Sunday, December 2, 2012

First Tastes of Baja California Sur

After leaving Bahía de los Angeles, we ended up crossing the border into Baja California Sur to stay the night in Guerrero Negro. Apparently in Mexico, crossing a state border is almost like crossing national borders. They have a post at the border to protect against spreading of certain agricultural issues. As such, you aren’t supposed to bring any type of fruit across the border, which is on the of the reasons we hesitated crossing on Saturday: we had one lone Granny Smith apple left. Supposedly, they always fumigate your tires as well. When we crossed, it was rather informal. An officer stood in the middle of the road to interrogate both sides of traffic. When he asked about the fruit, he told me I could go ahead, since there was only the one but next time not to have any. And, he didn’t fumigate the tires. Maybe that is during a different season? Regardless, it wasn’t as arduous, as I thought it would be.

Guerrero Negro is one of the newest towns on the Baja. It is a company town that is based on harvesting the salts on the tidal flats nearby. However, it has recently grown acclaim for the whale watching that occurs from late December to April. Since it was not whale-watching time and I would likely completely miss them, I was disillusioned with Guerrero Negro and wasn’t interested in discovering its finer points. We did stay a RV park with a nice restaurant attached. There I enjoyed fish burritos while Jonathan had the white sea bass for dinner. The food was quite delicious; I would recommend it.

The next morning, we were out of breakfast foods again, and in desperate need of clean laundry. So we spent the majority of the morning seeing to those needs. While at the laundromat, I encountered an adorable Siamese kitten, which I played with while we waited on our clothes to dry. She was quite insistent on being petted. I missed my cat.

Laundry done, we went to market to pick up some food. As a note, if you are a fan of parmesan and peanut butter (as we are), before going to another country, you should stock up on these items. They last for a long time and it will save you some serious cash and shortages. Most countries don’t believe in these items, and if they do, they are costly. We had to go to a special, expensive section of the store. These two items together cost us $20. I find that these markets also don’t do dried foods like craisins or mangoes, either, sadly. I have been out of those for a while now. Maybe in Loreto, I will be able to restock my stash.

Leaving Guerrero Negro after our errands were completed, we stopped in San Ignacio. In the middle of the night, I had to make a bathroom run. On my return trip across the lot, another Siamese kitten about the same age as the last one found me. So I got to cuddle her all the way back to the van. When I mentioned the cats to Jonathan, (after warning me that I couldn’t have one) he mentioned that Siamese are bred to be super friendly. I didn’t know that. When I was growing up, we had several generations of Siamese cats. They were all pretty friendly, except for the old matron, Snowball, who wouldn’t put up with nonsense and did her own thing. I had always just thought that I had won over their devotion with my charm, but seeing these kittens and hearing about their breed has made me realize my delusions. They way they warm up to perfect strangers, no wonder they get stolen on a regular basis.

Spanish Words of the Day:
Laundromat: la lavanderia
Market: el mercado
Cat: el gato
kitten: el gatito

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