Traveling alone

Todos Santos, Baja California Sur, November 6, 2007

When you travel alone, wonderful things can still happen to you. You just have no one to share them with…at least not immediately. Bad things can happen too, but I don’t think those are the ones that make you most lonely.

Today, I was walking along the beach before breakfast, wondering what was causing the water to splash way out in the middle of the ocean, far from where the surf was breaking. Climbing up on a granite rock, I figured it out: whales were jumping up, splashing their tails, and diving down in real-life Pacific Life commercials. As if in a congo line, they swam along the top of the water, heading north, dived down, splashed their tails as if posing for postcard photos and apparently (though I could not see it) dived down and back below the surface to rejoin their joyous pod at the back of the line. The joy, from what I am told, is from the fact that the mating season has begun. Or as my new friends from Italy put it, the “loving season.”

“I’m not sure what is making them frolick is love,” I murmured to my breakfast companions, with the weight of 54 years of cynicism pulling down my vocal chords.

“It’s a rough translation,” laughed Fabrizie, a beautiful, red-haired, freckled Italian, whom I guess is about my age but looked much younger.

I met Fabrizie when I ran back to my room to get my binoculars so I could better spy on the “loving” ritual out on the sea. She joined me on the beach to watch the whales, both of us with cups of “early riser” coffee – the coffee the hotel puts out in the garden for those of us who can’t wait until 8 a.m. for our first caffeine fix. Later, she introduced me to her husband and daughter at breakfast. We talked about the whales and about U.S. politics and economics, and about their trip down from L.A., where the daughter and her new husband have settled recently for his new job with Boston Consulting Group.

Fabrizie and her family gave me ride into Todos Santos shortly before noon, as they headed south for Cabo San Lucas. Given how much they loved the birds and gardens and tranquility of our little beach hotel, I am certain that noisy Cabo, home of the chug-til-you-puke Cabo Wabo, will be a disappointment.

Catching the mating of the whales and meeting my new Italian friends were two of the great things that happened to me today. Another was the offer of a comfortable, air-conditioned ride back to the hotel. But more on that later.

Ten years ago, when Ben and I rode through Todos Santos on a Backroads bicycle trip, the town boasted 900 full-time residents. It was a quiet artists’ and fishing enclave with one decent tourist hotel and one restaurant that was open for dinner. The Hotel California was a rundown, slightly seedy and totally laid-back waystation housed in a crumbling stucco building with a creeky two-story portillo that ran along the main street into the village. Upon request – or more often without prodding – the desk clerk or bartender would plug the jukebox with centavos and play the Eagles’ “Hotel California” over and over. You could buy a muscle shirt that said “you can check out but you can never leave” for five bucks. If you had plenty of pesos –no credit cards accepted – and were in town from 11 to 2 in the middle of the day, you might be lucky enough to find an artisan shop open that would sell you something that bespoke raw talent but little polish.

Realizing what the thriving tourist industry has brought to this town was the worst part of my day. Today, the Hotel California has a fancy new paint job, a fancy front desk, and a huge bar and restaurant suggestive of a Mexican Macroni Grill. A busload of tourists brought in from Cabo had just arrived when I walked along the portillo this noon, and the restaurant was crowded with guayabara-clad retired Yanquis and large women with gigantic costume jewelry. I felt like I’d stumbled across a Tex-Mex restaurant in Oklahoma City.

Dozens of tourist hotels and shops now crowd around the handful of surviving artisan galleries. The shops all sell the same wares – ceramics from Puebla and Guanajuato, painted figurines and cheap knock-off weavings from Oaxaca, and silver jewelry from Taxco. Once upon a time, you could only buy a Bronco’s tee-shirt if you went to Denver and you could only find fine Talavera ceramics in Puebla. Is something of value to regional culture lost when you can’t tell one part of a country from another because all of the once-local crafts (or sports-franchise tee-shirts) have become commoditized across the continent?

There are more jobs in Todos Santos now, and the town’s official population count – well into the thousands - can’t keep up with the in-migration. Local people have more choices and more opportunities. Tourism has brought many things we take for granted in Seattle within reach here – including those things they can now buy at Home Depot and Best Buy. There are more and better doctors in town. (Probably more lawyers, too.) The roads are being improved so that the September rain doesn’t cut Todos Santos off from the flush visitors coming in from La Paz and Los Cabos. It’s not the place it used to be. That is all good. Except for academic anthropologists, aging locals who can’t keep up with rising rents, and nostalgic travelers like me.

Hot and tired of the dusty streets, sticky air and crowded tourist shops, I decided to head back to the hotel only a couple of hours into my visit. Libusche (the owner of my hotel) had told me that I could find a taxi at the pueblo’s main park. But, no taxi was to be found. An old man peddling sugary popcorn from a ped-cart offered to ride off to find me one. But, given the heat and his skinny frame, I couldn’t allow him to burn off energy solving my high-class problems. So, I walked up the street to a prosperous-looking jewelry store and asked if they knew where I could find a taxi.

“Hagame el favor de decirme, donde se peude encontrar un taxi?” I asked.

“There are only three taxis in town,” said a healthy-looking young man, stringing silver pendants on an earring tree at the counter. Nine times out of ten, whenever I ask a question in Spanish at an establishment aimed at Gringos, I am answered in English. I’m practicing my Spanish, they’re practicing their English and everyone is trying to show off a little. “Everybody here has a car already,” he explained. “Where are you trying to go?”

He had never heard of the Posada La Poza, where I am staying, but offered to take me, if I could tell him how to get there. I thanked him, but said that was asking too much. He had a business to run and I couldn’t let him do that. I would just go back and wait at the park for a taxi. Perhaps after lunch and siesta, someone would show up looking for a fare.

I went back to the park corner and sat up on the crumbling stone wall surrounding the weed-chocked gardens and thought about how prosperity may have arrived, but it hadn’t bolstered enough civic pride or tax receipts to provide for a nicely manicured park or decent sidewalks. My fascination with Third World travel was wilting in the grime, heat and humidity, when the man from the jewelry store pulled up in front of me in a brand-new American-made SUV.

“If you know where the hotel is, I can take you,” he offered again. Thinking quickly that this could be the stupidest thing I had ever done – hopping in the car with a stranger without a license to chauffer and possibly no other way to be traced should he decide to rob me and leave me stranded along some dusty Baja highway – I threw judgment aside, doubled down on my faith in my fellow man, and jumped in. The truck was even air conditioned! I thanked him for the air conditioning, and he looked at me with resignation. What was I expecting? A horse and buggy?

Fifteen minutes later, I asked my benefactor if I could possibly pay him for the ride, but he refused, and I hopped out at my hotel entrance.

Other than that, I have little to report for today’s adventures. I swam a bit in the cool saltwater pool, read half of a new Ann Patchett novel in my hammock, cleaned up for dinner, took a picture of the beautiful red sunset (“red skies at night, sailors delight,” my grandmother used to say), and checked in with my husband by e-mail.

I wish all of you were here, as I am more and more convinced, the older and older I get, that travel is better with friends (or husbands), with whom to share the good and the bad. Perhaps by reading this, you’ll make me feel less alone.