I have changed my preferred mode of expiration from chocolate overdose to a flying ray to the head.
They jump! Holy wow! Huge flocks of them! We took a snorkel trip in Cabo Pulmo on the recommendation of German, our awesome host in La Paz. The guide took us straight out into the Sea of Cortez, and as the shore shrank behind us little jumping black dots appeared on the horizon. As we got closer, they started erupting out of the water all around the boat. They were mobula rays, not the huge 25 foot mantas they resemble but a smaller related type that the guide called ‘jumping rays’, and there were hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. Oh my gosh. When dolphins jump, they come shooting out of the water in a graceful arc and slip back into the water like the streamlined athletes that they are. When mobulas jump, they come out still flapping away madly, continue flapping all the way up like they’re trying to keep going through this oddly thin new water, and crash back down haphazardly, usually with a huge bellyflop but sometimes upside down or on their heads. We tumbled off the boat and swam towards the oncoming rays, and they started splashing down all around us. One of them came so close he almost hit me on the way down. Above water, all you could hear was “FlapflapflapflapSMACK!” Under water, you could still hear the rays learning over and over that they can’t fly, but it was harder to pay attention to those guys because ten feet below your mask (which keeps leaking because it’s hard to keep a good seal when you’re grinning like an idiot) were more rays than I knew the world contained. They swim in schools so large there’s no visible end to them, and when they’re underwater they swim at a much more dignified pace so you can keep up with them and see nothing but rays below you and to all sides.
We also got to swim with a huge school of jacks, and saw puffer fish and parrot fish and swam with sea lions who pretty much ignored us except for one who dove right underneath us and let out a burst of bubbles right in my face. It was a good day.
We left Baja last Sunday, after spending one more day in La Paz, which is an aptly named town far enough south to be fantastically warm but far enough north to escape the influence of Cabo San Lucas. It’s really lovely, and I think my favorite city in Mexico so far. The overnight ferry ride to the mainland took sixteen hours, and although we had cushy seats that let you lean back far enough to look up the nose of the passenger behind you, the passenger cabin was loudly playing American movies dubbed over in Spanish, so we rolled out our sleeping pads on the deck and slept outside.
I had a master plan to write on the road, and then post when we had internet, but this has been soundly thwarted by Mexico. Partially because it’s more fun to stare out the window than at the computer, but more so because we have three maps that all disagree vehemently with each other, and driving has become a team effort in an attempt to figure out where the heck we’re going. And to avoid the cows, and the chickens, and the dogs and the blankety-blank topes. Tope, we had already been warned, translates to speed bump, which means anything from a line of gravel or a rope across the road to a concrete hump so big you have all four tires on it at once. And they’re everywhere. Perhaps because they seem to be more effective than actual traffic lights at making people stop. (To be fair, it’s not always the drivers’ fault for ignoring the traffic signals. A lot of them seem to be broken, including several today that had working lights but broken covers, so all you could see was a white light bulb. White, apparently, also means go.)
When dogs aren't busy playing chicken with your car, they like to hang out on the roofs.
Speaking of dogs… They’re everywhere. Mostly, of course, on roofs or roads, but all over the streets in every town we’ve come through. There are also chickens and cows and horses and donkeys, but we realized today that we have not seen a single cat in the two weeks we’ve been here. Possibly because there are lots of dogs and cats are delicious. (To dogs. Probably. This is pure conjecture and not the voice of experience.) (Previous parenthetical expression brought to you by the fear of pissing off all the cherished cat lovers in my life.)
These are the fattest horses we saw in all of Baja.
The roads in Baja were mostly two lanes or gravel, which was fine because there’s pretty much nobody in southern Baja but retired Americans and Canadians who’ve already parked their RVs on a beach for the winter. However, the roads in Mexico are also just two lanes with no shoulder, and much better traveled. On the third day of driving, we were watching yet another impatient truck driver pass a vehicle while approaching a blind turn, and remarked with amazement that although people here do insanely risky things in order to get past someone, we hadn’t seen a single accident. By the end of the day, we’d been stopped three times behind multi-car collisions that took up the entire roadway and were attended by several ambulances.
Despite topes and crazy drivers, we’ve made it almost all the way to Guatemala, and the plan is to cross the boarder tomorrow morning. The drive has been exciting and scenic and fun and whatnot, but I’m going to bed now so I’ll just leave you with that illuminating list of adjectives to describe our last four days. We’ll be at language school in Guatemala for three weeks, so theoretically there will be lots of time for bloggy goodness!
Las Tortugas 