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Published: June 17th 2008
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In Tijuana
Rob bought a ¨bucket of beer¨, which = 8 beers. An American guy then gave him 4 more! He left those as a tip to the waiter though. Well after trying to sound optimistic in the last blog, we were relieved to arrive in Guerrero Negro after 5.5 hours on the bus. We were quite gutted that after half an hour on the bus leaving San Quintin we saw a lovely little town, El Rosario, that we almost stayed in instead. But that was before we learnt to research our destinations a bit better. San Quintin wasn´t terrible but it wasn´t great either. If we managed to avoid the one horse towns before it then San Quintin was a two horse town. Really just a big dust bowl/service town. Unfortunately with the distances we needed to cover it´s either the long haul on the bus or staying somewhere very basic.
Our hotel had no hot water unfortunately and a ceiling fan that jumped around crazily while you tried to catch the tiny little cords for the light or fan speed.
The streets of San Quintin were very reminiscent of Machava in Mozambique - a lot of sand and concrete. It makes sense that they would have had similar building materials to hand and things looked in about the same state of repair.
The cacti in the desert on the
way in and out were spectacular though. All sorts of varieties including the sort that Wile. E. Coyote was always running into, some the size of Pohutukawa trees, and these crazy Dr. Zeuss style trees. Also a lot of hawks and eagles and massive hills of piled up boulders.
I have learnt some survival tricks when it comes to using public toilets in Mexico (sorry if this is too much information for some!). Carry the following at all times: toilet paper, shewee and hand sanitiser. The public loos are pretty disgusting. Rob says they were much worse in some countries in Africa (actually I saw some pretty bad ones in Mozambique so can attest to that) but these still are far from pleasant. So my strategy has been to dehydrate myself sufficiently to avoid the ones on the bus altogether (sorry baby Stanton, I do make up for it once we get there!). Picture a tiny cubicle with no water, no soap, HOT HOT air as it´s the only part of the bus not air conditioned, puke, poos, general EUW all round all while being bounced around by a moving bus - even Rob was pretty grossed out by
Waiting for bus at San Quintin
The look on my face is one of dreading the bus toilet! the last one. I have found I can make it to a halfway lunch stop and use a public one - still not pleasant but at least larger space around you and less heat. Unfortunately the Mexicans put their used loo paper (which they have to provide) in a bin next to the toilet rather than flushing it, even for number twos. Imagine that in the desert heat. I can´t bring myself to do it. I´ve been flushing. Sorry, Mexico sanitation system...
Another thing I´ve found I haven´t been coping with so well is the smells. Mexico has some pretty funky smells on offer. We´ve seen dead birds, dogs and cows in the desert which obviously don´t smell good, but what has surprised me is the smell of the road side taco stalls. NO WAY am I eating that stuff, especially after seeing some of the meat sitting around in the heat. I actually have to speed up as I walk past them as I start coughing and gagging (hopefully nobody has noticed this as it must be very rude). I try and gag while rubbing my belly to indicate I´m just a crazy nauseous pregnant woman but I´m
still not sure if I actually look pregnant or just like I have a beer gut. I did have one guy try and sell me souvineers for my ¨bambina¨though, so that was nice. Rob´s handled some of the more pungent food very well, in fact he claims to like it - he´s a legend. But he did have one bad stomach incident. We have managed to find very good places to eat in every town though and I´ve found that sticking to a vegetarian diet with some fish is working for me. We have the odd supermarket meal to make sure we´re getting our fruits and veggies and we´re getting lots of cereals and feeling very healthy.
We have passed through a lot of military check points. It´s pretty weird to see all the soldiers standing around casually slinging machine guns. They sometimes board the bus too but never seem interested in us so I guess we don´t look like drug runners. There are jeeps in every town full of soldiers too, apparently to provide support for the police who weren´t coping with the drug problems. I´m not sure if they make me feel safer or more nervous! But
seriously (Mum!), we have felt extemely safe everywhere. The only place that was a bit dodgy so far was the red light district (go figure) in Tijuana that Rob dragged me through. I must have looked like a freak scoping out the girls on the street with my pregnant belly! Actually I got pretty upset seeing those girls, it was so sad. We have been offered crack cocaine (right actross the road from a cop) and weed a couple of times too.
So, Guerrero Negro was heaven compared to San Quintin but still kind of a bigger dust bowl. It´s right by a big headland that sticks out and there is desert all around. We stayed in a great hotel and had some fantastic meals and so were very happy and were inspired enough to stay 2 nights.
They offered whale watching tours - the whales come right into the inlet nearby, right into the desert and there are whale skeletons on display everywhere! It´s pretty weird seeing abandoned boats right in the middle of the desert too, as well as many, many junkyards full of abandoned cars. But it was the wrong time of year for whales as
Cacti in Desert
Fly-by shot from bus, so a bit blurry. nothing touristy seemed to be open unfortunately. Some parts of the year there are blue and grey whales to be seen.
As always, everybody was very friendly. Nobody seems to be offended at my appalling lack of Spanish, even though they have every right to be. I can proudly order a cup of tea now: 'The negro con leche por favor´. I´m also very good at saying ´hola´ and ´gracias´ but that´s about it. Rob does very well with communicating - the numbers are no great mystery to him somehow, whew! Although sometimes throws the odd Portuguese word in by mistake which nobody seems to mind.
We found that we were pretty much the only tourists in Geurrero Negro (except for a few on a tour bus) and in San Quintin (no other gringos there). We did see quite a few Americans in Ensenada but they seemed to have arrived on a big cruise ship that was docked off the coast.
I have to say that the Pacific coastline didn´t match the beautiful Baja photos I have seen in the guidebook. It was all a bit dull and grey unfortunately.
I´ll add some photos from Rob´s camera but unfortunately
have been unable to access the ones on mine from the last two internet cafes - stupid Canon has to make it complicated by requiring drivers. Once I´ve had them burnt onto a CD in La Paz I´ll add mine. The same goes for the photos in the next blog in Loreto.
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