Bribing Baja Jesus

We just returned from our annual Baja extravaganza and I wanted to write about Fishing With Jesus, because it makes for such a great title.  But here's the thing about fishing:  I suck at it and Regina, on the other hand, is great.  To prove this point, we hired a kid named Jesus, and his ponga, to take us fishing for a day.  Jesus rigged up our fishing poles and we started trolling.  We had exactly the same lure on our poles, although mine was green and hers was hot pink.  Two lures, side by side, and guess who caught all the fish?  Yeah, not me.  Regina filled the boat with Yellowtail and Sea Bass while I watched.  When I finally caught a fish, a Grouper no less, I didn't even really "catch" it.  I accidentally snagged the hook through his little brain.  Mr. Grouper was probably trying to make his way to that sweet hot pink lure when my dumb ass green one hooked his head.

So, instead of lying about all the fish I caught, I thought I'd really get to more exciting business and write about the roads.  Sounds dumb, and it might be, but I'm a sentimental creature, and driving through Baja's desert always brings back memories.  I pull over at every single pit stop and cantina, just so I can show the kids where I once bought an Orange Fanta when I was five.  Or if someone's selling burritos from the back of a van, then I'm just obligated to stop.  But I also stop so I can catch my breath and relax a second before we hit the roads again.  As beautiful as the Baja desert is, it doesn't always make for relaxing driving.

Much of our route on this trip followed the same trail that the Baja 1000 was just on, meaning it's a road best served for jacked-up desert rigs with oversized tires.  My truck handled the roads fine, just at much slower speeds.  Our first stretch of pavement, south of San Felipe, fools me every time.  The road looks perfectly smooth, but every quarter mile or so there's a vado.  Vados are just dips in the road where rainwater can run on the off chance that it rains.  Normally, they're roller-coaster fun to hit.  On this road, Baja-legend says that tourists die every year from hitting them too fast.  I believe it.  I may have had all four tires leave the hardtop on more than one occasion, and I'm surprised our cooler stayed put in the back.  Gringos have even spray-painted names on some of the really bad ones.  There's "Oh Shit Dip!" which is followed by "Oh Shit Dip II."  Then there's "Oh Dip Shit!" and then they either ran out of ideas or paint because the next hundred or so vados aren't named, but are equally suspension-crunching.

After we cleared that section and we got back on Highway 1, the real driving challenge began.   Highway 1 has more potholes than Hussein Drive in Baghdad, and the locals who drive it all seem like they're auditioning for driving jobs in next year's Baja 1000.  There is absolutely no shoulder, and I'm a notorious gawker, which is a bad combination.  It's definitely a two hands on the wheel, two eyes on the road kind of driving.  My strategy is to make little micro-adjustments to avoid the really deep potholes and haul-ass over the rest.  That's probably the norm, but we passed a lot of folks who tried to swerve around every pothole, and consequently were driving like it was a Saturday night after the rodeo dance.

The rest of the roads were just dirt.  This was fine by me because I'm pretty used to both driving on dirt and driving on dirt in Mexico.  I drove a little slower, turned up the tunes, and I finally got a chance to gawk at every Cardon cactus and Boojum tree that we passed.

This trip took us a little farther into Baja then our previous drives, and it brought back a lot of memories.  We stayed at a place that I hadn't been to since I was Dylan's age and the kids did the exact same thing I probably did when I got there: plopped down in the sand and started playing.  I'm already excited about going back and I've got a few tricks up my sleeve for our next fishing trip.  I'm going to slip Jesus a few extra pesos, and maybe he'll give me that hot pink lure.