Whatcha

"They are going to suspend classes on Friday, the day before Semana Santa. All you have to do is stop by on Friday and sign that you taught your classes" the union rep advised me. I went up to the school around three to sign for the classes that I didn't teach and the school was deserted. For once, I was the late one. The few people that remained were literally running for the parking lot to cars that were packed with wives and kids, ready for the long journey back to the precious pueblos they had left behind years before to head for the job filled metropolis of Tijuana.

En Mexicali ya había tenido oportunidad de echarle un ojo a esa gente. Gente sin vida, es lo que digo. Como cuerpos sin alma, quiero decir.

I was glad they were going home.

I asked Profe Josefina where she was going for vacation before everyone left. "We're staying here. My husband's family is coming up from San Luis Potosi. We didn't have enough room for all of them in the house, so my husband built an extra room off of the side".

Alec and I drove south, fighting over who had control over the stereo. We spent our first night in Ensenada. I love cable TV. For some reason I have ended up watching one boxing movie or another on more than one of my stays in Ensenada. This time, Raging Bull. "You didn't knock me down...you didn't knock me down..." Robert DeNiro hisses at Sugar Ray Robinson, his nose plastered across his face and eyes swelled nearly shut. It's really a sick scene, but I'm not big on being knocked down either.

On we went, toward the fantastic, Dr. Seuss desert that surrounds the small cluster of buildings that make up the town of Cataviña. Oddly shaped cacti and neon yellow desert flowers dotted the mountains. Men sold gas from jugs on the side of the road. My car thought it was a good time to start acting weird and glow some of its danger dashboard lights at me around dusk. It reminded me of the time my sister's car broke down on us in the Petrified Forest in Arizona. I decided to just turn it off and we stayed at a hot pink little hotel with a slouchy mattress and a curtain for a bathroom door. Isn't it funny how places that advertise themselves as "linda" never are?

Though I loved the desert scenery, I felt sorry for Baja California. Even dusty roadside taco stands had menus in Spanish and English, anticipating tourists that used to come and clearly weren't arriving this year. Gun toting soldiers stopped us in the military checkpoints that line the transpeninsular highway and politely waived us through.

The car felt better in the morning and stopped shining those lights at me. For a '97 Mazda, it really seemed to take to those dirt roads. We drove through massive salt fields that made Baja California look like the arctic to arrive at the Laguna Ojo de Liebre. I really wanted to see more whales. From our little boat, gray whales and their whale babies humped their way through the water, blowing a weird orangey smoke out of their, um, blowholes. I really wanted one of them to turn our boat over. I am not really sure why, I didn't want anyone to get hurt and I didn't want to get eaten by a whale, I just wanted to know what it would be like.

We were supposed to turn back there, head north, but we went crazy instead and kept heading south. Actually, southeast, through San Ignacio and on to Santa Rosalia - a French anomaly mining town that looks like the Marigny or Dominica, but in Mexico. And further south, to Mulegé. And then to the crystal clear beaches south of Mulegé with big white faced birds that looked like Dick Cheney.....Some gringolandia developments started popping up. And we saw some of their inhabitants in Mulegé. But they were the other kind. The mysterious kind. Older, with four wheel drive vehicles with plastic gas cans strapped on the back and skin like brown leather. People that knew the whole history of Mexico and referred to their homes in San Felipe. They reminded me of Australians. A little rougher than ordinary Americans, wilder, but people that share our humor and redneck qualities more than our English brethren. I can't say that I entirely approve of the Baja expatriates, whether they live in McMansions in San Felipe or rusted RV settlements in southern Baja, but will say they are a different sort of tourist and generally extraordinarily friendly and helpful.

I realized that Tijuana is perceived as the eyesore of Baja California. When hotel proprietors would ask us where we are from, we would tell them that we are from Atlanta but have been living in Tijuana. "Oh no..." they'd say "you'll like it much better here". Poor TJ. It just can't help itself.

We had to get heading north. We went crazy again and took a detour to Bahía de Los Angeles. I expected another pretty, crystal bay or feared San Felipe, but instead found a more savage place with deep blue water and wild waves. Alec and I started plotting how to get back there and headed north the next day.

Military checkpoint after military checkpoint. The car was searched every time. Thumping on side panels, flashlights in air vents, please open your trunk can I see inside your luggage? All cars going south get the waive through. All cars going north get searched. "Write down your name and the make of your car" the soldier instructed me. I am almost afraid to say it, knock on wood, but the soldiers are actually really polite. I watch them when they search my stuff but have never had anything but honestly, a pleasant experience with them.

We got back to TJ late Thursday night. After washing my clothes, Alec and I went to a park near our house on Friday. It has a little zoo. Tigers, pumas, lynxes. Some really big bears that can stand on their back legs beside a wall that is way too low where we stood and observed them. One time, Alec saw a tiger ride by, being towed from a truck in a little cage, in the middle of traffic in Tijuana. I saw a llama in an intersection in Ensenada, riding through a four way behind bars. "I saw this tiger in a cage" the husband of another exchange teacher told me. "It was right in the middle of traffic. The thing was, the bars just seemed too far apart, like the thing could just swipe at you if you came too close. You know, a kid or something!".

I love Mexico. The park is basically in the middle of a series of giant roads, pollution, madness all around. A lot of the people I work with don't seem content in Tijuana. They want to be home, where they came from. There is violence here, bad violence, drug wars, soldiers, men in ski masks patrolling the streets. The Mexicans chased their kids through the park, bought snacks and laughed. Their capacity for happiness amazes me. It's as if the pollution, noise and grime just vanishes away. I love how they can't eat a bag of chips unless someone pours a quart of hot sauce directly in the bag before serving it to them. That my male students carefully cut out pictures of soccer stars from magazines and glue them to the front of their notebooks. That five gallon jars of hair gel take up a whole aisle in the supermarket.

As I rode the trolley north to San Diego to catch my flight back into Mexico to get to Mazatlan to begin my second week of vacation, I was filled with love for my students. Their faces filled my mind as I sat by a big cholo guy that no one else would sit next to, listening to Tijuana's greatest hits on my ipod. The job thing is a little on my mind. I have options. In that moment, the thing that felt most comfortable, the most natural, was to stay in Tijuana.

I did a plane tour through the southwest United States, changing in Phoenix and on to Sinaloa. I knew we were in Mexican airspace when I started seeing messages to God written on the sides of mountains. "Whatcha!" my cab driver said to another man, before continuing his sentence. You Spanish speakers may be accustomed to "Mira" as a way of saying "Look". Here, and in Sinaloa, "whatcha" does just fine. My super asombrosa family met me in Mazatlan for the rest of my vacation, while Alec returned to work in TJ and the rest of the world avoided Mazatlan because of the state it is in.

More cable! I turned on the TV late in the afternoon and caught CNN español. Sismo? 7.2 in Baja California...epicenter Mexicali...phone in my hand, "Alec, was there a, um, earthquake?". "Yeahhhh," he answered cautiously. "I didn't want to worry you. The floor started shaking and I thought 'shit this is an earthquake' and I got in the doorway. Then I realized in ten more seconds I could be out of the house and I ran outside. The whole street was out there and the road was moving, people laughing hysterically and dogs barking like crazy."

We took the boat to La Paz traveled and west toward Los Cabos. Okay, the Americans did not get the memo down there. BAJA CALIFORNIA IS DANGEROUS. STAY HOME. There may be beautiful beaches there, but BAJA CALIFORNIA IS DANGEROUS AND ALL GRINGOLANDIA EXCEPT ME MUST STAY HOME. Oh well.

I flew back to TJ Friday night. I offered Alec 175 pesos to drive my car to the airport and pick me up and was super surprised when he did it and had to cover my eyes from the passenger's seat while he drove through Tijuana to get us back home. "Keep the bottom lock on the door unlocked" he instructed me. "When the house starts shaking you're gonna want to get out of here".

*Malasuerte en Tijuana, Hilario Peña, READ IT