Baja and Playa De Oro
15 February 2010 
After a week driving down the majestic Californian coast, we arrive in San Diego and begin the chaos of taking the trolley train over to the Mexican border town of San Ysidro.
With my huge backpack and my Voyage air guitar safely stowed (boy am I glad to have this folding guitar, traveling in cramped trains and buses, is so much easier), I enjoy watching the subtle transition of the landscape, as we roll from California into Mexico….
Fast food and clothing chain stores give way to concrete block houses and tumbleweed, skinny dogs and rocky landscapes and soon we are at San Ysidro at the US-Mexico border.
It´s a lot calmer than I remember from our previous travels and I wonder if the drug gang terror stories and global economy slump is keeping people away from Mexico, sure hope so!
People tell us to ´be safe´ and ´beware´, as we cross the border, for a minute I suspect that all may have changed since we last visited Baja but once across the border, the smiling faces of Mexicans and vibrant colors, smells and scenes of the town assure that all is pretty much the same here.
The hot afternoon sun and dusty town of San Ysidro welcomed and warmed our hearts as we headed toward the bus station to our first Mexican bus trip in four years.
On to the dusty beach town of San Quintin, where our good old friends Bill. Denise, Skippy, Joe and Kay live, on the Playa De Oro, Beach of Gold.
When we finally got into town it was late, loud music blared from one or two of the dark, uninviting little bars but the street was pretty empty, we decided to stay in Hotel Romo for the night and head over to our friend Bill the next day.
Hotel Romo reminds me of the seedy motels you come across in America when touring,clean but unclean, worn curtains that just reach the edge of the window and a TV that doesn’t work. I didn’t mind, I was beat from the day’s traveling. The music from the nightclub next door pulsed in and out of my dreams that night.
Next day the hot Baja sun greeted my tired eyes. We hitched a ride from the Los Pinos fruit plantation, over to our good friend Bill’s place at Playa de Oro.
It sure was good to see Bill! He gave us a trailer to stay in and we wiled away a couple of weeks with Bill and our other friends,Denise, Skip, Joe and Kay.
Waking up to the beautiful Sunshine and watching the day transform in all its glorious hues into twilight is one of the great luxuries of living in this trailer park, people live as much outside, if not more, than they do inside. It’s like desert out here, there’s a beautiful peace, a quiet calm that emanates from the surrounding hills that glow deep golden red and amber in the day’s sun. It’s inspiring being in places like this, I can just sit and listen to the breeze and hear songs playing in it. I’ve been playing my guitar and playing with ideas for new songs, it’s good to be out here, everything sounds different and I get excited being so far away from the familiarities of the city. Things feel more magical and raw here.
Happy hour at Cielito Lindo is kicking as ever, with divine Pina Coladas at $2 a glass and stray dogs wandering around the grounds.Lost souls and happy campers all toast together at Happy and you meet all kinds of folk there.
Riding on borrowed bicycles, we rode out to the lagoon and the dunes. We picked up a couple of friendly dog friends along the way. We called out to them and laughed, as they playfully leapt and bounced before our wheels.
The two dogs were great friends with each other and we were honoured by their freedom and friendship. At times I could have sworn that they were laughing, their red tongues flopping about sharp white teeth. Big, jewel eyes, alive and alight with a joy so simple and pure as they danced around and ahead of us, into the ocean
A sad reality of life out here, one day, we found a horse, dying in the road, no one seemed to know what to do. It’s legs were broken and it may have been knocked down by a vehicle of some kind.
We gave the horse water and called the local police who were pretty helpful but eventually, it was decided that the horse must be shot.
It was a sad thing. Days had gone by and the horse had lain dying in the dirt road, At night, we would wonder at her fate, knowing she was out there in the darkness, alone and in pain, beneath a spinning universe of cold bright stars.
This notion kept us awake at night and brightly aware of the transience of life and bleak stark ways of nature, death and suffering. Eventually, the animal control people came and shot the horse and took her a few miles into the long grasses to be eaten by buzzards.
It was time for us to move on. We decided to head to one of our favorite places in Baja, El Coyote Beach down in Mulege.
We stuck around for the Thanks Giving party at Joe and Kay’s place and left the next day. it was lovely seeing everyone again and not too much had changed at Playa de Oro and that’s good to know.
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On 16 February 2010 Rich_B said:
Hello Kelli,
Your trip is amazing. I will be looking forward to your entries. Going to Mexico like that and in that way is cool. i sit here in the west suburbs of Chicago where we are cold, snowy and bored. Now i am imagination is south of the border. I did a motorcycle ride like that, just packed up and rode for 3000 miles, through the Appalachian Mountains from here . I sometimes wished i’d never stopped. any way have fun on you most excellent adventure.
Party on,
Rich_B