Baja Mexico

The State Dept and the Press (Press is capitalized now, since they control everything in the world....) have been very good at warning people away from Mexico. I guess they figure that since things are bad in the U.S. they better try to make things bad elsewhere. Baja relies solely on the export of Tequila (capitalized because it is so very important) and tourism to keep their population employed. Not the drug cartels. That's in mainland Mexico. Tourism is what Baja relies on. It is a desert peninsula spotted with resort towns and fishing towns. I know there is violence in the border towns, and that it has to do with drugs, but since I'm not a drug dealer, a distributor, or a cop in Mexico that excludes me from the terrorism. And all the other tourists.

So Baja is suffering, thanks to the recent Press statements and State Dept warnings that Americans are not safe in Mexico. I just spent four days there, and not once was my life in danger.
But Jim and Glenn's lives were severely altered when they made the mistake of asking a restaraunt manager if they could get the "HOT" salsa:


They respected the salsa, with all their hearts and souls after that experience. It was so hot, I took one tiny little sample of it and it burned all the remaining enamel off my teeth.
When the sun came up on Friday morning, I was ready for the day. I stood out on my balcony and watched as it edged up over the Sea of Cortez:

We walked down to the beach and had a great breakfast, then went to "contingency" on the Malecon (means "seawall" in English) where the racers lined up to have their vehicles inspected by the tech guys. My friend J.T. was there with his wonderfully huge dog, Chuy:


Sunny needed to find a Wi-fi connection for her laptop, so we met at the Rockodile bar, which is a multi-colored place with an indoor volleyball court and plenty of balconies for people watching.


I had lunch:

And I put my business card on the wall with all the other ones:

Sunny struggled with the internet:

We decided the internet connection was not worth all the time and effort, so we shopped in the stores along the Malecon for a bit. Here's just a sample of some of the wonderful things we managed not to buy:






We ended up buying very little, because on purpose we carried VERY little cash. Coming home with a huge bag full of Mexico junk is fun once, but you learn after that.

We socialized with some ex-patriots (Americans who live full time in Mexico) and learned that the economy is so awful there right now. They haven't seen the spring breakers that they normally do, and they're worried that the warnings from the State Dept are going to keep people away for good. I'm sure the races will always be in Baja, they can at least count on that.

As the sun set we returned to our hotel, which I told everyone was the Uncle Jesus motel. It was actually the Don Jesus, which means something besides Uncle. Oh well.
Nice place, and we had some race teams staying there as well:

We walked down to a restaurant on the beach for dinner. Oh, what a lovely dinner. And the view was phenomenal:

We had our usual margaritas on the rocks, with the extra Tequila on the side just in case the bartender was being stingey with the wondeful ingredient in our drinks.
Conversation got sillier and sillier, because we discovered after a while that there was actually a good amount of alcohol in our beverages. So the pictures were of course jovial:


And we took a moment on the way out of the restaurant to pose together:

But alas, all the giggling gave me a great case of the hiccups. I tried everything, even holding my breath:

It was the kind of hiccups that make OTHER people laugh at you. Ug.
Sunny and I discovered that we really like to set the timer on the camera and pose. This picture was only one of SEVERAL that we took that evening:


I was mindful to get to bed early that night, because the racing begins on Saturday morning at 6am. That means getting up at 4, getting ready, getting down to the start line, getting set up, then being very mindful about accuracy on the numbers. The THOUSANDS of numbers.
The Mexicans decided to make sure that the situation at the start line was well in hand. The Army, the Marines, and the local police were there to stand guard and keep the crowds in check. Amazing.
Actually, it was a bit of overkill.


But I was most impressed with the Army Officer who looked like the PERFECT Columbian Warlord:

As the first racers got lined up, the boss of the entire race organization did interviews. Don't know if this was NBC or what. I know they were there, but I don't know if this was them:


The race actually started with no problems, Glen and I got everyone off the line on time.
Our view was sometimes obstructed by the crowds who kept pushing closer and closer.

Here's the Herbst Truggy leaving the Start:

And here they are several hours later coming to the Finish:


I didn't get a photo of the winner, because it was Brian Collins and I have a hundred pictures of him.

I did get a few neat ones that evening. The race track didn't close until 9pm so we had some time to kill.
I realized that I have never photographed the Arches in San Felipe. It's basically at the edge of town and it's the image that people associate with the community. So once the sun set I got a great photo of the arches, just beyond our Red Bull finish line:

I also used for the first time the Night Landscape feature on my camera. I saw some partially illuminated palm trees nearby and I wanted to see if it was possible to get the stars in the background:

So proud of myself....