Embajada

Awakening to the real Baja California

It’s 6AM and just getting light far out over the warm and calm Sea of Cortez

The overflowing dumpster we parked next to last night begins to smell with the heat

It only costs $8US and the mosquito bites come at no extra cost

The wi-fi was a fable after the flood destroyed the town

The bumper fell off and we wont be able to carry our broken bikes anymore

Gave them away to two brothers who knew how to ride but never had their own

The flood was everywhere and took the charm out to sea, leaving behind only the brown mud

The empty mission survived and granted comfort to the remaining blindly faithful

We smashed into a piece of concrete poured purposely to jut out into the road

Luckily it hit just the back wheel and we found our dislodged hubcap by the road

A guy at the next llanteria straightened the bent rim with his sledgehammer

Perhaps the tire itself is not quite as ruined as the center of his town

There’s another route back up, but it’s 200 km of unpaved, pot-holed hell

The desert was beautiful, in full bloom, after the two unusual tropical storms

The road was badly damaged as well in too many places to mark any of them at all

Happily, the half-dozen US-funded military drug checkpoints are still in operation

Drinking water costs 20 cents a gallon and bring your own toilet tissue

Don’t put it in the toilet though, just drop it in the smelly bag right there beside the pot

There’s sand or mud or dust which gets all over everything, everywhere you go

The people are so very friendly considering that the overwhelming majority have nothing

The open roads are for dumping and shitting by lovely little accident memorials

We saw unsavory landfills overflowing quietly into the patient sea

We smelled urine as we watched a señorita sweeping her steps with utmost care

Dirty men with greasy hair and tattered clothes toil at nothing, smiling in the sun

A million tiny stands compete to sell a couple cans of Tecaté per day

Pemex is a government-owned oasis offering gasoline, water and home cooking

You’ll never get sick if you buy their good food locally and cook it for yourself

All the tiny towns are called Saint or San or Santa or some other catholic bullcrap

Desperate, sickly, limping dogs scavenge hopelessly wherever people congregate

And their puppies can be found everywhere should one need a friend

The houses are all almost finished, or wait…maybe they are already falling down

Militaristic cowboy Gringos drive by bristling inside powerfully macho OHVs

Penny-pinching and indolent retirees flock down for the sunny winters

Frightened RV adventurers pay a fortune to travel in guarded convoys

The smell of wood, paper and plastic burning often fills the air

Mufflers may be illegal here for all that one can tell by the traffic noise

You fix things only when they break down and the mechanics have the know-how

Outside showers drain on out into the sand, helping to damp down all the dust

The Transpeninsular is two shoulderless lanes dropping off steeply on both sides

Axle smashing topes appear at every block to slow traffic in all the little towns

Fisherman will gladly sell some of their catch by their boats pulled up on the beach

The huge federal prison smells like a broken sewage treatment plant

It’s quiet in the night off the highway and you can really see the Milky Way

Many of the women are quite attractive despite their Church and the constant harassment

The tortillas are made by hand with real lard and, if  they’re bagged, they don’t have labels

The new books look used because they are so covered by a thick dust

It’s good if you find you a peaceful spot, stay still and just kick back

It’s hell to drive for days through heat and sun and dust, garbage, cactus and smoke

You can clean your fish right on the beach and the birds will pick up the place

The Spanish brought the useless missions, epidemics and a tradition of litter

The rich like to fly their planes or sail their yachts from port to port for lunch

The young men stand on the back of crowded open trucks, tasting the wind like dogs

The rusting skeletons of abandoned cars picked clean abound just off desert roads

Working hard and staying dirty without opportunity really is the way of life here

The Californians try to get a hold on all the nicest places, building walls and fences

After a while the dust feels comfortable and it becomes a protective layer

Diabetes and obesity run amok but so many children have those beautiful dark eyes

Begging and the hard sell of worthless trinkets is, refreshingly, almost non-existent

Miles and miles of coastline remain totally unreachable and, therefore, pristine

A faded, dusty Maria sadly watches the drab but noisy procession as Sunday ebbs and flows

Tough survivalist Gringos yard up Hummers in walled hotels with hot showers every night

Cowardly cheap tourists cook their own meals and sleep with their old RV doors open

Mechanics will work 7 days a week and all their clothes are gray and dirty

Boozy retirees recapture their youth under dusty Christmas lights to bad old music

The Transpeninsular wanders and twists aimlessly most all of its way on down

Dust covers the litter and the memorials to the traffic dead in strictly egalitarian measure

The guide books omit the reality of heat, dust, garbage and the unremittingly unsanitary

Very few beggars sit in the dirt and the children do not plead for money

Dead cows and horses bleach to skeletons in peace after fatal highway encounters

Endless blazingly-bleak, hot, dry and stony panoramas separate the travelers oases

The locals know that you are crazy when you feed a mange-ridden stray dog

You can camp for free on the beach but just don’t push your luck and stay on too long

kings of castoff American semis thunder by on unmatched worn out tires

macho trumpeters suffering from deafening jake brake flatulence

short, fat, horny brown men pissing in the littered, smelly desert weeds

these mestizo Don Quixotes charge 24x7 across the narrow Transpeninsular

The gringos know no Spanish and that pays the Bajeños to learn some trade English

But if you try a little Spanish, they’ll be more than glad to help you on your way

No trees or farms hide the unforgivingly hard volcanic landscape

Many scenic bays have been sacrificied as septic tanks for the towns and the campgrounds

The Gulf side is hot and buggy and the waters teem with nasty sting rays

The Pacific coast has fog from the ocean’s cold and it’s too rough for the tourists

The spine is unpopulated except for the rare ranchera or Tecaté shack

Local chicken, beef and seafood is tasty when you come upon it fresh

Village mercados seem to stock just a dusty couple of everything you need

You must buy every ounce of your drinking water at small private stores

Tetanus thrives in the dust waiting for an open wound to happen by

Women and dogs do not have it good and the men must work all the time

The larger restaurants are as expensive as those up north of the border

Tijuana is a filthy pit where life is cheap and so are drugs and medical care

But they’re locking up the coast for Orange County gringos down to Ensenada

Little bits of trendy SoCal behind new security fences surrounded by old poverty

The scorpions are hard to see against the shattered volcanic debris

The rock art appears to be adolescent doodling in the brutal mid-day heat

Things move at a rusty, creaky pace and everybody pretty much gets by

Then an occasional  hurricane washes a horribly purulent mud down to the sea

Being Embajada is a state brought on by heat and dust and rock, grease and dirt:

Cooked deeply into one by that unremitting peninsular sun