Baja Mexico: Mistakes were made

Our introduction to Mexico was to grossly overpay for a so-so camping experience in San Felipe, the first stop south of the border on Highway 5. It was not a great time to be there as the entire town was overrun with Baja 500/1,000 competitors so yeah, we got hosed.

BUT in the true nature of adventure, we also had the great benefit of camping next door to a lovely Canadian couple from Red Deer, AB. Joe and Alex sold their house (a money pit, they confided in us. The roof collapsed 48 hours before the sale was going through, with Joe laid up with a health issue. Not a good time for our new friends). They, like us, were wanderers. They also had a massive and very well appointed RV and an equally massive and friendly dog, Clive. Clive was a dignified ‘farm dog’ that must have had Bernese Mountain Dog in him, he weighed more than I do. His farts could clear the RV in seconds. Clive was also outliving everyone’s expectations, at 11 he was the same age as our little dog Gidget, but for a dog that big? Gidget was pretty rude to poor old Clive, and knew she could intimidate the big old floof. 

Joe and Alex were unfailingly kind, generous and funny. They too had gotten burned to a fine, bacon crisp by the realities of everyday life (Joe managed an upscale care home during COVID-19. The man had not just hate emails, he had hate WEBSITES dedicated to him. Something I could really identify with, personally having gone through my own hell in the health system during that dark time). 

I learned that Joe is a medical anomaly. In a vein similar to Cronenberg’s new film, Crimes of the Future, Joe had extra kidneys. Two to be exact. 

They had made friends with another wanderer, Michael – our camp neighbour on the other side. Michael had a crude sense of humour, a profane sense of humour, and a heart of solid gold. He gave me a tour of his camper van, and made peppermint schnapps with hot chocolate for all of us. He was also a former paramedic in the Yukon, worked in Whitehorse with one of my former bosses, the director of Health and Social Services Brian Kitchen. Michael also experienced extreme PTSD, and moved to Kelowna to live with his wife after decades in the frigid nights in the Yukon. 

Both Michael and our couple shared one incident: Shakedowns at the border town Mexicali. It’s a dirty, smelly, dank place, one that reeks of transitory movement, shame, filth. Joe got pulled over with the massive rig, where the municipal cops clearly had a system of whatever bogus charges they can yell at you, and you are in a new country, confused, out of sorts and very vulnerable. They paid, and told us it was pretty obvious the cops were not new at this little game, with a sophisticated way of taking the money that involved a ritual with a folder, and money goes in, unseen to the outside world.

I guess the municipal cops also saw Michael as a target, but the man is quite deaf and I think he just shouted that he didn’t understand, and that they wouldn’t dare target a fellow first responder (repeating the word ‘bombedero’ over and over again) until they gave up and let him leave unmolested. 

When we left San Felipe, we got phone numbers for our new friends to keep them apprised of road conditions for Mexico’s treacherous and infamous HWY 1. Who knows, maybe we’ll run into them again? It immediately made the trip seem less intimidating, more accessible, more friendly. 

It felt nice to not be alone in this journey, that others were making a pilgrimage similar to us. Also we could share some of the truly boneheaded mistakes that we made- and continue to make- along the way. I am keeping a running tally of idiotic mistakes. I told Joe about a particularly stupid incident I had, freshly in Mexico for 24 hours–I forgot my bank card inside an ATM at the grocery store. I didn’t even realize it was still in there until I nagged at Ian to get money out from an ATM at the bank in town. He came back from the bank with cash (NOT always a given, as we both had trouble with the grocery store ATM ) saying he almost forgot his card, funny isn’t it, how they give you the money first, and then your card?

Shiiiiiiiit. I checked my purse and that sealed it: No bank card. 

We went back to the grocery store, as I was having a meltdown imagining my bank card being used to buy zillions of phone cards in some sort of scam (it’s always phone cards with these scammers. I have no idea why). Ian asked the bank security guard and he produced a wad of bank cards. Turns out i’m not the only dummy who’s pulled that move apparently! I immediately saw my emerald -green bank card, showed the guard my passport and we were reunited, thank god.

I have a running tally in my head of the dumb mistakes we’ve accomplished so far. Joe assured me that these won’t be the first, nor the last mistakes of our journey. 

• Ian losing his car keys inside our car at a rest stop in Issaquah in a torrential rainstorm.
• Ian losing his wallet, again inside our car when we were packing up from San Felipe, our new friends watching with worry and curiosity.
• Ian booking 6 nights at our hotel in Loreto, in a series of three nights in one room, check out, and three nights in another room  instead of 7 and not realizing it until we got back from the beach in the afternoon after the first three nights to increasingly angry text messages about how the hotel was going to remove our belongings if we didn’t show up to get them. 
• Us forgetting our keys in the room at the beyond bizarre ‘Hotel OYO’ that we ended up booking in a last minute scramble to fill in the missing night from our other hotel, and me climbing in through the window to open the doors. 
• Me with the bank card shenanigans.
• Me accidentally registering- and PAYING for- a race in a city we’re heading to in the new year…Because I didn’t know there were TWO races in that city, a month apart. Jesus wept.

I do expect to update this as we go. There are always new opportunities to be an idiot on the road.