Baja day 8 – Merry Christmas!

It did rain a little, especially in the morning as I was packing up. That’s my least favorite time to get wet, so I was grateful for my barn. For Christmas breakfast, I ate a funny pig cookie from the grocery store. Lots of fat gray clouds raced around, looking eager to drench me. I pulled on my raincoat.

The road rattled on west, bumping over rocks and ruts, and then the Pacific appeared on the horizon. There were some lonely vineyards and scattered mobile homes. Baja is full of used up RVs and trailers. I bet they all leak in the rain and whistle in the wind. The road got a little crazy as it switchbacked down to the coast. I had to walk my bike down big chunks of it. In the distance, I could see a minivan slowly slowly driving towards me. There was a wind-blown camp at the shore, no swimming at that shoreline. Just a leaky trailer and some raggedy sun shades of tattered blue tarp whipping in the wind. The minivan stopped there. The passengers were a nice couple from Idaho and they offered to fill up my water bottles. I came to a tiny settlement of beach houses. Not a town yet but there was an odd building close to the shore, someone’s halfbuilt and abandoned project. It was a line of bathrooms but why? I pulled up to investigate. Just then an angry cloud exploded overhead so I pulled all the way into the bathrooms to wait it out. Thanks, rando bathroom.

I pulled into the tiny town of Erendira and went to the grocery store. I asked the girl at the counter about a hotel and then could not understand her answer. So I showed her google maps on my phone and asked her to show me. I swear I can speak Spanish and use google maps, most of the time. But I do need millennials to show me how to use my phone, and this grocery clerk did not let me down. She pushed one thing on my phone and then there was the hotel with the route all mapped out. How tf did she do that? The look she gave me was pure self-satisfied “here ya go, oldie.”

The hotel looked empty and abandoned at the end of the road. The sky was threatening to dump more rain. Then the window of the office popped open and a friendly lady rented me a cavernous cement room. No heater but good wifi. I called my family and had some quality text conversations. I unwisely washed my pants in the shower. Then I had no pants. I got in my sleeping bag and binge watched Homecoming.