The Baja California Travel & Living Webzine

SERVING THE COMMUNITIES OF EAST CAPE
Los Barriles • Buena Vista • Santiago • La Ribera & beyond
Spring, 2006
 

…and Leave the Driving to us !

December and January mean seeing our family in southern California and enjoying non-stop family fun in LaLa Land. When I asked Russ, “How shall we travel this time? Drive our decrepit Baja cars or take Alaska?” Russ answered, “Neither...let’s take the bus. It’ll be another one of our Baja Adventures!”

We went to La Paz to check out bus schedules and ticket prices at the new, modern Terminal Turistico on the Malecon and discovered that there were two types of buses that made the 1,000 mile trip up and down the Baja peninsula. A one-way ticket on the Águila bus was about $1,100 pesos. The ABC Plus bus was a little more at about $1,300 pesos. We had heard that ABC Plus was the best... “Plush reclining seats, non-stop movies, a clean bathroom and food stops along the way.” So, we purchased two tickets on the ABC Plus bus for December 2. It sounded like fun, even if we were in for a 22 hour trip to Tijuana!

There was only one problem. How would we get to our family’s casa in Sherman Oaks once we got to TJ? If we took a taxi from the Tijuana Terminal Turistico to the border at San Ysidro and walked across maybe our daughter who lives in the San Diego area would pick us up. We called Tina, and she agreed to meet us on the US side of the border Saturday morning December 3 and drive us to Sherman Oaks. On December 1 our friend took us to La Paz where we spent the night. After eating a great Chinese meal we went to bed early.

The next morning we boarded the ABC Plus at 10:00am. A few miles north of La Paz we encountered our first military inspection. A very young soldier (they all looked about 14!) politely asked us to disembark and wait outside. After a brief inspection of the luggage bay, we were waved through. Piece of cake….we hoped ALL the military stops would be like this! When we got to the Bus Terminal in Constitución we decided to look for a taco. The only foods available were chips and refrescos so we ate the left-overs from the Chinese Dinner we’d had the night before. After the driver started off again he turned on the TV monitor. It was the beginning of the promised parade of non-stop movies...all grade B or less and dubbed in loud Spanish. This was when we discovered that we were sitting directly below one of the speakers.

As we traveled northward our ride took on a surreal quality. Soldiers at one of the military stops produced a drug-sniffing dog who preferred to play with his green tennis ball; two Federal Policeman signaled our bus to a stop so they could hand over a mysterious young woman sitting in the back seat of their car; our plush seats had turned into trampolines from the bone-jarring effects of Baja’s new “Reducador de Velocidad” system; and the next movie was a grade B- teen flick with lots of excessive giggling (in Español, of course).
Then, around dusk, somewhere near Vizcaino, we were stopped once more for a military inspection. We vacated the bus and waited outside. Fifty minutes later, after the soldiers had laboriously inspected the contents of an ice chest full of round plastic-wrapped packages with white stuff in them (which turned out not to be you-know-what) and poked around the doors with a screwdriver, we climbed back on the bus. How could we get to TJ on time at this rate? Our stomachs were growling as we crossed the state line at Guerrero Negro. Surely, the terminal had a taco stand! When Russ came back bearing two limp baloney & cheese sandwiches on Wonder Bread I gave up on real food until we could hit a Denny’s in San Ysidro.
 

East Capers  is published by

The Asociación de Artes del Mar de Cortez A.C.

Editor:   JoAnn Hyslop

Contributors:   Ann Hazard, John Brooke, Bob

Moran, Camilla Ford, Liz Pudwell, la Nativa

and Max Cudlitz

Graphics:   Russ Hyslop

Email:   eastcapers@hotmail.com

East Capers is printed at

Ciudad de los Niños y Niñas en La Paz

Stories in this issue...

• ...and Leave the Driving to Us (page 1)
• What's Happening at the Center
    • Classes at the Center
• Good Idea! – Protecting Your Fishing Gear
• Rancho la Venta
• Portrait of Maya Woman Discovered
• La Quinceañera – A Womans Right of Passage
• Diá de la Bandera – 24 de Febrero/Flag Day
• The Mighty Cardon
• Rocks in Your Bed – Baja Gardening
• Building Green – Wise Construction
• Mexico's National Flower
• Who Invented Color TV?
• Cooking on the Early Ranchos
• Exvotos-Mexican Folk Art
• Scary Squid Stories
• Where my Feet Took Me – Poetry
• Oido en la Calle – Heard on the Street
• Let's Party – Baja Social Life
• Cooking with the Sun
• Local Artist Profile – Oscar Garciglia
• Top 10 AntiOxidant Foods
• Celebrating at Rancho Buena Vista.

• East Cape Business Directory
 

During the next ten hours we joined a parade of loaded produce trucks and passenger busses passing each other by inches on a fog-shrouded Baja Highway #1. The drivers seemed perfectly comfortable with this even if we weren’t. They used a combination of lights to signal “OK to pass, “danger ahead”, or “Hola, que tal?”. Occasionally, our driver would pull to a full stop in the middle of nowhere next to a south-bound ABC Plus bus to shoot the breeze with the other driver. At the same time spine-tingling explosions and blood-curdling screams shook the sound system. The movie of the hour was, “Aliens vs Predators”. None of this seemed to bother the other passengers who were snoring peacefully. We decided sleep was out of the question.

After all the delays we still managed to arrive at the TJ terminal at 8:45 on Saturday morning! Tijuana never looked so good! “So,” you ask, “did you take the bus BACK to La Paz?” Not! Although we’re into Baja Adventures we finally had to admit we needed to draw the line somewhere. We just may be a little too long in the tooth for SOME Baja Adventures.. we need a good night’s sleep! R y JH