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Friday, September 28
A SONNET FOR TODAY
by
Lloydville
on Fri 28 Sep 2007 09:51 AM PDT
On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer by John Keats:
Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific--and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise--
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
Chapman's Homer seems a bit stodgy today but compared to previous
translations in English it had power and punch -- and was much closer
to the supple, hard-hitting Greek of Homer. You have to read
Stanley Lombardo's bold new translations of Homer to get a sense of how
Chapman's version must have sounded to Keats' generation.
The last four lines of this sonnet are what make it memorable, even
though we may know that it was Balboa, above, who first sighted the Pacific
from the vantage point of the New World (in Panama) -- not "stout
Cortez", below.
Hernán Cortés did reach the Pacific coast of Mexico sometime
later, or rather he reached the coast of a sea that communicates with
the Pacific, now called the Gulf Of California or the Sea of Cortez or,
of
course, the Mar de Cortés. This is the great body of water that
lies between the west coast of mainland Mexico and the Baja California
peninsula.
Tuesday, September 18
WHAT STAYS, WHAT GETS AWAY
by
Lloydville
on Tue 18 Sep 2007 02:23 AM PDT
Above
are the fish we took away from our fishing expedition on the Mar de
Cortés -- all good for eating. We ate some of the catch in La Paz before
we left, the rest made it, frozen, to Las Vegas and Los Angeles, where
it served for a couple more wonderful meals.
We caught other fish on our expedition -- including a few bonito, all
but one of which was thrown back. The biggest of them was saved to
serve as shark bait for a friend of our captain. We caught
several needlefish -- nasty looking things with long pointed snouts
which are no good for eating. "Banditos" our captain called them,
disdainfully, because they steal bait. If one got hooked, the
captain had to beat it senseless with a wooden club before he removed the hook, to avoid
having his hands lacerated by the needlefish's sharp teeth.
Nora watched this procedure with burning eyes. "I almost can't
stand to look," she said. "But it's also kind of exciting." This struck me as a very Spanish response, with the
appeal of the bullfight in it.
In any fishing tale there's always the part about the one that got away.
Just before we headed back to shore, with our bait almost used up, I
hooked a huge fish. It felt like the big bonito I'd caught
earlier -- maybe heavier. It kept wanting to sound and came up
slowly, when I could move it towards the boat, like a massive lead weight at the end of the line. When I got it to
within four or five feet of the surface we could see, in the dappled sunlight rippling through the water, that it was a gigantic
yellowfin tuna. The captain was very excited -- this was
a stupendous fish. I was too excited. I jerked the line a
little too hard and the hook slipped out and I watched the amazing
thing swim away again into the depths. I was sad but also oddly
moved by the encounter.
Below, pelicans feed on the remains of our fish, after the captain had filleted them:
After I dropped our catch off at the restaurant at the Los Arcos I went
up to the bar for a beer. I was exhausted from the long drive to
and from the beach and the hours out on the water, all on far too
little sleep. But my nerves were singing. I knew I had
experienced something extraordinary. There was no way I could go
to sleep.
That's the moment I come back to when I think about Baja California --
the way the cold beer tasted, and the image that kept going through my
mind of the big tuna swimming away into the Mar de Cortés, its
silver sides and yellow fins flashing a few times before it disappeared
into the deep blue.
Part of my heart went with it, and is still there -- lost at sea.
For previous Baja California trip reports, go here.
[Photos © 2007 Harry Rossi]
Sunday, September 16
DRIVING IN MEXICO: A POSTSCRIPT
by
Lloydville
on Sun 16 Sep 2007 02:37 AM PDT
I
recently came upon a term, "risk homeostasis", which I think helps
explain why driving in Mexico feels safer, and may in fact be safer,
than driving in the U. S.
Roads and streets in Mexico tend not to be
as well-maintained as they are in the States, lanes tend not to be as well
marked (or respected when they are marked), traffic signs are treated
very casually -- in La Paz, many stop signs are completely obscured by
foliage. (You quickly learn to come to a full stop at every bushy tree near the corner of an intersection.)
The result is that Mexicans are forced to drive with greater care,
greater attention to the behavior and greater respect for the
prerogatives of other drivers -- not to mention pedestrians . . . and goats.
In the States,
where road and street surfaces tend to be impeccable,
lanes are clearly marked, traffic signs prominent and logically placed,
livestock properly penned, people rely on these things to allow them to
drive more carelessly --
while talking on a cell phone, for example, with very little attention
given to immediate traffic conditions around the vehicle. They
assume
that the markings and the rules will keep them out of accidents -- but
based on that assumption they feel free to expose themselves more to
the hazards of unpredictable
incidents.
This is "risk homeostasis", a phenomenon observed in all security
systems -- people "consume" improvements in security and use them to
justify taking more risks.
The result can
be paradoxical. Here in the U. S., more pedestrians are killed in
clearly
marked crosswalks than in unmarked crosswalks -- the bright white solid
lines give them a false sense of security and lessen their attention to
the actual behavior of drivers. (The GPS system in my car, above,
has no detailed map data for Mexico -- it only told me roughly where I
was on the Baja California peninsula . . . all the rest I had to figure
out for myself.)
My sister was terrified by the idea of driving in Mexico -- because it
all looked so anarchic. But it wasn't anarchic at all -- just the
opposite. Almost all drivers were following one basic rule, which
transcended all the other less basic rules -- pay close attention to
what your fellow drivers are doing and don't run into them.
It's the one basic rule that no improvements in traffic systems can
promote, and that many improvements in traffic systems can actually
undermine. It's against the law in Mexico to drive while talking on a
cell phone -- but it's something you wouldn't be likely to do anyway.
You wouldn't feel safe. You may feel safe driving while talking on a
cell phone in the U. S., but you very likely aren't.
By directing so much of your attention away from the traffic around
you, you have essentially "consumed" the advantages the U. S. road
system has over the Mexican road system.
For previous Baja California trip reports, go here.
[Photos © 2007 Harry Rossi]
Friday, September 14
A PLACE FOR PEOPLE
by
Lloydville
on Fri 14 Sep 2007 12:22 AM PDT
One
of the sweetest aspects of traveling in Mexico is experiencing a
society that has not been thoroughly corporatized. Big U. S.
corporations have infected Mexico on a large scale, but you only see
the manifestation of this in localized areas of big cities -- the strip
developments on the outskirts of towns where Wal-Mart and Office Depot
rule. There's a Burger King and an Applebee's on the malecón in La Paz, but they still seem anomalous, like unsightly trash dumps in a vacant lot.
Everywhere else, businesses seem to be run by, stamped
with the personality of, actual human beings. Restaurants and taco stands
are decorated according to the eccentric tastes of the
proprietors. You visit them not to find some standardized form of
service and decor, originating in some distant corporate headquarters,
but to have the adventure of meeting and interacting with the individuals who have personally organized these enterprises.
Las Vegas knows the advantage of this sort of eccentricity --
restaurants here, like casinos, have quirky themes, promise to be
"experiences" . . . but it's all professionally designed, the product
of artful concepts rather than of individual obsessions or
passions. It's better than nothing but it's a far cry from the
organic expressiveness of everyday Mexican culture.
For previous Baja California trip reports, go here.
[Photos © 2007 Harry Rossi]
Wednesday, September 12
A FEW MORE TIPS FOR TRAVELING IN MEXICO
by
Lloydville
on Wed 12 Sep 2007 03:28 PM PDT
In Mexico, when
referring to the U. S. State of California, don't call it California,
call it Alta California, thus showing that you realize there are three
Californias -- the U. S. state and the two Mexican states, Baja
California and Baja California Sur. Mexicans are so unaccustomed
to gringos using the term Alta California that they will sometime laugh
when they hear it, but it's a laugh of satisfaction and approval.
I'm sure I don't have to encourage anyone not to refer to Cabo San Lucas as "Cabo", but by the same token, don't refer to Baja California as Baja. Baja
just means "lower". It's sort of like saying, "I'm going to
North," when what you mean is, "I'm going to North Dakota."
In spite of the above, get hold of a copy Baja in the Moon Handbooks series. It offered the most sensible advice about traveling in Baja California and the most reliable
recommendations about hotels and restaurants. We carried the
2004 edition, which was already outdated in some respects, but there's
a new edition coming out this month (see above.) Also, be sure to
carry the AAA road map of Baja California, the best one available north
of the line.
Take along some chewable Pepto Bismol tablets. These handled all
the (very mild) stomach upsets we suffered in Mexico. Take along
some Benadryl, in case of wasp and bee stings. In the desert
environment of Baja California, bees and wasps will appear out of
nowhere, in the midst of the most barren wasteland, if you expose so
much as cookie crumb, or open a container of anything liquid. If
you keep items made with sugar wrapped and stuff tissue paper into the
tops of open soda or beer containers, they vanish just as quickly.
But accidents can happen. On our fishing expedition, a fellow
passenger in our van popped open a beer when she got back to the beach
after her time on the water. Within about two sips, and without
her realizing it, a bee got into the bottle. She swallowed it and
it stung the inside of her throat on the way down. We were at
least an hour away from any kind of medical facility, and if my sister
hadn't had some liquid Benadryl in her fanny pack, the situation could
have been dangerous. As it was the Benadryl reduced the swelling
in the woman's throat, allowing her to breathe freely, and some Advil
(which my sister was also carrying) helped her manage the excruciating
pain
I have no idea why my sister was carrying Benadryl in her fanny pack --
just as a general precaution, she claimed, though I suspect that
Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe put the idea into her head precisely for
the emergency in question.
This brings me to my final tip -- always listen to the promptings of La Morenita. She will never steer you wrong.
For previous Baja California trip reports, go here.
[Photos © 2007 Harry Rossi]
Monday, September 10
MORE TIPS FOR TRAVELING IN MEXICO
by
Lloydville
on Mon 10 Sep 2007 12:40 AM PDT
First
tip -- if you're a guy, wear a straw cowboy hat. I don't pretend
to understand the full cultural significance of the straw cowboy hat in
Mexico, but I do know that it has replaced the sombrero as the national
headgear, though it's not nearly as ubiquitous as the sombrero used to
be. The sombrero has become ceremonial, part of a costume used on
festive occasions and by theatrical mariachi troupes. The bands
of strolling musicians who play in restaurants, for example, wear straw
cowboy hats.
Hip young kids in Mexico don't wear straw cowboy hats, nor do
sophisticated professionals, and the baseball cap is making strong
inroads everywhere, even in rural areas.
The straw cowboy hat
seems to have something of the significance of the cowboy hat in
America, a sign of solidarity with the nation's rural roots and the
romance of the ranchero.
The important thing is that Yankee tourists don't usually wear straw
cowboy hats. My three traveling companions, all blond, were
usually taken at once as Yankees, but people sometimes expressed
surprise to find that I wasn't Mexican. Even when I was taken as
a gringo, the hat seemed to confer on me the benefit of the doubt,
especially at the ubiquitous army checkpoints where they stop your car
to look for drugs. (They have stepped these up recently at the
urging of the U. S. government, so don't blame Mexico for the resulting
inconvenience.) We were usually ushered through these with
only the most cursory of inspections, while other gringos were being
searched rigorously. I attribute this to the formal and
respectful greetings I offered to the soldiers -- and to the hat.
I live in a U. S. state that still considers itself Western.
Wearing a cowboy hat in Las Vegas doesn't arouse any special curiosity
outside of the fancy casinos or yuppie enclaves like Summerlin . . . so
I didn't feel that wearing one in Mexico constituted any kind of
charade. The hat seems to mean more or less the same thing on
both sides of the border. Maybe that's the point.
Second tip -- travel with kids. Mexicans have an instinctive
reaction to kids that instantly dissolves all linguistic and
cultural barriers. They like having them around. They like
you for bringing them around.
Third tip -- avoid the Pacific coast of Baja California above
Ensenada. Even if you're motoring down from San Diego, go east
and cross at Tecate. The Pacific coast above Ensenada offers a
vision of the future of Baja California, as more and more Yankees
retire or build vacation homes there. The vision will make you
ashamed of being a Yankee and depressed about the future of Baja
California.
Fourth tip -- go! Just go. Below Ensenada, and outside the
city limits of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico is still there. Its
gracious and humane culture has much to teach and many ways of
enchanting its complacent neighbors north of the border.
For previous Baja California trip reports, go here.
[Photos © 2007 Harry Rossi]
Saturday, September 8
DRIVING IN MEXICO
by
Lloydville
on Sat 08 Sep 2007 01:09 PM PDT
There's
really no way to explain this precisely, but driving in Mexico is
different from driving in the States. Mexicans don't follow
roadsigns or rules except in the vaguest sort of way -- they respond to
the behavior of other drivers. At an intersection with four-way
stop signs, a Mexican driver, if he or she thinks there's time, will
scoot through on the cross street ahead of you without stopping at all
-- you are expected to expect this and react accordingly.
Anything is permitted between drivers as long as it makes sense.
It's more like navigating a crowded sidewalk as a pedestrian than
driving on streets and highways north of the border. In other
words, it doesn't work if people aren't instinctively respectful of
other people's space and right of way.
I came to enjoy driving in Mexico very much -- it was always an
adventure and always interesting, because it required you to pay
attention to other drivers, to imagine what they were thinking.
It was disturbing to drive in Las Vegas afterwards. I found it
almost impossible to imagine what other drivers were thinking --
because they usually weren't thinking at all. Cell phones are a
big part of the problem here -- in Mexico it's illegal to drive while
talking on a cell phone, and people, at least in Baja California, don't
do it. Not, I suspect, because it's against the law, but because it's not
sensible. In general, drivers in the States rely on lanes and
signs and signals to avoid collisions with other cars. In Mexico, you have
to rely on a careful anticipation of how others are going to behave -- and sometimes of how livestock are going to behave.
On a related note, streets signs are posted very spottily in Mexican
towns, even in big towns like La Paz. You can't navigate by them,
even with a reliable map. This requires stopping often to ask
directions -- an occasion for a social interaction that is almost
always pleasant. Why put up street signs when you can have a
friendly interchange with a human being who will tell you how to get
where you're going, and the best way to get there?
Once we got caught in a maze of street construction in Loreto.
There were policemen posted at all the intersections with
detours. When you asked one how to get to Mexico 1, he would
point vaguely in a certain direction -- "That way." Eventually,
that way would lead you to another policemen, who would tell you to go
"up there." At last you'd find yourself back on a familiar
street, heading for Mexico 1. Why complicate things with
elaborate directions, much less with temporary signs, when there are
enough officers around to give you the part of the puzzle you need at
any given moment?
It should be noted that the police in Mexico do enforce the driving
laws. Contrary to popular belief they don't target tourists, but
they don't give them a pass, either. Noting the presence of
police is part of the acute environmental awareness necessary for
driving in Mexico.
For previous Baja California trip reports, go here.
[Photos © 2007 Harry Rossi]
Thursday, September 6
TODAY'S TIP FOR TRAVELING IN MEXICO
by
Lloydville
on Thu 06 Sep 2007 09:47 AM PDT
The
most important thing to know about everyday Mexican culture is that
it's organized around a system of subtle but highly formal and
ritualized courtesies between people. Even when you have business
to conduct in Mexico, the situation -- at a gas pump, a cashier's stand
in a department store, a roadside taquería
-- is first and foremost social, not commercial. If you treat a
Mexican waiter or merchant or clerk as a functionary, if you get right
down to business or generally act as if you're in a hurry to conclude
it, the Mexican is likely to see you, quite correctly, as a barbarian.
Mexicans are accustomed to Yankees behaving like barbarians. They
have a defensive reserve when dealing with gringos. We saw pompous middle-aged Yankees, soi-disant
sportsmen, ordering dignified waiters and bartenders around as though
they were children. The waiters and bartenders took a little
extra time doing what they were told, and if you caught their eye in
such moments, they would offer the slightest trace of a smile . . . and
a shrug. A civilized person can never be humiliated by a
barbarian -- only saddened, or amused.
But if you
take your time, look them in the eye, exchange greetings like a
civilized human being, they are more than likely to break out in wide
smiles and treat you with an almost familial warmth. If you show
them that you're interested in them, they become interested in you,
interested in what you want, interested in helping you get it. The situation has become personal -- humane.
The moment of greeting, of establishing a personal contact, can be very
brief, but it must entail a perceptible pause, an unhurried ease, a
sense that nothing will or should happen until the two of you have
sized each other up and shown each other respect. Your Spanish
can be dreadful -- it's the timing and the demeanor of the parties that
define the interchange.
Mexicans are never servile, but they have a servile mask they can
assume when dealing with barbarians. It's a mechanism for getting
through with the interaction as quickly and painlessly as
possible. It has a melancholy quality, too -- because in truth they are feeling
sorry for you. But nothing delights a Mexican more than being of
service to a compadre.
Accommodation and co-operation are values of the highest order in
Mexico -- a legacy of its revolutionary history and a necessity in an
underdeveloped economy.
When we took our cruise to the Isla Espíritu Santo I left the
lights of my car on. When we got back the battery was dead.
The guy who rents the kayaks at Pichilingue instantly went to his car,
pulled it around to mine and got out his jumper cables. But we
couldn't get my car into neutral without power and so couldn't push it
out close enough to the guy's car to hook the engines up. The guy
went and got his boat battery, which charged my engine enough to allow
the shift to neutral. We pushed the car next to his and soon had
it going again. He never once gave the impression that he was
doing me a favor. When I slipped him 100 pesos afterwards he
nodded gravely but didn't look at the bill -- just tucked it into his
pocket. The gesture had been enough -- but the gesture was very
important.
Bargaining in Mexico is a game between equals, conducted not for financial
advantage to either party, but for fun. We saw fellow tourists
angrily and self-righteously berating a hotel clerk for not honoring
some sort of discount coupon, treating the clerk like an imbecile.
The clerk, who spoke perfect English, pretended not to understand what they were saying.
But when my sister haggled with a hotel clerk for a reduced room rate by
suggesting, with a face that was a little too perfectly straight, that
her children were weeping and fainting in the car from heat exhaustion,
the clerk laughed . . . and reduced the rate. Once a hotel clerk
told my sister that he couldn't reduce his rates because it was high
season. "But high season is in February," she replied. The
clerk looked around furtively, pressing a finger to his lips.
"Tell no one," he said. My sister laughed . . . and he reduced
the rate. The game had been played well.
Some mornings in La Paz I would go across the street from our hotel to
a little food stand in a park, for a cup of coffee. It cost eight
pesos and I would always leave the senora
behind the counter ten pesos, which she always accepted with a mixture
of gracious formality and genuine delight. Once my sister joined
me for coffee and when she went to pay for it, the senora
felt it was her duty to tell my sister that I customarily left a
two-peso tip. I think she was afraid that my sister might
embarrass herself, and perhaps compromise my own honor, by forgetting this tiny, infinitesimal courtesy.
For previous Baja California trip reports, go here.
[Photos © 2007 Harry Rossi]
Tuesday, September 4
LEAVING LA PAZ
by
Lloydville
on Tue 04 Sep 2007 09:22 AM PDT
We
hated to leave La Paz but the hotel bill, even with the discount rate,
was mounting and the kids had stories they wanted to tell their dad and
their friends back in Los Angeles. So we packed our frozen fish
in a cooler and headed north again, a prospect made more pleasant by
the thought of re-visiting the towns we'd stopped at on the way down.
There was much excitement about the first night's stop in Loreto,
because of that great pool, but the La Pinta inn there was booked --
which turned out to be a happy circumstance in the end because it drove
us to the Hotel Oasis, which was wondrous:
A great bar where the
kids were welcome to hang out, playing darts and pool, a great seaside
restaurant, hammocks strung up between the palm trees and on the
porches. Nora took advantage of one of them to finish the magical
book Half Magic:
On subsequent days, San Ignacio and Catavina proved to be every bit as
charming as we remembered them. There was even a horse grazing outside our rooms this time at the La Pinta in San Ignacio:
But we made a fatal miscalculation at
the end of the journey. We decided to drive north of Ensenada and
stay at Rosarito, and then take the toll roads across to Tecate, to
save some time.
It was fun to drive by the Fox studio outside Rosarito, where Titanic
was filmed, but the town itself was a nightmare of traffic and hustlers
and tourists. We stayed at a bland motel, whose only advantage
was that it was across the street from a famous old restaurant
specializing in carnitas, slow-roasted pork, which we hadn't run into
often in Baja California (it's not a specialty of the region.) The carnitas was good, and so was a
shrine near the restrooms to Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe:
Driving the next day proved to be a nightmare. The toll road
north was fine and fast, but there were no signs for the turn-off to
the toll road to Tecate and we got lost in the shabby maze of a Tijuana
suburb. Between the hideous condos on the coast and the wretched
poverty of Tijuana, we felt as though we'd entered another
country. It made me think of the old saying -- "Poor
Mexico! So far from God, so near to the United States of
America!" Things in this part of Mexico are probably just going
to get worse in the years ahead, and I don't think the condo-sized
Jesus, below, is going to help much.
We eventually made it to Tecate, where we waited for over an hour in a
long line of cars to cross the border. The crossing itself was a
breeze. The U. S. guard, who spoke English with a Spanish accent,
asked us a few questions then waved us through -- and suddenly it was
all over. We were back in the States.
All that was left was to miss Mexico -- something I haven't stopped doing since.
For previous Baja California trip reports, go here.
[Photos © 2007 Lloyd Fonvielle & Harry Rossi]
Sunday, September 2
PESCADORES
by
Lloydville
on Sun 02 Sep 2007 06:55 AM PDT
The
Mar de Cortés is one of the world's great fishing grounds and we
decided we couldn't end our time in Baja California without at least
one fishing expedition. Morning is the best time to catch fish in
the waters around La Paz -- the earlier the better -- so we decided to
arrange the expedition through the hotel, which meant we'd get picked
up there instead of having to drive ourselves to a distant rendezvous at some
ungodly hour.
Captain Jack, the hotel's agent for such things, confirmed the wisdom
of this when he told us we had to be ready to leave at quarter to five
in the morning. We would be driving an hour to the beach we'd set
off from. The 4:45 departure and the long drive sounded grim
but encouraging -- we would be in the hands of people who were serious
about catching fish.
We stumbled into a van with four other pescadores
at the appointed hour and headed off towards the west, across the
peninsula that forms one side of the Bahía de La Paz. The last
part of the trip took us over bone-rattling unpaved roads to a remote
beach lined with pangas. The sun had not yet risen but Jorge, the
captain of the panga we'd rented, appeared out of the darkness and
rounded us up, loaded rods and a drink cooler into his boat, dragged
the boat into the ocean, helped us on board and set off towards the
Isla Cerralvo, about a half hour away by sea.
Just off the island he rendezvous-ed with two men in a skiff who sold
us our live bait for the day. The two men wore baseball caps and
slickers and had the exact demeanor of Maine lobstermen -- with faces
that seemed carved from granite. (People who work the sea tend to become mythological.)
The sun was well up by now, and our taciturn captain finally asked us
what sort of fish we were looking to catch. "Fish to eat," I
said. "Only fish to eat." His face lit up, he smiled
happily and began replacing the big hooks on the poles with smaller
ones. I don't know if he was happy because he thought catching
fish to eat made sense, or because it meant he wouldn't have to deal
with the sort of egos that can't be satisfied with anything less than
impressive sporting trophies, but he was incredibly kind to us from
then on, warm and solicitous.
There were several other chartered boats out in the channel looking for
fish -- all open pangas like ours. Our captain looked around to
see who was catching what and finally stopped at a likely spot.
He baited our lines for us and spooled them out by hand to the
indicated depth -- he said that the channel here was about 60 feet
deep, its bottom lined with rocks which attracted marine life of all
sorts.
It's always so dramatic and mysterious to set a fishing line out into
the ocean -- it seems wildly improbable that it will ever connect with
anything swimming down in that alien realm. I was so happy just
to be out on the surface of that enchanting sea that I wouldn't have minded if we never
caught a thing. But almost instantly Nora's rod began to
jerk. "Fish!" shouted the captain, and slowly but surely Nora
reeled in a big, beautiful dorado, also called a mahi mahi, one of the
tastiest fish to be found in any ocean.
Then I hooked something really big -- it was all I could do to land
it. But it turned out to be a bonito, a humongous bonito, which
is not a good a good fish to eat. The captain said he would save
it anyway to give to a friend, for shark bait.
Then Nora landed a smaller bonito, which we threw back, and I landed a good-sized tuna -- which of course we kept.
By this time Harry had
become seasick. He was truly miserable but the beach was too far
away to land him on -- an hour's round trip. Finally he threw up
over the side, said he felt much better, took up his rod and
immediately caught a nice tuna of his own.
Then his stomach turned
on him again and he was more or less out of commission for the rest of
the trip. (This explains why there are no cool photos here of our time out on the water.)
I caught a parga (a red snapper), a great eating fish, and a trigger fish,
an odd-looking flat fish which I'd never heard of before. "It makes the best ceviche," our
captain assured us -- and he was so right. Lee caught a tuna
then, and we felt we'd had a most successful expedition.
Back on shore the captain (sharpening his knife above) filleted the fish and our driver put it in a
cooler in the van. (I gave the captain my big tuna for his family
-- we had more fish than we could eat ourselves in several meals.)
In La Paz that afternoon I took our fish to the restaurant at the hotel and asked
the staff to cook up enough of it for dinner for four that evening and
to
freeze the rest. I asked them to make some ceviche out of the
trigger fish. The waiters had to call the chef to identify the
trigger fish, which they didn't recognize, but he beamed when he saw
it. "Ceviche -- yes," he said.
That night we dined like kings -- like fishermen. Nora's
dorado
was generally acclaimed as the best-tasting fish of them all, which is
saying a lot when the competition is freshly caught tuna and red
snapper, and the
ceviche made from the trigger fish was sublime. The ocean had
been generous to us, and we took no more from it than we could
use. Life was good.
For previous Baja California trip reports, go here.
[Photos © 2007 Harry Rossi]
Friday, August 31
FOOD IN LA PAZ
by
Lloydville
on Fri 31 Aug 2007 03:43 AM PDT
It's
hard to have a bad meal in La Paz, especially if you stick to
seafood. In fact, if you stick to seafood (and avoid the Burger
King and Applebee's) it's hard not to stumble upon some of the best
meals of your life, just about anywhere.
The fanciest place we ate at in La Paz was the Bermejo, the restaurant
at Los Arcos, our hotel, but we didn't pay fancy prices there because
we dined on fish we'd caught ourselves (an experience I'll write about
in a later post.) The hotel, which caters to fishermen, is happy
to prepare fish you supply yourself, and to freeze any of it you want
to carry home with you.
The simplest place we ate at was the Super Tacos de Baja California
Hermanos Gonzáles, an outdoor stand with a big terrace that's an
outgrowth of a sidewalk stand that got so popular it had to
expand. My sister Lee had some stupendous fish ceviche there,
Harry and I shared some equally stupendous octopus and clam
tacos. (Nora isn't a seafood fanatic and often had quesadillas of
one sort or another.) We never ate better or cheaper food
anywhere in Baja
California. One wall of the place had cool murals (above.)
One evening we took a lengthy walk along the marinas to the south of the malecón
to a medium-priced restaurant called the La Costa, palapa-roofed, right
next to the water. We had super-fresh seafood there and Harry
felt moved to record the crab dinner he ate. "A lot of work," he
said, "but worth it."
The Bismark is a rarity -- an indoor seafood restaurant back several blocks from the malecón.
The seafood was terrific and the decor was even better:
Harry and
I had dinner one evening at the Bismark II, which the clerk at our
hotel recommended. It's right across the street from the malecón,
with seating on a terrace or back under a high palapa roof. A
charming place with the same great seafood as its parent establishment.
The only bad experience we had dining out in La Paz was at a place right on the malecón, the Kiwi. Lee and I had fine smoked marlin tacos and Harry had a wonderful pescado entero
-- a whole fish fried quickly in super-hot oil and then served whole
(but with olives replacing the fried eyes), which Harry also felt moved to
record (see the images at the beginning and end of this post.) But Nora ordered fish and chips and the fish had gone bad
-- very bad. There's just no excuse for this in a restaurant
within spitting distance of the ocean, in a town where fresh seafood is
so ubiquitous and so cheap. Foisting a small bit of bad fish on a
child might have saved the restaurant as much as fifty cents, I
suspect, but it lost our goodwill forever.
La Paz is a seafood lover's paradise, not just because there's so much
and such a great variety of it, and not just because it's so fresh, but because of the simple, perfect
ways it's cooked and served. You feel you're eating the same food
the chef would make for himself or herself, or for their families,
prepared with the same unpretentious care and respect.
For previous Baja California trip reports, go here.
[Photos © 2007 Harry Rossi]
Wednesday, August 29
LAND'S END
by
Lloydville
on Wed 29 Aug 2007 01:28 AM PDT
I
was leery of visiting Cabo San Lucas, reputed to be an outpost of
Orange County, but El Arco is there, the rock arch (above) that marks the
bottom of the Baja California peninsula, and it seemed unthinkable to
have driven most of the length of the peninsula and not visit its
terminal point, where the waters of the Pacific meet with the waters of
the Mar de Cortés.
We decided to make a beeline for land's end, see the cape, and head
straight back to La Paz. This turned out to be easier than
expected because there's a new road to Cabo San Lucas from La Paz
which runs down the Pacific side of the peninsula. (Mexico 1,
formerly the only paved route from La Paz to the cape, runs down the eastern shore of the peninsula and is a bit longer.)
The new road on the Pacific side is in superb shape, allowing for faster speeds than
normal, and we made it to Cabo San Lucas well before noon. The
town of Cabo San Lucas still has some charm, but it's ringed about by
hideous condo compounds -- enclaves for people who want the views but
don't want to live among Mexicans, in anything resembling Mexican
culture. In forty years the whole of Baja California will
probably be encrusted with these compounds, as the Pacific coast above
Ensenada already is. Go see it now, before the
yuppie stain grows insupportable.
The tip of the cape can only be visited by sea, unless you're an expert
rock climber. We rented places in one of the glass-bottom
superpangas that take tourists out for a look. Fortunately the
other passengers were one large extended Mexican family, cheerful and
friendly and good company.
As we motored out of the harbor we were greeted by the strange and
nauseating sight of huge party boats filled with tourists drinking and
listening to bad pop music from live bands blaring their sounds out
over huge amplifiers. "We're having an experience -- we're having
fun now!" was the message. Not. "We might as well be in Las
Vegas!" was more like it.
El Arco looks as though it might have been designed for dramatic effect
and beauty by some 19-Century landscape artist like Frederick Law
Olmstead. It's a most appropriate and theatrical punctuation mark
at the end of the great peninsula. Just beyond it you can
actually see the light green water of the Mar de Cortés mix with the deeper
blue of the Pacific.
The captain of our panga had his wife and kids and father on board --
his oldest son took the helm on the ride back to the docks. His
father beamed at him and made sure we all saw how well he was doing.
We decided not to tarry in Cabo San Lucas but headed back
towards La Paz and stopped about halfway there at Todos Santos for
lunch. Todos Santos is a lovely little town that's become
something of an artists' colony. We looked forward to visiting
the galleries there, but they were all closed, because we came on
a Sunday. You would think that Sunday would be the one day of the
week most likely to bring tourists into the galleries, but there is
obviously a higher law at work here -- the Lord's day, and the day of
rest, trumping commercial concerns.
We did have a fine lunch at the Hotel California, a charming place
that
is often visited by Americans on the mistaken assumption that it has
some connection with the Eagles' song. Harry had the Mexican
equivalent of surf 'n' turf -- a plate of shrimp and carne asada tacos.
We got back to La Paz before dark, in time for drinks at sunset on the terrace of the Hotel Perla.
We were happy we'd visited Cabo San Lucas,
and land's end -- even happier that we didn't have to spend the night
there.
For previous Baja California trip reports, go here.
[Photos © 2007 Harry Rossi]
Monday, August 27
ESPIRITU SANTO
by
Lloydville
on Mon 27 Aug 2007 12:03 AM PDT
The
early Spanish explorers of Mexico, who almost always traveled with
priests, had a habit of giving religious names to the places they
"discovered" -- which was fortuitous with respect to the region of the
Mar de Cortés, which has an unearthly, supernatural beauty. It's
hard to imagine talking about, even thinking about, the Isla Espíritu
Santo, Holy Spirit Island, under some more prosaic name.
It's a severe, haunted, sublime place. When the Spanish first
arrived there were about 300 Indians living there -- they must have
been hard, solitary folk. Disease or some other European-borne
catastrophe left the island unpopulated until a French entrepreneur set
up a camp there for pearl fishing around the time of the outbreak of
the Mexican Revolution. Disease again intervened, wiping out the
pearl-oyster beds throughout the Mar de Cortés between 1936 and 1941.
Today there are a few shacks used by local fishermen (with solar panels
on their roofs for electricity) and a luxury tent camp for wealthy tourists.
There is something shocking, even frightening about the landscape of
Espíritu Santo. It's a place for gods and monsters, not
people. I kept thinking that when blind Homer imagined the
settings of The Odyssey in his mind's eye, they probably often resembled the Isla Espíritu Santo.
We rented a panga, with a captain, at Pichilingue beach for a cruise to
the island.
It was a magical journey -- we flew like the wind
across miles of open sea to reach the island, then circumnavigated it
slowly, pausing to marvel at many wonders.
The captain took us
at speed through rock-bound channels barely wider than his boat, into caves and
along the seemingly endless curves of totally empty beaches, running the boat close in to the shore for dramatic effect.
We stopped to snorkel at a small island populated by hundreds of
braying sea lions, who swam close to us when we were in the water, eying us
ironically. "You don't really think you can pass muster as an
aquatic mammal?" they seemed to say.
We stopped to look at what appears to be a mask carved into the rock
face of the island. That seemed like an ironic gesture by nature
itself, vaguely threatening.
Finally we came ashore at a lovely beach. The captain set up a
table under an umbrella and produced lunch -- ham and cheese
sandwiches, exceptionally fine fish ceviche and picked marlin. We swam and ate and
felt utterly elated.
It was good to go to the island, and good to leave it -- it didn't seem
like a place that wanted to be visited for too long by the children of
men. All the same it might be interesting to camp out on it for a night
-- like spending a night in a haunted house. I imagine one would
hear exceedingly strange voices in the wind.
For previous Baja California trip reports, go here.
[Photos © 2007 Harry Rossi]
Saturday, August 25
BEACHES
by
Lloydville
on Sat 25 Aug 2007 12:36 AM PDT
The beach along the malecón
in La Paz is narrow and the water is shallow -- not good for
swimming. But within 20 minutes of the town are beaches of
greater charm and a few of magical splendor. The first one we
visited was Pichilingue -- not a spectacular beach in itself but
featuring a big palapa-roofed restaurant next to the water with sublime
seafood. I had some stuffed clams there that were memorable -- Nora gave a very high rating to the piñadas.
Adults can sit in the shade of the palapa roof, eating and drinking
exceptionally well, while their kids frolic in the ocean, which makes
for a pleasant afternoon. Harry and Nora went kayaking and Lee
made friends with a panga captain who offered to take us on a tour of
Espíritu Santo island for a price far lower than we'd pay if we
arranged the trip in La Paz. We checked on this back in La Paz,
found he was right, and came back the next day to sign up for the
cruise.
On a different day we spent an afternoon at Balandra beach, which was
truly breathtaking. It curves around a shallow bay, which you can
walk across to visit the famous mushroom rock, an iconic landmark of
the area.
There's a reproduction of it in the central square of
La Paz, across from the cathedral:
Smaller reproductions can be
bought as souvenirs, though I really can't imagine who would buy such a thing:
Some American tourists in La Paz told us
that the rock had actually toppled off its stem a few years ago and had to be
bolted back together -- which turned out to be true.
For previous Baja California trip reports, go here.
[Original photos © 2007 Harry Rossi]
Thursday, August 23
LA PAZ
by
Lloydville
on Thu 23 Aug 2007 12:05 AM PDT
Mexico
1 leaves the coast of the Mar de Cortés just south of Loreto and cuts
back into the interior of the peninsula before veering east again and
doubling back to the great sea at the Bahía de La Paz. The city
of La Paz, nestled in the wide curve of the bay, was our main destination on this trip and Harry recorded the
attitudes of the passengers at the moment we arrived there.
Here's John Steinbeck on La Paz, as it was back in the 1940s:
La Paz grew in fascination as we
approached. The square, iron-shuttered colonial houses stood up
right in back of the beach with rows of beautiful trees in front of
them. It is a lovely place. There is a broad promenade
along the water lined with benches, named for dead residents of the
city, where one may rest oneself . . . [A] cloud of delight hangs
over the distant city from the time when it was the great pearl center
of the world . . . Guyamas is busier, they say, and Mazatlán
gayer, but La Paz is antigua.
We didn't approach La Paz from the water, as Steinbeck did, and it has
changed plenty since his time, but a cloud of delight still hangs over
it, purely Mexican, not fueled by American tourist dollars, and it it
still antigua, old and wise. It's a tourist town, but it caters to
Mexican tourists, and so is graceful and slow in its rhythms, without
the frenzied party-til-you-puke atmosphere of Cabo San Lucas or the
Pacific coast above Ensenada.
There is nothing spectacular about the place, its allure is quiet . . .
but powerful. After a day there I never wanted to leave, and I
wish I was there right now.
I thought it would be good to stay for at least a night or two at the
Hotel Perla, the first "destination hotel" in La Paz, built in the
1940s, which for a short time, into the 50s, was host to Hollywood and
literary celebrities, a kind of proto Cabo San Lucas -- but the Perla was full, which led us happily
to the second destination hotel built in La Paz, not long after the
Perla, the Los Arcos. The rooms in the main building were too
pricey for us, but we got fine rooms in a more recent extension of the
hotel across the street, the Cabañas de Los Arcos.
The main hotel was full of American fishermen, the cabañas were full of
Mexican families and so pleasant that, after a couple of days spent
searching for even cheaper accommodations, we sent my sister Lee forth
to negotiate a lower rate for an extended stay at the Los
Arcos. This she accomplished, and when we checked out we
discovered that they had applied the rate retroactively to our first
days there as well.
This rate was cheaper than you'd expect to find at a Holiday Inn next to an
ugly Interstate off-ramp in the United States, though the big rooms had
views of the Mar de Cortés, the service was superb and the hotel was
located on the malecón, the
broad promenade along the water that Steinbeck mentions and that is the
heart of La Paz's daily public life, especially after dark.
I felt I had come home.
For previous Baja California trip reports, go here.
[Photos © 2007 Harry Rossi]
Tuesday, August 21
MAR DE CORTES
by
Lloydville
on Tue 21 Aug 2007 02:52 AM PDT
There
is just no way to describe the coast and the islands of the Mar de
Cortés. Parts of it remind you of stretches along the coast of Alta
California as it must have been in frontier times. Most parts of
it seem like a landscape from another planet, or like our own earth
reduced to its purest elements -- sea, land, no frills.
Every mile of Mexico 1 that takes you within sight of the Mar de Cortés is beautiful and inspiring.
Driving east from San Ignacio we hit the Mar de Cortés just north of
Santa Rosalía. Then we drove south in a state of enchantment to
Mulegé, a town built next to a palm-lined estuary, and stopped for
lunch at Dony's taquería,
where we had some fine shrimp and carne asada tacos at a sidewalk
counter. Then we followed the road down the coast to Loreto,
where we spent the night.
Loreto is rumored to be the "next cool place" in Baja California, which
means that developers are building fancy condo compounds near it.
The town itself is pleasant enough, though a bit touristy. It's a
famous place from which to set out on the Mar de Cortés for fishing,
and we found that American fishermen tended to be the most
objectionable tourists in Baja California -- mostly white, middle-aged
men with loud voices pretending to be Ernest Hemingway and behaving as
though Mexico was a country populated entirely by domestic
servants. (We eventually became fishermen ourselves, however, and met some
very nice pescadores among the blowhards.)
The La Pinta inn we stayed at in Loreto was the shabbiest one we
encountered on our trip but it had a big pool right next to the ocean
with an island in the middle of it that thrilled Harry and Nora.
Nora also had her first piñada here, a pineapple smoothie. She became an afficionada
of the concoction and had them everywhere, rating their
qualities. The ones with a cherry and a pineapple slice included
always rated highest, especially if they were served in a large
frosted-glass goblet.
Lee had her first fish ceviche
at the restaurant at the inn, which became an obsession of hers for the
rest of the trip. All of it was good, but the best was a ceviche made from a trigger fish I caught myself . . . but that's a tale for another time.
On the Mar de Cortés, sunsets like the one above, at Loreto, which look unreal at first, quickly begin to seem routine -- I guess because they are.
For previous Baja California trip reports, go here.
[Photos © 2007 Harry Rossi]
Sunday, August 19
MEXICO 1
by
Lloydville
on Sun 19 Aug 2007 01:34 AM PDT
Traveling
by car down the Baja California peninsula is one of the world's great
drives. You pass through ever-shifting landscapes of the most
extreme, surreal beauty -- from high desert to low, from mountain to
plain, from the shores of the Pacific Ocean to the shores of the Mar de
Cortés.
The surface of the two-lane highway is very well maintained these days
-- the era of the lethal potholes is over. Gas supplies are
plentiful at the government-owned Pemex stations along the way, though
you'll have trouble finding premium gas, if that's what your car
prefers, between El Rosario and Santa Rosalia. (Stations do run
out of gas from time to time, mostly depending on how many big campers pass
through them in any given week, but if you fill up wherever possible
whenever your tank drops below three-quarters full you'll never get
into any serious trouble.)
Mexico 1 is a marvel of engineering but most of it leaves you
little to
no margin for error. Shoulders are rare, especially on stretches
which
snake through high mountain passes with terrifying drop-offs just
inches from the edge of the road. At every blind curve on such
stretches you just have to pray that oncoming vehicles, especially the
big trucks, will stay in their lanes and leave you enough room to
live. It's on stretches like this that you want to be thinking
about Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe and not about the drop-offs, though
this is difficult sometimes because of road signs reminding you of the
present hazards with icons of tall trucks flying off the edge of the
mountain. Often you really do need supernatural aid to maintain
your nerve -- as the trucker below, with his Jesus and Mary mudflaps,
clearly knows:
Even when the road cuts straight through level desert it's usually
built up on a high causeway with steep sides, no shoulders and few
turn-outs. If you had to veer off the pavement suddenly, even
here, you'd probably roll your vehicle, though the roll probably
wouldn't end in flaming death, as it certainly would in the high
mountain passes. And this is not to mention the livestock that
occasionally decides to share the road with you.
This is a road you never want to travel at night, or at speeds much
above the 80kph limit. I mean, don't even think about it.
The road from San Ignacio to Santa Rosalia on the east coast of the
peninsula is one of the most hair-raising stretches of Mexico 1.
But you're more than rewarded near the end of it by your first sight of
the Mar de Cortés, which is less like a real sea than a sea out of some
ancient legendary tale. It enchants everything.
For previous Baja California trip reports, go here.
[Photos © 2007 Harry Rossi]
Friday, August 17
DATE PALMS
by
Lloydville
on Fri 17 Aug 2007 01:05 AM PDT
On
our third day in Mexico we drove from Catavina, in the center of the
Baja California peninsula, to Guerrero Negro, on the Pacific coast,
where we grabbed some lunch. Guerrero Negro is a fairly charmless
town whose principal industries are harvesting sea salt and servicing
the tourists who come to whale-watch in the nearby Laguna Ojo de
Liebre. (Whale-watching was out of season while we were in
Mexico.) The town has some good restaurants, however, and we had
some great seafood at one of the better of them, the Malarrimo.
Just north of Guerrero Negro is the boundary line between Baja
California and Baja California Sur, where the magic of the peninsula
really begins. We drove that day only as far as San Ignacio, back
in the center of the peninsula on the way to the Mar de Cortés, because
we were told that the last stretch of mountain road leading down to the
east coast of the peninsula was challenging and not to be driven when
tired. That proved to be an understatement.
San Ignacio grew up around a freshwater lagoon, which the Spanish
missionaries tapped for irrigation. What they planted, in great
abundance, were date palms, and so San Ignacio is a most improbable
palm-shaded oasis in the middle of the desert. The town's
once-famous dates have been undercut on the Mexican market by cheaper
dates from abroad, so the town has a sleepy, vaguely depressed air,
though it's still extremely charming, with a central square planted
with tall shade trees and one of the most beautiful missions on the
peninsula.
We ate our first lobster at an old restaurant in town that looked as
though it had seen better days -- lobster tacos for me and a whole
lobster for Harry.
The lobster in both forms was a bit
over-cooked and over-priced but still delightful.
We stayed at
yet another La Pinta inn, one of the few choices for accommodation in
San Ignacio.
When we got to the town it was being spruced up for its annual date
festival, to be held the following week, but there were no dates for
sale anywhere we could find . . . because, we were told, "the date
harvest isn't until October." The mystery of this only added to
the slightly unreal loveliness of the place.
For previous Baja California trip reports, go here.
[Photos © 2007 Harry Rossi]
Wednesday, August 15
TOGETHER
by
Lloydville
on Wed 15 Aug 2007 04:34 AM PDT
In
Mexico, whenever anyone asked where my sister Lee and her kids were
from she always said Alta California. This delighted Mexicans,
who probably think all Americans believe there is only one California,
the U. S. state. In fact there are two others, Baja California
and Baja California Sur, both Mexican states located in the Baja
California peninsula. Mexicali is the administrative center of
Baja California, to the north, and La Paz is the administrative center
of Baja California Sur.
At the La Pinta inn in Catavina my sister ran into a Mexican woman who
had lived in Los Angeles but had moved back because she didn't have
"the right papers" and didn't feel good about it. My sister
remarked on how unfortunate it was that papers could keep the
Californias apart. "I know God meant us to be together," the
woman said, "but something has gone wrong with it." "Maybe we'll
all be one California again," my sister suggested. "I think it
will happen," the woman said, without much conviction.
The woman seemed a bit puzzled about why someone from Alta California
would choose to visit the poorer Californias to the south.
"Because it's so beautiful," my sister said, " and the people are so
wonderful." The woman nodded dubiously.
I suppose it's not surprising that the Mexicans' envy of American
prosperity should cause them to be defensive about their own country,
but I don't think money is the root of the issue. It's more about
children and the future. Mexicans worship children -- their eyes
light up with almost supernatural joy at the sight of niños, even gringo niños.
The poorest of Mexicans will introduce you to their children as though presenting
movie stars. I think when they head north, to endure the
humiliations and hardships of life in El Norte, it's not to get
flat-screen TVs for themselves but a better future for their kids.
The poverty of Mexico, at least in Baja California, south of the
tourist zone, rarely seems ugly or degrading -- the everyday culture of
the nation is rich and humane. But it's so often frozen where it
is -- economic progress is coming but coming slowly. Looking into
the eyes of their niños, many Mexicans may feel that don't have time to wait for it.
They may not realize how much they stand to lose up north. The
idea of making grueling sacrifices for one's children is losing
currency in America, and many Americans no longer believe that their
children will have better lives than they've had. The ragged
Mexican man walking miles through the desert country of the borderlands
to get a back-breaking, low-paying job in the United States probably
has a picture of some children in his pocket. If you're tempted
to fear and despise him, think of that. He may have more to give us than we have to give him.
For previous Baja California trip reports, go here.
[Photos © 2007 Harry Rossi]
Monday, August 13
FROM THE PACIFIC COAST TO THE HIGH DESERT
by
Lloydville
on Mon 13 Aug 2007 03:03 AM PDT
The
first time I visited Ensenada (above) in the late Sixties it was a
small, dusty
tourist town. Now it's a big, sprawling tourist town but still
has some charm. Above Ensenada on the Pacific coast, yuppie scum,
mostly from Alta California, the world headquarters of yuppie scum, has
turned the region into into a nightmare of condos, tourist traps and
perverted, groveling commercialism. This is where you see the
true face of Alta California, "The Wellness State". The influence
of the Great Satan begins
to wear away the further south you go -- only to
flare up again like a festering boil at Cabo San Lucas at the tip of
the peninsula.
On our first full day in Mexico we made it as far as Catavina, a tiny
town in a bizarre high-desert setting in the middle of the
peninsula. (Mexico 1, the only road that goes all the way down to
Cabo San Lucas, zig-zags back and forth across Baja California, from
one coast to the other.) The desert around Catavina is covered in gigantic, car-sized boulders
and tall cactus -- like much of Baja California its landscape is
surreal in the extreme, with an effect on the psyche that can't be evoked by
photographs.
In Catavina we stayed at a La Pinta inn. These are dotted along
Mexico 1, are run by the government and are very pleasant, with a
cantina and restaurant surrounding a small courtyard fountain and rooms
surrounding a larger courtyard with a pool. Mexicans pay about
$57 (American) a night there -- rates for tourists can rise up over
$100 a night, but my sister quickly discovered that Mexican hotel
clerks love
to bargain, especially if the negotiation is conducted with humor, so
we paid well under the tourist rate wherever we stayed. The
clerks always seemed genuinely delighted when Lee managed to talk them
into lowering their rate, as though they were appreciating a clever
goal from an unlikely player in a soccer game.
The terrace behind the restaurant at the Catavina La Pinta looks out
over the mystical desert and has a shrine dedicated to Nuestra Señora
de Guadalupe, which puts everything into perspective. When
driving the roads of Baja California you want constant assurances that La Morenita
is with you, and you want a chance to thank her for getting you to
wherever it is you've gotten. This is psychologically sound,
whatever you think of the theology of it, because it reminds you to
never, ever
take Mexico 1 for granted. It's full of surprises, most
delightful but some hair-raising. I'll write more about Mexico 1 in a later post.
For previous Baja California trip reports, go here.
[Photos © 2007 Harry Rossi & Lloyd Fonvielle]
Saturday, August 11
LA FRONTERA
by
Lloydville
on Sat 11 Aug 2007 01:35 AM PDT
On
the first day of our drive to Baja California we got off to a late
start -- a miscalculation that led to us having to spend our first
night in Blythe, in Alta California. I'm not sure what the deal
with Blythe is, but it seemed like a depressed and hopeless sort of
place. We stayed in a lousy, overpriced motel and were happy to
be on our way again in the morning. Above is a picture of a
rooster on top of a cafe in Vidal Junction, Alta California, on the
road to Blythe. The cafe was closed and the only restrooms we
could find in Vidal Junction were some dirty Porta-Potties behind a gas
station, which was also closed. The sight of a new moon behind the rooster cheered us up immeasurably.
If you drop more or less straight down from Las Vegas you hit the
Mexican border at
Mexicali, but we'd been told that crossing at the smaller town of
Tecate was quicker and
easier, so we veered off westward at El Centro on the I-8, then dropped
down to a smaller road that skirts the border on its way to
Tecate. (Tecate is where the great Mexican beer of the same name
originated, though it's now brewed in other places in Mexico as well.)
It was fascinating to drive through the Imperial Valley of Alta California, past the huge
Sahara-like sandscape of Imperial Dunes and through the lush cultivated
fields beyond them. The water that irrigates the Imperial Valley,
and makes it one of the most productive agricultural regions in the
world, comes from the Colorado River, which used to empty into the top
of the Mar de Cortés. Now only a trickle of it arrives at the
apex of the great sea and the rich delta that used to be there is more
or less a wasteland.
The land above the border on the road to Tecate is well-watered, too,
and very beautiful. We passed four U. S. Border Patrol cars along
the road before crossing quickly and easily into Mexico at
Tecate. You need a Mexican tourist visa if you plan to travel
south of the "tourist zone", or more than about 20 miles into
Mexico. Lee had gotten hers and her kids' in Los Angeles but the
Mexican consulate in Las Vegas doesn't issue them. I got one on
the Mexican side of the border in about 20 minutes, with no trouble at
all. The Mexican border officials were friendly and efficient.
Somehow we managed to find our way through the teeming streets of
Tecate onto Mexico 3, which cuts across the top of Baja California and
hits Mexico 1, and the Pacific, at Ensenada. The road passes
through high valleys where grapes are cultivated and wine made. We
stopped at the largest of the Baja California wineries, L. A. Cetto, a
lovely establishment surrounded by a sea of green vines.
Lee and
I sampled and bought some good, cheap wines there . . .
The kids were
diverted by a pen that held burros . . .
. . . and peacocks . . .
At Ensenada we headed straight for the city's fish market, with its
extraordinary displays of seafood arranged in elaborate, artful piles. We
had some indifferent seafood tacos at one of the small stalls lining
one side of the market, then cast about for a place to stay for the
night.
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