We began our day with the usual “not quite” Mexican breakfast of a Belgian waffle and huevos rancheros. A few more mosquitoes got their last few nibbles in while we ate. We made one last trek down to the empty and vast beach to watch the waves crash in before packing up the remainder of our items and preparing to head back out toward the Cabos Airport.
After packing up the small hatchback, we made a quick stop in the town of Todos Santos in an attempt to do some last minute shopping. We walked through an arcade market. Many of the stalls were just opening up at this hour, but it made little difference. All the stands had pretty much the exact same offerings and nothing really enticed us. We got back in the car for the remaining hour and 20 minute drive to the airport.
Nearly all flights back to the United States depart within a two hour span in the afternoon that leads to a bit of airport mayhem. The line for Delta wasn’t too bad, but the problem with Mexico is that it lends itself to a lot of amateur travelers. I guess Mexico is an “easy” destination for Americans, but the ones around us were very absent-minded. We breezed by them during both check-in and security. We had to hide away in a corner inside the terminal because there were just so many people wandering around. Multiple aircraft were leaving for Los Angeles around the same time — at neighboring gates, which added to the chaos.
As the only standbys on this flight, our tickets were issued without much difficulty, and we got seats together in Comfort +. Enroute, we watched an episode of the Great British Bake Off, which was appropriately featuring Mexican food for that particular week. It was entertaining to watch British people mispronounce “tortilla,” “pico de gallo,” and “taco” in horrendous fashion. And while it’s somewhat shocking to note that the contestants had very little concept of what a taco was, the tourists down in Baja were not much better.
While Todos Santos shielded us a bit from the really trashy tourists in Cabos who were probably at a Señor Frog’s taking shots of bad tequila and getting 2-for-1 tattoos, the amount of American expats in the Todos Santos area was a bit annoying. Even our host at the casita was a woman named Sharon who had a southern accent and spoke barely passable Spanish to the employees she had hired. It made me a bit sad. You would think that these expats who have decided to move here to embrace a new “home” would make a bit more effort to immerse themselves into the culture or at least try to learn some spanish. The fact of the matter is that they don’t have to. They surround themselves only by other Americans, whether they be tourists or other expats. One could be forgiven for thinking that they hadn’t even left the United States down in this area of Baja California. A trip through customs back at LAX was an important reminder that we had, in fact, been in a foreign country.
It was overall a relaxing trip, though we both feel a bit beaten by both waves and mosquitoes. It wasn’t the trip we planned, and its duration was much shorter than we allotted, but things may have turned out alright for us despite our various setbacks. We have been looking for a house in Los Angeles for more than a year now, and finally found a townhouse that checked all the boxes. If we had gone on our Pacific trip as planned, we would have lost decent internet and cell coverage right at the moment where we had to be in contact with our real estate agent the most. While a trip to Palau and elsewhere would have surely been memorable and fun, it very likely could have sabotaged our hopes of ever moving out of our apartment complex.
So there you have it. We spent some time in a casita this week, and if all goes to plan, we will finally have a proper casa to call our own. In a bizarre twist of fate, we needed a lot of things to go wrong, in order for one thing to go right. This bizarre rollercoaster ride that brought us to Baja California and back may prove to be one of the more memorable trips of our lives — not due to any unique cultural experience or spectacular sights, but because of the rapid change of fortunes in our lives. Quizás en la futura, mi casa será tu casa. Or as American expats in Baja would say, “Perdon? No hablo Mexican. Dos more margaritas, por favor.”
passports & pepto bismol 