eetdrt88
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Location: Az/Ca/Baja
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everybodies got their own idea of a good time...
The Baja is just beginning
A solitary man steps out of a plane and onto a desert tarmac in Loreto, Baja, to be greeted by a bearded colleague. They are surrounded by a swarm of
women in Birkenstocks carrying paddles.
The ladies getting off the Aero California flight from Los Angeles are all members of a lesbian kayaking club. They are the triumphant edge of this
new phenomenon in the Baja -- eco-tourism.
As the women assemble their gear, they are watched by Baja's older guard who are scheduled to depart upon the turnaround flight. Loreto, site of the
Baja's oldest mission, was first popular as a sports-fishing destination, and the anglers present at the airport are easily spotted with their
dorado-stuffed ice chests secured by duct tape. It's early afternoon, but the airport bar is moving fistfuls of Pacifico beer and margaritas among the
sunburned fishermen in Hawaiian shirts. The brisk kayakers appear unaware that the airport has a bar.
Earl Doliber, the solitary man, is met at the gate by the friend he has traveled the Baja's dirt roads with for more than a decade, Jerry Stricklin.
They pigeonhole into no particular demographic, neither kayaker nor fisherman. They came to the Baja years ago for its dirt, for its vast emptiness,
abusive trails and hospitable locals far from the asphalt highway and other gringos. They did not arrive with a need to see gray whales.
The pair drive into Loreto and stock up on water, stopping just long enough for a cerveza at the Hotel Oasis. Long a lodging for the sort of person
who reads Car and Driver, the Oasis lobby is cluttered with photographs of big-game hunters with trophy kills bagged in the Baja's mountains. But the
pictures of hunters have been pushed to the back of the shelves out of the light. Brochures promoting whale tours now have prominent position. The
hotel's transformation is not entirely successful. In the courtyard an enormous deer is penned up, an unsettling reminder of a bygone era.
Doliber is not happy with the kayakers he traveled with on the plane.
"I hooked up with some of this crowd at the airport in Los Angeles," says Doliber. "These folks in their Columbia wear, sporting Polar-tec vests and
Aussie hats couldn't all be going to the Baja. Had to be some sort of fluke. What was going on?"
Despite his leeriness regarding the regimentation of their Baja uniforms, Doliber was, initially, conversational, particularly when he learned that
they intended to stop kayaking long enough to see the whales.
"They really wanted to know what I do in the Baja, as in fishing, hiking, kayaking or what activity."
Stricklin has his own idea of what constitutes an itinerary.
"We're going to drive around, drink tequila and smoke until we get so dizzy that we don't care if we have to sleep on a cot in a room constructed of
cardboard and Tecate cans. End of story," says Stricklin, referring to a particular night's lodging on the Sea of Cortez. "Not knowing what's ahead
and leaving the rest of the world in your dust is the attraction."
Doliber says this approach baffled the kayakers who were surprised that, year in, year out, he had no agenda and was content to simply go see,
occupied by nothing more than the land and its people. Trying to explain the appeal of the peninsula left him sputtering, particularly when the
kayakers showed little appreciation for how poor and occasionally primitive much of Baja is.
"Their idea of poor people were the folks at the grocery store who clip coupons. I think that was the real turn-off, that they were dressed for and in
the mood for adventure as long as they didn't get dirty or exposed to smelly people with bad teeth."
A sanitized tour is precisely what the two men hope to avoid.
"People have tamed even the remote regions of California and Arizona," observes Stricklin. "California has phones located on one-mile intervals along
most of its highways. When help is just a phone call away, there is very little life-affirming tension and uncertainty. So where do you find a little
freedom, adventure and the minute-to-minute uncertainty that reminds you that ya ain't dead yet?
"Baja. It might not be the land of opportunity, but until recently, maddening crowds used to be sparse."
Doliber is of a like mind.
"I liked the Baja when the only Anglos you met were hippies and strange guys in big trucks who came to the Tropic of Dirt to misbehave in ways that
have become unacceptable at home," says Doliber. "Baja was, and in some corners still is, like America in the '50s when drunken driving was
appreciated and considered a skill. You know, drunk driving takes practice, and I've never hit anything bigger than shrubs and little old ladies. The
Baja was a place where barroom brawls were not the exclusive property of biker gangs and college kids, and peeing in the bushes was not an offense if
your back was turned."
Doliber concedes that he has not been in a bar fight in the Baja any more than the kayakers have discovered new islands. He is simply nostalgic for
the traveler's mirage, the image that brought him to the Baja in the first place.
That image certainly did not include packaged eco-tours, something more readily associated with the likes of Cabo San Lucas and easily avoided in the
past. But now team leaders were taking planeloads of freshly garbed tourists into the outback, leaving Doliber and Stricklin picnickers who have just
discovered a long line of ants in the potato salad.
Doliber acknowledges that part of his response is simply NIMBY (not in my back yard) on holiday.
a read i found on the net from a 2001 phoenix newspaper
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Cincodemayo
Senior Nomad
Posts: 725
Registered: 3-7-2005
Location: Pacific NW
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Were they lipstick or bulls?
Don\'t get mad...
Get EVEN.
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eetdrt88
Senior Nomad
Posts: 986
Registered: 2-20-2005
Location: Az/Ca/Baja
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this is the part of the article that cracked me up...
"I liked the Baja when the only Anglos you met were hippies and strange guys in big trucks who came to the Tropic of Dirt to misbehave in ways that
have become unacceptable at home," says Doliber. "Baja was, and in some corners still is, like America in the '50s when drunken driving was
appreciated and considered a skill. You know, drunk driving takes practice, and I've never hit anything bigger than shrubs and little old ladies. The
Baja was a place where barroom brawls were not the exclusive property of biker gangs and college kids, and peeing in the bushes was not an offense if
your back was turned."...........seeing how theres so much talk on this board lately about how civilized Baja is becoming,alot of it more or less is
due to gringo's looking to buy cheap houses at the beach,then when things get a little to weird they try to implement all the rules of the places that
they moved from or make sure that someone else does
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bajajudy
Elite Nomad
Posts: 6886
Registered: 10-4-2004
Location: San Jose del Cabo,BCS
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| Quote: | Originally posted by eetdrt88
"Baja was, and in some corners still is, like America in the '50s when drunken driving was appreciated and considered a skill.
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This really cracked me up, skilled as I am at this artform.
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Oso
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 2637
Registered: 8-29-2003
Location: on da border
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Mood: wait and see
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"a read i found on the net from a 2001 phoenix newspaper"
I'm glad you clarified that you are not the annoying twit who wrote this and kept repeating "THE Baja", over and over.
All my childhood I wanted to be older. Now I\'m older and this chitn sucks.
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eetdrt88
Senior Nomad
Posts: 986
Registered: 2-20-2005
Location: Az/Ca/Baja
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the baja....
over and over
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Diver
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 4729
Registered: 11-15-2004
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Ok, so what's at the beach at Punta Canoas ?
Just out of curiousity ???
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soulpatch
Nomad
Posts: 399
Registered: 7-30-2005
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It was always better back then..... people will be saying that 1000 years from now.
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