Baja, Top To Bottom

Slate's Seth Stevenson has just reported on a trip in Baja California, where he drove from Tiajuana to Cabo. It sounds like a pretty cool trip-I'd definitley like to travel in Mexico sometime soon. Here's an exerpt:

If I drink enough, I figure, I will start to feel at home. So, I'm pounding away. Around me, the place fills up with gaggles of shrieking women in halter tops and enormously paunchy men in polo shirts embroidered with the names of their cabin cruisers. Cabo has perhaps the world's highest concentration of white people in pleated shorts.

The DJ, for his part, is only playing songs that I hate. The dance floor is a Hieronymus Bosch triptych. It's not that I'm against hedonism and excess—quite the contrary, in fact. It's just that I'd rather not watch these arts practiced by a mob of unattractive chuckleheads. When "YMCA" surges through the sound system and everyone screams with delight, I can take no more. Adieu, horrific nightclub dystopia. I weave tipsily through the streets and back to my room.

And that's it for Baja. Tomorrow I catch a plane home.

Did I find the adventure I sought? Sort of. The guidebooks essentially warn that driving the peninsula should not be undertaken without three spare fan belts, an air compressor, 600 gallons of water, and an elephant gun. Yet I found driving here to be no more difficult than driving in the American Southwest. (Although the gas stations are farther apart in Baja, necessitating a bit more forethought.)

It's pretty hard to get lost when there's only one paved road. Even if you wander off it, you'll smack into an ocean within 75 miles in either direction. If the sun rises over this water, you'll know it's the Sea of Cortez; if the sun sets into it, you'll know you've hit the Pacific.

I never felt the slightest bit unsafe in terms of crime. Actually, I felt much safer here than I ever do at home in D.C. The people are laid back and friendly, and if you speak just a touch of Spanish, you can mostly make yourself understood. I wish I spoke more, of course—I might have enjoyed more profound interactions with the locals—but then I wish I spoke French and Chinese and Hindi, too.

I guess the thing I'll remember most is the nothingness. The opportunity to pull over in the middle of the desert, take a leak by the side of the road, and see no cars in either direction for mile upon mile. No billboards. No rest stops. No McDonald's every 15 exits. In fact, no exits at all. Just the occasional ungraded dirt road winding off to some hidden beach behind the hills.

Comments

[lou]

you don't need to worry about gas stations when you're on a bus.

[MC]

That's the trip you took with Phatrick and Hadley right? How many days did you need to do it by bus?

[lou]

it's all a late 80's blur, but i do remember traveling by foot, train, taxi, bus, ferry, van, sailboat, and plane.

oh yeah, and some dudes gave us a ride to club med in a volkswagen bug.