Baja California Sur
It’s amazing how few books on Mexico a gringo can find in her local bookstore, especially given our country’s complicated history and relations, but besides Paul Theroux’s excellent “On the Plains of Snakes”–a book that even my dad approves of and that my brother Peter is currently reading–I have had to rely on Patrick Oster’s mind-blowing “The Mexicans: A Personal Portrait of a People.” It’s a series of the most vivid portraits of mexicanos imaginable, mostly in the capitol region, and reveals a remarkably positive and hopeful people, but it does start with a bleak pintura (painting) and a few rhetorical questions:
Imagine what kind of society the United States would be if half of its workers made the wages of a McDonald’s cashier, a restaurant dishwasher, a parking-lot attendant, or a field hand. Who would buy automobiles, appliances, homes and the other big-ticket items that make the enviable American economy what it is? Who would have the money to go to college, or even high-school? With an uneducated middle class, what kind of culture or government would there be? (p. 22)
To this point in our journey, we have been sheltered from the abject poverty of Mexico, but next we’ll be a lot closer. We heard today of the unrest in Washington DC and can only think of the privileged position it represents. Could we urge all gringos to reflect on the real conditions which ground their discontent and then to compare those grounds to those of Adeleida profiled in Oster’s opening chapter.
I have also been slowly consuming Henry Bamford Parkes’s old-school but comprehensive “History of Mexico.” It makes clear what I had never understood before: Mexico’s attraction to Russia’s experiment with Marxism–Trotsky’s final days played themselves out in Mexico City–and the enduring socialist tendencies of its labor movement–including the teachers I worked with twenty years ago in Chiapas, but I’m also thinking of a Philly-era friend’s AFLCIO (union) work here in opposition to Prez. Clinton’s NAFTA. The left has deep roots here.
To summarize Parkes’s account: Cortez’s Spanish colonials were replaced by hacienda-owning and largely absentee land-lords, as in Ireland, and were only supplemented by US corporate pirates–think of Hearst’s Californian cattle, but also of Guggenheim’s oil–after Mexico’s independence from Spain. (The role of the Catholic church here also reminds me of Ireland, but enough said on that for now.) Given the fact that this revolution occurred within the very same memetic context of our own in 1776, it has to be seen as largely unfinished.
Add to this the fact that Mexico’s middle class grew faster than any underdeveloped country in the post-WWII period, and you can begin to entiende (understand) the radical extremes of the political rhetoric here.
Take a look at a map of the place to understand (also) the urban/rural divide here; the gap between rural West Virginia and Washington DC has nothing on that of Sonora or Sinaloa or Chiapas or Oaxaca on Mexico City.
In any case, La Paz has grown in our affection over our expanded and expanding foray here. We’re kind of stuck in a comfort bubble, and it will prove hard to move on, though move on we must, on the 9th of Enero, to be precise.
But today’s the 6th, and more than a week ago we used I-Overlander to find a site on remote lip of land over La Bahia de La Paz. We somehow managed to bypass the excellent options for great food anyone can find here, in order to gripe over lame sushi, but hey(!)…it was our first night in town.
We did find a pretty fancy hotel though for $100 US. El Moro is probably the fanciest hotel we’ve stayed in yet, and it was super cheap!
The bank said it’d take 10 days to get the card, so we left the hotel after a night or two and gave them our phone numbers in case it got there sooner. We kinda felt bad leaving because one of the servers invited us to a Christmas meal that the hotel was putting on. But it’s hard to stay in one spot for long.
As we were backing out of our parking spot, Nick exclaimed, “Look at this fucking asshole!”
I was expecting to see someone yelling or waving their fist or a fight. Instead, there she was, Frida. Sitting on the sidewalk, watching us back away. I shook my head. “Fucking asshole,” I laughed.
(In other news, we found bottled gas! We’ve been to countless stores along the peninsula and were being to worry we’d have to find a new way to make food – we still might. But for now, we’re set.)
The 23rd we ended up at Playa (Beach) Tecolote. We were aiming for Balandra, but when we got there at midday, the road was closed off due to Covid/population limits. So, we ended up continuing along the road and found this playa.
We had a day of watching pelicans dive for hours on end and of snorkeling by the rocks.
There we some pretty large fish, one such fish looked like a type of gar.
It was the first thing Karyssa had seen when she put her head under the water, as it was wavering mere inches from her face. She let out a scream through her snorkel that made a few people along the shore stare out at her. But then she lifted her face from the water and let out a long laugh. “This frigging fish is huge! And it’s like, right here!”
It was something between a pipefish and a gar. It’s body was a beautiful silver color, but it had a vibrant sky blue stripe that ran along either side of its dorsal fin. There was another of the same species that was a darker, almost black color, and one stripe seemed a bright, almost neon green, while the other was the same blue. The colors underwater are always so much more intense than those above it. Pictures never do it justice (and we don’t have any anyway).
Additionally, there were a ton of puffer fish of all different colors, a different type of sea urchin than that of Monterey, CA, some fish, silver, yellow and black, that looked like they might be tang, and other flounder-look-alikes that were perfectly camouflaged and let us approach to within a few feet. Our fish identification needs some work.
We found a spot that night along the beach to park the van, and talked to another van couple. They were only out for a week long vacation, but they had been vanlifers before. And they we full of useful information, mainly that we could hike over some hills to two other beaches, and, during low-tide, we could reach Balandra.
So, we hiked the next morning. It was unbelievable how stunning the beaches were from so high up. We had to carry Frida most of the way, as we do, because it was too hot for her, and she’s spoiled. (We do love her despite what our tendency to leave her in random places might suggest.)
We passed the first beach (because curiosity)…
…and descended to the second one. It was wild.
There were these strange formations of rock that jetted out of the sand in seemingly random fashion and then, just a little farther, was this outcrop of rock.
And we were the only ones around because the people in front of us climbed over the rocks so they could make it to Playa Balandra.
It. was. insane. We couldn’t believe our luck. We tried to snorkel around the rocks just off shore, but the waves were too harsh making for both nauseating conditions and terrible viz.
Instead, we maneuvered around the rocks, where we too found Balandra. Crowded it was. As pretty as the beach was (dubbed the most beautiful in Baja, according to a few travel sites), we were happy on ours, under our little cove.
The rocks above our heads 
The shells beneath our bodies
We spent quite a few hours just lazing about watching the pelicans dive and the frigate birds soar. We watched an osprey retrieve a puffer-fish from the sea, actually saw it inflate, be released by the bummed-out bird, and then float comically before eventually returning to normal.
Eventually, we decided it was time to take that hike back to the car and drive south on Hwy 19, down to the first town of the coastal loop that would eventually send us back to La Paz:
Todos Santos (or All Saints) is a tiny town on Pacific Coast that is a big ex-pat destination of late; a one-bedroom condo will cost you $450,000US.
We spent our X-mas Eve at an amazing surfer’s beach just north of the quiet town. It was dark by the time we got to the beach, so it was hard to know where the soft spots were and where the safe spots to drive were. But once we figured it out, we saw a couple bonfires and decided to check out the one that was next to a fellow van and had only two people around it.
And this, our reader, is where we met Emily and Enrique (Kike, for short (pronounced Kique or Key-Kay)). He is from Cochitlan and was invaluable as a source of what to see and what to avoid. She is…well, she is the sacral scorpion (her IG handle (no spaces), if you wanna give her a follow).
We stayed up later that night than I think we’ve ever managed to, except possibly when meeting another vanlifer and friend, Courtney (IG: court_neeeeeee (that’s seven “e”s)) in Tennessee or Virginia or wherever we were.
They’re good people. Emily is a yoga instructor, macrame artist, and huge into Reiki (hence her handle “sacral” which is the second chakara and is located just under your navel, I think. I forget exactly what the second chakara does though.) She used to work at festivals and was/is a dancer. She’s a really neat person and just so kind.
Kike is a dive master who works two jobs, one as a manager of field workers (we think?) and the other with a group in La Paz called Sea Lions Dive Center. They do SCUBA and snorkeling trips, most notably of which include swimming with the sea lions near Espirito Island and swimming with the whale sharks around La Paz. He was very generous and patient with answering our endless questions about Baja, the mainland, Spanish, and Mexican customs/courtesies.
Christmas morning we woke to a nearly empty beach, with the exception of our newfound friends and a surfer or two.
But by the time we got out of the van and sat along the shore, to be joined by Emily and Kike soon after, the beach became quite popular. It wasn’t crowded, but it was weird to see so many people on Christmas day out at the beach, surfing or talking excitedly about surfing.
The dogs were overwhelmed by all the other dogs around us, but it was a tranquil morning nonetheless, as we sat, staring into the water or watching the surfers, cheering for them when they got to stand on their boards or ride for a few seconds, sipping our tea, coffee, and mate (an Argentinian communal tea that Kike brought over), the sun warm on our sides with a cool breeze brushing against our faces, and talking about everything and nothing.
I really wish we’d gotten a picture of all of us. It’s a precious memory I want to have with me forever. But the above two pics are all we have from that morning. And writing about it certainly helps.
Eventually, our hunger forced us to leave, despite not really wanting to. We wanted to hang out with these two for just a little bit longer, our first friends of Mexico, it was a relief and a warming experience to have some people to talk to, share Christmas Eve and Day with, and learn things from. But, we had the hopes of our paths crossing again some day and went to find a place to eat. (It was only in hindsight that we realized we could’ve invited them to eat with us XD)
Perhaps the oddest X-mas am ever, as we started alone on a beach with the baby Jesus, but then were surrounded by surfers, and then went to Todos Santos and heard a choir sing songs in the chapel. Even jingle bells was transformed into a hymn.
Karyssa bought the cutest dress, after negotiating its price down 10%, como una mexicana.
On the advice of Emily and Kike, we stopped by to see Playa Carritas, with its wonderful olas (waves) but only after swinging by one of the only open restaurant on Xmas Day in TS for comida (food) on the road to Cabo San Lucas
2 nights at the $700MX Cabo-Cush hotel ($35USD/night for a cute hotel that allowed dogs and had off-street parking), where we sorted out battery issues once and for all thanks to Juan Ortega at Baja Sensor. It took me a few hours to find the right guy, but once I did, I knew we had put the persistent problems of our electrical system behind us. He even provided a schematic of what he did and what the van may need going forward (hint: a legit isolator).
We ate some great food – one an American restaurant for Karyssa was in want of some familiarity of home.
And, our first night there, we tried bone marrow. Not good, you all. Not even a little bit! Though the rest of the meal was delish
Eventually we entered the tourist trap and booked a boat out to the iconic “Lands End Arch” where the boats were stacked on top of each other, and yet the natural beauty shone through.
Gassed up, got groceries, and headed back up Hwy 1 on the eastern side–the Sea of Cortez side–off the Baha peninsula towards our long-lost bank card awaiting us in the ever-so-helpful El Moro Hotel in La Paz.
A night on a beach road east of San Jose del Cabo, where we saw a humpback whale just offshore! We ran a mile, though K ran another few after we stopped…lol…
…and watched two locals stroll into the rough sea with netting stretched over tire tubes; as these floated 10-20′ above them, one grabbed langustina as the other pummeled the bottom with an iron rod, displacing osteria and the like. By the time we left, they had two sacks of oysters and a 5g bucket of lobster. We have seen this small-scale (and thus sustainable) fishing throughout Baha, and it’s as if we’re in New England in Melville’s days.
2 nights at beautiful Cabo Pulmo, earned by traversing the worst 10k of road we’ve encountered in the van (the worst due to its length of washboards).
We paid a mere $2000MSD (plus another G in tips) to take a 3-hour snorkeling cruise out to the only coral reef in North America, and to see some of the variety of fish of the National Parque de Cabo Pulmo.
Organized first by local fishermen in 1995, who saw their fish stocks depleted, it has become a model of habitat restoration, with their stocks now increased by 400%, according to Irene, our guide on the bote (boat).
Karyssa also snorkeled by a small sea-lion colony, though Nick was too wiped by the waves by then. The blue and green brain coral and dozens of species of jacks, pufferfish, and grouper made for a mind-expanding trip. Karyssa was in her element, and didn’t even feel the side-effects of her dramamine. Irene mistook her for a marine biologist.
Trailers that the boats drive into 
They attach the rope to the car and go
A beautifully relaxing afternoon was spent at La Palapa Restaurant and “Tacos and Beer” at the water’s edge in busy little Cabo Pulmo, a pueblocito (small town) we highly recommend.
We kept the dogs off leash because that’s what you do in Mexico. But, it can be a pain. We ended up putting their leashes back on when Frida constantly ran into the only two restaurants around, begging for table scraps.
We boondocked on the outskirts of town, on a hill overlooking a school that had been wrecked by a famous hurricane many years pasado. We returned there for a nap after putting the dogs in the car, filling up our water bottles, and shutting the sliding door.
After about 1.5-2 hours, we wake up and hear Daisy whining – as she does when she knows we’re awake so that her baba can put her on the bed with her mama. However, I got up first and realized Frida wasn’t on the seat cushion she usually lays on. I immediately turn to the dog house and look up at Nick, “Where’s Frida?”
He shook his head and cursed her under his breath.
I laughed – as I do when I’m happy, excited, stressed, worried, nervous, angry, or sad.
And we went back into town. “I bet I know where she is,” I told Nick.
“Yeah, at that fucking restaurant.”
“How do we keep doing this? Like how have we not learned to just check the dang doghouse before we leave?” I couldn’t stop laughing at our absurdness.
Sure enough, she was in the restaurant. She followed me out and back into the car, but then jumped right back out of the car and started walking right back to the restaurant, as if to say, “I was starting to worry you’d left. But now I see where we are. Kaitnx I’m going back now, baiiiiiiiii.” Smdh. This dog.
The rest of that night, I was short-tempered for no reason. At some point I had said something negative and condescending about something random we were passing by while in the car. I told Nick to pay me no mind because I was just prone to blow up at anyone.
And let me tell you. I blew up. It wasn’t until the next day, during one of our random runs, when Nick’s hip pain returned ten-fold. I got unbelievably angry and refused to talk to him all the way back to the van, despite knowing I was behaving irrationally.
Once we reached the van, I went to finish the run, but the dogs kept following me. I yelled at them multiple times to stay, but they didn’t. Finally, I thought I had won, after screaming at them once more. But, as I started worrying that they were following me and would ultimately get lost, still in a fit of rage, I turned around and found them running back to the van because they had lost me. But then it seemed as if they wouldn’t be able to find their way back, so I had to go back there and show them.
And listen. My throat hurt for two days from how I screamed at them. Nick took them inside the van while I kicked at the dirt and sprinted away, down this pebble beach nearby. I knew I was being ridiculous and dramatic as fuck. I knew that whatever anger or frustration I was feeling had absolutely nothing to do with Nick or the dogs. And I knew that no matter what I was feeling, there was no justification for taking it out on them.
When I got to the end of the beach, behind some rocks, I cried. I cried for being such an asshole. I cried for being such a baby. I cried for not knowing why I was crying. And then I cried because my gramma was gone. And I cursed my inability to stay rational.
On my return walk of shame, Nick had come down to the beach. And I apologized to him for being an insane person. And he apologized to me for letting me down, which made me feel even worse because literally none of my craziness was his fault. And he’s just such a frigging sweetheart. It kills me.
Anyway, when we got to the van, where I think Nick left them to shield them from my wrath, I apologized to them, even though they had no idea what I was saying. “Just, I’m sorry.”
It was all very dramatic and childish. But, I guess all I can really do is learn to meditate on my short-temper when it first starts, rather than ignoring it and expecting it to go away.
It was weirdly comforting to return to La Paz, only because it was relatively familiar turf by now, where we retrieved our replacement bank card from the very helpful El Moro Hotel, booked a cheap hotel room as the El Moro was full, and went to La Nomada, an amazing organic place for lunch, where Karyssa bought a traveler from Houston his lunch.
We feel unprepared for mainland Mexico, but are approaching the date for a ferry ride! Mainly, we feel homesick, and I hope we can get my daughters down here next year, as well as getting ourselves north, of course.
We wanted to slow down some, and considered renting a place (in Mulege, actually, as La Paz is fairly rico (rich)) but those in La Paz recommended AirBnB, and thus found an odd little roof-top casita on the outskirts of town.
At less than $20US a night, it will allow us to chill for a few days and focus on Espanol, which we feel may help navigate the mainland of MX and beyond.
We had our first lesson today (Jan 1) with Senor Sergio, and Karyssa was especially charged up by it. New Year’s eve passed quietly in this neighborhood, except for a couple of weird booms this am, and the city as a whole esta muerto, but “feliz anos” anyway.
(Jan 3 or 4) Espanol es muy dificil pero el curso es bien, porque Maestro Sergio esta profesor empatico. (He has a website–www.spanishwithsergio.net–and we can highly recommend him.)
We’re in a fairly strange place these days, with a regular home to go to at the end of a regular day of school. We barely drive at all…whaat?? It’s the 3rd day of what will be a week at Sr. Pedro’s roof-top casita in a quiet neighborhood of LaPaz.
All we do is study our handouts, google translate while watching tv, and eat out downtown, as no tienemos una cocina (we don’t have a kitchen). Though Sergio brought us some of his esposa’s mole sauce today! He’s been trying to convince us to stay here, or at least to avoid Mexico (city, that is; when people here speak of Mexico, they mean the city).
It’s a grand life, all things considered, but we’re still stressed over Covid restrictions tightening in some parts of MX, and the worsening situation in parts of the world we care about, not the least of which are California and Ireland.
Ahoy (Today) – now the 6th of January (Happy Three Kings day for those who celebrate) for those trying to make some linear since of this – we desayuno’d (had breakfast) with our AirBnb host, Pedro, and su eposa Anna, y su hija Jessica tambien (also). His two daughters are the same ages of my own Hannah and Molly, and their interactions over fruit and yogurt moved my nostalgia level to once (11 – haven’t figured out how to do accent marks yet).
Pedro talks a lot, and talks a good game regarding his dream coming true, but it’s hard to read a former used care-salesman turned slumlord. He kept implying that I knew of his dream-made-real grand narrative, but all that I could see was a middle-class story that starts with his middle-class dad, a pastor.
The breakfast was a great convo-opportunity, all in all, and we thanked him and Anna profusely for the extended break and opportunity to pick up some Spanish before the mainland.
We also bought some books and a dog crate for the ferry ride, and are currently arranging a scuba-trip with our Todos Santos friends Emily and Kique, who freelances as a dive-master and guide at “Sea Lions Dive Center” in LaPaz.
(Jan 7) We had a sad final lesson with Sergio, who has become a sort of friend; he’s fallen in love with Daisy and it’s a mutual thing. He’s had a rough life, with economic crises leaving him homeless with kids on more than one occasion, and yet he’s very positive, and loves the current gobierno (government).
Our Spanish is much improved, and our confidence in using it has vastly increased. We will miss LaPaz, which we feel we know as well as anywhere on our travels, but it’s time to move on to the Mexican mainland and the rugged beauty of remote Nayarit.
Karyssa has insisted that we not leave Baja without swimming with whale-sharks, sea-lions, or both, and so we’re off to Isla Espirito Santo in the a.m. to scuba with K-Que. Emily couldn’t join us for the trip, which is a bummer. But she has agreed to watch the girls for us…yeah for doggie independence! It’s wild to think that we have friends in La Paz, Baja California Sur.
Holy shit! I (Nick) just had the a scuba dive to compare with the best of my life, which include a night dive in Hawaii…not to brag or anything because it’s all about Kike, who is the best dive-master since Jacques Cousteau himself!
For real, Kike, who, to remind those who haven’t been paying attention, we met by Karyssa’s approaching his friend Emily’s van on a beach south of Todos Santos. His chillness culminated in his simple “decompress with every exhale on the first few feet of your descent” instruction and this revolutionized diving for me. (“Decompress” here means clear your sinuses and ears by pinching your nose closed while blowing out, btw. ((On my prior scuba dive I simply followed the dive-master 40′ straight down to the root of a sea-kelp forest, and my ears were f-ed for days.))
I never felt so relaxed under the water, even though I sucked through my two tanks of air quicker than Karyssa or Kike. It was the best of days, with Victor at the helm, and we ended up surrounded by sea-lions swimming within feet of us as we circled a tiny island which the sea-lion colony made their home.
[Karyssa’s turn] Listen. The moment I volunteered for The Marine Mammal Center, sea lions went from my 3rd favorite marine animals (after octopodes) to my 2nd (after orcas). From the moment we entered the water, close to this island of which the sea lions frequented (this was by no means a chance encounter), we we told that we were not to approach the sea lions. If they wanted to approach us, that was okay. But we could not be the ones who made the attempt.
And listennnn to me, Lindaaaaa. I had forgotten about the sea lions as we descended into the ocean. Nick and I both were too focused on our bouyancy and becoming reacquainted with the water/surviving to be bothered by the simplicities of desires.
Kike was the absolute best guide we could’ve asked for for this. He was so patient and understanding that neither one of us felt the pressure to push past our ailments or worries, rather we both felt like we were all in this together and that we would all make time for each other.
As I fumbled around with my buoyancy and ear pressure, part of me remarked how incredibly lucky I felt to be able to have problems that were so minor and so dependent on the water, while, at the same time, I was also able to watch the fish swim by in excitement or hope of finding food and the parrotfish munching on the sponges nearby.
I felt so outside of myself, so high, that I was just grateful for the bliss I was experience, despite my need to equalize my ears. Indeed, if it wasn’t for Kike’s constant reminders to equalize, I would’ve completely forgotten until it had felt as if they would explode.
Nick has figured it out well before me, as I gazed out at him some 10 feet below me before embracing the reality that I was in control of my body and needed to also equalize to be able to join the two of them.
I did struggle momentarily, as seems to be the norm with me and my ears. But the attentiveness of our dive master eased my worries, as he made sure that I was descending at the right speed while also taking the necessary precautions to equalize.
As we were getting comfortable in the water, I watched all the different fish with all their different variations of vibrant colors and strangely shaped foreheads swimming by. I made note of their feeding behaviors and of this urchin/sponge like animal – what with its pinkish-purple tube-looking-feet that all connected to a singular spherical body.
(Later, Kike confirmed that it was a type of urchin, which is remarkable to me because I thought urchins only had spines.) And, upon further searching, this was, specifically, the toxopneustes, (also called a rose/pink flower urchin <3 how cutteeee!) which, I can’t handle because WHAAAAT???!!!! How friggin amazing?!?. As the root of its name might suggest, this urchin is poisonous. I’m guessing these critters eat algae?
The purple urchin, which is found in Monterey, eats giant kelp, which isn’t found here. Soooo, that’s my guess! Please feel free to correct me in the comments! We love to learn!
(Fun fact, the purple sea urchin can eat so much kelp in a day that it can depelete entire kelp forests, which is why the California Sea Otter, who eats sea urchins, is such an important species aka a keystone species.
In fact, in the 1950s (if I recall correctly), when sea otters were thought to be extinct, sea urchins had eaten so much kelp that it became nearly nonexistent. Thus fish populations died off or migrated to other areas.
Thanks to the citizens of Big Sur, CA, who kept the few remaining sea otters a secret so as to protect them from being hunted by fur trade companies, and to The Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, sea otters are making remarkable progress in their population size. As such, the kelp forests are healthy and continue to provide a safe haven for small fish, which brings bigger fish, which also brings whales. All this diversity would not be possible without the sea otter!)
After what seemed like mere seconds (which, in my experience while underwater, is often several minutes), we were following the ascension of cliff of reefs/sponges/rock (I dunno how to describe it) we found ourselves pretty close to the surface. I stopped inspecting all the life in front of me and glanced out into the distance, remembering that we might see sea lions.
And I saw this massive figure in front of me, that looked nearly the same size as me, if not bigger. I didn’t want to hope for too much, to save me the disappointment. And, truth be told, I eventually realized it was someone snorkeling, along the surface. I chuckled silently at myself before continuing towards Nick and Kike.
Nick’s head was over the surface of the water, and I wondered what he was looking at. Meanwhile, I realized how much rock was in front of us, and I made the very astute observation that we must be near the island where the sea lions were.
And it finally occurred to me that the snorkelers above and Nick’s face’s absence must have been clear indicators that sea lions were in abundance around us. In fact, I realized that many of the figures I assumed were snorkelers were actually sea lions, just chilling. And I. Frigging. Freaked. (on the inside, of course.) Like, I almost cried, as I watched the figures of what I realized were sea lions floating around.
Within seconds, four or five of them were diving and swimming all around us. I was frozen with awe. One, a blonde female, swam right from wherever she was to mere inches in front of my face before bounding off to toward the surface and back to me. She danced all around me, admiring my fins and gear, wondering (I imagine) what in the world I was. What were these limbs? Was I like her, in some strange way, or was I completely different? For now, (I projected) I was like her, a friend, an ally, someone who was a part of her world.
She explored only momentarily. I searched for Nick, who was off in his own world. I was reminded, in this experience and in this expectation, of tripping. Even though tripping, and this moment, was such a beautiful, pure, and amazing experience, it was unrealistic to think that Nick was with me in it – that we were one in the same, sharing the same minute by minute highlights.
Rather, he had his precious and mind-blowing experiences, and I had mine. While they were similar, they were not the same. And while we experienced them along the same time line, we did not experience them together. For it was silly and naïve to think we were one person, when it is so undeniable that we will always be two, trying so desperately to intertwine and mix together… as couples do.
There were so many times that sea lions came up to us and searched our faces and our gear, wondering what exactly we were. I wanted so badly to be able to communicate with Nick as there were often times that a sea lion would be swimming barely just above him, nearly touching his air tank, and he didn’t even know it. One was so bold as to swim along with him, hovering just above and behind him as to not be detected. By the time I got Nick’s attention, he was able to look above himself just in time to see the majestic animal swimming off into the distance.
Indeed, towards the end of the first dive, two sea lions decided we’d be fun play things. One, in particular, got so close that I could see she had cataracts. Her face came so close to mine, I thought we’d bonk our noses together (well, her nose and my mask). I wondered her age and her life story when she, at the last second, maneuvered just above me, showing me her cloudy eyes.
But she wasn’t done with me. For the next few minutes, it felt like the whole sea was just us, staring at each other in stark curiosity of the other. She kept testing me, coming closer and closer each time, dancing all around me. And I just mimicked her movements, pleading for the moment to never stop. She had me twisting, turning, and flipping every which way, following her as she moved.
Emily had reported dancing with the sea lions when she had last met them, and indeed that was the most accurate way of describing it. While Emily is a professional in the field, I am not. Yet, here I was, dancing with this most amazing being. I will never forget her and her beautiful blonde fur as she danced with me, despite her cloudy eyes. And for this, I truly am the luckiest person in the world.
I feel like this is even more compounded by the fact that Nick was there to watch it happen and to experience his own dance. And on top of all that, our friends were there in one way or another that allowed us to have this moment in our lives: Kike by taking time off from his other work to join us and share this experience with us, to give us this gift, and Emily by taking our dogs into her home simply because she wanted this for us… like this was brought to us by people who, after spending only Christmas Eve and Christmas morning together loved us so much that they too wanted this for us because they knew what an incredible time it would be.
Anyway, I’m gonna stop crushing on them for a second and let Nick move on to the next dive:
For our second tank, we anchored in a sandy inlet and swam across and around a 20′ wall of boulders around a headland covered in fish, urchin, huge purple and green starfish, and sea-cucumbers. It was glorious, with at least 50′ visability.
Kike showed us this tubed hole within the rock, that I (now Karyssa again) originally thought was built by a worm of some sort. And that may have been true, but there was this teeny tiny wittle fish that lived inside of it, and it would dart back inside the tubes depths whenever we got too close. It was incredibly adorable.
At some point, I got distracted by this fucking huge-ass starfish, and if you guys could do yourselves a favor, look up what the heckin heck a Panamic Crown of Thorns Starfish is, because that thing is frigging insane. In fact, listen, this thing is too crazy for you to not see, so let me just see if I can’t find a picture of it online somewhere. (Edit: Kike just sent us the videos and pics from our dive. Unfortunately we can only post pics on this. Fortunately, two of those pics is the starfish!) It’s multiple armed, which means it doesn’t follow the multiple of 5 rule. Alsoooo, it eats coral.
One cool fact from the good ol’ Wiki Pi:
Despite the battery of sharp spines on the aboral surface and blunt spines on the oral surface, the crown-of-thorns starfish’s general body surface is membranous and soft. When the starfish is removed from the water, the body surface ruptures and the body fluid leaks out, so the body collapses and flattens. The spines bend over and flatter, as well. They recover their shape when reimmersed, if they are still alive.
There were also tons of red starfish and sea cucumbers. If we could find the scientific name of the red starfish, we’d give more deets, butttt… meh.
For those who don’t know, fun general fact about sea cucumbers is (and this is recall from high school marine science class, so I might be wrong) they can eject their innards from their anus in order to confuse their predators. So like, imagine being like, “Imma eat this mofo. Look so delish. Oh! It’s tryna escape, but I got it! Oh… wait a minute… wtf is this shit?”
Puffer fish were also in abundance. I never knew they existed in so many colors. They’re frigging cute af. Puffer fish have always been an interest of mine, but they’ve moved up there in my fave fishes (my absolute fav obv being the Pacific Sunfish/Mola Mola – that thing cray).
Anywayyy, we finished that dive pretty early because, as Nick remarked earlier, Nick had gone through the last tank pretty quickly. As we waited for the few minutes of decompression, I reflected back on the sea lions, the fish, the starfish, and the water above.
I treasured the way I felt in the water, staring up at the surface so far above and thinking about how I could stay here forever, if only I had enough tanks to do it. And then because I had given my BCD some air, contrary to all the previous advice I had forgotten before, I ascended ever so slightly more quickly than I was comfortable.
But, the time we had spent hanging around the 10-15ft below surface seemed sufficient that I wasn’t worried. And I allowed myself to continue without too much resistance.
After all that Kike had to return to work, and Nick and I chilled with Emily, bonding over how amazing the sea lions were and vanlife adventures. A few hours later though, the excitement and adrenaline wore off and the dramamine kicked in full gear and forced us into early retirement before we were to have dinner with the two later that night.
And y’all. That dinner was such a blast. I swear, I never know what we end up talking about – the most random of things – but it’s always such a relief to do it. The two of them both have so much to share, and when we share they seem so hungry for what we have to share that it’s just such a great exchange of thoughts, knowledge, history, ideas, and beliefs.
I told Nick that while we were sitting on their couch, after having dove, I could imagine our life there, in which Emily and Kike would be the Rickey and Brian (the two main people we hung out with in Pensacola back in the day) of our weekends, where we’d get into the biweekly comfortable habit of just hanging out and talking about lord knows what. He agreed that he could see it too.
And it was a weird, fleeting moment of longing for a stability, familiarity, and predictability. But at the same time, there’s a reason we were doing vanlife. There was a reason that wouldn’t happen. And it was simply that we aren’t those people right now who can sit still, even for a little while.
When will we be? Only time will tell.
The next morning I woke up and folded our laundry from the night before. I felt a slight twinge in my neck and noted that I should probably stretch once I was done. After finishing folding and putting the clothes away, I got down off the bed and reached up to a shelf for some cereal. As I reached, I realized I had a terrible pain in my neck. Nick walked by the car at the time and I remarked simply, “My neck hurts.”
Neither one of us thought much of it. I decided I should try to stretch it out and started doing some shoulder rolls and arm stretches. But after about 1 or two minutes of it, I couldn’t handle standing. The sheer force of gravity on my neck and my muscles having to keep it upright was too much.
Eventually I couldn’t move my neck or shoulders without feeling immense pain. After laying there for about two hours, we decided to continue on becuase we were in El Tecolote, and downtown as nearly an hour away. On the way out, we passed over a few bumps. I hadn’t realized the sheer pain I was feeling until after I had already started crying.
If I had to compare it to anything, it was worse than my period cramps that I got before BC. I for real couldn’t move my neck or shoulders, yet we had to scramble through customs and get the crated dogs and van on the ferry.
As an illustration of how communication fails us here, consider the fact that we had discussed the dogs with the ferry officials last week in La Paz, prying details about their crate and our access to them, etc., only to show up at the port to board and only then be told we had to buy separate tickets for Daisy and Frida in order for them to board. Then we had to separate, and neither one of us was sure where we were going or how to get there.
Eventually, after Google Translate on Karyssa’s part (the only one of us with a useful phone) and even more confusion over ripped up tickets (we split the tickets up – one for the both of us, as only the driver can stay with the van) and yet despite a forgotten passport (guess who (Karyssa)), we found each other on the ferry.
The dogs were forced to wait nearly 20 hours in the crate with only one chance at a five minute break onboard, in which they weren’t allowed to urinate or defecate anywhere. They’re real champs, those two. But we’ll never ask them to do that again. Next time we know better: take the cargo ship. You get to spend the night in the van, and they dogs can stay in there with you.
Either way, we made it to the mainland, and beautiful Mazatlan. And so begins the next part of the journey.
