La Paz is a rather tidy kind of town on the West coast of Baja California (the Mexican part of California) where I stayed in an outrageously quaint little hostel with colourful rendered walls hung with decrepit paintings of religious and historical figures and famous for its lovely plaza and musty little rooms. I highly recommend “Pension California”. Rooms go for 140 pesos (about AUS$15) per night.
In summer its strictly mad dogs and Englishmen during the day as the city hangs back until the sun falls spectacularly into the ocean leaving the town to come alive with families, buskers, jugglers, lovers, vendors and the odd sunburnt gringo. Late at night, flocks of hopelessly lonely American yobbos shake free of hotel poolsides to seek desolate enjoyment in bottles of tequila and dance clubs where no-one dances.
At dusk one day on the foreshore two people were teaching their children to ride bicycles and a small boy went out of control, ran over my foot and fell over. I caught him before he hit the ground and we laughed like hyenas or old friends so his parents thanked me and I was included in their celebration of life, just for one short and beautiful moment.
My first real contact with other tourists was a cruise yesterday that took me and 20 others to Isla de Espiritu Santo to swim with sea lions. When people swam too close to the heart of the colony the alpha male puffed his chest and huge mane of wet hair while bellowing something hoarse about art. Young seals darted up to look through our goggles and made us all jumpy with their undeclared intentions – even the small ones are about the size of a person and have a slick lazy muscularity no amount of gym work could ever hope to match. Never are you more aware of the limitations of being a land animal in water that when face to face with a big aquatic one. The schools of fish were glorious too and when someone swam through them they parted and then re-formed behind them. An especially amazing thing to do was swim upside down beneath a massive school of silver fish and watch the sun work its way through them.
After the cruise there was beer, tequila and a late night so this morning’s 7AM flight to Mexico City was very hard indeed. La Paz airport is hopelessly disorganised and arriving at 6:15 was cutting it so fine they had to delay the plane and reopen the baggage compartment for my backpack. It says something good about Mexico that they did that rather than have me wait for the next plane.
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