Let’s start today’s post with a Spanish lesson. La Paz. City in Baja California Sur, Mexico (among other places). English translation: peace.
For 5 days Ana and I had literally been on the road to peace. For two yogis with a growing list of Rules of the Road, the metaphor wasn’t lost on us.
You pass through a lot of places when you’re looking for peace. Sometimes you have to make a Valle de los Cirios trek through the desert. Other times it’s a San Quintín moment of respite on diamond-studded sand. And then there are the Mulegé moments when you miss it completely, lost for awhile before you find your way.
But most of the time, the places we stop on road to peace aren’t so well categorized. The journey, it seems, isn’t quite so well defined.
No, most of the time it’s a Loreto. A mixed bag of experiences that take your breath away and break your heart. Moments that remind you that nothing is black or white or good or bad. At the end of the day, it all comes down to perspective. It’s the lens you choose to look through that will define how much peace you have down the road even if, like us, you just so happen to be driving down the road a few hundred pesos poorer than you were before Loreto, but we’ll get to that part soon enough.
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Loreto
A tale of two Loretos, Day 1
Immediately after our Instagram v. Reality experience at Requeson we got back on the road, heading 2 hours south to Loreto. We’d be spending 2 days there before starting the final 4-hour leg of the journey to La Paz.
But Loreto wasn’t just the last stop on the road to La Paz, it was also MUCH anticipated. Ana had been before, and she recounted her memories like poetry. Crystal clear waters. Deserted islands. A beautiful malecón (beach promenade).
And then there was my Lonely Planet.
For 20 years I’ve hung on the words of Lonely Planets and Rough Guides. They’ve faithfully told me where to go, how to get there, piqued my interest in places that otherwise might have been unknown. And my Mexico guide described Loreto as “somewhere between an old and new world.” We would “[l]inger along cobble-stone streets, past shops selling pottery and a centuries-old mission to find local teenagers practicing a hip-hop act in the square. Perhaps sit at an outdoor café to try some local craft beer or stroll along the malecón [] where an old man hobbles along with a cane and young women jog by in the latest workout gear[,]” it said. It used words like “magnificent,” “stunning,” and “paradise.”
To me, Loreto sounded like a place where the charm of Santa Rosalía met the serenity of the Mulegé beaches. And, it was.
The center of Loreto—defined by the picturesque 1697 Jesuit mission; tree-lined streets; and a café-framed plaza—is charming. The high-end hotels and restaurants that line the malecón all the way to the marina, are stunning. The waters of the Bahia de Loreto are a deep and inviting blue. Once you break away from Loreto’s shores, speeding through the open waters leading to the deserted islands that make up Loreto’s National Marine Park, well, scroll down and see for yourself. Paradise.
Images of Guidebook Loreto
It’s just that, the Loreto pictured above is not the only side of Loreto. And it’s not the first side of Loreto I saw.
As we entered Loreto’s city limits in search of our hotel, Google sent us off the highway onto a series of dirt roads lined with half-finished houses and shops, junk yards, and trash built up along the corners and sides of the streets. Stray dogs ambled in front of and alongside the Jeep. Ana found the hotel address and pictures on her phone. Were we lost, again? Had Google sent us the wrong way?
No, we weren’t lost. Our hotel was just on the other side of Loreto. The side of Loreto that made me wonder where the tourism money went. Did it reach the people who lived here? The side of Loreto that made me think that Lonely Planet got it wrong. Loreto wasn’t trapped between the old and new world. It was trapped between extreme wealth and extreme poverty. Because this Loreto did not look charming. It looked poor.
We eventually found our hotel which, accurate to the photos, was a white-washed building with a tile patio and bright-colored rooms. It’s just that the photos also made it look like it was in the guidebook Loreto, not this Loreto.
Ana and I debated whether to stay. We talked about expectations versus reality. We talked about price. We talked about safety and security in Mexico. We talked about all the things that two females traveling alone anywhere should talk about when the area that they are staying in doesn’t look like what they expected, when they must ask themselves the question: does this feel safe?
In the end, the rooms were clean and neat. We could park in the enclosed patio. The people who worked at the hotel were always at the entrance, it was only two nights, and the doors locked. We decided to stay.
So, we dropped our bags off and headed out to the other side of the highway like thousands of tourists before us to visit the guidebook Loreto. And, as the pictures show, that Loreto was exactly as Ana remembered it, exactly as the guidebook said it would be: charming.
But having seen the other Loreto first, the one not pictured here, I spent much of our first day in Loreto thinking about a lot more than cobblestone streets, which is I guess why I’m sharing it here. While I enjoyed the cobblestone and cuteness, it was the other-Loreto that sticks with me.
Day 2 – Bahia de Loreto and the islands in Loreto’s National Marine Park
Aside from cobble-stone cuteness, the thing to do in Loreto is to get off land and into the water. We booked a tour that was recommended by the aforementioned Lonely Planet and were up and out the door early the next morning.
What can I tell you about the Bahia?
Dolphins. Sea lions. Schools of fish. Manta rays. White-sand islands in the middle of the clear, emerald sea. The day felt free. Easy. Exhilarating, once we got into it. It just took us a long time to get into it.
Getting to the boat
As instructed, we showed up “at the whale statute” on the malecón at 9 a.m. sharp to meet our guide. When we got there, we found a man in a yellow shirt and his daughter. He had our names, seemed familiar with our booking, and his daughter was adorable. We followed him to a window by the boat docks. There he told us we could buy water or anything else we needed, while he went to get our “atletas” (swim fins), since we’d be snorkeling. I bought a water. Ana scoped out the restroom situation. We leaned against a short wall to wait.
One, two, three, four, five, fifteen minutes later, no yellow-shirt man. But there was a polo-shirt woman asking about our tour in choppy Spanish with a heavy gringa accent. (Yes, I recognize the irony of a gringa describing someone’s accent as gringa, but it was.) We weren’t quite sure why she was asking. Was she with our tour? Was she looking for her tour? We asked questions. We tried to explain. She said something that neither of us understood quite well and walked off toward the boats. It was at that moment I realized we should have just spoken to her in English, somehow Ana and I had forgotten that was an option.
We got back to waiting. Twenty minutes, thirty minutes, no yellow-shirt man, but the polo-shirt woman returned. Our boat was ready is what we think she said. She then recounted Ana’s lunch order, which we definitely understood. Why were we talking to her and not the yellow-shirt man? We had no clue. And which boat in the harbor was ours? We weren’t sure of that either. I tried to ask her in English, but she was a stalwart and stuck to Spanish. Having done that a time or two myself to practice, I have nothing but respect for her. It’s just that I also didn’t understand her, and she didn’t seem to understand that we weren’t sure which boat was ours. So, off she went, letting us get back to the business of waiting for yellow-shirt man.
Forty minutes later we spotted him walking toward us with his adorable daughter trailing behind. He led us to our lancha (small boat) for the day, said goodbye, and we were off.
We sped through the Bahía towards its open waters and empty islands, wind in our hair and smiles on our faces, right up until the moment the lanchero (boat captain) realized he didn’t have our lunches. So, back to the marina we went. There someone, who was not yellow-shirt man or polo-shirt woman, handed him our lunch. I had so many questions about just how this tour was organized. But, no importa. No matter how the tour was run, our burritos were secured so off we went for real this time.
On the boat
Whacky start to the tour aside, what I’ll remember most about that day is Ana’s laughter as we chased dolphins and they chased us through the bay. It bubbled up as she kneeled on the helm of the boat, pure joy as she captured videos of them swimming alongside us. I added my own “wow’s” and “ahh’s” to the chorus, leaning out over the side, practically able to touch the dolphins as they swam by.
Then there was also the moment we sighted the sea lions, sleeping in a circle in a bay. The slow approach as the lanchero cut the engine, and we drifted toward them, trying to get as close as we could before they swam away.
Or the time we stopped to snorkel, swimming in and out of schools of fish until the last moment we could.
The islands
But all of those moments, as incredible as they were, could not prepare me for the afternoon at the island. I have been to beaches in the Caribbean, the Canaries, off the coast of Brazil. I’ve been to places that dub themselves (and have been dubbed) as the most beautiful beaches in the world, and in just a few days I’d even go to the “most beautiful beach in Mexico.” Liars. All of them. Nothing I’ve seen can hold a candle to the islands off of Loreto. Rather than talk about it, I’ll let you see for yourself.
The water was so gorgeous that Ana and I never touched the sand. Our paddleboards served as our base, we tanned on them, ate on them, and occassionally used them to paddle around.
Late afternoon we headed back to Loreto where we topped the day off with the best $40 massage (or any massage really) I’ve ever had, a stop at one of those Lonely Planet cafes, and eventually the hotel where we spent the night hashing out and solving all of each other’s as well as the rest of the world’s problems.
It felt perfect, the best day ever. And I went to sleep thinking that this whole road to peace well, it’s not so bad. And then we woke up.
Leaving Loreto
I woke up early the next morning. Once Ana and I finished talking, I’d spent the night reading instead of packing so there I was bright and early, cursing my addiction to werewolf novels as I tried to get my stuff together so we could get back on the road to La Paz.
I’ve since decided that my werewolf/shapeshifter addiction is not a curse. It is a gift. A gift that gave me one perfect day in paradise. Because when I started packing that morning, I quickly realized that some of my money was missing. Not all my money. Not the dollars, not the cards, and not my passport, but about $200-worth of the pesos I’d taken out at the ATM two days before. I usually try to avoid taking out that much money, but cash is necessary in Baja, and we were running low.
In 20 years of travel, staying in hostels, cheap-hotels and motels, shared AirBnb’s, camping, backpacking, I have never had money stolen from my bags in my room. I’ve heard that it happens. I’ve taken precautions so that it doesn’t happen—hiding my money all over the place, dirty socks, muddy shoes—but I’ve never had it happen. In fact, it was such a surprise that I almost didn’t believe it. I sat on the edge of the bed recounting every purchase since I’d pulled the money out of the bank. But because I’d pulled it out just two days before, I was certain it was missing. I told Ana. She checked her wallet. Her money was missing too.
And then we had a choice. There were a lot of ways to react to the situation. Many ways to let it cloud our trip. We decided to look for the lessons in it (surprise, surprise), empathize or sympathize where we could, and throw a lot of humor around, once we got out of the hotel of course.
So, we got out of the hotel and headed to breakfast. The robbery was discussed.
It became clear we had become lax at hiding our things. Lists were created, recounted, discussed of the many creative ways we would hide cash on future trips—dirtier shoes, smellier socks, secret pockets.
We revisited the conversation we’d had the day we decided to stay. Should we have left? Could we have known? No, we decided, we couldn’t have known, and our decision made sense. But we’d both had a gut reaction about leaving that we’d ignored. Next time, we wouldn’t ignore the little things, we decided. Go with our guts. Afterall, it’s those gut reactions that have kept us in pretty good stead on many trips before.
We talked about poverty, disparity, the difference of $200 in our lives and whoever took it. We made up stories about need, about greed, we talked about karma. At that point I realized we’d forgotten, or more accurately, had never been asked, to pay the tour company. We put the robbery behind us, left the robber’s soul to the universe, and got down to the business of balancing out our own by paying for the tour we’d taken, with a credit card if we could, because we were low on cash.
It turns out, we couldn’t pay at all, at least not that day. The tour office said it was open, but there was no one there. I saw no polo-shirts, no yellow-shirts, no adorable children. I sent a message to the company. We waited as long as we could, but with no answer we eventually had to get back on the road. Bank transfer or online, we decided. Worst case scenario, we had to pass back through Loreto anyway, we could pay then.
The return to Loreto
And that’s how we found ourselves back in Loreto after La Paz. It turns out online and transfer weren’t options, so we went back to the tour company to pay. Our karma, however, had balanced out. We found a $50 deal for a night at a fancy, beachfront resort. Beach views. Beautiful sunsets. Big balconies.
Most importantly, not pictured here, little DO NOT DISTURB signs that we could put on the door. And if someone did choose to disturb well, our cash was buried deep in our dirty laundry. Have fun with that.