previously assumed are only comestible after a night on the town and several lines of coke.

No go. Which, thank god, leads to our return to the Ranch and to my discovery of machaca, a dish originally made from dried beef as a form of preservation, but nowadays a pulled-porky kind of concoction.

It's only thing on the menu I've never heard of. Horrible squid experience notwithstanding, I give another (fork-)stab in the dark. And it is delicious...



It's frigid by the time we decide to pack ourselves into the tent, with Eric worrying that we'll freeze in the desert night. I am a little less concerned, and offer to take the non-winter sleeping bag. Because I like being cold at night. And because I'm a bad-ass.



The stars are gooor-geous, first a smattering, then a dusting, then a full-on assault, and as we make pillow talk and try not to fall asleep at 8 p.m., a dash of raindrops hits our faces. Yelping, we burst out of our bags and pull the roof-flap over, benighted and entitled travelers bemoaning the disappearance of "our" stars.

Sleep overtakes us, until I'm woken by the violent flapping of the tent in the storm. It doesn't occur to me to wake Eric, and I lie there considering the possibilities and convincing myself of the insignificance of a little rain and wind. The problem is that despite my ability to send myself off to sleep, the spray of rain intermittently slanting sideways into the tent and onto my face, the snapping of the tent in the wind keeps jerking me awake.

I'm a miserable insomniac and Eric finally wakes, in turns squealing because he'd been trying to freak me out earlier with references to the Blair Witch and shamans and offering such reassuring comments as, "if this was hurricane, no one here would know. And it's not like anyone would trek out here and tell us."

Thanks.

A restless, broken sleep, then the too loud, too close mooing of a "mad and horny" (Eric's words) or "cold and lonely" (mine) cow. Maybe she's lost her baby. Maybe she's just lost from her herd. My sympathy for her/him/it is muted by my fear that, what with the tent flapping, she'll charge the tent. Inside my sleeping bag, I slip my sweats back on, then skooch (sp?) around, making sure I know where my possessions are. Camera? In bag. Wallet? In jacket, in bag. Hiking boots? Next to me. At a moment's notice, I'm ready to bolt and head for the car. I didn't come to Mexico to be trampled by a cow.

Fortunately, she makes her sad trek away from us, and my pity for her increases with her distance. Poor thang.

Baja, Mexico: El Rosario -> Catavina (Day 2: 12/22, Monday, Part 1 of 2)

We bust out of town for Catavina and food--somewhere we can leave memories of reconstituted squid far, far behind.

We land in a camping ground called Rancho Santa Ines, which, despite it's foul bathroom conditions--no working light, no toilet paper, and the stench of a hundred shits--had some of the best food we ate on the trip.

The following, huevos con chorizo with fresh tortillas, was a terror and a delight. We dug in with gusto, while I looked bemusedly at the strange green thing on the lid of the plastic tortilla container.



"What. is. that?"



Ah, a centuries-old moldy tortilla, probably left from the days of the Amerindians who made the trek down the peninsula. I grimace, then notice pale green spots on the tortilla I'm holding, and start picking what I assume is mold off the tortilla because I'll be damned if I stop eating. Fortunately, it's just the color of burn marks seen from the translucency of the flip side (what? Tortillas are not supposed to be dense discs of flour that come out of plastic bags at your local supermarket?).

I dig back in.

We spend the rest of the day wandering around the local desert landscape, granite boulders, massive cacti about forty feet high, a lovely little arroyo still trickling with collected water, and cirios, another form of cacti oft-described as looking like an "upside-down carrot." We're looking for the cave paintings but see only graffiti. Eric teaches me some kind of card game--gin?--as well as his ghetto form of Scrabble--Take?--at which I lose time and time again, and feel very stupid.

We go on another brief hike, at which point I make some nervous queries about the holes in the ground. What made those holes? Scorpions? Eric comes to the conclusion that it's tarantulas, then, as I continue to lag, intermittently turns to kick bits of cactus spines at me, screaming, "tarantula," while I squeal in horror.

Funny.

But, lo and behold, as we're making our way back, I spot something curled right underneath E.

I'm unable to generate any actual words and manage to yelp an "aaarghagh," while Eric leaps like a marionette into the air. It's a tarantula.

I mention the concept of karma in between gasps of air and tears, hunched over and laughing the entire way back.

Baja, Mexico: Tijuana -> Ensenada -> El Rosario (Day 1: 12/21, Sunday)

Breakfasted with Scottie and Dori at the Broken Yolk in San Diego, where I had my usual: California breakfast burrito with egg white, home fries, avocado, eggs, and bacon.

S&D dropped us off at the border to little fanfare, with Dori noting that Eric looked like he was off camping and I was on a trip to grandma's house. [grin]

No checkpoint, no guards, no officials. Just a stroll into the smoggy landscape, a turn of a revolving door, Eric in his cowboy hat, a massive hiking bag, backpack, and tent, me with my bookbag, a green plaid rolling suitcase (brand: Playboy), and an Adidas duffel--everyone else had more makeshift luggage in the form of garbage bags--and a friendly taxi driver who insisted that tourists weren't targets of the cartels in Tijuana (though a snatch I was able to catch of "luchares en las plazas" was a little disconcerting).

Eric and I spent some time groping blindly towards our car rental place, which turned out to be a tiny trailer in an out-of-the-way lot.

$700 for the car rental ballooned to something around $1,100 because we wanted to drop the car in Cabo instead of back in Tijuana; we decided to eat the extra charge between the two of us, then discovered that the car they had in mind for us was 1) manual and 2) without a CD-player. Fortunately, the rental guys were able to remedy the situation at no additional cost (we hoped), and we drove off without a hitch, excepting getting a trifle turned around in TJ before finally getting on La Carretera Transpeninsular.

Baja: fuckin' amazing food on the cheap, especially if you can get your American dollars exchanged for pesos ASAP--the exchange rate is 13 pesos to the dollar, and it being Sunday, we weren't able to find any banks and money-changers, and managed to get ripped off 'til we finally arrived in Guerrero Negro, just below the 28th parallel that designates Norte versus Sur and a time change.

Returning to Day 1:

We actually managed to find a Lonely Planet pick, El Taco de Hitzilopochtli, in Ensenada, despite both of our inabilities to pronounce the name and the endemic lack of street signs, partly because I hopped out of the car and said to some shopgirls, "Buscando por un restaurante: El Taco de Huitzil...er..." and partly because Eric has a ridiculous sense of direction.


Corn and mushroom quesadilla: more appetizing than it looks.

There we feasted on:
1) quesadillas of flor de calabaza (squash flower) and corn and mushroom (a type that grows on corn??)
2) a bright-tasting, melting-on-the-tongue lamb stew that came in foil
3) and some mole of shrimp and potato that seemed to be lacking in...shrimp and potato. At first I insisted that Eric had somehow changed the order to sheep brains, but he denied.
4) a jimaica drink made from dried hibiscus flowers that tasted to me like cran-apple.

Oh, but this is not before I managed to drive straight into a massive puddle of sewage water and a great wave of the stuff came pouring into the windows of the car while I simultaneously shrieked and reached for the power window button (wrong spot).

One should not have one's mouth open when one is being showered in shitty water because that shitty water has a tendency to land in one's mouth.

Eric went into laughing fits in between references to giardia and anime characters (apparently what I looked like at the moment of impact, my eyes squinted into crescents and my open mouth an upside-down triangle), while I spat ferociously and repeatedly out the driver's window and wiped what remained of the sewage onto Eric's arm.

Ech. Fortunately, I had no adverse intestinal effects, and by nightfall, we arrived in El Rosario at a magnificent little hotel called the Baja Cactus Motel, currently without a sign, but situated right off the Pemex gas station (Pemex is the only supplier of gas in the country, and I think is subsidized by the gov't).

The prices (something around 30 US$ for two people?) were absurdly low for fantastical digs, part Aspen ski lodge, part Mexican beach house (not that I've been to the former or latter).

We scuffled around town for about a half hour, all unpaved streets and (again) open sewage and some sort of motorcycle or 4-wheeler convention, and found an internet cafe that offered half an hour for five pesos (less than fiddy cents).

Dinner was at Mama Espinoza's, sort of the counterpoint to Taco Whatchamacallit earlier. One of those meals you have that remind you, as Anthony Bourdain is wont, that to get the good meals, you have to take the bad. I had the torta calamar, which was 1) not a torta and 2) tasted horribly of dried squid that'd been reconstituted (just add water). I managed to worry about 2/3rds of it down so as not to be a horrible, wasteful gringa, while Eric marveled at my fortitude and ate his just-okay fish tacos.

I brushed my teeth and thought my toothpaste had gone bad, until E. deigned to remind me not to use the tap water. Cuntsticks! But, again, no adverse effects.

Then, to bed in a massive king and Pretty Woman, where we learned that if you are an attractive whore with a heart of gold, you too can score a rich businessman who will take care of you for the rest of your life.