Dispatch Number 7 -Some Live Some Don't

Aside from all the landing gear having been ripped off and one of the propellers hanging from an engine the aircraft was in excellent shape. The wings and tail were unscratched and the freshly waxed fuselage was strangely absent of any dust in this dusty country. The twin engine Beechcraft Air King 200 sat at the end of a dirt runway up a slope. One thing was clear - it ran out of fuel. I believed this because only the lower half of the 4-blade propellers were bent on both engines. Neither engine was running when it landed. Once I realized it was a plane crash lurid thoughts swirled about when I peered into the cockpit windows, half expecting to see blood or something equally disturbing.

The beach camp I stayed at was adjacent to the runway and part of a decrepit resort long past its days when guests arrived by plane to play and party; its thatched roofs rotted away, a bar long abandoned and only a couple cabanas remained. San Francisquito sat on one of the most stunning crescent beaches on the Sea of Cortez; its sands were blond and coarse. The sense of desolation was punctuated by 100 miles of dirt to the nearest paved highway. I walked the length of the runway several times; it had no numbers, no landing lights, its boundaries were marked by hundreds of white washed stones and an air sock that hung from a rusty pole as a shard of faded ribbon. I started to ask around this village of 25 people to understand what happened with the white plane sitting at the end of runway. The story was shocking and happened just four days before I arrived.

Four days earlier in San Diego, California a twin engine air ambulance was called to fly down to Cabo San Lucas and pick up a patient; it had two pilots, a doctor and a nurse. One-way was a 1,000 mile flight. They made it halfway when at 27,000 feet the fuel ran dry and the heavy aircraft capable of speeds of 340 mph became a glider. Mayday calls went out as the pilot prepared to ditch into the sea. These radio calls were horrific terror filled transmissions with coordinate calls mixed with screams, "We're gonna Die!" as the plane glided rapidly to earth. Shock. Fear. Terror. Disbelief. And resignation.

Ten miles to the south of San Francisquito is the equally desolate fishing village of El Barril that has an airstrip of its own. A wealthy American has a get-a-way house there that he flies to. By divine intervention, and this is all you could call it, Tim, the American was in El Barril when the Mayday call went out. He told the panicked pilots of the runway at San Francisquito giving them a one-time chance to crash land on a runway rather than certain and violent death by ditching into the sea. Baja is filled with these dirt landing strips.

According to Howard, a seasonal resident from the United States, who lives on the final approach said the sound of the gliding plane was loud as it came in too fast and too high. It hit the runway at the halfway mark then bounced twice when finally its wheels made solid contact with the loose dirt and began to skid on the last fraction of runway coming to a rest up a slope leaving broken off landing gear in its wake. There were deep scores on the runway that continued up the slope to where the plane came to rest.

Howard raced over in his truck and found among the clouds of settling dust four adrenaline riddled people talking excitedly describing their near death experience. One of them claimed, after a life of non belief, to have found god. Shortly after the crash, Tim flew in from El Barril and whisked them back to the United States. A pilot I met said, "It was a Dead Stick landing." and added without emotion that, "Planes are replaceable, it is just a plane, you can't replace people."

Baja California, Mexico is a frontier in the true sense of the meaning of the old wild west where there is little enforcement of laws or governance on this sparsely populated desert peninsula; it is one of the attractions of the place. After three visits to the plane I gathered the nerve to board it. The plane was not roped off and no investigation was underway by the insurance company or Mexican authorities. It was an unattended plane worth $6 million new. I pulled the handle and the door came down. I walked up the steps and crouched in the cabin past a hospital bed and some oxygen tanks. The inside was in remarkably good order. The cockpit was tidy in the way cockpits are, flight notes were scribbled on the back of a second hand envelope held in place by a clip. There was a wet bar and opened aircraft manuals. I snapped some photos and closed the door after what felt like 10-minutes.

From what I was able to piece together talking with others was that there was a communication failure between the pilot and ground crew regarding fuel load and Captain error by not performing basic pre-flight checks. Four people nearly died because of this inexcusably sloppy pre-flight check.

The plane sat flat on its belly on a rancher's property adjacent to the airstrip. Betto was his name and he had a sense of humor. After a couple beers I was unable to bridle my curiosity and asked about the plane crash. I was witness and participant to cruel irony. Turns out Betto lost his wife eight years earlier when the plane she was in ran out of fuel and crashed in Ensenada, Mexico.

Cruel irony. Some live. Some don't.

Dispatch Number 6 -Muy Malo

In Spanish this means: very bad. I was driving across a volcanic plain in lower Baja seeking remote villages relatively untouched by modernism and far away from any paved highway. The roads in these parts are not the graded kind of gravel road, but more the carved out of the earth once sort, full of ruts, washouts, and rocks that slow you to a crawl. They are typical Baja ranch roads.

In the early afternoon, when I set out from the desert oasis of San Jose de Comondu set in a deep gorge with thousands of date palms and lush green grass -it was beautiful by any accounting and made more so in the extreme desert setting that surrounded it. There was an excited nervousness as I started out on the dry barren 50 mile road above the gorge. Immediately, the road became rough and forced me to a crawl of 2-3 mph; I grew uncertain of my direction and curiously doubtful about what I was doing. Perhaps it was in part that I broke a shock tower the day before on same road. The landscape was dotted with ranchos spread far apart where many looked abandoned against a landscape that showed little evidence it could support life; it was a land covered by a blanket of volcanic rocks and boulders. You could not drive off the road.

In these parts the ranchers made a living as goat herders. I could often hear the goat bells, but not see them through the thick brush. The deserts of Baja are thick with cactus and other thorny plants that suddenly bloom after a rain. The ranchos are not romantic in any sense of the word, at least not the ranchos my mind once conjured up. These were shacks and lean-tos with thatch roofs and flimsy picket fences. I will stop dancing around the point, they were dirt floor hovels.

I began to wonder what I was doing out here and what was I in search of? Was it necessary to see old pre-tourist Baja? Thoughts of a truck breakdown overcame me with dread. Actually, it was a sense of doom when I took in the moon-like landscape, its utter lack of people, a speedometer that hovered just above zero; and an unprepared element -very high fuel consumption. To cap it off I was traveling alone and without a caravan. Apparently I drove into these remote lands to manufacture drama for myself. There I was to face my romantic notions of conquering the land and the elements, you know the dreamy explorer kind of stuff we come up with while watching the Discovery Channel. My thoughts went from confident to foolish as my sense of purpose withered and sense of direction evaporated. The whole mood was like watching an ocean tide come in -no stopping it. Doom.

I fantasized that a group of vultures were gathering up in the skies above me. A group of them hovering above, patiently waiting. The word was out, there was a lost stupid white guy out in the high desert plains. Nature is vicious. In this part of the country there are no road signs -NONE. So it is all map work and talking with local ranchers who snicker at your polite Spanish. To add to navigational complications there are countless road spurs, each one with just enough tire tracks on it to make you think each time you pass one that you should have taken THAT one -you grow dizzy after a while with the choices. Each time this happened it seemed to invalidate the last set of directions a rancher gave me. No signs, except the emotional ones that said, Turn Back.

Back to Muy Malo. Very bad. I was lost driving around this volcanic plain unsure where the road led. The confusing road spurs left me constantly wondering if I was on the right track. I began to backtrack and repeat sections of road adding to my confusion. On one of these backtracks I decided not to advance any further on a road that withered out and showed no signs of use. It was full of large rocks and deep washouts. I chose another route that I was sure was the right road. The sure thing lasted less than a mile where it dead-ended at a rancho. To my shock and pleasure there were people there.

Too freaked to recall the word for lost in Spanish I began to gesture to the horizon 180 degrees with hands up waving this way and that. They got it. Oscar and Gonzalo explained I was going the right way before I backtracked miles earlier.

"That road looks unused.", I said

"No. That is the right road." they say in unison
"What's the condition?"
"Muy malo." came the reply
"You must have double." Gonzalo added
"Yes, I have 4-wheel drive." as I looked at the sun low in the sky
They sensed my hesitation, "You have time. Go.", Oscar said.

I was split between continuing the drive or a complete turn back retracing my steps to a town that had no gas station. After talking with them I wondered how much was truth and how much of it was Mexican bravado. If I go I'm doomed, I thought. Then the other part of me said, Go, take the road and find out what they mean by Muy Malo. I opened a beer and went up that road. I had driven some very nasty roads in Baja and this one was up there in severity -dangerous, slow and alone. After each mountain pass I crossed I wondered that if I had to turn back could the truck make it back up the hill it had just come down? The truck bounced and crawled and leaned heavily to the right once, Could it tip over?, I thought, and with a flash began to darkly fantasize two mules and men pulling my truck back right side up with broken door glass and driving onward. Manufactured drama.

If I had turned back I would have never gotten a sense of what they meant. And as usual I'm glad I took that road.
And that's how it was today.

Dispatch Number 5 -RV Park

RV Parks are Cesspools. This RV park is nicknamed "Shit Camp". RVers spill their canned poop when they rush out for the next destination. In a pinch a tent camper like myself ends up at one of these places for reasons such as a hot shower, too tired to drive further or want a walled compound in a busy city. But with that desperation and need comes a high cost to the tent camper who is accustomed to primitive camping in clean air and fresh soil. The RV park is noisy. Dogs yap uncontrollably inside their trailers just like they do at home. The soil is compacted and damp with the odor of septic tanks. My tent is in it.

Conversation with these RV people varies from getting great travel info on remote hard to find spots, to the more common topic of where to find cheap RV camping. Cheap. The dull compulsion of the economic. In conquest of cheap. The American dream played out on another man's sovereign soil. To the Americans and Canadians, at least those who I have met, are driven by this compulsion to measure things by the penny. A world viewed through a copper colored lens full of penny ideas and places. My view of these RV people sharpened when I noticed they rarely ventured outside their trailer compounds and instead paid visits on each other with a can of beer in hand -I won't reveal the hour. While acting terribly cheap within their own group they feel very rich while surrounded by the colorfully poor.

One woman over seasoned her conversation with "It's cheap." Each time she let me in on some deal of deals, she would nod her head sideways with brightened eyes and say, it's cheap as if I had missed the other attempts to impress me with her knowledge of Mexico. While she let me in on some deal she lightened her camper for a return trip north and it was between those it's cheap insights that she gave me 30 pounds of fresh oranges, a COSTCO pack of string cheese, chips and salsa. She talked about cheap and I thought about waste.


The American taste for conspicuous consumption is strikingly obvious when you see all the gear they haul in their RVs and trucks while trapezing the Baja Peninsula- the material possessions they travel with while visiting is more than most Mexican families have in their entire house. It poses a question that I will ask throughout my travels, "Is a society more happy with an abundance of material goods OR is a society truly more happy with less material goods?" I believe it is more complicated than that, however, it does provide a starting point.


As I drove 50 miles to the next town I could hear her voice and words it's cheap and wondered what Mexico meant to her. Was mastering Baja Mexico to her a matter of locating the cheapest RV parks; knowing what cities Costco and Walmart were in; was it the food or culture; could she count to 10 in Spanish? When you learn some of these people have been coming to Baja for 20 or 30 years with stays of up to six months at a time and they do not speak Spanish it leaves one dumbfounded. It says so much and says so little about them. In conquest of cheap why eat, why talk, why walk? When they get food at grocery stores they stare at the digital readout to pay the bill. In many cases the checkout person will not even call out the amount due standing in sullen silence making it obvious that they are accustomed to this mute exchange -I find mild insult when this happens to me and ask, "How much?" in Spanish. Yes, the RV path has been blazoned by mute penny pincher's.


I started this piece talking about the smell at an RV park and ended up talking more about the people. Americans in Mexico. Does anyone speak Spanish? As much as I have pounded on the non-Spanish speaking Americans and Canadians with their isolated lifestyles and garrisoned compounds; their tendency towards cliques, and their culturally incurious ways I find myself feeling happy to be among them.


Weeks after the smelly RV park, I stayed at another one further south in the coastal town of Loreto on the Sea of Cortez. I know that when I feel "at home" in an RV park that I have been out in the bush too long. I need things common to an American, things easy to reference and to be momentarily where I come from. The American order, the walls, the rules; American privacy with closed doors; their unfriendliness; their shortness of conversation.


When I learn how long they have been in Mexico they dread the next question, "How is your Spanish?", the answers come as a confession that they don't speak it, usually accompanied by some twisting and sheepish embarrassment. It was difficult to watch their discomfort, so I don't ask anymore. Instead, I let it hang out there to speed the end of a boring conversation about stuff they own or how cheap something was. For me the most agitating comments they make are when they speak of how dirty Mexico is or how some standard was not met. The dull compulsion of the economic. Cultural imperialists without guts.


The separation of cultures could not be more extreme. Local language -the American can't be bothered. Local customs -the American dismisses it as a peasant and savage lifestyle. Local food - the American asks, Is that beef?


The exported lifestyle in a land nothing like theirs where they shop, live and move about like Americans. Mexican people are warm and welcoming if you talk to them, but I have seen few Americans do it. The expatriates who live here look lonely and doubtful; they look like they're cheating at something; they are darting, skulking figures that avoid eye contact and conversation.


Its cheap! Its cheap! is the Americans lingua franca and I have noticed we take it everywhere we go.

Dispatch Number 4 -Puppy

A puppy prepares to die in our camp. The cycle of life and death.
Misery is a challenge to observe -crusted eyes hardly open, wet fur over the chest, so weak it cannot stand on all fours, it whimpers.
When it wants to get up it cannot.
It will die. An inevitable slow suffering. This is the Law of Nature, life then death.
Alone whimpering under a date palm.

Nature is severe and cruel.

Dispatch Number 3 -Flotsam

Big Malarrimo Beach with all its lore and fame among the beach comer set who scourer remote beaches in hopes of finding something special washed up on shore. If you talk to one of these beach comers they'll tell you Malarrimo is one of the top 5 beaches in the world to find odd things on. So there I was, standing on Malarrimo after 25 miles of challenging dirt road with faint tracks through a sandy river bed that led to a pile of glorified trash. There was not a person in sight. Set in a remote part of Baja California, Malarrimo Beach sits on the north edge of the Vizcaino Desert and catches a Pacific Ocean current all the way from the Philippines. It sits at the mouth of a crooked narrow wash and is referred to as the Junkyard of the Pacific.

There I stood gazing at a sea of plastic bottles. Lots of plastic crap scattered all over in a narrow gap of soft sandstone that let out to the Pacific. At least plastic is colorful, it set a charming scene against the light brown sands. So this was it? Where were the cases of booze; the gas masks; the message in a bottle? It became evident that I would need and incredible amount of patience to find something in this meadow of trash OR I should never read about a place before I visit.

Was it American impatience when I did not find treasure quickly, in the way I would find something on a store shelf? I took a walking stick and began to flip over trash, bottles, foam chunks and things that took a while to figure out what they were. I focused on wine bottles with corks jammed back in them for a message in the bottle -this kept me going for hours, I turned over dozens of them in hope of a message from a far away place. To my surprise there are many conscientious wine drinkers because most of these bottles were empty and re-corked.

I ambled over mounds of sea trash looking at thousands of plastic bottles and containers. No messages except the one that plainly told me that if I litter where it goes, how ugly it looks, and how long the stuff can last even in the harshest of conditions. Malarrimo is fiercely windy with waves to match the intensity of the place. In the morning light the waters of the Pacific were emerald, magnificent hues of emerald. At sunset the waters took on a menacing black and green tint, even the seagulls fought.

My one catch, during my stay at Malarrimo, was a piece of pure Americana -Mickey Mouse's left ear. The big black one from the dome cap we all owned once. I thought of Mafia style murder with an ear sliced off. I came to Malarrimo at great distance and hardship to find one of Mickey Mouse's ears.

Some great reward.

David,
La Paz, Mexico