There's a little beach around the corner where families bring their kids and fishermen sit patiently on the rocks, hoping to catch dinner.
La Playita is its name.
There were quite a few locals there today, just about 300 yards up from a marina where the big hitters launch on their daily run across the water in million-dollar boats in search of marlin or swordfish.
Right next to the beach are a bunch of pangas, little 22-footers the regular turistas can hire for the day.
But for the guy I saw this afternoon, there were no fancy boats or gourmet box lunches. Perched on the rocks near a beach with patches of black sand it was clear he was catching dinner. As he fished, children squealed as the waves chased them, a little dog danced between two young girls.
The streets of San Jose del Cabo are narrow. There aren't a lot of parking spaces and many people are on foot.
Once in awhile, a young man cruises through with his woofer blaring from the trunk of his car. No, no rap coming out. Usually its one of the popular bandas, maybe some mariachi-rock hybrid, or some Tex-Mex. Glad I brought the Dough Sahm CD. The Texas Tornado stuff fits in well.
On the drive down, we stopped for some cold drinks at a mini-mercado. Instead of the huge, well-lit and crowded supermarkets I was accustomed to, the store was a bit darker.
There were no packaged meats. In fact, the butcher had some fresh meat hanging to air dry near the checkout counter. There were no microwave foods, frozen dishes, ornate trays of veggies and snacks, just stuff real people in this world, about a thousand miles away physically and many years farther culturally, would need. Like the carton of two dozen eggs the middle-aged man who looked like he had worked the fields for too long carried gently to his car as we walked in.
A little earlier in the day we stopped at a place for a late lunch. The owner's English was far worse than my Spanish, but, I finally understood that he wasn't trying to sell me the beautiful fish he brought over to show me, just share his joy in having such a good catch in his restaurant.
We did more than 1,500 miles on rough and rugged road to get here. It's a trip I never want to make again, to be honest. The highway is narrow and you share it with not only other cars and trucks, but cows, donkeys, goats, coyotes and rattlesnakes. There are portions that look like a piece of the moon fell and cactus sprung from it. Others have nice, neat rows of hay with irrigation lines that reminded me a lot of Idaho.
It's Old Mexico, which is nothing like the shady quarters around Tijuana and Ensenada. It's not Nuevo Laredo or, as a matter of fact, Cabo San Lucas where college kids go to raise hell during spring break and rich turistas toss around money and enhance the image of The Ugly American.
I had read a lot about Mexico Highway 1, but I was unprepared for its vastness. I knew the The Baja had a range of mountains that divided it. But it still caught me unprepared to spend most of my time winding through curvy, often dangerous, passes, only to swoop down now and then to a coastline -- the highway touches both -- and see the magnificence of the ocean and breathtaking views.
Cara and I turned off the CD player just before we left San Diego and crossed the border. It didn't go on again until we were just about at Land's End, mostly to help me wrap my mind around something a little different in the final hour or so before we arrived.
Yeah, we've played with our laptops a bit since we got here and we can hear a neighbor's CD player doing some kind of dance music right now.
Us? Well, this morning Cara was sitting across from me and asked, "What day is today?" I really had to stop and think a minute before I could answer. When I did, it was very strange because I suddenly realized that I had no office to go to, that I could start my "work," if that's what you want to call it, whenever I pleased and continue as long as I wished. Odd, for somebody who has lived by daily deadlines most of his semi-adult life.
We have a TV here, but it hasn't been turned on yet. We brought a few CDs, but have not played any. Instead, between a couple runs to the store and a jaunt over to La Playita today, we've sat on the patio, looking at a cactus garden and breathing deeply. The attached picture is from our patio.
There's some kind of magic here, some kind of thing in the air that has captured us. I catch Cara gazing off into space sometimes, smiling, and I understand what it's all really about -- the smile.
All we brought with us was what would fit into the back of our Ford Explorer. As we packed it away in drawers and closets today, I wondered if I brought too much.
Things are things. You need money only to buy things that, really, aren't all that important.
Unless it's two dozen eggs to feed the kids breakfast or enough bait to catch dinner.
