Baja Time

I could feel us falling into the Baja time zone as soon as we turned in our little red rental car. The easy rhythm of each day began to descend upon us as we ordered a couple of street tacos that couldn't be beat.  The familiar walk home along a dusty road took us past field of basil and peppers, and several new homes.

Yes, change is inevitable, even to our little town.  And some of it is good: like the additional porch furniture and landscaping Johnny has done to the place we rent from him.  Then there is the case of a neighborhood dog whose owner decided the dog had to be "put down" after a vicious attack on another dog.  Frankly, that kind of thing helps return my faith in dog owners.

People have asked us, "But what do you DO when you are down there?"  I'll warn you, this is not Retirement 101; it's more like a 300 level class; and it has to do with entering the Baja time zone.  Friend Vinnie (who lives down here at least six months out of the year) asked if we'd entered "the time zone" 3 days after our arrival.  I thought we had.  Our pattern is a combination of general routine and seeing what the day has to offer.  The tougher requirement is the mindset that whatever possibility arises, may be the highlight of the day and the well-prepared (adjusted) visitor understands that possibility.

Our general routine goes like this:  slo-mo coffee, breakfast, exercise (walk/run) in the morning.  By noonish we are on the beach.  When that gets too warm we retreat to shaded porch.  Bruce likes to siesta and I like to stitch or write family.

The trick is accepting whatever glitch happens along the way to routine.  The morning walk lengthened the day we ran into Bilingual Tom who caught us up on beach gossip.  Then there is the day Johnny came by offering an armload of fresh picked basil and the suggestion it be eaten a leaf at a time atop a slice of aged goat cheese.  Our morning walk became a search for cheese and siesta became a pesto-making session.  Lunch and dinner that day were downright gourmet!

Then there was the day Johnny and Jessie introduced us to guavas:  funny little fruit that come in their very own serving bowl!  My morning run up the arroyo became a guava gathering session when I noticed a guava shrub in the wild!

When friends came to visit from the other side of Baja, they came with a photo of nearby a property that one of their friends considered buying.  Oh my!  It's the place I had always daydreamed about living in, a place ( it was rumored) designed by our friend Gary!  The morning our friends were to leave, we decided to do a walk-by and peek in the windows.  Emerging from a car parked on the lot was a fellow we mistook for a real estate agent.  He happily told us the casita was unlocked and he'd open the main house for us.  Inside, both places looked so very similar to the casita we rented from Gary our first years down here.

Before long the friendly seller started talking about how originally the place was designed for his grand piano to sit here and something about acoustics.  I was about to conclude this guy was not being totally honest with us and asked who the designer was.  Yep.  He named our Gary!  Then followed the story of Gary's arrival and how he helped "the turtle lady" establish her home here.  Gary had only told us how generous "the turtle lady" was gathering turtle eggs and building the protective enclosure, all out of love and caring, not receiving a cent in recompense.  Gary was filled with admiration for her.  What he never told us was the story in which Gary is the hero, helping the woman who became "the turtle lady" establish a new life here after escaping an abusive relationship with her three young children.

Another day we were on our way to the ocean for something when Johnny and Jessie called us over to a weathered table in the sand.  Johnny had been "diving" that morning with his brother and wanted help opening the oysters he'd brought back.  After opening and cleaning the bivalves, he chopped them into bite-sized pieces and replaced them on the now open shells.  Jessie quickly dosed them with lime juice, soy sauce and hot sauce.  We never made it to the water, but we'd never tasted such fresh oysters!

So, the tricky thing with Baja time is to just accept that things take as long as they do.  There's no point in fretting about the slow line at the hardware store or the walk on the beach that never happened.  The good stuff comes along when it is supposed to and your job is to accept it.  That's what Baja time seems to be all about. (That..... and being in bed by Baja midnight:  9pm in any other time zone).  What's not to love?