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