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You are here: Home / Archives for Destinations / North America / Mexico

Bajaducation

March 18, 2009 By Danny

Two overnight bus rides with a stop for whales and we found ourselves in Baja California Sur about 22 hours from the US border. We’re in La Paz on the eastern coast of Baja. Being a seaside resort town, the sea and sand are wonderful here, as is the culture. The well known adage of ‘me casa es su casa’ is alive and well. Perhaps it is our time in Washington, DC that has jaded us as pedestrians in an automobile dominated world, but the calm with which drivers meet jaywalkers has not yet ceased to amaze us. The constant barrage of ‘buenos dias’ and ‘buenas tardes’ is still catching us off guard. To say the least, Baja California has been a fabulous way to begin our Mexi-cation. We’ve been learning to negotiate daily life, which has been made easier by many bajacaliforianos along the way. Some of this vocabulary you just don’t learn in school.

It will be no surprise to most of you that at this point we are probably more adept at the grocery store than anywhere else. Naturally we expected the peanut butter selection to be replaced with an impressive display of salsas. What I did not expect was needing to understand the difference: salsa casara and salsa chipotle and salsa taqueria and salsa, well you get the drift. Perhaps the most interesting thing at the mercado is the cheese selection. I’d thought I’d died and gone to France there were so many options, except they all had names like Chihuahua and Oaxaca instead of Cheddar, Brie or something French. Our forays into the mercado continue to surprise us. Yesterday at a large chain store, after a feeble attempt at locating the bakery, we crossed paths with a Manischewitz cart. Yes, a full kosher-for-passover display here in Mexico. Just goes to prove, wherever you go you really aren’t that far away from home.

Fortunately, our learning has extended beyond the mercado. Driving in Baja should be scary, dangerous and nerve wracking, but from what we can tell, its only slightly different than driving in D.C., or Chicago (giant potholes anyone?). Most of our travel has been at night via bus so we’ve managed to sleep through the obligatory military checkpoints, although waking up to see a soldier walk up and down the bus is something everyone should add to their bucket list. Now that we’ve been taken under the wing of those with a car (more on them when we write about our time here in La Paz) we’ve learned a few more things about driving in Baja: 1) cattle in the road always has the right of way, 2) a left blinker does not mean turning left but that it is safe to pass…whatever you do, do not turn on your left blinker and then turn left…this will create a major problem, 3) unpaved roads are dangerous in a small sedan, and 4) did we mention cattle always have the right of way?

We’re interested to see what happens when we head to the mainland on Thursday. Hopefully our bajaducation comes in handy.

Filed Under: Central America, Mexico Tagged With: daily life, home, shopping

Baja or Bust

March 14, 2009 By Jillian

Update: 3/16/09 border crossing pictures added, see more at our Recent Sightings page.

We made it safe and sound!  Crossed the border yesterday uneventfully around 11am, which turned out to be 10am on the other side of the line, so we even gained an hour in our border crossing.  Got our tourist cards (giving us up to 180 days in Mexico) and caught the first bus from Tijuana to Ensenada.  Changed buses in Ensenada and pulled in to San Quintin around 5pm.  Our goal was to see gray whales before Monday.  Let´s just say, we were successful.

Turns out that the southbound bus `schedule´ in Baja California is awful and if we didn´t want to be stuck in San Quintin for 18 hours (no thanks!) we needed to get on an overnight bus.  I know, right now everyone is gasping that we took an overnight bus in Mexico as the US media says things are on the brink of civil war.  Nothing could be further from the truth, at least here in Baja.  The buses were full, the streets are full of families and children and the people have been nothing but friendly.  So friendly in fact that its almost scary coming from D.C.  (insert DC joke here).

Anyway, we pulled into Guerreros Negros this morning at 6am, definitely in time for whale watching.  If you aren´t familiar with the gray whale, its one of the largest mammals in the world and half of the world´s population migrates to Baja in late fall-early winter to mate and calve their young.  We happen to hit it at the best part of the season, the calves have been born and the migration back to Canada and Alaska isn´t in full swing yet.

We drifted in our boat for close to 20 minutes before the whales were spotted. Each time a white cap crested in the horizon I gasped thinking it was a whale.  Just as I was about to call the trip a bust, a huge burst of water exploded from in front of us.  As we drifted closer, the entire boat listed to one side as all eight of us clamored to get a better view of the passing animal.  To say these animals are huge is an understatement. To say they are friendly is the understatement of the century.  These whales were like puppies.  They came up to our boat, nudged the boat, rolled onto their backs for a tummy scratch, waved their fins, and even seemed to mug for the camera.  We actually got to touch the whales, several times, as they swam next to our boat.  By my count we saw one mother and calf and two other gray whales, two dolphins and a whole pile of sea lions.  Although the rest were cute, the whales were the highlight of the trip.  It was breath taking to see these magnificent creatures swimming along side us and heart stopping exciting when they came close enough to touch and the boatman said, “touch! touch!”.  I don´t think I stopped gasping for air the entire time.

I realize this is only day two, but it was such an amazing experience it is hard to think what will top this!

Click either picture to go to our flickr page for more gray whale shots!  We also have video that we´ll edit and upload in a few days!

Filed Under: Central America, Mexico Tagged With: baja, whales

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