Preparing for the Trip

Cabo Pulmo Mexico 191110 05:22

We were scheduled to fly out Sunday morning and I called my bank on Thursday to tell them I was going to be in Mexico. They said this was fine but there was a problem with my card. They had accidentally sent me two cards and were going to cancel them both and send out a new one next week.

This was annoying but I figured I could draw some money from my other bank. That evening, however, I received a notice from that bank that they would be closed from Friday-Monday to update their internal network and during this time their ATMs would be down. So I was going to Mexico with only the cash in my pocket.

We went out thrift store shopping on the Saturday before the trip looking for a larger bag we could use carry our dive equipment. We didn't find anything suitable but I collected pictures of weird thrift store stuff.

I woke with asthma at midnight the night before, lay awake until 1am, and then got up and entertained the cat until we had to head out at 02:50. Our regulators, wetsuits, and buoyancy compensators were in two awkward duffel bags which we carried a mile down the hill to the bus stop where we would catch the shuttle into San Jose.

We met Karen, Rian, and Kayla in San Diego and flew out to Los Cabos together. The plan, as we were told by people that visit this area regularly, was to stock up on food at the super mercado just south of the airport before doing the one and a half hour drive out to Cabo Pulmo. We met Joy at the airport after going through an enormous queue for customs. As we marched back and forth in the line they played bird songs over the speakers and huge flat screen TVs advertised the types of perfectly manicured beach resorts we were hoping to get away from. After getting our passport stamped we collected our bags, went through another door, and joined another queue to have our bags checked.

Here are the players in this little trip.

Karen (Rian's mother) and our chauffeur.

Joy (Amanda and Kayla's mother) - our hotelier. Together this pair were known as the moms.

Amanda - our bird creeper.

Kayla - our physician.

Rian - our demolitions expert.

and Na - our humble narrator.

Kayla had issues taking a bag of protein powder out of the US. Apparently when they swabbed it for spectrographic analysis it came back positive but they let her through when she pointed out she was about to miss her flight (one of those benefits to being a young white woman). Now, faced with the prospect of explaining the powder to the Mexican authorities she pulled it out of her bag and looked for a place to throw it away. The queue for this line was shorter than the visa check and when I came to the front and handed over my declaration form, the woman scowled and told me to press the button, pointing to a table with a box and a single red button. I pressed it, nothing happened, and she motioned me to the left, away from additional screening. Kayla and Rian weren't as lucky but they weren't deported so I guess it was ok.

Karen had organized a rental car with enterprise and we asked a few of the many loitering men where to go. One directed us to a guy at a desk and he tried to make a joke in broken English between "green go" and "gringo" (green being color of the rental company) but he repeated it so many times, he sounded crazed.

Karen had arranged to get a rental car for our time in Mexico. It was going to be cheap $7/day for ten days but the rental company rejected two different proofs of insurance and insisted she pay $400 for their own, in addition to a $1000 deposit. At this point we should have started looking into one of the other 50 rental car companies situated around the airport but they knew how difficult it was to change plans when you've just arrived in the country. So just to make a clear statement on the internet where it might last forever and influence others,

Enterprise rent a car sucks and you should avoid it at all costs.

Amanda navigated us to the super mercado, through the insane double-two lane entrance and we walked through the crowd at the entrance while the clothing store next door blasted us with pop music. A guard stopped us at the entrance and put a tag on our shopping bags.

We had a list of groceries we wanted to buy but it was hard to predict how much six people would consume over ten days. The moms spent some time trying to find things like butter, apple sauce, and peanut butter that are apparently exotic luxuries in Mexico and Kayla loaded us up on vegetables. We bought some avocados that were so firm they may have been carved of wood. Joy wanted to drink modela negro and she bought a case; and then on second thought, she bought another case for the rest of us.

The shopping cart was full when we got to the checkout but Joy and Kayla wandered off to pick up more stuff while we nervously waited for them to get back before we had to pay. Kayla was the only one in our group that knew any Spanish and the rest of us dreaded the moment we would be interrogated in a language we didn't understand.

The total grocery bill was 2711 pesos which seemed like an astronomical amount until we learned the exchange rate was ~20 pesos per dollar and our heavily laden shopping cart was filled with $140 of groceries. Two boys followed us back to our van and asked to load the groceries into our car. Kayla pointed out we had two strong men to do it for us (I hope she was talking about Rian and I) and they went away dejected.

Rian had waited in the car while we shopped and had figured out the complicated double two-lane access roads without any traffic signs by watching where people went. He said he watched men on bikes swerving around stray dogs and boys hustling for tips.

Our California clocks advanced an hour when we landed in Baja and Amanda was keen on keeping our mercado adventure brief so we could get on the road while there was still daylight but the moms were resolute in their quest for apple sauce and it was well after sunset by the time we left the building.

Karen was anxious about letting anyone else drive the car but both moms were unable to see in the dark so Kayla took the wheel with Amanda as her navigator.

The roads grew progressively worse as we left Los Cabos and we learned the inconspicuous signs that said 'Tope' meant there were speed bumps in the road as we rocketed off one at sixty kilometers per hour.

It was too dark to see much of the landscape but I caught glimpses of various shrines to the virgin Mary along side of the road. Some were as small as dog houses with iron bars in front (Were they trying to keep her from escaping?) and one was as large as a house with a colorful mosaic and fresh flowers.

As we drove, the road grew worse and worse and oncoming traffic kept flashing their lights at us. We weren't sure if they were blinded by our low beams or signaling that there were cows in the road. We passed many cows grazing on the shoulder of the road and we even passed a calf sleeping in the other lane.

A little farther on we came to a roadblock. There were no warning signs, only a heap of dirt piled in the road across both lanes and a sign indicating a detour leading through the cactus grove along the side. SUV's impatient to get around us zoomed ahead only to have to stop and make room for oncoming traffic. We went through two or three of these detours before the paved road gave out and the last ten miles were along a dirt road.

We drove carefully on the washboard dirt road and were passed by SUVs driving too fast. At one point we reached a flooded section of the road and stopped to see if we could drive through it. Amanda and Rian got out out to see how deep it was and I waded through the ankle deep water and found the mud well packed and solid.

When we reached Cabo Pulmo Amanda resorted to our written sheet of directions to navigate the last few streets through the small town and straight to our door.

The outside lights were on twist timers and there were geckos clinging to the ceiling. We met the black house cat and read the instructions to never feed or touch it. We read the rules about conserving power and water and Amanda read through the large binder of house rules which are always so illustrative of the ridiculous misconceptions and follies of our predecessors. We were told the ceiling fans only evaporated the sweat on your skin and wouldn't cool the room while we were away.

We sorted out our sleeping arrangements, put away the food, ate some cheese quesadillas, and went to bed.