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in baja norte in baja sur
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It is much like the Sierra Nevada's up here, only we are the only ones. Trout are darting in the pools of water, huge peaks loom, green aspens line the river. Climbing two miles through the canyon, and back, we returned to the plateau, and paid for beds at a solitary rancho. We sat down, as is custom at the ranch, with the other ranch guests, in a dimly lit Cafeteria from another time. Steak and tortillas were served. We introduced ourselves. Two white men from Fontana, and an Asian couple from Gardena. Mike's Sky Rancho has survived turbulent times; it began as a quiet cantina for horseback riders, a lonely place to rest en route from La Paz to Ensenada; it made it from time to time as a resort, but almost fell apart until the Baja 1000 came roaring through, and kept Mike's above water. The two men, it turns out, we're dirt bikers, on their way to La Paz from San Felipe. They had plenty of stories to tell, and the Asian lady, Soso, also a biker, loved to hear Bert tell tales of life in San Felipe; of buying a trailer and (this story took ten minutes) lying and deceiving the federales into moving materials to build his beach house for fifty dollars (the actual cost of the taxes was three-hundred dollars.) Soso ("I work records at the police department in Los Angeles"), was ecstatic. She giggled at the story of the two white men braving against federales. She loved how they cheated and stole against the Mexicans. Her husband was not talking, but peering down his whiskey bottle. The others were drunk too. Screwface, Bert's dirt-bike partner, was telling stories about thirty years of 'ridin' and 'crashin'. "One day, I was out riding in San Ignacio, and I ran into this cow..." Soso clapped and hee-hawed. "...I punctured a lung and broke five ribs." The shopkeeper didn't flinch from the bottom of his bottle. "...then I was on valium and scotch for a month, driving around in my little remote-controlled wheel-chair. Zip Zip. Ziiiip." The others weren't interested, and Bert interrupted, belching first and telling more stories about 'blazing across Baja', although I noticed that the stories proved enough inconsistencies in their knowledge about Baja geography that much of it seemed fabricated, or conglomerated. Screwface said, "...I was riding on my dirtbike one day and I stopped in this restaurant in Baja and we ate all this Mexican food and I started throwing up all over the place..." But the others weren't laughing, so he added, "...But then all my Mexican friends started throwing up too..." Screwface was a life insurance salesman, and he was chain-smoking and telling a story about 'breaking his femur in Catavina.' Bert ("I'm an attorney in Fontana, not many attorneys in Fontana!") was asking Soso for more Cerveza, and interrupting Screwface. Confused, we settled for a game of chess. I wondered why Bert, assumedly a man who was meant to defend the law, was so disrespectful of law in Mexico. And why did there appear a unanimous disdain for the federales, who are here - oddly enough, to defend American turistas against drug corruption passing north from Sinaloa. It was courageous work, but turistas turn their fear into condescension, a pattern that replicates the history of the United States and Mexico for decades.
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