The Dirtbag Diaries #2
Feb ‘24- Apr ‘24
Last I left off in the Dirtbag Diaries, we had just finished seeing lots of nomad friends at a festival in Arizona, Now, it was time to head south to an adventure I had been dreaming of for a couple years….RVing through Baja, Mexico. There was a lot of planning and organizing logistics to make this happen, because it’s one thing to drive down Baja’s famously narrow and treacherous roads and another thing to do so while towing a 30+ trailer. Luckily, while still a drive reserved for the daring, it is fairly well-trodden by many RVers before us, including some towing much larger rigs, so there was some information to plan with.
We entered Baja alone, but met up with and were joined along the way by various RV friends, in rendezvouses both planned and spontaneous. We were introduced to the first stopping point, San Felipe, by a couple of friends, @rebekahandjared, and got our first taste of cheap beach living. San Felipe is famous for having on of the largest tidal ranges in the world, receding as much as 1.5 miles. Kipling (and all the feral dogs of the town) loved running up and down the exposed ocean floor.
From there, we had the pleasure of meeting up with an RVer friend, Phil, that we met at the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous and who had since bought a house in Baja and let us moochdock in his spectacular driveway. He also took us on daily visits to the local hot springs that would flood with high tide every day, cooling the sulfur water to a bearable soaking temperature. It was really impressive to be sitting in a hot pool, but eye-level with the Sea of Cortez. I was also stunned to find a rare oarfish washed up on the local beach. These giant deep-sea fish are rarely seen, dead or alive, and it’s probably the closet thing we’ll get to a real life sea serpent.
One of the most incredible things about the Sea of Cortez is the vast marine and bird biodiversity, where interesting things are always or happening in the water washing up. You could be entertained all day by watching the wildlife around you.
We went back to San Felipe to join two other couples we had planned to travel through Baja with, and from there headed south together to Gonzaga Bay, where at sunset the water turns still as glass and is colored in pastel hues. At night, we put together a party palapa, mostly thanks to the impeccable vibe-setting of our friend, Brian. Our group viewing of the reality show Love is Blind (regular life doesn’t stop just because you’re traveling through rural Mexico) drew in a rogue vanlifer wandering past and we all heckled the show together.
From Gonzaga, we continued south to Guerrero Negro, on the Pacific side of Baja. This is a simple, unassuming town, but we all liked it for how easy it was to get around and stock up on all the hard-to-find essentials of RVing in Baja- drinking water, propane, laundry, an ATM, and fully-stocked grocery store. It also is home to a fish and shrimp taco truck that we repeatedly heard recommended to us all over Baja. In fact, as we were headed there, pulling away from a nearby laundromat, a gringo literally ran down our car to excitedly tell us we had to eat there. The truck was in fact, excellent, run by friendly folks, and even as someone who doesn’t eat seafood, I had to sample the shrimp taco. Muuuy bueno.
But the real draw of Guerrero Negro, and the nearby lagoon of Ojo de Liebre is the opportunity to pet grey whales as they gather in the calving season.
Whale Magic
I first heard about the friendly grey whales of Baja a few years back, but as with any incredible-seeming animal interaction, the first thing I did was to research how ethical the experience was. If an animal interaction is exploitative, stressful, or hurts a wild population (elephant riding, posing with big cats, swimming with dolphins, supporting false sanctuaries, etc), it immediately gets nixed from my plans. It's the least we can do if we claim to love animals.
But after lots of reading, I couldn't find anything that could say how these Baja interactions negatively affected the whales. In fact, over and over, I heard about how these interactions are something the whales actively chose. The three lagoons of Baja's Pacific side are the only place grey whales come to mate and calve and display this behavior en masse. After our last visit to Baja, I was also impressed how seriously the Mexican government took the conservation and regulation of its Baja waters.
Well, reading is one thing, and seeing for yourself is another. When we arrived in Ojo de Liebre, we camped by the lagoon for a week and almost every day went out to the dock to catch small boats heading out. The boats go out into the lagoons and spread way out, so there's never any crowding around whales. There's no chasing or feeding. Captains slow their motors when they are near and we sit dead in the water and simply wait. If a whale chooses to sidle along a boat, then that's our great fortune and if not, too bad. When whales left our side, that choice was respected.
To have an incredible animal choose to spend time with you is one of the greatest gifts that is more magical than any photo op could ever be. It's honestly unbelievable until it happens. One of the most awe-inspiring parts of this experience is when a whale approaches a boat and slowly rolls on their side, revealing a large, inquisitive eye. They will stare at you as much as you stare at them and the power of that connection is whale magic.
I am so grateful that experiences like this can still be had in the world. Will the lagoon tours here remain ethical in the future? I hope so, but it's possible they could see too many visitors and attract operators that don't respect the whales. Then, it will be up to the government to impose stricter permitting and up to us, the visitor, to always be vigilant and place doing no harm above all else, whenever we can.
Bahía Concepción
Continuing into Baja Sur, we reached the Holy Grail of Baja beaching camping: Bahía Concepción, a scenic stretch of coastline along the Sea of Cortez. The water here is turquoise and the beaches touted to be some of the most beautiful in the world. They were especially remarkable to us RVers, because you could drive onto them and park within feet of the gentle water. This area is especially rural with very limited amenities. One time, we learned our best bet for getting propane in the rural village of Mulege was to drive past a broken down van on the side of the road and see if behind it was a guy who sometimes comes into town with large tanks. After a couple days of trying, he showed up and we got a delightfully janky refill.
Living on the beach is a generally a luxury reserved for the ultra-wealthy, but we reveled in this simple privilege for weeks. And what a privilege it was. We kept our paddleboards next to our rigs, ready to be pulled 50 feet into the water at any time. Besides the wildlife, the water was still and uncrowded and some days I would just paddle out, lay down on my board and close my eyes, letting the ripples of the tides rock me. There were also various beach restaurants and bars, one not much more than a small shack serving margaritas, that we could paddle across the bays to and come ashore, like friendly but thirsty pirates.
One new moon, the bioluminescence in the bay was especially bright, so we all jumped on our boards after a campfire and just sat in the bay, watching the water shimmer around us. On these shores, just watching is a joy in and of itself. There are some places in the world where it feels like you could look forever and never get your fill of the sights before you. The Sea of Cortez is like that for me, my thirsty eyes gulping in the dreaminess of the sunsets reflecting off the water, the deep turquoises of the shallows, the massive tides revealing the secrets of the beach every day.
What to Fear in Mexico
I’m not even really going to get into Americans’ perceived dangers of being in Mexico because they are so overblown, over-sensationalized, and misunderstood. No, there is not zero risk of issue or being in the wrong place at the wrong time, as is possible anywhere. Mexico has its own political and cartel problems it must grapple with. But time and time again, it was clear that the biggest danger we would face in Baja was driving at night- not because you might be kidnapped and murdered- but because cows and other livestock gravitate towards the warm pavement and stand in the middle of the road.
One point of fear for some travelers is the military checkpoints that are scattered along the highway. Stocked full of young men in body armor with very large guns, it’s natural that they are intimidating, but the truth of it is that the soldiers are generally more curious about the inside of our rigs than anything. Sometimes they will ask for stuff (especially flashlights and small electronics), which apparently is very scary for some people, but all you need to do is say no, in a friendly but firm way. If you really want to get in the local spirit, you can offer them cokes or other snacks, which has the added bonus of bringing your search to halt. I thought it was really fascinating the cultural discrepancies between whether it was okay to bribe police and military, with traveling gringos being against (as so to avoid being targeted for the ‘gringo tax’), and many local gringos and Mexicans feeling that it was a natural way to move things along.
My favorite experience at a military checkpoint was when I accompanied a young, friendly solider back into our trailer and waited patiently while he checked out the pictures on our wall. He pointed to a picture of Kipling and asked where he was. I told him that el perrito was in the truck and after a pause, tapped the photo and said “mi hijo” (my son). This seemed to tickle the solider pink because he practically ran back up the truck where Kipling had his head sticking out of the window. The solider excitedly asked David, “this is your son?” several times until I translated and David responded, that yes, this was his son and he was a very good son. Delighted, the solider let us pass through.
Checkpoints and road livestock aside, the most nerve-wracking experience in Baja is towing, as the single lane highways are sometimes 8.5 ft wide and your average rig is 8 ft wide, leaving little room for error, especially when a semi is coming past you from the opposite direction and the little road you have to work with is crumbling away at the edges.
There are also extra fun obstacles, like one of the steepest and windiest grades in North America, comfortingly called La Cuesta del Inferno or “The Slope of Hell.” I think my nerves could have handled it better if they named something less intimidating, like “Candy Mountain” or “The Hill Even Little Babies Can Drive Down.” Potentially urban legends abounded online about this section of road, saying that if you looked over the edge while driving, you could see the remains of other cars that had driven off the edge. Our caravan crawled down La Cuesta and miraculously no one died. We were actually quite impressed at the quality of this stretch of road…it even had shoulders! Returning north on the way up, I peeked over the edge to see if the grisly stories were true, but like most stories about Mexico, they seemed to be exaggerated.
In summary here is what you need to know about your safety as a tourist in Baja:
To Fear:
Potholes
Rouge cows
Buying groceries in Mexico and discovering that everything goes bad quickly and getting really nervous about what’s in American food to preserve it for months
Grumpy old gringos who think they discovered Baja and are the only ones entitled to it
What not to Fear:
The locals
The cartel
Official men with big guns
That being said, like anywhere in the world, it’s important to be aware, act with consideration, and treat others with respect. I was so touched with how friendly, welcoming, and patient local Mexicans were, with all the gringos. The only rude people I encountered were the occasional American and Canadian. It’s also worth learning a little Spanish, which goes a long way. I have been improving my Spanish lately and some small personal victories were being able to help locals who didn’t speak English translate and when locals would switch from speaking English to speaking Spanish with me. The last time we were in Mexico, I was too shy to really communicate in Spanish, so this was a lot of progress for me. A big help in my confidence and comprehension was using the program Dreaming Spanish.
We were lucky enough to be traveling with our friend Brian, who is a professional videographer and captured some fantastic footage of our time in Baja. He created an entire art film, which you can watch here. You can also watch some great shorts he made:
Return to the Land of Plenty
After 2.5 months in Baja, we returned to the US and reveled in one of the country’s greatest strengths- getting anything you want anywhere at any time. Every local Walmart is such an embarrassment of riches. Of course, having every convenience easily available to you seems like a gift but leads to the empty trap of the hedonic treadmill. It was remarkable how little we were able to spend in Mexico when there’s just not that much to spend on, and yet we were just as happy.
This is the lesson learned every time I travel abroad for an extended amount of time and one of my favorite reminders from travel. It lets me reset my hedonic adaptation and be overwhelmingly amazing and grateful for common things we have available in the US. Each reset keeps me at the lower levels of consumerism and resist being swayed by superficial promises of happiness.
One of my favorite shifts in perspective that came out of Baja was a greater comfort with towing. Both David and I tow our rig and have done so for the past three years, but it’s still a chore that takes a lot of attention and focus and was not one that I looked forward to. Well, after the narrow, crumbling, windy, steep roads of Baja, towing in the US is a complete breeze. Any anxiety I had about it disappeared after towing in Baja. David and I now laugh at the ultra-wide, smooth roads with massive shoulders. You could fit a whole other semi in here!
Arizona
After a couple weeks of rest, we continued on through Southern Arizona to spend a weekend in one of our favorite towns in the US, Bisbee. Bisbee is full of character and art and David scored an incredible venue-turned-Airbnb for our stay. We wandered the tiny, hilly alleys of the town and soaked in the big personalities.
From there, we headed to Saguaro Man, Arizona’s regional Burning Man. We’ve been to a lot of ‘Burning Man adjacent’ festivals, but this was our first official regional burn. It’s much smaller and quieter than the big burn, but we enjoyed making friends that we could run into again and again. There were some excellent art cars, including a double-decker pirate ship and an old mining cabin on wheels that had perpetual propane flames burning on its roof. We were a little surprised to find it overall a quite mellow event, with a heavy emphasis on bars (all serving free drinks and food in various themes). So many weird and wild things happen in the desert boondocking world that I think we were expecting more from an organized event, but it was still a great time and a fun foray in the burner community, which was extremely welcoming and friendly.
Stuff I Made
Baja marked the conclusion of the creation of my needlefelted series, The Octoverse. You can see the whole thing with stories behind each piece on my felting page. But here’s a little peek of each piece. They were all fun and extra challenge to bring out of my head and into the world because they involved fabrication with mixed media beyond felting. I’m also excited to never felt all those little suckers again.
Elsewhere Music Video
Also wrapping a long and grueling artistic process, David finished mixing and producing his latest single, Elsewhere. It’s such a fantastic song that even after listening to approximately 10,000 versions as David worked on it, I still love it. Elsewhere is about the eternal struggle to stay present and in the moment. Once again, we were lucky to have Brian as he took David’s musical baby under his wing and created an amazing music video to accompany it. This film not only encapsulates some of our wonderful times in Baja but makes being Elsewhere look pretty great!
