My good friend joined me in Mexico for a few days of sun and fun, and we raced up the 4 lane highway of death and arrived in Todos Santos, scene of my victory on the battle field for Spanish Supremacy! Our days were spent shopping in the little town, surfing at Cerritos and San Pedrito, attending mass at the little church on Good Friday, eating, drinking and relaxing by the little pool.
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One afternoon we headed to La Posa (the lagoon) in Todos Santos where the waves break right on the beach. These bad boys are 5 to 8 feet high, and will sweep you out to sea then smack you back on to the beach. I played chicken with the waves like we used to do in Cali (ehem) years ago. Very fun. Check out the pics!
We headed up to La Paz for one night, which is the largest city in Baja at 170,000 people and sits on a beautiful lagoon that feeds the Sea of Cortez on the east coast of Baja. The boardwalk area Malecon is a great place to people watch, have dinner and better yet, get DRUNK on Tequila!
While in La Paz, we hit the big Kmart style shop called Soriana and bought a big comforter, a sleeping bag, two towels, 5 gallons of water and some food for the road and headed out the next morning for the East Cape where it was decided that we would camp out for two nights on a deserted beach! Total cost with gas? Under $100! What a deal.
We were gutted when we hit the beach at Cabo Pulmo, a beautiful little beach 20 miles from no where, and it was PACKED with locals!!! They had drove off road for 10 miles in tercels, old VW bugs, beat up trucks and anything that would carry the tents, chairs, BBQs, fishing poles, and huge speakers that would blast bad Mexican music all night. NOT what we had in mind.
We continued down the coast and found every beach full of locals celebrating the long Easter weekend. Finally after about an hour of driving down bumpy dirt roads, we found a cove with a mile long stretch of white silky beach with only about 10 people on it, and they left at about 5 PM leaving us alone in exactly the scenery that we had hoped for, total seclusion! We set up camp, gathered fire wood, and watched the pelicans dive for dinner. The sun set just as the fire started to roar, and about two hours later Hiroko said is the sun coming up already? Not the sun, but an absolutely AMAZING moon rise. We only had about an hour of darkness, but the stars were amazing, and the light the moon put out allowed us to see 100 feet in all directions.
Living in Tokyo for the last 10 years listening to trains go by, traffic, and just plain city noise is quite different from sleeping on a blanket in total silence that gets broken every 45 seconds when a wave crashes on the beach. The silence was eerie enough that I could not sleep! Only got an hour or so until the sun rose again.
We played with the pelicans and watched as a flock of about 30 very large birds swooped and dove for breakfast. We saw a group of people down at the end of the beach and walked the 30 minutes over to them and found that they lived there! They have been living in tents since 1996, and finally built a house 6 months ago. No one around them for 25 miles in either direction! Honestly don?ft know if I could do it.
Baja was amazing. The difference from Cabo to Todos Santos to La Paz to the East Cape was enormous. If I were to do it again, I would stay far away from Cabo and stick to Todos and the East Cape, the prices are half, and the people are much more friendly.
Gracias amigos, and good luck in the World Cup!!