Baja Day 1: Day of Travel

This is an accounting of the first day of events of one week ago today. I will be posting the rest of the trip notes throughout the coming week, along with many photos. We spent the last week on Lindblad’s Baja California: Among the Great Whales expedition. Awesome trip. Zero connectivity (feature!!). So this will be posted after the fact.

Today, we left San Jose at 6:00am to travel to La Paz, Mexico to meet the Sea Bird for a cruise around the Baja Peninsula. We are traveling with Lindblad Expeditions, an operation that runs relatively small ships (typically well less than 100 passengers) with a goal of visiting various wildlife and natural phenomena in some part of the world. My parents have gone on several Lindblad expeditions and were impressed enough to take us with them on the Baja cruise.

Lindblad has a tie with the National Geographic society and, apparently, we will have professional quality videography and photography experts joining us. I suspect I’ll learn a thing or two. There is also an end-of-day wrap up of the day’s events and people are encouraged to drag along their laptops and share photos and notes.

A very different experience than the 1500+ person mega-cruiser experience.

This is also my first trip to Mexico, though I’m sure there will be more. I have to gain Tequila Demi-God status, after all.

So far, we have done little beyond seeing an airport and a highway of Mexico. That will all change tomorrow.

We flew from San Jose to Los Angeles to meet a chartered flight to La Paz, Mexico. From there, we are driving (I’m writing this on the bus) to Puerto San Carlos (another link), Mexico to meet the ship. It looks like there will be about 60 or so guests on this cruise, along with a botanist, naturalist, and other experts to introduce us to the local flora and fauna.

Even so, you notice little things that remind you that you aren’t in the US any more. Some random observations:

• Flying into La Paz, you see Cardón [Pachycereus] cactus everywhere (Not Saguaro — those are farther North). This isn’t like the dessert southwest of the US. Many more. Much larger. Looking out the bus window, the last site in the fading day’s light was the silhouette of the Cardón cactus arms reaching into the night sky.
• Aero Mexico’s bar has less choices, but makes up for it in volume and quality. The cart had five or six one liter bottles of liquor. Including a one liter bottle of Herradura Repasoda tequila. 100% blue agave bliss. Very different label, took me moment to identify it. I asked for a straight tequila and they poured a bit over 4 ounces of straight up. For free. Woot!
• The army is everywhere around here. I felt like in was in Grand Central in 2002. Only without the obvious and oversized guns. La Paz is a relatively small airport and there were 8 soldiers in the customs area and several more outside. Once we hit the road, we had to stop at military checkpoint. It was entirely business like and professional.
• It is actually dark here at night. There are no streetlights of any note or frequency. I like this much better. Interestingly, the road crews and military compensate for the lack of overhead light by lighting up the traffic cones. Neat. Uses less electricity and serves the immediate purpose without irritating the neighbors.
• The “highway” is, at best, a rough two lane road by stateside standards. And the hosts gave us a warning that it is scary in that big trucks and busses will pass really close. Yet, the drivers seem to be more polite — giving more room and generally not as pushy. I do not find this surprising given some of the studies I have run across.
• The junk food is a hell of a lot better. I’m currently eating salty-lime flavored fritos and, apparently, they also make Chili-Lime, Avocado, and Chipotle-Chorizo flavored. And this stuff actually has some flavor beyond the random chemical nasties often left behind by various flavored chips I run across stateside (just what the hell is Cool Ranch anyway?)

It is now pitch dark and I’m sure stars would be spectacular if I weren’t stuck in a bus. And they certainly are from the bow of the boat!

We arrived at about 20:00 to champagne and a family style meal with excellent wine. The bar has four kinds of tequila, all better than the last (including Don Julio Anejo!!).

We will be here for a while longer and I will be posting lots of photos and a narrative throughout the trip.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 5th, 2006 at 12:39 am and is filed under Life, Nature, Photography, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.