BajaNews - 3-16-2006 at 06:21 PM
http://waldo.villagesoup.com/guestcolumns/story.cfm?storyID=...
By Stephen Olson
BELFAST (March 16): Since my last column appeared in these pages, our trip has taken a few new twists. We parked the Land Sloth in Phoenix, where it
is resting up for the trip back north.
We continued on in a vehicle originally purchased to tow behind the Land Sloth. It is about the smallest minivan ever built, so small that when the
sliding side door is open it extends past the back of the car. If you happen to have the little door over the gas cap open, the sliding door will hit
it. This means the children have to either get out before we start refueling, or sit tight.
This vehicle is manufactured by Mitsubishi (the People who Brought You Pearl Harbor) and sold by Chrysler as an Eagle Summit. I'd never seen one
before buying this one, which is painted a peculiar metallic color that provokes debate over whether it's blue or green, and led to the car being
named the "Tealmobile."
Our travels in the Tealmobile led to San Diego, thence south almost 1,000 miles to the southern tip of Baja California. It's all two-lane driving,
although the road surface is in surprisingly good condition.
The local cows and goats often exercise their right to share the road with the cars. Along the mountain roadsides are lots of shrines erected to the
memory of deceased motorists. If you get out to visit one of these shrines you can often look over the edge of the precipice and see a mangled hulk of
a car lying at the bottom, hundreds of feet down.
Traffic speed is regulated in towns by numerous ferocious speed bumps (Descundo Velocidad). I hit one going too fast, and managed to break one of the
rear shock absorbers completely off. Seeking repair parts, we looked for a motel room in the big city, La Paz, and wound up staying in the sort of
place that specializes in hosting local businessmen and their mistresses. The staff was amused, the children were fascinated by the Jacuzzi right by
the bed and all the mirrors.
The stock of spare shocks for an oddball car was nil, so I resorted to roadside adaptation, which involved slithering under the car with wrenches and
hammers while the traffic roared past. The patrons of the adjacent taco stand were suitably amused by the gringo fixing his own car, and applauded the
successful attempt.
The weather is warm down here, the grey whales have calved and are preparing to head north. The land is full of gringos. Most are retired people,
mixed with a fair number of aging hippies from the West Coast, and junketing big-game sport fishermen lured by the big fish and free-flowing tequila.
Sport fishermen are about the same whether encountered in Key West, the Bahamas, or Baja California, best described as being "the unspeakable in
pursuit of the inedible."
The hippies are still hippies, but they're not getting any younger. Their eyesight is going and their feet hurt. Their former hippie children ? Peace,
Krishna and Sunshine ? all seem to now be loan officers and lawyers, which shows how far the rising generation will go to in order to discomfit their
parents.
The retirees are down here in pursuit of a bargain. Having skimmed the cream off the fullest flowering of the American Dream, they are now gimlet-eyed
bargain-shoppers intent on cheap living south of the border.
It's no longer all that cheap. Gasoline sells for U.S. prices, and a bottle of Corona beer costs $1. A tasty meal of tacos or other Mexican fare costs
about 20 percent less than the wretched swill available at American fast-food places. Tourist hotel rooms cost a bit more than half U.S. prices. This
is a far cry from Mexican prices of 20 years ago.
There's a real-estate boom going on down here, because the Mexican government has changed the rules to allow gringos to buy land. Huge, adobe-style
palacios are going up all along the beach. Land is still cheap compared to California, but in order to use it you'd have to either have lots of money
for air travel, or not have to show up for work very often. It will be interesting to see what happens when the bubble starts leaking. For the moment,
the little beach town of Los Barriles (The Barrels) boasts about an equal number of Realtors and taco stands.
The big shortage is of water. Well water is brackish, and as they drill more wells, more seawater finds its way into the aquifer. There is no surface
water to speak of. In the long term, the only answers are probably depopulation, or desalination of seawater. This used to be done by heating the
water to steam, then capturing the condensate, which is distilled water.
About 25 years ago, reverse osmosis desalinaters became common. These use high-pressure pumps to drive salt water through a microscopically fine mesh
screen. The salt crystals are too big to go through the screen, so what comes through is fresh water.
Reverse osmosis desalination is used on some ships and smaller vessels that operate in areas where water isn't readily available. The technology has
allowed rich white people to build houses on islands in the Bahamas that are entirely lacking in freshwater. All it takes is money to buy the
machinery, and a source of power to drive it. My nightmare scenario is that this area's thirst for water will lead to a new generation of nuclear
power stations devoted to powering desalinators, allowing another round of suburbanization of the desert.
An alternative would be to build a big solar distiller in the desert. Lord knows there's enough sun. Or it might be a good use for a big wind turbine.
This would avoid the most commonly cited drawback of wind power, which is that you get power when the wind blows, not necessarily when people are
using electricity. Storing freshwater is easier than storing electricity.
The most amazing aspect of water around here is the fate of the Colorado River. For ages it emptied into the Sea of Cortez, providing the same
vitality that the Penobscot River brings to Penobscot Bay. No more.
Every drop of the Colorado is diverted by the United States to its own uses, watering the golf courses of Las Vegas and Phoenix, irrigating the
Imperial Valley. It's as if the entire flow of the Penobscot River was funneled into a pipe in Veazie and taken away to Boston, leaving the people in
Bangor to get along as best they could. It's the time-honored prerogative of the people living upstream, and an ecological disaster.
bajalou - 3-16-2006 at 08:21 PM
"Every drop of the Colorado is diverted by the United States to its own uses, "
Not true - Mexicali valley is watered with Colorado River water - thy use the rest so rarely does any flow to the Sea of Cortez.
Capt. George - 3-17-2006 at 07:17 AM
"rich white people"? What's wrong with that? are you racist?
Would rich "black people", or whatever the politically correct term is for today, be better??
I think rich is great and I ain't even rich!
capt.g just curious
Pompano - 3-17-2006 at 07:40 AM
Nobody outside of a baby carriage or a judge's chamber believes in an unprejudiced point of view.
Bruce R Leech - 3-17-2006 at 08:22 AM
what about us poor Green people?