Comparing and contrasting

It wasn’t entirely on purpose, but it happens that we will spend the first third (or so) of our sabbatical in Spanish-speaking countries: Mexico, Chile, and (in March) Spain. This is mostly to do with chasing warm weather (or, in the case of Patagonia, the warmest weather available), but of course the Wongenbergs love to practice speaking Spanish and it sure is lovely to travel in a place where you can communicate without much trouble. A side effect of this has been the fun of comparing and contrasting different countries, and it was great to travel in Chile (2,653 miles long, ~100 miles wide) while thinking back on our time in Baja (760 miles long, ~100 miles wide).

The thing that stands out immediately is the differences in gastronomy. In Mexico, it was practically impossible to have a bad meal. We ate tacos (so many tacos), ceviche-type dishes, grilled fish, Cesar salads, bírria, and so much more and it was almost always outstanding. And thinking back to our trip to Guadalajara earlier last year, we had great international food as well. However, besides a cold Mexican beer on a hot beach, the alcoholic beverage selection left a lot to be desired. There is definitely a growing drink scene in northern Baja, but after trying many different wines and craft beers, there were precious few that rose above “decent for Mexico” status (the Piedra Lisa from Colima being the exception). The one bright spot, truly, was the selection of hard seltzer, which seemed to rival the United States, much to Sheena’s surprise and satisfaction.

In Chile we found an almost inverse situation. The beverage selection was fantastic, with both Chilean and Argentine wines available (and very good) and craft beer oftentimes reaching “great” status (must be all those German immigrants). And there was a fun influx of Italian liquors (seeping over from Argentina), like Gancia, Fernet, Ramazzotti, among others. But the food was quite disappointing… Standard Chilean fare usually consists of some meat (beef, chicken, fish) served over french fries, with an egg on top; great every once in a while, but hardly something desired everyday. A “Chilean salad” is some sliced tomato and onion, and lettuce seems to be practically absent from any menu in the country. And international food was generally disappointing (sushi covered in cream cheese, poorly seasoned vegetarian cuisine, modest attempts at pizza). The one bright spot was the cafes, especially the sandwiches. Sometimes called sándwiches, sángüiches, sánguches, or sánduches, these were almost uniformly amazing. I don’t know how the “Peruvian sandwich” became a thing in the US because we never ate one while traveling there in 2014… but holy cow (or lomito, really) we really need to import this!

We also had a fun time with the different ways Chileans and Mexicans speak. Generally, and not just because Mexico is closer to the United States, it is thought that Spanish from that country is much easier to understand. This is mostly because Mexicans tend to pronounce most letters (Sheena, of course, can give you any number of examples when patients have not done this). In Chile, in addition to not pronouncing the end of many words, the accent is reviled for its unusually high amount of slang (insolencia, as a taxi driver put it), which is spoken by everyone, but especially by young people. One young couple told us that it’s an especially bad idea to try to learn Spanish in Chile because of this; they said this while speaking in a way that they admitted was unnatural so that we could be made to understand them… Next door Argentina also ranks as a terrible place to learn Spanish, but the accent is so different from Chile that my choice to study in Buenos Aires gave me no advantage on the other side of the Andes. Besides accents, there are many words that are different, and we had a fun time remembering that strawberry is frutilla (fresa in Mexico), avocado is palta (aguacate in Mexico), beans are porotos (frijoles in Mexico), and pineapple is ananá (piña in Mexico).

Sheena talked about how easy and laid back, convenient and unfussy Mexico can be. This is not a quality that can be extended to Chile, which is very much a country of process. Queues are common (I bet the pandemic social distancing went fairly well here, and we see government issued stickers and floor markings everywhere), tickets are required, receipts will be received, and bargaining is not common. And Chile also seems to have a lot in common with the United States (something you could hardly say about Mexico), as it has a stable economy, a high level of immigration from other South American countries, and is more focused on the individual than the group. As an example, we know the mandatory masking requirement ended in Chile in October 2022, and Chileans were sure quick to drop the habit as we saw almost nobody wearing a mask during our time there. In Mexico, where mandatory masking was never really a requirement, it was very common for a majority of people in grocery stores to be wearing masks. Chile also has significant income inequality and a notorious right-wing constitution leftover from the Pinochet regime, both reasons for wide spread protests in 2019 and the subsequent effort to rewrite the constitution.

The little gaucho hat is quite cute

One final interesting note regarding Chile is the presence of the gaucho culture in Aysen. I had always associated drinking mate with Buenos Aires, but truly it is associated with gauchos (adopted from the indigenous Guarani people of Paraguay), who are the cowboys of South America. Mate is consumed everywhere you find ganadero, from Patagonia to eastern Paraguay to Uruguay. So it should be no surprise to find mate museums, statues, and shelves and shelves in grocery stores dedicated to the ritual, but since we never visited Aysen before, we didn’t account for the closeness (culturally and physically) that the area feels with Argentina and the pampa. On our way to start the trek through Parque Nacional Patagonia, our driver told us that it’s one culture, that the Argentines are very, very good people, and that everyone up in Santiago had forgotten that because of the Andes that separate the two countries that far north; Patricio related all this as we traveled down a road a few hundred feet away from a river that is the natural boundary between Chile and Argentina.

Mate is right up there with pumas, condors, huemuls, and Cerro Castillo in the Aysen

Mexico Amor

Aside from those ups and downs while camping and aside from getting Covid, I would say Craig and I really enjoyed our time in Mexico (I know it doesn’t seem like that in our blog posts… my fault). It is the Wongenbergs’ most-visited country by far; we have been to Mexico five times, and in fact, our first trip abroad since the pandemic started was to Guadalajara in March. So we really love Mexico and I thought I’d write a post about all the things we love about it.

Driving in Mexico

We didn’t go through too many big cities, but when we did, I enjoyed the challenge. I called it MarioKart-driving, and it was all about defensive, efficient driving. A two-lane road that could fit three cars always turned into a de facto three-lane road. All-way stops weren’t actually stops if there was no one else waiting at the intersection. Merging was always done at the last possible second with minimal fuss because there was never any advance warning. There would just suddenly be a closed lane and everyone zippered up without all the passive-aggressive “I’m not going to let you in!” B.S. that so often happens in the U.S. It was great!

On the highways, there was rarely more than one lane in each direction and sometimes no shoulder (or less than a shoulder when the crumbling road would eat into the lane). Things felt a little tight and I definitely had to keep my focus, especially on very curvy sections, but as Craig (traffic safety expert alert!) pointed out, feeling slightly uncomfortable when driving makes people drive more cautiously, and thus safer. I mean, it didn’t feel safer to see all the roadside shrines (which we assumed meant that someone had crashed and died there), but since I definitely drove a lot slower than I do in the States, I guess it probably was. Craig just wrote a post about it so I won’t elaborate on the driving too much, but I will give an example of something that would never happen here that we saw often.

They were doing road construction on the two-lane highway from Guerrero Negro to San Ignacio, and they shut down the entire highway in both directions. Instead of paving a temporary highway, which is what we would do in the States, they just diverted everyone to the dirt strip off to the side. Driving for 10 miles on a bumpy dirt road behind semi-trucks isn’t great, but it was funny to think that we cater to motorists so much in the U.S. that this type of inconvenience is unheard of. It made me think of my SoCal friend who I accidentally steered onto one of the rare, unpaved roads in Riverside several years ago. She had never driven on a dirt road before and freaked out. To a Mexican, this would probably be laughable. I mean, some of the towns we drove through didn’t have any paved roads besides the highway running through it. Some might say this is the opposite of efficient, since you can’t drive as fast (although this didn’t seem to stop most locals from speeding around), but Craig thought it must be a cost of infrastructure efficiency. Why pay for paved roads in the first place, which will need constant maintenance, when a dirt road will can serve just as well?

Food

Oh man oh man, do I love Mexican food. Besides consuming our weight in fish tacos, of which we have a “highlight” on Instagram, we also ate lots of other delicious things. Highlights include the fish tacos at El Rey del Taco in Loreto, tostadas at La Guerrerense in Ensenada, Birria anywhere (ermergerd get that in my mouth!), sashimi and almejas gratinadas at Mariscos El Paraje in La Paz, and a caesar salad at Caesar’s in Tijuana, where the caesar salad was invented! I don’t think we ever had a bad meal, actually. Mexicans understand the need for garnishes and sauces, too, which I, not surprisingly to anyone, greatly appreciated.

Buying a tiny amount of something

Here again is that Mexican practicality. Why buy a 32oz bottle of Clamato (which is all I can find in grocery stores here) when you only want 8oz? I also enjoyed going into a pharmacy and asking for just one bandaid and it not being a weird thing. Why can’t you just get a 2oz bottle of rubbing alcohol? Why does Walgreens make you buy 16oz when they know you’re going to take five years to use all of that? It’s super frustrating and I think also highlights the problem with a capitalist country that doesn’t care about efficiency or wastage, but is all about profit. Sometimes (or most of the time), all you need is a tiny amount. Consumerism bloat bothers me so I was pleased to see it wasn’t a thing down there.

Less bureaucracy/bullshit

We’ve talked about the Danish family who were running the campground at Campo Beluga in Bahía San Luis Gonzaga. The wife often complained that the owner wasn’t trying hard enough to improve his property. She boasted about all the things she and her husband were doing to “improve” things while he was gone, and how she would explain all of it to the him over the phone and he’d say, “Sure, maybe later” or “I don’t see the point of that.” I think it all comes down to the Western love of convenience and comfort. Of course I love reliably hot showers, being able to use tap water to brush my teeth, and not driving on dirt roads, but do I need all of these things all of the time as fast as possible? Nah. And is it a weakness that it’s not the raison d’être of Mexico? Nah. In fact, I would say that someone who knows what they can live without is a lot stronger than a pampered, soft American who can’t handle waiting longer than 2 days to receive an Amazon shipment. But what do I know.

Obviously Craig and I enjoy this straightforward practicality. I was pondering this and formulating a blog post about it as we were walking around Ensenada. We came up to the malecón (boardwalk), and the large main part of it was fenced around and there were two openings into it. One was marked “Entrance”, and there was a security guard motioning us to go through that one instead of the closer one marked “Exit”, even though there was literally no one around. The entire area spanned over a hundred yards, and we were practically the only people in it, and yet we had to go through that designated entrance. There seemed to be no reason for it at all. So I suppose there are some weird, impractical, wholly insensible things that happen in Mexico. But I think on the whole, there aren’t too many. When you compare the time it took to enter Mexico (5 minutes) versus entering the U.S. (2.5 hours), there’s a lot to be said for less bureaucracy!

Extremely efficient crowd-control.

Authentic Mexico

We read terms like “real” a lot in travel books and articles, as in, “Some people say ‘Real Baja’ is south of El Rosario” or “You can have a more authentic Mexican experience in La Paz.” It’s a bit odd, because all of Mexico is Mexico, of course, and I usually don’t like it when people say a place isn’t “real” just because it’s touristy. However, there are some places in Baja that are just inundated with gringos. Huge swaths of gringo compounds, with gated fences and barbed wire. Where not a lick of Spanish was spoken. Craig and I called these places “Gringolandias”, and there are quite a few in Baja, especially around San Felipe, Mulegé, and Los Barriles. Of course, some people really like to travel to places like this, but it’s not really a Wongenberg thing.

I think we always leave Mexico wishing we had had more interaction with actual Mexicans. Even when you’re searching for it, it’s hard to find those pockets devoid of tourists and gringos. But we really had a great six weeks in Mexico. When we met that couple from Tijuana down at Bahía de Concepción, they talked about all the places in Mexico they had traveled to. “Do you guys have any interest in going abroad?” The wife expressed some lukewarm interest, but the husband said, “No, not at all. Why would I need to?” After traveling to so many parts of Mexico ourselves, I can see his point. It’s a beautiful country with friendly, down-to-earth people, and already, I can’t wait to go back.

La Paz

California driving

In Mexico when someone wants to drive faster than you are driving they simply pass you, rules of the road be damned. This is occasionally shocking in its brazen disregard for human safety, as is the case when said passing maneuver occurs coincident with a blind corner, but most often you (the one being passed) are filled with an overwhelming feeling of satisfaction and relief because of the total lack of aggression and the inherent practicality of the action (if Mexico could be summed up in one word, practical would be my nomination). South of the border you do not need to deal with that most maddening proclivity of motorists in Southern California–the tailgate–because people don’t have the inclination toward that stupid and pointless exercise. In fact, contrary to the rat-race inspired, eat-or-be-eaten, me-first mentality of driving in SoCal, Mexican roads are all about teamwork and helping each other out. Take, for example, the very common use of blinkers by semitrucks to indicate when it is safe for motorists behind them to pass. Or, as another example, the extensive use of shoulders to create three lanes on the road, allowing slower motorists to be passed with little danger or stress. It’s tempting to think (not by me, but perhaps, by the general public) that the wider, grossly-oversized, speed-inducing roadways of the great state of California would laugh Mexico out of the conversation, but after driving the entire length of all of California (not to mention Jalisco, Yucatan, and Quintana Roo states), I’m struck by the opposite, and I’ll take those narrow roads where markings and signs mean a little less but people seem to be paying attention a little more, any day of the week.

Baja in the rear view

During the planning stage I was quite nervous about this phase of the trip. I was nervous for many reasons, as you can imagine since we had just uprooted our whole lives and embarked on this sabbatical, but I was nervous in particular about the logistics of this desert road trip. And I bought any number of items that I thought would protect us from discomfort, and therefore unhappiness, because I had a vision of how this trip would be a success. And even though friends told me “there are no bugs in Baja” and even though literally no one mentioned wind to us (probably because it’s so blindingly obvious that wind is expected in Baja in the winter), I still pondered those things and bought bug nets and brought insect coils and started checking wind forecast apps because I wanted to be prepared for all the eventualities so that we would have a good time. But I failed to reckon how our biggest purchase–the eWellie, our beloved Honda Element with pop top tent–is essentially a flawed vehicle to take through Baja this time of year.

Our flawed little eWellie

We have seen so many different adventure vehicles and camp set-ups down here, so it’s fairly easy to put them on a spectrum of comfort. At the bottom, there are the tent campers. Now, sometimes the tent campers are traveling by bicycle, so in actual fact the tent might feel like a welcome bit of structure at the end of the day, no matter how windy it is (I surely know this when backpacking), but even so, tent campers are at the bottom. And then you have the giant RVs, trailers, and converted school buses, which occupy the upper end of the comfort spectrum, simply because the owner can choose to live indoors. In the middle, to varying degrees, are the myriad vans and campers that range in size and amenities. After our first two weeks in Baja we came to the sad conclusion that the eWellie is located just above the tent campers…. We knew we weren’t a mini RV, but we were kind of wishing we were a mini van. Instead, we found out we were a very comfortable tent on wheels.

Crouched inside our tent on wheels

And very comfortable tents on wheels basically provide you no indoor space that is not hunched or laying flat, which means you spend the vast majority of your time outside, which would be fantastic if it wasn’t incredibly windy and/or buggy. I maintain, if we had had no wind or bugs, we would have fallen in love with Baja road tripping. But that would never have happened, at least not at this time of the year. And now we know better; next time we’ll come with an Airstream Bambi in tow.

It turned out that our trip was really three trips, in the end. We somehow managed to sleep in the pop top 13 nights out of the first 14, and then we never slept in it again. This quirk of the trip has its seed in our decision to travel down the East side of Baja first, where we passed through very few established towns. After leaving San Felipe, we didn’t see an ATM until Guerrero Negro (530km later), and even in more established places like San Ignacio or Mulegé, we elected to camp in RV parks since options for hotels or Airbnb’s were few or undesirable. By the time we reached Loreto we were well and truly whipped, and we happily slid into our successive long stays without giving two thoughts for camping. So it followed that we spent an average of $66 a night during our second two weeks after spending only $17 a night during our first two.

Just let that Pueblo Mágico envelope you

And these second two weeks were quite happy, culminating, perhaps, with the visit of my parents in La Paz and the whale shark tour (which, as Sheena has noted, also planted the seed of our downfall). And it’s a funny and known thing that these two weeks were not nearly as memorable as the first two. We didn’t do hardly anything. I can think back on a handful of times we moved the car, a few delicious meals that we ate, a few moments that we didn’t spend idly, whereas the first two weeks have already reached a legendary status, not least because of all the documentation they generated. And I think I really do want both of these experiences; maybe we can do a Baja road trip better in the future (I certainly hope we learned something!), but it was a step into the unknown and that was bound to create uncomfortable situations (TTs), but it also did create some moments of beauty. And the two weeks of comfort were just that; we were doing something familiar and it was easy and it won’t stick in our minds forever (already we wonder, was that restaurant the one we visited the first time, second time, or even third time we were in La Paz??).

Trying to make a few memories (day trip to San Javier)

The third part of the trip has been consumed by sickness. We came down with COVID shortly after saying goodbye to my parents and returning to La Paz from Cabo Pulmo, and from there we sleep-walked up to Ensenada, passing through a series of regrettable and frustrating situations (noisy lodging, cold weather, etc.). It is so hard to be satisfied and to know what is best when you are feeling physically low and it makes me think that getting sick while traveling is one of the meanest states to be in. But it is almost inevitable and we already have a stockpile of stories to prove it, showing once more that it’s not the happy times we remember, but the times we suffer. And the sun does always come up, and you do eventually recover your equilibrium, even if it seems an impossibility at times. We will shortly end our time in Mexico, which feels epic in its length despite its pedestrian (compared to South America!) scale of only 6-weeks, and I think we have both gained a lot from it, even if most of that planning and scrambling I did beforehand was futile.

The Pacific Ocean outside of Ensenada

Life in reverse

We’ve now started to subir, a word I can never seem to think of in English terms that I like. Go up is probably the best translation, but its two-word nature bothers me. Where is our one-word equivalent that can mean climb, ascend, board, and increase? The problem is I don’t think we have one… Anyway, our journey will now be repeated until we get into northern Baja California, when we will head up on the Pacific side instead of the Sea of Cortés side, and visit Ensenada, el Valle de Guadalupe (wine country), and Tijuana. Well, maybe. We are inundated with doubts.

After a great time in La Paz, having Thanksgiving dinner with our new friends Jamie and Spencer (who are driving down the Pan-American Highway) and then having Craig’s parents join us for some snorkel tours and general tourist fun, the plan was to go back to La Paz and do/eat all the things we missed on our way down.

Eat all the things!!!

Unfortunately, life thought we were probably getting too complacent and threw us a curve ball in the form of another bug, this time viral. Yep, after almost three years of evading it, we got Covid. Although I always thought it was a matter of time, getting it while in La Paz seems so unlikely since about 95% of our time spent in public was outdoors. Restaurants, boat tours, beaches; the only indoor places we went were grocery stores. We searched our memories and decided it must have been that French Canadian gal who was coughing on me during the whale shark tour. I don’t think it was the whale shark anyway.

Although our illness progression has been fairly mild, it still meant that when we got back to La Paz, we didn’t get to do anything except sit in our Airbnb and feel sad about all of the good food we were missing. And the reptile museum!! Sigh. Well, it just means we’ll have to come back again. More whale sharks please!

Nervously anticipating the whale sharks with Craig’s dad Rick.

Sunset walk on the Malecón in La Paz.

As we were bemoaning our fate on the drive from La Paz to Loreto, Craig said, “Well, I think I’d still rather be where we are than back in our old lives working.” This is indisputable but it did make me think of something that Danish woman at Bahía San Luis Gonzaga wryly said to us about somehow getting saddled with running a remote beach campground for a month: “It’s all part of the adventure, right?” She said this after complaining for five minutes straight about all of the trials and tribulations she and her family had come up against in this surprise detour of their trip, in a way that was meant to convey, “But none of this matters because we’re on a grand adventure!”

I find this need to smooth over or paint in a better light any travel misfortune to be a strange compulsion. Although they’re far outnumbered by dreamy, praise-filled accounts idealizing the mythology of travel and how it will Change your life!, there are plenty of books and accounts of travel mishaps that have done very well. Bill Bryson built his whole career on it. National Lampoon vacation films also come to mind. And of course, if we weren’t having TTs (Tough Times), this blog would be a lot less interesting. I obviously do not suffer from this compulsion and probably go a little too far in the opposite direction. When we had arrived in Loreto and were having a great time not camping, my friend was relieved to hear it and said, “Oh good! I was worried you were just cold and mosquito bitten.” I mean, I wasn’t just cold and mosquito-bitten… but it did make me a little sheepish about my less-than-glowing blog posts thus far.

Embracing our travel misfortunes while in the middle of the travel does have the unfortunate side effect of making us question everything about the trip so far, though, even down to the most fundamental question of whether we should have attempted this Baja road trip. Although I think spending two months in another country regardless of the experience is almost always worthwhile, it’s been hard to deny that we have had plenty of TTs. Covid has been the proverbial straw and we are now rushing back north with so much haste that arriving in Guerrero Negro last night to highs in the 60s and lows in the low 50s was quite a shock to our sun-baked systems. A small part of us feels like we’re going the wrong way (the cold part), but mostly we just want to get back to somewhere comfortable and familiar, where we don’t have to constantly think about where we’re going, where we’re staying the night, and where we’re eating every meal. We can at least eliminate three-fourths of our decision-making.

Despite all the brain power we’re spending on logistics, I’ve been realizing that we’re getting used to being on sabbatical. We’ve been able to use the time and energy we would otherwise be spending on work to have many and varied conversations about the nature of our trip (could use a do-over with an Airstream), how we feel about Mexican road construction (not enough sight distance), and the somewhat lackluster chip selection available (man, I miss salt and vinegar kettle chips). We’ve been cracking ourselves up over the worst joke of the trip, Craig’s zinger, “These Cirios cacti are seriously out of control.” We’ve been, wonder of wonders, having a good time, even though for the past seven days we haven’t done any of the things we planned to do or see or eat.

Also known as a boojum tree.

I think realizing this has gone a long way towards making me feel more complacent about all of the unplanned “adventure” that keeps finding us. Craig and I have been talking about the balance between travel anticipation and tempered expectations, between having memorable experiences and having no misfortunes at all (not necessarily mutually exclusive, I suppose…), between being productive with our hobbies and just going with the flow. Maybe when people say, “It’s all part of the adventure”, they’re not trying to sweep any travel misfortune under the rug simply because it falls under the category of “travel”, but instead, reminding themselves that there is no wrong or right way to do any of this. I have been searching for sustainable balance and it is slowly revealing itself to be that essence of Buddhist thought: that where we are is enough. No wonder it’s been so hard to find; mindfulness is an elusive thing in any situation, not just when you’re in the middle of a crazy road trip.

I imagine the search will continue to go on and on as I’m not yet a Buddhist monk, but I hope I can get to a place where, even when I’m wind-blown, insect-plagued, and down with Covid, I can take a deep breath, shrug, and just get on with enjoying life. Because right now, with my current state of zen, I can honestly say that we’ve been having a Cirios-ly good time!

It helps to have a Craig around to make really bad jokes.

The desocialization of commercial purchases

The clasp on my only bikini top broke a couple of days ago as I was desperately trying to put it on in order to escape the horde of sandflies that were eating me alive at Playa Balandra near La Paz. After a howl of anguish, I threw my sports bra back on and ran into the water in record time. Thus I escaped with only 37 bites (I counted) versus the hundreds more I most likely would have gotten if I’d stayed on the beach. Phew!

Aside from the bites, the bay was really beautiful and as long as I was in the water or out paddling on the water, I didn’t get bitten. And by the time I got back out to the beach, they had gone away, as most biting insects seem to do when it gets hotter and sunnier. We were again unknowingly too early. I wish these things came with advance warnings.

I had a broken bathing suit top, but I was in a Latin American country, so I knew I could probably get it fixed for less than $5.

I found the closest tailor and walked in during the last World Cup Group B matches. Yes, I purposefully missed the last half of the USA game, but to be fair, I really didn’t care all that much. The tailor had the match on anyway so I was still able to experience most of the stress of the second half. The tailor’s name was Javier and we looked at the broken clasp together while I explained what I thought needed to be done (and used the word for sutures instead of stitches… “I’m a nurse!” was my excuse).

“I don’t have these parts, though. You’re going to have to find them yourself. See if that shop across the street has it.” He pointed out his door to the fabric store that was, literally, across the street.

“That one?” I said and also pointed, just to be really sure.

“Yeah, yeah. Come back when you’ve got the parts and I’ll sew them on for you.” He waved me off.

As I made my way over, I thought of a recent conversation I had with Craig about shop counter culture. Way back in the day, like when Laura Ingalls went to the store with her Ma to buy fabric, or when Matthew Cuthbert went to the store to buy Anne Shirley a dress, the whole shopping experience was built around the shop counter. There was no browsing by yourself. You just had to go to the shop counter, ask for what you were looking for, and then hope that the shop clerk could find it for you. Socialization was mandatory, unfortunately for Matthew Cuthbert.

Then stores became more like what you find in the still-open malls nowadays. There wasn’t just one shop, it was hundreds of shops. I spent hours and hours at the mall in Riverside growing up. Admittedly, there wasn’t much else to do with your friends that had air conditioning and was free (if you just window-shopped), but sometimes you also needed to buy something and the mall was the only place for it. And although you could avoid most salespeople, you still had to find one to ring you up or open a fitting room door. Some socialization was still required.

Now it’s all about the online shopping, which gives infinite choices and options, with zero socialization required. You might not spend hours in a mall, but you can spend hours browsing online for the perfect pair of shoes or the perfect bikini to replace the one you broke on vacation. Even if you’re not really intending to buy anything, you can spend a ridiculous amount of time online window shopping. In fact, I would posit that nowadays, the average person spends much more time searching, but also has more of a likelihood of feeling dissatisfied with their purchase. It’s like Aziz Ansari theorized in his book about modern dating: too much choice breeds the idea that perfection is attainable, which leads to constant dissatisfaction. There is no longer that “Aha!” moment of finding something cute after flipping through racks of clothing and being pretty happy with it. There is always the thought running in the back of your head, “I bet I can find this for cheaper/better/free shipping somewhere else.” It is that same old struggle between “perfect” and “good enough”.

Thus we return to my story about my bikini clasp, in which I could have saved myself a bunch of time and walking in hot, dusty streets by just being happy with “good enough”. I went to that store across the street from Javier and although they had a pretty good clasp substitute, it wasn’t perfect. I bought it for $16 pesos ($0.80 USD), but I thought to myself, “I think I can find something better.”

One other tailor, three mercerías, and 20 minutes of walking later, I had come up empty-handed. A mercería is a haberdashery shop; here they were almost all combined with a papelería, or a stationery shop. At each, I had to find the right shop counter, explain my dilemma, ask to see what they had, and then agree that it wouldn’t work very well. If I didn’t know Spanish, maybe I could have used a lot of hand gesturing and pointing at my swim top. What I couldn’t have done, though, was avoid interacting with someone completely. It just wouldn’t have been possible.

Neither could I avoid socialization while getting the clasp sewed on by Javier. He finished up the project he was already doing, then moved onto mine while we sat conversing about soccer, the merits of the USA team and of Mexico’s, where I was from, how old I was, what my name was, why I was named as the same word for “Chinese person” in Spanish (Javier knew who Sheena Easton is!), if I lived in La Paz, etc. We had a great time although I think he made some sly jokes that I didn’t quite catch in his rapid paceño accent. “Cómo??” I’d say and he’d giggle and say, “Nada, nada.” Just as the whistle was blown on the USA match (we won), Javier finished up my swim top.

“How much do I owe you?” I said.

He shrugged and said, “Mm, $20 pesos” ($1 US dollar). All I had was a $200 peso bill, though, and he didn’t have change. “I’m sorry!” I said. “I don’t have anything smaller.” (It is notoriously hard to break bills larger than $100 pesos in Mexico. Actually, this is true for the equivalent currency value in all of Latin America, really.) He shrugged again and said, “Nah, don’t worry about it.” I thanked him profusely and promised I’d try and bring him $20 pesos later on.

All in all, it took about 45 minutes, 6 conversations with tailors and shop clerks, and less than $1 USD (thanks to Javier’s generosity) to fix my bikini. This is what’s so great about Latin America, and actually, Craig waxed poetic about a similar experience he had in Colombia in 2014. Although I wasted some time and energy in trying to find the “perfect” fix for my bikini, I eventually gave in to the “good enough” vibe that the rest of the non-Amazon, non-online shopping world lives in, and you know what? I had a great time doing it. If I were able to embrace this back home, I totally would, but I know I won’t be able to. I know I’ll again be prey to the urge to endlessly quest for the perfect product, setting myself up for disappointment, missing out on human interactions and human kindness, and wasting too much time on screens.

But it’s been nice to go back in time, in a way, and remember how things used to be. (Amazon has a lot to answer for if it’s giving me nostalgia for shop counters, which ended in the US long before I was born.) So while we make our way back up the peninsula, I’d better make the most of this and remember that life can be more than the convenience of never leaving your home. It can be a funny afternoon, wandering around a foreign city, magically fixing a swim top.

Notación : La Paz

Playa Balandra pen sketch

La Paz is one of those cities that The Wongenbergs find delightful. What is it about this place? I suppose that one point in its favor is that it’s about the right size. While only slightly larger than Spokane, WA (a city well below the ideal), it has an urbanity that Spokane can’t get close to matching. And maybe there is a bit of a favorable contrast going on, as it is much more dense and city-like than Cabo San Lucas, and quite a bit larger and more interesting than almost anything else in Baja that we have visited so far (I’m still holding out hope for Ensenada and Tijuana though).

And as someone who loves walking around urban spaces, it has been enjoyable to see how La Paz has changed in only a few short years (the first time we visited was in early 2019). There are more restaurants and bars now than before, there are nicer sidewalks and patio spaces, and there are a greater number of narrow streets and bike lanes. It’s true that you can find any number of comical sidewalk transitions and insane ADA ramps, but on the newer streets, the pedestrian space, the use of bollards on corners, and the raised crosswalks are better than anything back in Seattle. And the malecón is one of the best around.

When you add in the beautiful beaches nearby, the fact that you can swim with whale sharks in the bay, and the ever-present warm desert climate, it’s enough to give you pause in front of the real estate offices to see what’s available.

Notación: Loreto

I never managed to do a little sketch in Loreto, which is somewhat surprising because we had an entire 7 days here, but then again we weren’t staying right on the beach and because we had some indoor space for once, we got to lean into some other hobbies a little harder; it was a good change of pace. I have finally made some progress on books, for example; I still can’t seem to journal with any regularity though (something that I had hoped to do, but which I seem only capable when I have a literal total absence of internet–see Cuba), so for the time being these notes must suffice. And I swear that I’m working on ukulele fingerpicking, but it’s not easy to memorize songs, which is almost a prerequisite to attempt to record them… And let’s not even talk about those four rolls of film and the Olympus 35R that I brought… So that’s the updates on my hobbies, then.

When we drove into Loreto we were pleasantly surprised at how big it seemed. The main street into town is a fairly built-up, commercial street and this got us pretty excited after the sleepy little towns we have been in. We even turned at a traffic signal to arrive at the main grocery store. But we soon learned that this was the only traffic signal in town (it’s not a good sign when directions start with “sabes dónde está el semáforo?“) and that in fact, these two streets were essentially the only two that were built up to that degree. Loreto is small and quaint, and it’s full of older gringos, like a more photogenic version of San Felipe.

But it has been very pleasant, with its pedestrianized streets and decent number of restaurants; and it is very picturesque, with the Sierra de la Gigante looming in the background and Isla Carmen sitting in the sea. In fact, the entire eastern coast of Baja has been beautiful in its ruggedness, its bays, and its offshore islands.

A search for sustainable balance pt. 3: #cheapskatelife

Loreto sunset. (Are puddle pictures still a thing?)

Some (or all) of you already know this, but Craig and I are frugal. As the daughter of a woman known throughout our entire extended family as “The Cheapest Woman on the Planet”, I think it’s not too surprising that I carefully count my pennies.

Side story of when we were staying with my mom: we had gotten an order of lacquered/roast duck for take out. As my mom was clearing up the dishes she looked at Craig’s plate, then looked at him reproachfully. “You eat meat off of bones like an American. Look at all this meat you’ve left!” He looked a little sheepish but unsurprised at her assessment because, of course, I have often remarked the same thing to him. (If you, like Craig, think there’s a limit to how much you can clean a bone, then you should see what my Vietnamese friend can do with a hot wing just using a fork and knife!)

Although some friends have called me cheap, I just think of it as not having a lot of expensive habits. In regular life, I didn’t go to Starbucks every day for a latte, I very rarely ate out for lunch, and I didn’t have the Uber or Lyft apps on my phone because I just always walked or took the bus (sometimes it would take me three times as long to get somewhere, but that’s the price you don’t pay, har har har). I also have an allergy to buying things at full price. Luckily, Craig is similarly frugal. His mom has stories of stretching a single income for a family of five. We really were made for each other.

The upside to this ability to save money is that we’re now on our second year-long break from work. We’ve never had to worry about paying our credit card bills or our mortgage. Even though we spent down pretty much all of our savings in 2018 in order to purchase a condo, in the time since (which admittedly does include a couple of pandemic years in which there wasn’t a whole lot to spend money on), we’ve been able to save enough to take this trip and to be pretty comfortable on it… if we so chose.

The problem, of course, is that we’re so used to not choosing to spend money, that it sometimes makes it a bit hard to do the opposite.

Let’s take this whole camping thing, for example. We know now that the wind can be a big problem. When there’s no wind, the bugs might come out (sand flies AND mosquitos, oh my!). Campground bathrooms are my nemesis (I just have a thing about gross bathrooms, okay??). Looking back on our two weeks of camping, it’s struck us both that a lot of the things that we hesitated in buying because we weren’t sure we needed it, we have really loved. The camping chairs, solar panel/battery, string lights, cookware, propane tank, water pump; they have all made our camping life a lot more comfortable and enjoyable. As miserable as I was sometimes while we were camping, it’s a bit scary to think how much more miserable I could have been without these things.

We bought the table and awning not specifically for this trip, but they have also greatly added to our comfort and convenience.

When we first camped on a windy beach and realized how difficult it was, Craig asked if we should just book an Airbnb for a week in Loreto. Even though I felt like the wind was scouring my soul, I hesitated. Part of that was because I was worried that my discomfort was impacting Craig’s ability to do the trip the way he wanted to do it, i.e., more camping, especially wild camping. The other part of it was not wanting to spend a ton of unnecessary money. “I want you to enjoy this trip, too,” Craig reassured me (after using our communication skills and not just griping at each other). “If you’re not happy, then I’m not happy.”

So one worry was assuaged. And now that we’re nearing the end of our Loreto stay, I can definitely say that I’ve been a lot “happier”, if that’s the right word, this past week. Even though there were a few times while we were camping when I could hang out in my chair, knitting and listening to an audiobook, there was still an undercurrent of displacement, not feeling quite settled. It’s hard to explain, but those times when I could settle down and do something for myself were few and far between. A lot of the day was spent in tending our little campsite; taking things out of their specific places, putting them back, reorganizing everything because the wind was affecting something, contemplating what we were going to do next and how to do it, scanning the environment to find my next cat hole site, etc. etc. and then suddenly, the day had passed! It’s not a terrible way to spend the day, of course, but I wouldn’t say it was “relaxing”.

Possibly my expectations for how much relaxation time I would have on this sabbatical have been grossly overestimated. I know that Craig and I are kind of weird in that we actually like to just sit around at home reading, engaging in our pretty tame hobbies, and cooking. We’re not like, ooh, let’s leave the Airbnb at 7am, eat every meal out while doing some touristy activity, and come back at 9pm or later to just crash. That is really not our M.O. So maybe it’s a bit much to expect to be able to do nothing while traveling thousands of miles in a desert surrounded by ocean. As Craig remarked at Bahía San Luis Gonzaga, “Huh. I guess we should have expected some extreme weather out on this desert peninsula.”

So how do we justify spending a little more money on things that aren’t necessary but will make our sabbatical more comfortable and enjoyable? I think it’s something that we’ll have to get used to, just as we’ve had to get used to all aspects of the sabbatical so far. There is an element of voicing how you feel, as well. I had to get over my fear of disrupting Craig’s enjoyment of the trip and just say what I needed in terms of accommodations and bathroom standards (see graph), which is still sometimes an obstacle. Craig has been the macro planner of the trip, but we’ve talked about how I need to be the micro planner since I care more about these pesky details like flush toilets than he does.

Pit toilets aren’t always gross, but I’ve yet to see one down here that incited any degree of complacency.

I will also most likely have to temper my extremes of optimism and pessimism. I tend more towards optimism, so I seem to often think something’s going to be way more delicious, relaxing, fun, clean, and bug-free than it usually is. On the other hand, when things aren’t going well, I can get into a spiral of negativity where even only a slightly gross bathroom will just seem like TOO MUCH. As my therapist once told me, “If you’re feeling negative, you don’t have to go to the opposite extreme of positivity. You can just be neutral.” As Craig and I learned in South America, low expectations are the key. We just kind of forgot that leading up to this trip we’ve been looking forward to for so long. It would have been hard to get excited about it if we were always telling each other, “Yeah, but don’t expect too much from our year off.”

But now that we’re actually on it, I can be neutral. I can put our transmission into neutral and just try and go along with the flow (as long as the flow has clean bathrooms… or no bathrooms, as the case may be). In fact, things have been getting better! (Although this could be because we’ve been in an Airbnb the past week.) It will eventually all come together… and hopefully before the trip ends!

Notación : Bahía de Concepción

Bahía de Concepción charcoal sketch

In Mulegé, which is at the top of Bahía de Concepción and sits slightly up a river in a “palm oasis” (read: mosquito farm), we stayed on the outskirts of town at an RV park. On our first day, walking back from errands, a gringo in a truck stopped in the road and asked us “are you enjoying your time in Mulegé?” When we answered that we just arrived and that it seemed alright and that this was rather weird to just engage in conversation while in the road in a vehicle, he mused to himself, “it’s heaven….” We found his truck later on, parked by his camper trailer next to the windswept lighthouse and tiptoed on by. In the evening we met a friendly couple from Seattle (Sheena noticed the Washington plate on their scooter, and in our new bid to be a little more social, we stopped to talk) and we have been happy to keep running into them around the bay. They are driving the entire Pan-American highway and we can’t stop telling them about places not on the highway…

A few days later, in our wild camp down the bay, we woke up to several pickup trucks driving through camp. Once we climbed down from the pop top and started getting things going they stopped by and asked if we needed kayaks, water, firewood, etc. At the second proposition we decided that yes, we did need a kayak for the day and promptly rented it. Nothing fancy, but very functional to go explore the bay on a rare low-wind day. When returning from kayaking we found that our beach had become more crowded, but luckily our immediate neighbors were a very lovely couple from Mammoth and they provided quite a bit of entertainment with their skim board and electric wench.

On our last night, staying in a fancy ‘glamping’ location which had a very comfortable bed and shower, lots of cats, and unfortunately still harbored a resident mosquito population that came out at dawn and dusk, we met a nice, young couple from Tijuana and spent the night chatting with them around a smokey fire. Our Spanish must have been preforming at an acceptable level because it was only rarely that the guy switched to English, a language he speaks perfectly. Even in another language Sheena is a curious kangaroo, so the conversation never stalled and we had a great evening.