My routines have been disrupted by travel. There is this constant tug in my inner life between seeking routines and sticking to them and stepping outside the routine and enjoying the excitement of change. All my life I have struggled between these two states of being and never more so than since we landed in Baja California Monday morning.
In addition to my struggles to overcome my love of routine I find the remaining part of my personality is devoted to the awkward philosophy of contrarianism and from the outside this attitude can look like nothing more edifying than bloody-mindedness. People who dislike me think I dislike what everyone likes just because I want to be different or annoying or some other creepy reason. I wonder if perhaps I choose to be contrary to reject others before they reject me.
Ask anyone who has ever visited Baja California and they will wax rhapsodic about this desert peninsula about 750 miles long littered with stunning mountain scenery, cacti, and beaches that most people only ever hope to dream of seeing. Ask me about Baja and you will get a different answer: read on.
If you have struggled to read the avalanche of words I have posted on this page since last December you will know I have enjoyed driving Mexico in a way few journeys, few moments in my life prior to retirement have fulfilled me. The past four months have been a continuous unspooling of exceptional moments and days, of extraordinary countryside and above all of life lived in full technicolor across mainland Mexico.
Mainland Mexico is as varied as any country of 120 million inhabitants might be, but along the highways and byways we have seen people up and about selling, doing being in a purely Mexican way. Almost all the time we have been alone on the road, the sole gringos for miles. Obviously we aren't pioneers! Far from it, but there are so few foreigners traveling, the chances of meeting on the road are remote. Suddenly we are in Baja where vans, California license plates and English speakers are two-a-penny.
It feels like a form of gentrification, the local life has been supplanted by the need to provide services to the explorers and adventurers who travel the week beaten paths through Baja of off-roading, surfing and kayaking amongst others. It's no bad thing to bring money to a community, especially a desert like this where economic opportunity is stifled by lack of resources but it wears on me.
Baja California Sur seems to live to serve adventurers in their carefully planned and fully resourced "adventures" in their playground that is Baja. This is Mexico-Lite, a place where English is almost universally spoken, or at least understood, where the campground offered to take payment in dollars (!) yesterday and where the history and culture of Baja California is ignored, unknown and forgotten. Wild camping in Baja is the norm and I love that, but to enjoy the Americanization of everything else is not the goal of my travels.
If you are afraid of Mexico, Baja is the state you first want to visit. This is not a place where you will get lost in Mexico or Mexican culture. It is beautiful, and in the south sparsely populated, and the roads are wide open and smoothly paved. At least having suffered the unmarked topes of Chiapas and the random potholes of winding mountain roads in Guerrero, the little we have seen so far is easy driving. If your goal is to sit on a beach for a month you can do a lot worse than Baja. Indeed, even the grump-potato in me is looking forward to exploring the coast between Loreto and Santa Rosalia on the shore of the Gulf of California, flat turquoise waters, wild camping and splendid beachfronts.
One other note I should make here is that I am told that long stretches of Baja, including favored beach camps are extremely unlikely to offer cell phone connections so I apologize in advance if posts are a bit random for the period of our Baja explorations. We have pondered taking the ferry back to the mainland to complete our journey at some favored spots on the coast on the road back to Naco, Sonora the border crossing, then back to Bisbee Arizona. For the next little while we will devote ourselves to enjoying what Baja does offer and ignoring the reservations I have expressed here about its shortcomings. I think there is a great deal to enjoy whichever route we take back to the United States.
