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
