One Tequila, Two Tequila, Three Tequila, Floor

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The high desert has an effect on people. The place has a way of swallowing you up.

-Campbell Scott


So the first thing that I must clarify is that I am not actually in Loreto. Loreto is about 100 km south. I am on La Playa de Coyote off of La Bahia de Conception. It's a pretty neat place. But first, lets recap a bit:

After spending some quality time in Portland, I found that I had developed quite a liking for the tiny city that everybody thinks is so large (it only has 500,000 people). However, the time had come for me to drop Ash off at a hostel, and continue south. I spend the next day and a half driving from Portland OR to San Diego CA. It was pretty uneventful, just long. The part that I found fairly amusing was doing a mapquest to see how long it would be. The website said something like this:

1) Drive south for .2 miles, turn left.
2) Go east for .5 miles, turn right.
3) Go south for .3 miles, merge onto I-5 South.
4) Continue for 1200 miles, get off at exit 30
5) Turn left and go .4 miles.

I thought it was funny anyway. So I made it to San Diego and found my way to my cousin's place. They (Will and Liz) were kind enough to put me up for 2 nights and then drive me all the way to Ensenada. After those two nights, we got in their car and headed south. (My car was left at my cousin's (Mike) wife's (Angela) brother's (I forget his name, I'm a bad person) house. That was awesome of them to let me do that, and they had a great spot for an RV which they didn't have.) On the way to Ensenada, actually in the city itself, I abruptly realized that I didn't know where to go. Despite me asking for directions twice, we ultimately had to call NOLS because nobody knew where it was. Apparently, the place in Ensenada is a twig, which means that it's just a house NOLS rents out for part of the season. But, eventually we found our way there, and Will and Liz were able to start their trek back up the the States (much to their appreciation I'm sure).

Once in Ensenada, I met my co-instructors (Alison and Marcio), a married couple and both very cool. Then we had a course. It was pretty neat, this was the first time in a while that I had hiked in a desert. I became more experienced at finding water and keeping scorpions out of my boots and all sorts of things. My learning curve is still high, as I'm sure it will be for a while, but I'm definately becoming more confident with myself in the instructor role. The course was cool though. We got up to a big observatory and checked things out and the last week and a bit were spend going through this big canyon. The canyon I think was my favorite part because we got to swim a lot and go down waterslides and swing on cables. Good times.

After the course, we all (instructors and students) went back up to Ensenada. This course was the first section of a three month NOLS semester for the students, so they were continuing on. Nine of them went in a big van for 8 hours down to Bahia de los Angeles, and 3 went with me in a public bus to the same place. Buses in Mexico are exponentially better than buses in the states. They're comfortable and have air conditioning and movies and all sorts of stuff. It was like riding on a charter bus. Anyway, we got to LA Bay and at that point in time I was finished. I gave the students to their sailing instructors, whom they would be spending the next month with, and hitched a ride with Chicilin (the driver of the van) down to Coyote Bay, where I am now.

On the way down, Chici and I actually ran out of gas, and had to wait for a couple hours at a gas station because no town at all had diesel fuel and the truck delivering it hadn't shown up for days. It came soon though.

Once here in Coyote, I met some awesome sailers named Pablo, Barnes, and Gerber. When I say "sailers" I mean sailing instructors for NOLS. I hung out with them and got out on a sail boat and started to learn how to sail and dive. Good stuff. Bryan and Pablo left the next day to go surf and spearfish somewhere, but I've been hanging out and sailing with Gerber for the past couple days. I've learned a lot and had a lot of fun. Today, the other people doing my seminar are showing up and tomorrow we leave. For those of you that don't know, a seminar is a course for instructors of one skill type (i.e. hiking) to become instructors of another skill type (i.e. sea kayaking). It'll be fun. I've essentially been backpacking for 4 months, it'll be good to sit in a boat for a while.

So, in conclusion, here are some things that I've learned about Mexico so far:
1) Fish tacos, while always amazing, taste better and better the further away from tourists that you get.
2) Mexican buses are a comfortable and afordable way to travel the country, but they are not time-efficient.
3) Sailing courses get to take a lot of food and a cooler. I want to be a sailer.
4) Water instructors are weird and all have New England accents.
5) It is impossible to not look silly while in a sailboat, but it's still fun.
6) Mosquitos can live in the desert.
7) While eating cactus fruit, be sure to remove all needles as it is quite time consuming to pull a bunch of them out of your tongue.
8) Remember to bring my beard trimmer next time. I look like Wolfman.
9) I have learned more Spanish in the past month than I have in 15 years of Spanish class.
10) Fish tacos really are amazing.
11) The tortillas and tequila that we have in the States are crap.
12) When I have a student named Chris who is taller than me, the other students call me "Big Chris"
13) I will always always always shake out my boots before I put them on and shuffle my feet on the ocean floor.
14) I love Baja, and I'm going to come back.

So that's about it in a nutshell. Happy trails everybody!

-Soarpheat

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Comments

[Mom]

Shake out those boots
Chris, love hearing about your travels. Several LOLs and so entertaining. I hope you didn't learn from experience to shake out your boots and shuffle your feet in the water. Have a great Kayaking experience. Take dare of yourself. Love Mom