winds and whales, federalis, shark bait, rainin whales, hitching with scallops

Flew into La Paz down on the tip of the Baja Peninsula and rented a car to drive out to La Ventana since Alby wanted to learn to kite surf.  What a hell hole.  I mean it's beautiful and the drive through the desert mountains is Y Tu Mama Tambien esque but it's just packed with retired Canadian and American baby boomers living in trailers and baking in the sun.  You know, the types of old chicks that look like old leather saddles.

Anyway, long story short - we bailed on La Ventana (and kite surfing) and drove back to La Paz.  Booked into a hostel and headed straight for one of my principal draws to Baja - fish tacos.  Ran into a lil taco stand on the street and oh yeah it was business time.  Fried to perfection with a toppings bars of all types of salsas, peppers, onion dishes, etc.  Money.

Woke early to swim with whale sharks.  Titties in yo face good.  Swam along a 20-something foot whale shark within inches.  Then took the afternoon to have a joy ride into the desert.  As we were leaving the city, I passed a cop who promptly began following me (all rental cars have license plates and special markings).  So after verifying that we were indeed white, they pulled me over.  F me.  Federalis.  They have quite the bad rep and I wanted nothing to do with them.

"You know why I pulled you over?"

"Nope, why?"

"Speeding mano."

"Oh really?  Well honestly I was just following everyone else and honestly other cars were passing me. So if you were really going after speeders why didn't you pull them over?"

"Yeah, well I can't stop everyone."

So on it went, and he eventually told me that he'd be writing me a ticket for a whopping 1,800 pesos (like $150) and that he'd have to retain my license until I went into the office and paid for it.

"Fine, I'll pay it senor.  But tomorrow, I got things to do right now."

So then he agreed to go call in to his supervisor to see what to "do about the sitch".  Then the "good cop" came over and told me that you know, if I could pay right now I'd get a discount.  So how much would I be willing to pay to make everything disappear right now?

Ah, right the mordida.  Was waiting for that.

"Well, officer, I'd really like to pay $0."  So then I went into this lengthy story about how we're not the typical gringos here to party (kinda true) and that we've been in Guatemala working on a food security project (true) and honestly I spend all my money on that and feeding children (eh maybe 30% true).  And we came to Mexico to evaluate new project places, you know, to help kids feed themselves (100% lie).

"So, you see, sir, I really have no money to give you much less pay a ticket."  His face dropped.  "Ok, yeah, you can go."

So day 2 in La Paz, went to Espiritu Santo Island.  On the way out we cruised through a pod of about 100 dolphins and then trekked out to a sea lion nursery.  Wetsuits and masks on and in we went.  We started in say 50 ft. of water but as we neared the shore we hit a school of a million or so sardines.  Birds, predatory fish and sea lions sliced their way through the school gorging themselves.  Soon the sea lions started playing with us, swimming up to our faces, nibbling our flippers etc.  Thuper duper cool.

Made it back into town and really for no reason we just got black out drunk.  Maybe cuz it was Carnaval or cuz we had just sorted out our next few days.   Anyway we got wasted, I finished the night eating another of the best carne asada burritos of my life (we ate them every night) and woke up at 6am with bloodshot eyes.

Ran to the bus station and hopped on an 11 hour bus ride to San Ignacio.  Without much of a plan and a ton of hunger, we arrived around 6pm.  We were headed to San Ignacio Laguna to watch the Gray Whales (childhood dream of mine).  Unfortunately it's about 1.5 hours out of town and there's 2 ways to get there - take a shuttle for anywhere from $40-$80 a person or hitchhike.  Luckily a fisherman from this town of ~100 had just dropped someone off at the bus so we hitched a ride with him through the desert to the lagoon.

Made it to camp around 730pm.  The camp was located in the middle of the desert on the water with no lights, no noise, nothing.  Perf.  Ate until we almost puked, setup our tent purchased from Wal-Mart the day before and popped a valium.  Awoke to a killer desert sunrise and whales playing in the water in front of the tent.

You know how Arnold once said that pumping iron is like having an orgasm so that when he lifts it's like a constant orgasm?  Yeah, the whale watching wasn't like that for me.  But en serio, it was surreal. We were surrounded by dozens of Gray Whales, jumping, fluking, mother and calf, etc.  Even got to see two whales having sex.  Anyway, it was just really sweet being within feet of these beasts.

So finished with two tours and we wanted to head north instead of spend the night on the beach.  As essentially no one lives there they said we should wait til morning when a car would be going into town.  Nah, we'll walk the 50 miles and hope to hitch a ride.  We had 1.5L of water, 12 pretzels and 2 ciggies.  So we'd live at least.

About 2 miles into the walk we got a ride with a toothless old dude bringing potable water to his "community" (there were 3 houses).  That took us a good 5-10 miles but then back to the road.  We had resigned ourselves to walking all night to catch the 5am bus north.  Just as the sun was setting, we turned around to snap some pics when a car came up over the hill.  Was a scallop diver going back into town and he was more than happy to take us.  So into the bed of his pickup we went, sandwiched between a couple hundred lbs. of scallops as we shot through the desert just as the stars came out.

Got dropped off, gave him a bottle of whiskey para decir gracias, and ate some din.  Walked over to the bus station, missed the 830 bus and so here we are sitting on a dark stretch of Highway 1 waiting for our 11pm bus to some town I've only heard of this morning.