Skip to main content

The Baja Odyssey, Pt 2

Following San Jose de Cabo we found ourselves on a bus back to San Lucas fully loaded for a sailing trip only to find out there'd be no sailing trip, so we sulked the rest of the day mostly drinking beer, smoking cigarettes and hanging around the beach and eating tacos.



The next day we marched over to the bus station and headed north, to Mulege (pronounced Moo-leh-hey; population ~5000), where we hoped to get the kayaks we were promised. We were a little worried about that, as some of our recent experiences reflected the opinion of our couchsurfing host there, the locally infamous 71 year old gringo Bill. He believes people only tell you what you want to hear in Mexico, if you know what I mean...

We got off the bus after driving through desert vistas and mountains and nervous military check points. We were greeted by Bill, the first thing he said, in a raspy loud American accent, was "Fuuuck!". He was complaining about his knee, though that didn't seem to slow him down too much.

Bill was a bit of an enigma, not so much of what he is (a retired, crotchety, straight-talking, friendly, blue-collar, gun-loving, red-blooded republican), but where he is (11 years in Mulege alone) and what he's doing (hosting couchsurfers). He was very honest, didn't take bullshit lightly and seemed to despise half the people in the town, who one way or another bullshited him, and love the other half. We liked Bill, though because of my construction experience I had an easier time seeing through his coarse demeanour than Zack did.

It was actually pretty funny, the whole situation more so when the next day we were cruising around town in Bill's truck getting supplies for our kayak trip (which we found out was going to happen). I was sick again, swealtering and nauseous in the back, as Bill lurched the truck from one store to another, yelling 'Hola Amigo!' in total Americano to someone and talking shit to us about someone else, or else holding the horn down until some poor mexican driver who parked his car in the middle of the street moved. Zack, in the front, didn't see the humour in the whole situation yet and was a bit forlorn between understanding why Bill acted like he did and trying to figure out kind of cheese to bring on the kayak trip (we eventually got some cheap local goats cheese which Bill suggested, which at first we doubted, but by the third day into the trip our camping trip hunger got the better of us and we figured out that was some damn fine cheese!) The whole supply run came to an end when Bill found out the toilet paper sale at some store was the day before. All I saw was Bill come out all cranky like 'What the Fuck! This is Bullshit!', with Zack left to his own devices to try to figure out what we needed for the trip in the store.



The next day we headed out south of Mulege to start the kayaking. On the way we stopped by the restored Jesuit mission, which, like most centres of religious/imperialist expansion in the Classical era, was basically a fort with a church in it. We got our boats to the beach and started loading 'em up, which considering all our stuff (food, all our backpacking stuff, kayaking stuff, camping stuff and over 70 liters of water), Bill and I found it hard to believe we could fit it all in the boats. But the big 18' expedition boats had room to spare. We said goodbye to Bill and paddled out into the warm clear blue water.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Very good post.

Popular posts from this blog

MySpace Blog Archives for Dummies!

Cheers! So, guess what guys, this is the last blog im gonna write on MySpace. It not that I don't like MySpace, its just that if someone wants to read it, they have to subscribe. If you're reading this on my Blogger blog, then you already know... Anywho, life continues here in Calgary. Craig, Meg (aka Sir Moog) and I went to Fernie yesterday. That was sweet as honey baby! Snow was a bit heavy because of the warm weather, but still awsome to the extent that sometimes I thought I was in a dream. I got a bit recless but didnt get hurt... barely. Went to baznica (church) today, to meet latvians. Met up with Jancis, Niks and Erika Muizniece. Jancis works as a window cleaner, and i want to see if I can do that too. Work at the warehouse has been pretty dull, and hopefully I can do the window cleaning. Anyway, that you all you loyal readers (ie - Wilkie), see you in Blogger at http://matisslife.blogspot.com/ Cheers! 10:36 PM - 0 Comments - 0

Ski-Bum Theory

Being a ski-bum in Revelstoke is for many here is a right of passage. Today we posit that often a first-year ski-bum is tempted to repeat his experiences in another ski-season. We observe and draw conclusions of one first-year ski-bum's experiences in Revy. The Revy ski-bum is amused in many ways. The ubiquitous 6 - 25 foot tall snow banks along all roads that make driving exciting (playing in said snow banks is also fun, especially for a certain sister of subject ski-bum, especially after friends' birthday parties). Its good to have all wheel drive. Also amusing is the skiing. To people who have not done big mountain skiing at Revelstoke Mountain Resort (RMR) and want to do it, it is a lesson first in humility. If you consider yourself an intermediate skier, perhaps even expert in Ontario (if you go by ski-run difficulty ratings out east), consider that no longer in Revy. You are a beginner. Forget what you know. This mountain has many and much more vertical, powd

Java time

So Im applying to get into a GIS course. GIS courses demand mucho computer programming, so I'm trying to learn some. HTML's one computer programming language, its not too bad at all actually. I think I'll convert my blog to HTML if im up for it (technically it already is, and now I basically understand how it works). Then there's Java. It seems like a whole new world. I feel like I am delving into the deeper, darker subconscious that is a programmer's mind - there are countless versions and the download/file folder/path variable/MS-DOS promt stuff blows the mind (and thats even before the actual progaming). It dawns on you: even though you just downloaded, un-zipped and installed a 76 mega-byte program you can't actually open anything in the Java folder in Windows - at least I don't THINK you can. Never mind actually programming. I'm sounding like a nerd already. But before I learned of these challenges, I thought "hey HTML's a breeze! I did Tur