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Back to Basics in Baja
a family holiday
by Rebecca Priestley

Excerpts:

       Tijuana has a long and fond reputation as a bawdy sex-and-drugs border town where you go to drown your sorrows when you’re on the run from the law or a less-than-gracious ex. But below Tijuana is a narrow, 1,100-mile-long peninsula called Baja California, which separates the Pacific Ocean from the Sea of Cortez. I’ve come to love this peninsula, not least for its weird and wonderful deserts, beautiful beaches, fabulous food, and cheap beer and tequila.
       I can thank my California-based father and stepmother for my latest drive down the peninsula. With a move back to New Zealand imminent, my father organized a family-and-friends road trip. Ten days before Christmas, our 12-strong band of Kiwis and Californians takes to the road in a convoy of four-wheel drives. I have the distinction of being the oldest of my generation on the trip, and the only 31-year-old I know on a family holiday as a child rather than a parent.
       From our California mountain village we drive south through San Diego to the international border, where this affluent American city meets Mexico’s Tijuana. We join a stream of American holidayers and drive straight through. It’s not as easy the other way. Every day thousands of Mexicans queue to cross the border to study or work in the United States. And every night a few hundred more make a moonlit dash across the mile-wide no-man’s-land that separates the two countries, hoping to evade the U.S. border patrol.
       We bypass Tijuana and head for the trans-peninsular highway along a road flanked with high corrugated iron fencing. As the road climbs higher, the fence changes to wire mesh and we can see the skyscrapers and marinas of San Diego across the dusty divide. We pass a group of young hombres heating a pan of beans beside the metal fence, perhaps fueling up for the night’s run.
       The Pacific soon comes into view, and the narrow highway winds along steep scrubby cliffs. Clusters of brightly plastered new housing developments overlook the ocean. The fast lane is blocked with tumbleweeds -- one of the giant balls makes its own dash for freedom, right into the grill of the sleek American convertible traveling in front of us . . .

. . .

 . . . The first town across the border is San Ignacio, an oasis of date palms and citrus trees surrounding an 18th century lava-block church. We pitch our tents in a well-kept campsite, inhabited by a band of Mexico’s ubiquitous little dogs and a donkey we name William S. Burro. The donkey ignores us, concentrating instead on the pair of gray flannel pants he is eating, but the dogs accompany us on the short walk into town to visit the church and buy fresh flour tortillas. The town is small enough for the locals to regard us with curiosity. Boys laugh and call to us as they kick a soccer ball around the narrow cobbled streets. They happily offer to pose for snapshots, then run off to resume their game. Back at the campsite, our dinner is chorizo wrapped in warm tortillas with hot salsa, with generous margaritas from the campsite bar. As we sit around the fire after dinner, a scorpion crawls out from under a rock. He is small -- about two inches long with his tail straight out -- but scary nonetheless, especially to us Kiwis who have never seen a scorpion. I freeze him in my torch beam while James, my brave step-brother, picks him up with a shovel and flicks him away.
       Later in the night, I wake to find James chasing the donkey in the dappled moonlight. William S. Burro is making a getaway with my step-brother’s tent in his mouth. . .

. . .

 . . . Taking a walk along the beach, we encounter a startling array of buses, 4x4s and recreational vehicles. Retired North Americans on the Winnebago trail fill the beach. Fred and Olga greet us - “Welcome to our beach!” This is their sixth winter on the bay. They’re not put off by the 2,000-mile drive from icy British Colombia. Before they hit the road, Olga stocks the bus with enough hamburger patties, turkey, pickles and relish to last the winter. They meet the same gang here every year. As the sun sinks low in the warm winter sky, Fred and Olga play host to their fellow campers. Earl, Norm, Bob and Harold play a game of horseshoes while the ladies park their plastic lawn chairs on the Astroturf and enjoy a cold drink or three. Later in the evening, the gang adjourns to the other end of the tiny bay. “Wanda’s is the party palapa” confides Fred. “That’s where we do our dancing.” . . .


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