Baja, Mexico: La Paz -> Cabo Pulmo -> Cabo San Lucas (Day 7: 12/27, Saturday, 1 of 2)

The early morning drive to the hotel dock doesn't bode well for Eric's planned dive. I'm to drop him off, then make my way back to the hotel, a day putzing around town, then spent in sun worship at Tecolote, a day gloriously alone.

But, no.

The water's choppy and shark-gray. Eric's not optimistic, though I'm bullishly sanguine, as if my insisting that diving conditions might be okay will make it so.

Nope.

I hide my disappointment and we're off for breakfast. Eric's been obsessed with a place called Baja Biscuits, so that's where we head. There, he has the eponymous biscuits and gravy, and I the breakfast burrito of eggs, potato, avocado, and salchicha, topped with a creamy chipotle sauce and a Mexican-style Minute Maid Orange Juice that is essentially sugar water and orange flavoring that would never fly in the U.S., let alone California.



Eric's eager to be out. I'm less so--a vacation without Rancho Viejo is no vacation at all--but tacos are hardly a (socially acceptable) reason to take up residence in a place, and the man's insistent. As a result, we're migrating south again, down the Transpeninsular, busting a left at Buena Vista to take the scenic route to Cabo Pulmo in the hopes of scallops at Nancy's, essentially the only reason to come to Pulmo, besides the coral reef.

Alas, for the coral reef, the weather's shite, and alas for Nancy's, its lunch hour and the offerings are, shall we say, meager compared to the dinner menu.



The scallops are still soaking in a bowl of water (should I have asked for them though they weren't on the menu? Oh, must we dream our dreams and have them, too?), so Eric and I both settle for the shrimp, which, though nice, are diminished by the stale-ish (or maybe just not freshly made) tortilla that comes with.



While we wait for the check, I manage to break the door window on my way to photograph the restaurant signage. Granted, it's a piece of cardboard propped in the sill that's simply flopped to the ground, but I'm racked with guilt nevertheless. Clumsy American.



I'm still mourning my tacos de arrachera; the dirt roads rumble past, the playas a distant, green-blue.



Finally, San Jose del Cabo, and the corridor to Cabo San Lucas.

The evening's a blur. This is the night a friend tells me, over the internet, about the untimely death (aneurysm, Arteriovenous malformation, AVM) of a guy I knew, fleetingly, in a past life. I'm bewildered and unusually quiet, and attack my meal at Lolita's in a pale imitation of my customary vim and vigor. The chicken mole, the beef burrito, the chile relleno, the chicken taco arranged on my plate go down without photographic archiving, ditto the Pacifico.

Everything's dust in the mouth.

I am, in truth, mostly jealous.

Nevada City Weekend, 3/13 - 15

Spent weekend at the house of an ex-lawyer, current farmer.

Along with one New York-based masseur/sex worker (happy endings), one current office furniture saleswoman (previously worked with Connecticut Public and had received an Emmy for a documentary), one nurse fresh out of nursing school, one SF English teacher, a couple who own a farm and rent out goats for landscaping, and another area couple.

Seven of these folks were gay men. (And I wonder why I never get laid. Fuck.)

I got to:

1. sit in a hot tub and gaze at the stars
2. get within a foot (no fence) of an ostrich
3. hug a baby emu
4. hug baby goats
5. play with a tiny kitten

I also was:

invited back for harvest season at the rate of $200 a pound (of work)

Potentially more to follow.

Baja, Mexico: La Paz (Day 6: 12/26, Friday, Part 3 of 3)

I'm of two minds when the boat, replete with divers, comes chugging into our little slice of blue-green silence--half peevish for the interruption, half eager to return to land. I'm going mad with stimuli, six whole days with nary a moment to myself and then this day of highs (real dolphins, flopping sea lions, wobbling puffer fish) and lows (imaginary sharks, a stretch of backbreaking, arm-wrenching ocean).

And I's hongry.

Lunch is served shortly after we re-board. Tuna (pepper, carrot, corn) salad sandwiches on Mexico's version of Wonder bread--Bimbo bread, ya heaaard?!

(Not my pic.)

I'm befuddled when the divers (who were, as expected, grudgingly envious of Eric's encounter with the whale shark) begin strapping back in.

A third dive? Fuckin' a. We're in open ocean now, and they're going down to a wreck. I've already psyched myself out (with help from Eric) about snorkeling and there is no way I am getting back in the kayak, so while Eric pulls off, I lay out at the prow with a bottle of un-American coke and cookies.



One of the divers has hung back. Since she and her husband are the originators of scuba diving (the way she tells it), she's over wreck-diving, and because she's also a nature photography nut, she has her massive camera out. She's wielding it like Dirk Diggler in the jaws of his meth addiction. I think she's irritated that I've seen a sea turtle but've failed to mention it quickly enough, and she grudgingly tells me the glassy circle the vanished turtle makes is called a "footprint."

She's freaking me out, so I climb down to the water-level platform at the stern and dip my legs into the placid water, snapping photos of Eric, the horizon, my contented, nay, smug and complacent countenance, granules of salt speckling my face where the seawater's dried.



I am perfectly and radiantly happy.



With folks back on board, I notice some popping in the distance, about 75 yards away. "What's that?" I ask, pointing.

It's a school of rays jumping out of the water to flop onto their backs. There's no explanation for it, the dive master tells us. It's speculated that they do it to rid themselves of parasites, but somehow it looks too playful, too exuberant for something as mundane as hygiene.

And on our return trip, flying fish glimpsed out the corner of my eye, another spin with dolphins.

That evening, we head back to Rancho Viejo for more sweet ambrosia in the form of skirt steak tacos and papas rellenos. This time, we only order two tacos each and split the papas. I've agreed to this decision, but deep down, I want that third taco on my plate, even if I know all it'll cause me is grief.

Because I'm a greedy fuck.



Eric has plans to go diving tomorrow, and I'm secretly glad to have a day to myself, already envisioning the location of my beach chair and feeling the condensation on a bottle of Pacifico in my hand.

I've fallen in (friend-)love with Eric, but this only child needs her some spiz-ace. Fer-rills.

Baja, Mexico: La Paz (Day 6: 12/26, Friday, Part 2 of 3)

The water's pleasant enough. There's a baby sea lion napping next to its mama, and, unsurprisingly, this has me unhinged, distracted, at least for a moment.



But I keep knocking into Eric, and his occasional grasping at my leg to point something out isn't exactly tonic to my nerves. Every flashing fin and somersaulting sea lion is a bull shark, emerging from the deep to jerk me to a thrashing, bloody death.

We've been warned to stay a distance from shore and away from the big daddy of sea lions, the one who gets to bone all the lady sea lion(esse?)s, because he's territorial, but there are the friendlies, the younger ones who've probably gotten used to playing with the hordes of snorkelers and divers; these guys keep streaking past my line of vision, playing in my periphery, and each glimpse gives me a jump, has me bobbing back upright, looking frantically for a dorsal fin. "Gah!" I think, and, "swim away, swim away."

Fortunately, Eric's not comfortable either. I'm surprised because he's an avid scuba diver, wall diving, diving in the Galapagos, diving with hammerheads, etc. But--his words--"we're more vulnerable swimming at the surface because sharks hunt from below."

His suggestion that we kayak a bit is met with a nonchalant shrug and "okay," but in reality, I'm creaming my bikini bottoms in gratitude. Thank Hay-Zeus.

The captain of the boat helps us into our kayaks, taking a moment to call down to me as I awkwardly try to simultaneously paddle and keep my vessel from tipping as a result of my inept maneuvering--from on high, he gesticulates with an invisible paddle, and I finally realize that I have to keep the blade perpendicular just as it cuts into the water. Any other angle initiates a disagreeable seesawing sensation and involuntary squeals.

I finally get the hang of it, and Eric and I move towards rougher waters, just off the jurisdiction claimed by the younger bulls, excommunicated from the harem, which is not to say they are not equally--really, more--territorial.

(Meanwhile a pack of tourists has amassed near Big Poppa, another expedition's disembarked--all snorkelers--and they're grubbing all over the rocks from which we'd already been warned away, reaching out to touch the sea lions. What the fuck.)

Sea lions can turn aggressive quickly, and though we're at least twenty-five, thirty feet from shore, the bulls begin bellowing immediately.

"Agh," Eric and I yell. I'm screaming, "run away," as I paddle frantically off, and there's a small boat of locals wheezing at the sight of us. We decide, therefore, to linger in safer waters, where the sea lions are a little more companionable--he keeps using his paddle to nudge off one juvenile that keeps trying to hoist itself into his kayak, and I keep fleeing the more inquisitive ones, but so long as they're not yellin' at us like them thugs back there.

"Ballena," the Spanish for whale, the boat captain suddenly shouts. He's pointing, the boat of locals crowding over their port side. I'm too far away--fleeing the curious little cunts again--but a whale shark is passing feet underneath Eric. He's gasping at the distinctive spot markings, the thirty feet of filter-feeding, largest shark in the world, swimming just below his kayak.

I'm glad for Eric, and relieved for myself. I can tell he'd been chafing at the sight of the scuba divers, wishing he were down there with 'em, and I can feel a slightly less guilty for ball-and-chaining him to the surface.

...

Finally, we decide to kayak towards the neighboring islet that the dive master'd pointed out earlier. It's across open ocean, several hundred yards away, with a fair share of swells, but it doesn't look that bad, that far. Eric, all guns and workout-ready, reaches the opposite shore in an instant, hugging the shore while I'm making an arduous hypotenuse.

A third of the way there though, I don't know whether to laugh or cry but I'm leaning toward the latter. Later, Eric retells it as "every time I turned around to yell at you, you'd pick up your paddle, but you'd stop paddling whenever I turned my back!"

Okay, maybe. I'm murmuring inanities such as "just go on without me" and "fuck this" and "fuck me." The shore looks so. far. away. And my arms are so. fucking. tired. Finally, an executive decision. I begin to count the strokes that I'm making in an effort to stay focused, and each stroke is a moaned number...

At long last, the tiny bajia and water the color of summer, a pale, incandescent aqua, but at this point I'm so exhausted and miserable that I brattily threaten...the universe, stipulating that I'm not getting out of my kayak "if there's no door to door pick-up." The thought of having to hoist myself back onto the kayak and use my arms, now useless noodles of flesh, to paddle any length to re-board the boat, even a mere 50 yards, is anathema.

Wah, wah, boohoo. The lure of clear water's too enticing; I lug the kayak onto the stony shore and gingerly wade into the water.



There's a puffer fish tootling around by itself, and I have a distinct feeling it's curious about me, as it keeps moseying in my vicinity, trundling in circles. I've since learned they're supposed to be poisonous--and not just when eaten as fugu--so it's just as well that my attempts at poking it with a finger end in failure.

Two pelicans are dive-bombing the water, and each crash is a crack in the silence. It's lovely. I could stay here all day.

Baja, Mexico: La Paz (Day 6: 12/26, Friday, Part 1 of 3)

Dolphins, sea lions, puffer fish, and one (missed) whale shark.

We have a 7:15 pick up for our snorkel/kayak trip to Los Islotes, location of a sea lion colony--how do you distinguish between sea lions and seals? Well, funny you should ask! Sea lions are identifiable by their external ears.

Anyhoo, we arrive at the office, sign our lives away, are braceleted with hot pink paper stickers, and receive a meal ticket. We're told that the boat will be leaving shortly, so we should head upstairs and eat our complementary breakfast ASAP.

Eric and I seat ourselves in the patio overlooking the harbor and dine on what I think is something called entrefrijoles,



a sort of enchilada-looking dish with chorizo-filling and instead of a chili pepper sauce, refried beans ladled over the tortilla, all of it garnished with cheese and slices of avocado. Yerm.

I make a break for the bathroom and upon my return learn that I've missed a group of dolphins that just frolicked past. Fucksticks.

We spend the next eon waiting for the other passengers, all scuba divers, to bustle self-importantly--as if their experience diving and the fact that they own expensive equipment suddenly makes them brethren to Jacques Cousteau--to and fro with their gear. A younger German couple, the rest mostly retirees, and there's even a portly dude wearing an aloha shirt, the kind of guy that makes a lot of lame-o but well-meaning jokes and prone to affably sharing his bag of Jolly Ranchers.

Shortly after we set sail, another--the same?--school of dolphins.

I'm in raptures, of course, at the sight of them, and when they hear--I'm sure of it--when they hear our squeals of delight, they commence to patronize us with their presence, leaping, swimming in the wash on the port side. They look close enough to touch, fifteen feet of gray bottlenose muscle, and I hang over the guardrails in a frenzy, gasping when they turn on their sides to look at us, poor bipeds, one and all.



When the dolphins tire of us, they flick away so quickly it's hard to say they were ever there. We continue on to Los Islotes, the motor cranking away, and I begin to feel a little...perturbed. I'm leaning over the side of the boat and the sea is deeper, darker, and more secret. It's impenetrable. This doesn't look like the waters off Cancun where I had my first and only other snorkeling expedition. Am I supposed to get in that? Just jump into that? The driver/pilot/captain is edging us over swell after swell, the bow rocking into the air to what seems like forty-five degrees, then crashing down with a bump. Maybe I should've grabbed the wetsuit when it was offered.

I make a few sneaky queries to Eric--so like, the scuba divers, they just jump right in? It's pretty choppy here, isn't it? His replies are not wholly reassuring, but I ain't no bitch, so I restrain myself from a more explicit line of questioning, such as, "Do I have to do this?" and "What's lurking in that shit?" and "Are you people insane?"

When we reach the sea colony, I'm slightly encouraged; there are a half dozen other boats loaded with tourists and locals, groups large and small. The water is an exercise in green--moss green and forest green come to mind, though algae- and sea- are likely more apt. We're close enough to shore that the underwater boulders are a mere twenty feet below, and despite Eric's last minute admonishment that we are about to swim with "the favorite food of sharks" and that should I see the sea lions bolt suddenly away, it would be wise to "look around" (thanks!), I wedge my feet into the flippers, tighten my mask, clench my teeth around the snorkel, and scooch my butt off the slimy ledge of the stern.

A mouth and nose full of salt water. What the fuck? Is my gear malfunctioning?

The dive master, still bobbing at the water's surface, comes to my rescue. Gently, he tugs the mask over my nose--oooh--tucks strands of my hair back, then pulls the sticker, still attached to the left side of my mask, off. I'm an embarrassed preschooler getting my shoes tied, and I think I may have been so overwhelmed that I swim off without a thank you. Thanks, dive master man.