I Returned to Baja California 20 Years After Living There, and Here's How I Fell Back in Love
Two decades ago, a few of my newly graduated from college friends and I walked across the border from El Paso, Texas to Juarez, Mexico, hopped a train through Copper Canyon and boarded a ferry to La Paz, Baja California Sur. Awaiting our crew was a retired Navy Seal, John, who broke his back rappelling out of a helicopter during a training exercise 10 years earlier. He was living on a lifetime pension in San Jose del Cabo, the more charming half of the two cities that comprise Los Cabos. We toured around a bit, watching the 21st Century roll in while eating lobsters parlayed from local fishermen for $1 apiece near the sleepy arts community of Todos Santos, and met John’s happy-go-lucky Mexican mutt, Zora.
John had packed his things into an old pickup truck with a camper shell on the back and made friends with a landowner named Fernando out on what’s now known as the “East Cape,” on the Gulf of Mexico side of the Baja Peninsula. He set up camp in an arroyo just up the beach from Nine Palms, a legendary surf spot, and invited us to join him there, indefinitely.
I wrote cover letters to prospective employers on an old Royal typewriter in the biblioteca, the tiny green tent John set up as a library, and we surfed and spear-fished and hunted scorpions and wrangled thieving burros. My savings ran out after a couple of months, right around the time I landed my first full-time newspaper gig, so I flew back home to pack my belongings and head to Idaho to start a career.