I’m out in a wonderful thatched-roof domicile about 12 miles east of San José del Cabo; it looks out to the ocean and gets the sea breezes. The surf is up and there was only one surfer out today. Surfing has become too much of a hassle for me lately, crowds and age the main detractors. With skateboarding, there’s no problem getting up, and there are no crowds. The drawbacks are, yes, pavement and cars (and age, que lástima).
So I’ve been swimming. Jeez, if I lived where water was this warm I’d be in it every day. Tonight I bagged it because of the shorebreak – steep beach means you can get handled coming back in – as I did yesterday, rolled around and thoroughly pounded – sand in hair, ears, coating body, I mean I was sanded!
Back to Los Cabos Has it built up down here! (In the 30 years since I first came here.) Non-stop hotel/golfcourse/drinking/food/100 tourist gimmicks. BUT just like the heart of San Francisco is still there despite rich-os, the heart of this land is still to be found. Choyeros, the local guys are still here. Good fresh food at 100 taco stands. The ocean and the beaches are exquisite. The tropical desert is a low-key, underrated, under-appreciated wonderland. You get off the road, on foot through the surprisingly-navigable terrain, slow down, listen and look and – wow! – the chipmunks, birds, lizards, plants – THE PLANTS! The stout barked convoluted Torote trees (their resin is the incense copal), the cholla plants – aieeee! – beware gringo; brush against this plant and you will have a barbed-spined chunk of it attached to your body, and good luck getting it off. There are small subtle red and yellow flowers. A family of desert plants, all acting in harmony. The best book on plant life here is A Desert Country Near the Sea, by Ann Zwinger.
I was driving (OK, my rental car is a Dodge, um, Attitude—no kidding—sluggish transmission) back out to Buzzard Bar & Grill and came over a dune and there was a great ranchero tune on, oom-pa-pa tuba, turned it way up and suddenly had this wave of love for this land and the people.
Book(s) on Baja California Sur. I have so much material, but there’s the krap-shoot of what will sell. I’m thinking of some small, on-demand or short run books. I’ve shot 1000s of photos down here.
The Clueless Old Guy I was fiddling with my iPhone tonight, trying to get the flashlight function to pop up and somehow toggled into the music whatever, and lo and behold up comes the only thing I ever put there, a bunch of Stones songs starting with, ahem, Gimme Shelter, followed by Brown Sugar and so I sit here in shorts and shirt in the comfortable early evening…My tech savvy sometimes reminds me of the primitive tribe depicted at the end of the film Mondo Cane, whose religion was the airplanes flying overhead – holy miracles, right?
…but you can’t take Baja out of the boy.
