The Great Outside

Sunrise, New Year's Day, Bahia de Los Angeles, Baja California.

The Baja trip, with nearly 100 photos (warning: mostly cactus porn!) is somewhat memorialized on good old photobucket.

The palapa on the beach in Bahia de Los Angeles with "8 dlls" painted on the side, but no one ever came around to collect. The walk all the way along Punta la Gringa to the other side of the hill, crashing surf of El Mar de Cortez. 20 fish and shrimp tacos in two days. Playa El Coyote in Bahia Concepcion, which maybe should be renamed Playa La Basura...cockroaches boldly advancing out of the bushes as we whipped up pancakes on our single burner camp stove. Scorpion hunting with The Poet's handheld blacklight flashlight; a couple of fierce looking buggers on the rock foundation of an abandoned and trash filled building. Endless hikes up the rocky hill at the south end of Playa El Coyote. 20 pictures of the same species of Mammillaria, Mammillaria dioica, all of which I took for different plants.

Christmas Eve in San Ignacio, buying a pack of Marlboros from Arnoldo's Abarrotes after which Arnoldo closed up shop and headed to mass at the 18th century mission down the street. Dinner at a restaurant, our hearts set on mariscos, the waiter awkwardly trying to talk us into the Christmas dinner special of "pavo y papas," the Americans in behind us asking what pavo was ("Is that sheep?" and the waiter knowing enough English to say "no, no, not sheep, turkey. Pavo es turkey.")

Driving to Loreto from Bahia Concepcion just long enough to stop at the mercado there and buy fresh potatoes.

Squeezing every possible minute out of the trip by leaving Bahia de Los Angeles New Year's Day, driving to Tecate, and then home from Tecate the next day. Tecate bitter freezing cold and windy, and our bad Spanish not only trying to get a room for the night (for the ridiculous price of $54) but also trying to ascertain with certainty that the shower would have hot water at all times. Reassured that yes, there would be hot water, we slumped exhausted into the room...and of course there was no hot water. Okay, sure, maybe I'm a spoiled rotten Gringo, but there's also being freezing cold and not having bathed for 10 days.

Since our return the only activity I'm actually motivated to undertake is wandering around in the deserts of Arizona. Everything else is like extracting molars with fishing line.