For all you beginners out there..I will take things slow. The Baja California is not in California, it’s a little dip in Mexico that looks a little bit like a boot.
A few people have been complaining that I don’t put any pictures up on here..so, while I am ahead..maybe I will start to add a few. So…here’s the boot:
Anyways, Monday, February 14th was scheduled as my first day of the trip. I woke up, made some tortas (a type of sandwich in Mexico), wrote the last blog post and headed to Dulce’s house (she would be accompanying us on the trip.) I was sad to not be going to school, because it sounded like Valentine’s Day (or also called..Day of Love and Friendship, is bigger than in Canada…because it also celebrates friendship. Apparently people continue to give out cards between friends in High School and give gifts and receive gifts and sell treats and all that jazz..So..that was disappointing. And, if that wasn’t bad enough..the week of the campaigns that I had mentioned early, where every class in my grade has one candidate to run for Queen..just happened to be the week that I was planning to go! So that made it a little hard to leave as everyone told me I would be missing the best week of school in my grade ever! But..life goes on (even if I didn’t want to admit it at the time!) We drove to the ferri and got to know the boat..which turned out to be a French boat! Only me, the girl from Finland (Peppi), the girl from France (Caroline), Dulce (the YEO coordinator, and Omar (Dulce’s son who spent one year in Germany) went on the trip. That being said, the girl from France was really excited to see the boat, as the signs were in French, and since she is teaching me French, she made me read the signs and everything. It was cool to see the boat, but it was old..and they didn’t have anything. This was really disappointing when they told us the boat before had a pool and game rooms and everything. Our boat had tiny rooms, and one kitchen/dining room. (In other words..a bunch of circular plastic tables). So, we had about 16 hours to kill on the boat..now what!? I had brought some movies but to my luck we went to plug in my laptop and…look at that…the plug ins on the boat are FRENCH. Well, that’s luck. Well, we were with the French girl who uses adaptors..but luck took a strike again…and she had bought her laptop in the United States and didn’t bring any other electronics, so she didn’t even have her adaptor! Luckily though, she had a few movies on her laptop and a battery life with several hours in comparison to my forty minutes…so we all cuddled around her mini laptop and watched a movie. When that got tiring, we went to explore the boat a little more..we noticed several areas that were Restricted…and being the curious exchange students we are…I am sure you can imagine what the mission was. Unfortunately, we got busted before we even got into one of those doors. After that, we went outside to watch the sunset over the ocean. It was so beautiful because it was just the ocean as far as your eyes could see. It was just one of those moments when you can’t help but stop and notice the beauty of the world around you.
After that we got permission to go up to where they control the boat with the captain. It was pretty cool, it was all dark and there were so many buttons and controls in English, French, and Spanish. It was a little tempting not to touch anything. We stayed up there for a while and talked to the captain, and then it was dinnertime! We went downstairs and I ate a type of meat (I think it is called costillos…), and rice. Then, we stayed down there and we played cards, for a while. We saw people sleeping on the floor in the dining room, and Dulce said that is where the people who didn’t buy a room sleep for the night. (The poor guys!) But we did, so, after that, we got ready for bed, and since there were only two beds in the room (about the size of my closet), and three girls..Peppi and Caroline squeezed into the same bed for the night. MM…comfy!
The next day, Tuesday, Dulce woke us up early and we went outside to try and catch the sunrise. We were a little late, but it was still gorgeous watching the sun first thing in the morning. We ate breakfast, chilaquiles (like nachos but with sauce instead of cheese), marley (a type of jumping fish), and beans. Quite a breakfast, right!? Typical really, for a Mexican!
We arrived in La Paz, a small city where our hotel was located and headed to check in. It was pretty small, but it would do. Our tour guide picked us up in his big white van and we headed to Los Cabos! It was about two hours away, so we had the chance to talk for a while first. He speaks English, French, German, Italian and, well, Spanish of course! So, he talked with me in English, Caroline in French and Omar in German for a little while and then apologized for not knowing any Finnish! Finally we arrived in Los Cabos, and right away you could tell is was touristy. We went to go take a boat trip and on our way everyone at the dock spoke English to us, trying to get us to come with them. But, we made it to our boat and took a tour to a beautiful island, the Island of Love, and then on the other side, the Island of Divorce. The water was crystal clear and just gorgeous. And we already started to see wildlife, lot’s of colourful fish, we even saw a whale a little ways away. I saw a jellyfish, which made me a little scared since we were planning on going snorkeling later in the week! It was all just so gorgeous.
After that, we drove to the other cabos. We bought a coconut, just the way I like it with chile and lime! We took a walk along the beach, just gorgeous with sand whiter and softer and an ocean bluer than I have ever seen! Then, we went to eat in the restauraunt. They gave us nachos with a special tuna salsa and I ordered chicken with molcajete salsa. It was so delicious, but extremely spicy. This would have bothered me a lot more last year, but some how I ate it, and was still happy! We were all so full as we drove around the town, and then we headed back to La Paz to our hotel, and Memo (the tour guide) told us about a little shop of regional candy from Mexico…and the minute after we all complained about being fat and gaining weight in Mexico..we all decided we wanted to go! So there we went and refilled our stomachs with jamoncillo, (delicious candy made from milk) and empanadas filled with cajeta. (A caramel type candy)
Then, it was back to the hotel because we were up for another early morning the next day!
Memo the tour guide picked us up bright and early and drove us to a little convenience shop/restaurant for breakfast. Everything was fresh and homemade..literally! We went to the back where they cook the food, which was like an outside kitchen on a little dirt backyard. They had empanadas being made freshly there, cooking on the stove top and lots of flies surrounding them! Yummy….Haha..But the food was actually delicious because it was so home made. We ate machaca and bean burritos and empanadas. Then Memo drove us to go to a port to take off on our whale watching tour. There was a lot of wind, so they told us we could not depart from that area, so, we got back into the car and drove for a few more hours to another port. We finally took off and I was so amazed. We were in the boat not one minute when we saw the spoom of the blowhole from a whale not too far away! We drove out into the ocean, and it didn’t take long to see several sprays! I couldn’t believe it…we saw one whale up close for a while, and there were several boats close by…we looked at it for a while and then the boat driver said, “Well, let’s go find another whale!” –I didn’t realize it was that easy! So off we went to find another whale, and in a few minutes we found a mother and a baby that was calm enough to stop and look at us for a while. We stopped the boat and the mom and baby swam around about 15 meters away from the boat. The mother watched us, and the driver said she was curious. He put his hand in the water and tapped the water, because apparently that calls their attention…because the mother came a little closer! So there we all were tapping the water and the mom and the baby got closer and closer until they started swimming right under the boat! It was amazing..and a little scary..considering our boat was not too big at all..and I am sure these whales were several meters long. They were grey whales, and they were so big! Eventually they swam so close that I even got to touch them! I touched them three times it swam so close, and I could hardly believe it! I never thought I would say I touched a whale before!
After the whale watching tour we went to buy a few souvenirs and then we headed to lunch! We went to a restaurant and the meal we had pre ordered was not too shabby at all..lobster, shrimp and fish! I had never eaten lobster before and let me tell you…not too bad at all! Dulce told me that this part of Mexico has so much lobster, and that it is typical for people to invite you over to their house and eat lobster, and that in restaurants they are actually embarrassed to say that they just have lobster to offer! After we ate, it was back to the hotel. I was feeling a little heavy from having eaten so much in the past days, so me and Omar decided to go for a run. The malecon, (boarwalk), in La Paz, was so beautiful along the ocean. The ambience is a little calmer than in Mazatlan, and was really peaceful to run. However, I did notice that it was drier than in Mazatlan, my mouth was dried out by the time we got back to the hotel. A friend of Omar’s that I met when we went camping in Mazatlan lives in La Paz, and we decided to go to a local bar with his friends from school, who are all studying marine biology. It was pretty cool to meet up with them, from all different parts of Mexico, who all were inclined to come to La Paz because the marine life is so accessible here. Then we walked back to the hotel..which can be a little more difficult than it seems with a Finnish and a French girl. It can get especially incomfortable when the people whistles and shout things like, “Let me find a home for all three of you”..but mom, you can just ignore those past few lines.
Thursday we woke up and walked to the market a few blocks from the hotel to buy breakfast. We found a place that makes juice and smoothies and I bought myself a banana chocolate milk freshly made. Then we went back to the hotel so Memo could pick us up! We went into this tour shop, as Thursday was the day we were to go scuba diving! We got our wet suits fitted and then it was off to the boat. The boat ride was about 40 minutes out and our scuba instructor taught us everything we would need to know before we went out for a quick practice spin. Hand signals, how to use the equipment, how to breathe..Then we arrived at a small island and practiced certain drills. Everything went well, but I got a little nervous when I did the drill where the water fills your mask and you have to breath strongly out of your nose to get the water out, because I thought I might inhale the water and drown myself underwater. But, I did the drill alright one or two times, and then I just hoped for the best when we got back on the boat and made our way to where we would actually be scuba diving. We got into the water like professionals with a backwards summersault into the water and then the instructor helped us to go down one at a time and kneel on the ocean floor, about 12 meters down. I was extremely slow to go down, as I had to continue equalizing the pressure in my ears, and my right ear hurt and was a little hard to get to cooperate. But finally, we all stood on the ocean floor and the instructor right away gave me a few starfish to hold…amazing! They were so beautiful. We stayed down there for about 40 minutes and the instructor pointed out all sorts of colourful fish, and we even saw a sea lion swimming down there. It was a really cool experience.
Then, it was back to the surface and time for lunch. We took off our gear and went to the island where we ate ceviche and sandwiches. There was a group of people from France on our boat that Caroline took up the opportunity to talk with, and it was pretty cool to hear them speak in French. I understood most of it, but if I tried to form sentences, usually all that came out was some French-spanish badly conjugated jumble of words. We stayed on the beach suntanning a while and then we headed back on the boat to the hotel. We got back to the hotel and bathed, and then we went out to have some Chinese food. It was absolutely delicious! After that, we were a little full, so we decided to walk around the city and do a little shopping. However, I don’t think poor Omar was so up for the idea as he waited for us in the door of every shop we entered! After that, I headed back to the hotel because I had some French homework from the online course I am taking. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but then Peppi got a phone call on skype from a finnish friend of her, my homework was written in English, we were speaking in Spanish and listening to Spanish music and Caroline was trying to say who knows what in Finnish!!
So…we will see how I do on that assignment!
Friday, I could still not hear when I woke up in the morning, because my ears hurt so much from scuba diving. But, the day had to go on! So, we went to the central market and I bought myself an apple smoothie with honey. We also bought a carrot bread. Delicioussss! Then Memo picked us up in the van, and took us to the same office of the company that took us snorkelling. We got all wet-suited up, and then hit the boat! We went for about forty minutes in boat, and then checked around to find a shark whale! It is a crazy, big fish that we were going to snorkel with! But don’t worry mom..they cant swallow people..we can only fit into their mouths! Soon enough we found one, and in I hopped with the shark! ..Never thought I would say that before!! We jumped off the boat, six at a time, so as not to scare it, and then we swam towards the shark. And then, I looked down, and there it was!! Swimming right under me was this huge white black spotted animal! It was unbelievable. We were told we were able to be two meters from the sharks body, and three meters from the tail, because apparently it has enough strength to knock someone out if it hits them with its tail. It swam a little fast, and we had to swim to keep up with it, and when there are six other people splashing and trying to get a good view…things can get a little complicated. So, they picked us up and let us jump back in the water again when we got too far away from the whale, or when we got too tired to follow it. The shark whales name was Cory, I believe. They track these whales, and I believe they said there were about 6 in the area. After we got tired of Cory, we went and found another..I believe Alena was her name. She swam a little slower, so it was easier to get a good view. It is pretty overwhelming, when there is this huge animal…about 9 meters…swimming right beneath you! I could hardly believe it! It wasn’t a very pretty animal, but it is a pretty cool one! Its just too bad I couldn’t have seen it for longer periods of time…more swimming lessons..and less tacos..really could have helped me out! Omar was with it for really long periods of time, his physical condition is great, so we passed him the marine cameras, and he got a few photos for us. After that, I took off my wetsuit, and I noticed I my hands were very dark compared to the rest of my body thanks to my long sleeved wetsuit! So, Memo dropped us off right onthe beach to even out the tan! It was so beautiful, with the sand really white and the water really clear. It was so beautiful. We hopped in the ocean for a swim, and talked with Dulce all about exchange and countries and their differences and world peace. Haahaha..how I love being an exchange student! After some sun bathing, we went up to a little stand and bought some drinks. I bought a Jamaica water (a delicious drink made from the petals of the Jamaica flower), and we sat talking for a while. Then, we decided to make a trip to have some lunch…but the bus wasn’t coming. So, when in Rome…we decided to hitch hike! The truck ignored us..the second looked sketchy…and along came the lucky third and in we hopped!
We stopped in a restaurant that Memo had recommended, and sat down to eat the nachos they brought us as we browsed the menu. The nachos were delicious, they had this type of tuna salsa I just cant get enough of! We weren’t really too impressed with the menu however, so..on the count of three, we decided to walk out of the restaurant! We were laughing pretty hard, licking up the last bits of the nachos as we ran out without ordering! Well, that’s one way to get a cheap lunch! It was a day of firsts for me that day..hitchhiking and ditching restaurants! Anyways, we found another restaurant, and I had a good lunch anyways, Caroline and I ordered two plates to share: fish with mango salsa and fish with garlic. I liked them both…naturally! After that, Dulce invited us for icecream and we ate delicious fresh ice cream typical to the area…rose petal, and cactus flower from the nopal plant called pitaya! A little different from the typical rocky road…but delicious just the same! After that, we went to do a little shopping! Everyone was very surprised that we spoke Spanish, and offered to give us “better deals” just for knowing it! I bought myself a shirt, and fell in love with a pair of high heels…but spending fifty dollars just wasn’t sounding too appealing me. So…I left them! After a little shopping, we walked back to the hotel, and everyone whistled at us as we walked back…Ya, we know, we are gorgeous! We arrived back at the hotel, bathed and got ready, and hit the streets to go meet some of the same friends we met with the other night. We stopped in an icecream shop to buy strawberries and cream and a fruit cocktail, and then we headed to the bar. We left early because we were so tired we were dying, and we were cozy in our beds just after midnight.
Saturday I woke up at about 10:30, and Peppi and Caroline both started to talk with the parents on skype…and there I was..feeling a little lonely! I tried to skype with my mom a little while after, but the reception was bad, so I didn’t say much. Peppi made fun of me, and said that Canadians are slow, (just like the Americans!) because I speak so slowly on skype with my mom in comparison with how she speaks in finnish! Later, we went shopping for a few souvenirs, and then to breakfast. I ate a salad with mango dressing and a chicken sandwich. After that, me, Caroline and Peppi went to the beach. Caroline went for a swim and there I was sitting with Peppi. We started to talk about all sorts of things. We began to talk about sex, and its amazing how much our views clash. I am very conservative, and I think sex should be saved for marriage and the best sex will be when people only have one partner in their lives. And, I am sure you can imagine what a Finnish girl would think! I will give you a clue…Finland is a LIBERAL country! We found it amazing that we come from cultures so different, but we can put that aside and call ourselves friends. Exchange has taught me so much about that…and I love it. Omar arrived at the beach as we were sunbathing with his cousin, Edgar, who lives in La Paz. They brought us another typical drink from Mexico, and then we decided to find a pool! We tried to enter various hotels, but they didn’t let us in two of them because we didn’t have rooms. Finally, we found a place that would let us enter, and sat there to talk for a little while. Edgar had been in Vancouver and mentioned how amazed he was at the ability of a Canadian to accept other cultures from the diversity that he saw. Represent Canada! That was a little interesting to hear, especially after the conversation in the morning, and I felt proud that people visiting Canada would notice that. After a little while in the swimming pool, we went to subway, which was a little funny because there was tuna subs, and everything typical to the area and Mexico. Then, we went driving for a bit and bought another ice cream. YUMMM!!!! There were some breakdancers on Malecon, and me and Caroline went to watch them for a bit. It was pretty amazing…I am still confused how people spin on their heads! After that, we decided to go dancing! It was pretty convenient, once again, to bring Peppi, the blonde one with us to enter, because it is easy enough for her to act all confused and speak in English with her Finnish accent when they ask us for identification! Once we entered, we had such a great night and we danced the night away to salsa, and whatever other song they played! It’s a good thing I am not embarrassed to dance anymore! I had such a good time, and I even saw someone who looked identical to a friend of mine in La Piedad. An Argentinean was there, and introduced himself to Peppi as soon as he saw her! We had a great time dancing, and home we went in la mañanita!
The next day was our last day in La Paz, so we woke up and we headed for tacos. The fish and shrimp tacos here in La Paz are famous from this area…so we couldn’t miss out! And were they EVER delicious! I could eat them all day! After that, we went to the beach for a little while, and then Memo picked us up. He took us to see the skeleton of the grey and blue whale. It was absolutely unbelievable. The blue whale was so big, it didn’t even fit in the picture I tried to take!
After that, it was already time to get on the ferry, and we complained until we had both feet onboard! We weren’t quite ready to let go of La Paz, it was all too beautiful! But there we were back on the ferry again, with another 16 hours to kill! So, we watched a movie on my computer until the battery died, and then we went to eat lunch. Meat, rice, beans and tortillas. Perfect! After that, we went back up to our rooms and I studied French while Caroline studied English. I read a magazine that I bought in La Paz, and then we watched another movie on Caroline’s computer. It started to get late, but Caroline and I still didn’t want to sleep. So, we went down to the kitchen to study! We wanted cake that they had in the fridge, but the man told us they weren’t selling it and that the kitchen had already closed! But we were hungry, so we ate the little packets of sugar and cream that come with the coffee! We were so crazy, most possibly from the tiredness! We saw some Canadians that we met earlier on the boat, who are driving up to panama and surfing on their way there. They were from Toronto, I believe. We played cards with them for a while, and then we told them good night and we went to watch the stars with some other people that we had seen on the boat. Finally, we went to bed, and Caroline and I snuggled in together in the almost a twin sized bed in our room!
In the morning, I woke myself up in a panic because I wanted to see the sunset. I noticed it was already starting to get a little light, so I ran outside, without grabbing my camera because I didn’t want to miss anything. I went outside and though it was light, I still didn’t see the sun in the air. So, I walked around the deck for a little bit. I noticed that in one part of the sky, the colours started to change a little bit, it was just a tiny bit prettier there. So, I watched it for a while, and there, after a few minutes, I saw the tiniest yellow light shoot up from over the ocean. I don’t know if I have ever seen a sunrise before, but if I have. I have never seen one so distinct, where things are flat as far as you can see, and the sun arrives at your eyes the moment it crosses the horizon. It was so beautiful, although the colours aren’t quite as nice as those at sunset, I was happy to have woken up to see it. I spoke with a man also watching the sunrise and then I woke up Peppi and Caroline for breakfast. We ate chilaquiles and eggs and beans…delicious as normal! We arrived soon after that, and while Omar went to school, Caroline’s host mom picked us up, and we went for coffee with Peppi and her host mom. I took the first opportunity after that to go to the gym with Caroline, after having been on vacation so many days without doing any exercise! The trainer said it would be a good idea to lose a pound or two..hahaha..but you try to lose weight in Mexico…impossible! After a good workout, we went back to Caroline’s house to eat lunch, (chicken….typical when there is nothing else!) and to put some pictures on facebook. Then, I went back to my house, and I spoke with my mom about my trip and everything I had done, and settled back into home life, as it was back to school the next day!
It was such a great trip, and I saw/did so many things I never thought I would get the chance to do. So, if you ever get the chance! Go!
Well, hope you enjoyed reading about my trip! Sorry I feel like I am becoming a worse and worse writer everyday! I just don’t know how to explain extraordinary things in ordinary words! Hope you are well, and ready for the next blog post..because it’s coming your way soon!
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