Mexican Beach Life

We spent a week at Playa San Carlos in January. It was the beginning of our six month winter journey around Mexico and it was also the place where we learned to enjoy cold water swimming thanks to the gentle encouragement of fellow van traveler Ron from Iowa. In that week we were hardly alone as there were perhaps a dozen other RVs parked among the bushes on the beach. 

Now as we close in on Memorial Day we are alone on the beach during week days. In the evenings one or two cars come out to enjoy a sunset at the beach after work and on weekends Sundays are packed, the sole day off in Mexico. 

The cultural differences between “gabachos” (a not entirely polite term for foreigners) and Mexicans are highlighted on Sundays. Mexicans don’t have the same view of personal space as we northerners do. They celebrate time off with ear splitting music and if their neighbors are playing a different genre, never mind song, that’s okay. You can hear thumping tubas rappers and seductive ballads all together in one unholy racket on a Mexican beach on Sunday. Fun eh, gabacho?

Mexicans don’t do it to be annoying or to invade your space or send you a message. It’s simply a celebration of life and their families. You will see vast elaborate picnics with three or four generations sprawled on a blanket. If you see a couple walking along a beach by themselves chances are they are gringos. Not always but most often. If you see a couple with children they are Mexicans. Obviously I’m generalizing to make a point. But the way Layne and I travel and camp at the beach is weirdly unnatural to family oriented Mexicans. This is not a country that sees school shootings. Children are cherished. 

We respect the local traditions on Sundays because they have one day to be at ease and we have seven. We plan our weeks around where we will be on weekends and we prefer to be traveling if possible. I hate noise especially when I’m in nature and I struggle with my gringo moments when bird song is smothered by boom boxes. 

But here’s the great thing about these Mexican wild camps, you are free. I don’t just mean there’s no charge to camp, but you are free to live as you please. Play music, be silent, do yoga, walk your dog off leash? No problem. Rusty doesn’t even wear his collar here: he’s nekkid! 

So with freedom comes responsibility as we have been taught. Except that freedom doesn’t quite get the respect it deserves in these places. The question is: can you handle it? Freedom is often quite messy. 

If you can handle loud music once a week can you handle trash distribution all over the place? We in the north have been trained to twitch any time we see someone dumping trash in our presence. It’s second nature after a life time of recycling, composting, and the “reduce reuse and limit packaging” training. Can you suppress your own gringo moments in the face of this? 

Or this, a classic home made porta potty abandoned and up ended in a parking area? 

If this abandoned land contested by rival developers were in the US it would be fenced locked and liability laws would require everyone be kept out. In Mexico it is a public access area with no facilities, no fees and no promises of future accessibility. If you hurt yourself here there’s no one to sue and no one to blame but yourself. You need to be a grown up if you want to beach camp in wild Mexico. 

In the US this might be a state beach with paved parking, with fees, rules and rangers to enforce them. There would be trash cans and toilets but in Mexico a sheet, some buckets and toilet paper scattered to the four winds does well enough. If you wonder why we don’t park in the shade now you know.  

This isn’t Bureau of Land Management  camping either. There are no 14 day limits. Come back next year and the land dispute may be settled and the property may be locked and guarded. Or it may be just as it is today.  

When we plan wild camping anywhere we always try and sort out a back up plan in case the target destination doesn’t work for any reason. If this place were closed we have a nearby truck stop we can use for the night, for instance. 

Often iOverlander user reports will mention trash at the site and sometimes our estimate of trash disagrees with previous visitors comments.  In any event I expect to do a little clean up if we are staying somewhere wild. To that end I have my grabber from my time in the rehab hospital. 

The orange bag is our waterproof trash bin. If we are wild camping for a while we put our trash bags in the smell proof, fly proof orange container for proper dumping later. I have also added trash I’ve picked up around our camp site. You could fill a dumpster with the trash here so we can only grab what we can. In winter when there are a lot of campers all on trash pick up for their own spaces, the place is much cleaner in our experience.  

It is possible to keep your space clean. 

As long as you are patient and appreciate these free open spaces for what they are: yours to enjoy as you please courtesy of your easy going, if cheerfully noisy Mexican hosts. 

And after next Sunday it will all revert to its normal state. If we are here I’ll be out with my grabber. 

Beach Life Again

When we parked back in the same spot as our original anchorage in January we were relieved to see our free camping area was pretty much unchanged. It felt good to be back in San Carlos. 

We first came here in early January, our first week in Mexico in a van and we got right into the spirit of free camping at the beach. This time we came back ready to revisit an old favorite and after five months driving 10,000 miles around Mexico van life has become second nature. 

After we stopped in Hermosillo we had everything organized for a week’s sitting still and we have taken to it right away. It’s been breezy so the swimming has been a bit lumpy but very refreshing. 

Sunday was busy with lots of people but we spent Saturday night at a nearby truck stop with showers and do-it-yourself laundry so we looked clean and presentable to our many neighbors. 

They were families enjoying their one day off at the beach and it was surprisingly quiet and easy going.  No drunks no fights no drama. Though we did get wedged in rather tight: 

Rusty has been delighted to be back running out of GANNET2 with his tail held high. 

We carry my old picker upper tool from my time in the hospital and I’ve been using it to pick up trash of which there was a fair bit left behind  from Sunday, mostly beer cans and toilet paper. 

It’s a pretty nice spot to hang out for a few days. 

Thoughts On Baja

I lack enthusiasm for Baja. We both are glad to be back on mainland Mexico and the change in our attitudes came as a surprise; we found ourselves unaccountably buoyed up as we drove into Sonora. We have completed our winter’s exploration of Mexico and where we travel now will be a return to a some favorite places we wanted to explore again. And as we find our way back to San Carlos, Alamos and Huatabampo in Sonora we are glad to put Baja behind us. 

Baja inspires desire in outdoor enthusiasts and surfers and people who like to sit at desert campsites and go to bed smelling of bonfires. It is a peninsula with beaches and mountains and rocks and a great deal of desert devoid of human beings.  If that sounds appealing you will love Baja. 

To see the peninsula through my eyes is to see a thousand miles of rock and cactus and sand bisected by a thin strip of asphalt dotted with very occasional small towns of little architectural merit. 

Baja is a playground for Americans. In this context I mean Canadians and US citizens. I am well aware that Mexico is geographically located in North America and Mexicans are Americans. But to call someone American is shorthand in my mind for people living north of Mexico. 

Americans have bought second homes and retirement homes across Baja. Many Mexicans who made money in the US have returned to their homeland in an unnoticed  reverse migration from the US and the net result is a bi-cultural state of affairs in Baja. 

You could view Baja as Mexico with training wheels for those keen to learn how to travel in Mexico. You don’t need to speak Spanish, use pesos or even check your vehicle entering Mexico. All Baja is in the Hassle Free Zone which means you only need a permit for yourself and insurance for your vehicle which you can buy online before you enter Mexico. It couldn’t be simpler to get past the wall. 

However limiting travel to Baja means missing out on all the mainland has to offer. We like swimming but what we had expected to find in Baja we found on the mainland. Endless swimming beaches in Baja are either rocky or if sandy sold by the day with guards at gates. The rugged Pacific coast of Baja has the waves surfers need. We found better beaches on the mainland of Mexico for our style of wild camping with easy access to long sandy beaches and swimming. Baja was a surprising disappointment. I had imagined endless wild camping and swimming and beach idleness. 

The mainland offers mountains, rivers, canyons, cathedrals, history, art, museums, music, beaches, assorted climates and people who aren’t steeped in the bi-cultural economy of Baja. No one starts a conversation in English in mainland Mexico. Make an effort in Spanish and they may courteously reply in English to relieve you of your difficulties but Spanish is definitely spoken. 

When I was training new dispatchers I used to tell them everything happens on Duval Street in Key West. I remember a 911 caller telling me he’d had an accident, he’d been rear ended. I asked where he was and his answer was “somewhere on Duval Street.” He was two miles away from Duval at the Shell gas station up the street from the police department. That sort of lack of awareness is normal in a tourist town especially in those moments of stress and it gets tiring dealing with tourists when you live in vacation land. I understand the burn out. 

I like being a tourist. Actually I love it. For me it is a life free of responsibility and it creates a daily kaleidoscope of experiences. To go on vacation for me was a small taste of the life I live now, the permanent tourist. And I am well aware of the disdain the term tourist carries with it. I used to hear locals in Key West, world weary and squirting disdain from every pore, refer to the visitors as tourons. Tourist morons. I never allowed my exhaustion with tourists to be seen on the streets of Key West but that was easy as I knew where I was going to end up: as a touron myself! I tried to answer worried queries without being mean to anxious visitors. 

Baja has what appears to be a touron economy. I can only describe the vibe that way not because anyone was nasty or even unkind but there was a sense of that irritated dependence on tourists. And like the Keys, Baja’s success has brought gentrification wealth and higher prices for the people who live there trying to make a better life for themselves. Those daily tensions are not exactly unfamiliar to me. 

I’ve always been skeptical of the relationships people claim to create on their vacations. I expect that’s just a reflection of my lack of salesman-ship, my shyness or my self sufficiency that I’ve often been told is unnatural. I’ve never made friends with a bartender, though I have had convivial conversations.  The life of the tourist is the life apart which suits me now. Perhaps it won’t suit me in a while but for now I thoroughly enjoy being a feckless nomad. I have wheels and I use them. If you make me feel like a nuisance touron I accept it or move on. 

Mainland Mexico is not in general a touron economy. Obviously there are places where tourists and foreign residents predominate. Google will reveal all of those places if you want to look them up. Pátzcuaro, Lake Chapala, Mérida, San Miguel de Allende, Puerto Vallarta etc…Mexico is vast and a tourist can get lost on the back roads and small villages far from the centers of tourism. 

Even in cities much enjoyed by Americans like Pátzcuaro you can be a touron and tramp the streets and barely notice American residents living around you. And yes, the locals are there to sell to you but across the mainland of the country we found low pressure sales to be the rule. You don’t see streets like this in Baja and I miss these cities and the life of Mexico as lived by ordinary people.  

If it isn’t obvious we aren’t four wheelers or rock climbers or windsurfers. We like to travel for other reasons.  One of the things I like about being on the road is similar to the pleasure we found traveling by boat and that is the discovery of places. I love not knowing what’s over the horizon. Having a destination is critical, it’s not enough to drift. Webb Chiles has mentioned this aspect of travel in his own life in his writings. For me it’s simple: when I am no longer curious about what’s over the horizon I shall stop traveling. Or if travel becomes too arduous. Or prohibited by who knows what dystopian future awaits us. Until then I want to taste variety and we are both glad we gave Baja a try but I doubt we will return.  

In the end Baja just ended up looking like Arizona with a coastline. With the towns amounting to dusty desert villages we looked at each other and decided we missed the mainland. We saw the national park in the mountains and loved it. We enjoyed the valley of the grapes. But we ended up driving a lot and swimming and wild camping very little. We’ll leave it to the adventurers and their surfboards and mountain bikes and jumars and hiking boots. Baja is theirs.