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.