Breath catching, breathtaking

After a 3.5 hour wait in the long lines to cross back into the US into Calexico, I drove immediately to the shabby-by-US but incredibly-well-appointed by Mexican standards Days Inn in El Centro. Hot water, a king size cama, a heater that works, a desk and a chair, electrical outlets galore, all for a mere $60 US. 

Sappho's low beams quit working about halfway into the Baja trip, but it wasn't a problem there, as I never drive at night in Baja anyway. I tried to cross La Frontera before sunset, to no avail. But it ended up being okay, driving on high beams, the nine miles to the hotel. I expected angry drivers to be flashing their own high beams at me but no one did. Makes me think maybe there's something not quite right about how those are aimed. They are supposed to blind and infuriate people. 

So much unfolded over the time since December 11 when I left Tempe that it's weird trying to shape it. It feels like a few weeks that packed in a year or more. It is also extremely odd, and nauseating (more on that later) being back into the virtual world after hardly any connectivity. I didn't even have network coverage in Anza Borrego State Park in California. In Baja, it is always dicey trying to get connected. There's a lot of wifi but it almost always absolutely fucking sucks. It's easier to not even try most of the time. The shit wifi simply reinforces a feeling of unintentional disconnection, and can ramp up the fomo for sure. Something catches my attention and I want to reply, or make a joke, or connect, and, instead, there's just the spinning wheel of death, forever. 

There's a whole post in the offing about ruined Mexico and the peculiar aesthetic, material and practical aspects of Mexican culture, at least in Baja, but I don't feel up to it this morning. 

Anyway, the trip in pictures and captions. Maybe some way to string a slight narrative together. It's mostly plot, with epiphanies and emotions cut away for the moment. Too raw to write about. 

Playa Saldamando, about 30 miles south of the border. Beachfront camping for $15 a night. The trade off is that the four lane toll highway from Tijuana to Ensenada is less than a half mile to the east, and if the surf is down, one hears truckers using their engines as a brake on the hills, all night. It is an incredibly loud sound that is all pervasive anywhere near the transpeninsular highway. Like Zeus, farting. Great farts of Zeus! one might say, Mexico is often an unbelievably cacophonous country.

The eve of the Winter Solstice, camped in the middle of nowhere, south of the weird little town of El Rosario, on the edge of the central desert, my camp about 300 yards from the ocean. In spots like this, the cacophony finally is gone, and the solitude is perfect. Sappho helped me get to many such places, and, for that alone, I am in love with her, as unavailable as she is. 

Solar powered holiday lights provided endless amusement for me, for some reason. Here, a garland for Sappho, warding off the darkest day of the year.

On the actual solstice, in a favorite palapa at Campo Archelon in Bahía de Los Angeles, with fire, lights, candles. Some ritual of letting the darkness have its way, ironically.

Bahía de Los Angeles is rugged, windblown and wild in the winter. Unbearably hot and still in the summer., It amazes me that a tourist industry works here, although attempts to ramp it up to another level have always failed; more on that when I do the ruined Mexico post.

 Skies of Bahía de Los Angeles. Sunrise, the day after the solstice. The second visit, on the way back, as some of these places are like pivots along the peninsula, on the way down and up, it rained for two days. There was something great about that darkness, cold and wet.

The unending REI and Subaru ads.

 Another pivot down and back is often Playa la Perla, on Bahia Concepcion.

It was rainy here too, somewhat rare for so much rain along the Gulf Coast, even in the winter. 

 Beautifully engineered and constructed palapas. Palo adan main poles, cardon slats, palm leaves. The small plywood shelf a grudging concession to industrial civilization.

 To a small canyon north of Santa Rosalillita, to check out a Cochemiea species. Sappho really does great off road, in sand, mud, rocks, you name it.

Cochemiea maritima, a highly restricted, narrowly adapted endemic cactus, known only from a few rocky canyons on the Pacific coast. Winter growth and flowering is an interesting adaptation.

Luxury.

 I spent Christmas Eve in La Paz, usually bustling and a little crazy. It was quite peaceful. I sometimes expect Noche Buena to be boisterous and wild, with a lot of fireworks and partying, but La Paz was oddly subdued, and everything closed early.

A favorite gelato place, the sign still saying "abierto," people inside. I went in and the happy family that runs the place said "lo siento, cerrado." Ah, okay! Feliz Noche Buena!

Since one of the goals of the trip was to bail on the holidays, it was odd to choose to spend Noche Buena in a city.

 Christmas day I drove up the fairly rough and flooded out East Cape road, through the wildly overdeveloped Los Cabos, to Todos Santos. Pinon and avocado ice cream and a Mexican hot chocolate, my Christmas present to myself.

 I drove north of Todos Santos about ten miles, in the dark, to a string of undeveoped beaches where I have camped in the dunes. It was driving out there that I realized the low beams were out on the car. Ha, typical Mexican chaos.

A great wild spot though, with nothing but frogs and the roar of the nearby Pacific, some coyotes and owls.

A couple nights camping with a very few other Americans on the beach in Santa Rosalillita. I am drawn to camping where I can hear the sea's rote, and, after a few nights, it ceases being a disturbance that sort of keeps me awake and becomes a lullaby. It also blocks out the voices and music of other campers.

 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's spectacular novel, Americanah, was great company all along the way. Highly recommended. A post about that coming up.

 Three species of Fouquieria in this pic: splendens, diguetii, and columnaris. With the Pachycereus interloper.

Another segment of the trip made possible by Sappho was a trip across the peninsula, off road for about 50 miles, from near Bahía de Los Angeles, up and over the San Borja mountains, to Nuevo Rosarito on the Pacific coast. I camped about halfway, in the San Borjas, where it was 34 degrees overnight. There is nothing like the utter and total silence in this place. There's hardly even any animals making any sound at all, overnight. A few times the wild screams and choruses of madness of coyotes. But, otherwise, so silent I could hear my heartbeat inside the hoodie of my sweatshirt. It's unnerving but also healing.

Anyway, after three nights of primitive camping out toward La Gringa near Bahía de Los Angeles, which included stormy weather and long hours lying around in the tent and reading and writing, I decided to head back to the US. I was in Mexico from December 18 to January 1 and took two showers, and stayed one night in a hotel room. 

I took the coast route up from Laguna Chapala, which is now almost entirely paved. Then, there was the 3.5 hour wait at the border. Somehow, it didn't bother me at all. There's a way one gets into the wide open, surreal and unmanageable time of Baja, and a 3.5 hour wait is just what it is. The only thing that gets me when there are long lines is the string of incredibly poor vendors and mendicants endlessly passing by one's car, selling gum, caramel apples, tortillas, ice cream, weird Catholic icons, you name it. It's a way that the universe reminds me of the realities of the place where I have been a guest, on the way out of that place. "Don't forget," the one-legged, one-eyed ancient woman says, with cup extended for pesos. "No se olvide."

But in America, it's easy to forget. "Best restaurants in El Centro," I typed into Google. Number 1: Burgers 'n' Beer. I walked there, and the dozen televisions were blaring with college bowl games. The Hispanic waiter was taken aback when I said "la cuenta, por favor," and then I smiled, and said "sorry, I just got back from Baja." He laughed and said, "I've never been, well, except to go to Mexicali and Tijuana. How far down did you go?" "To Los Cabos." "Wow, that's awesome." He sounded like former students of mine from Arizona. 

Wow, that's awesome. 

Welcome back.