Shall we speak suizo in Mexico?

Loreto, Baja California

Tonight, I write from the ferry that is taking us from La Paz (not in Bolivia, La Paz in Baja California Sur) to Mazatlan on mainland Mexico. We have driven down most of Baja California, which is mainly a desert, with beautiful beaches on the way. Mexico is big, bigger than most of us think; Baja California is roughly 1’000 miles long, and it is only a tiny bit of Mexico. Baja California is hot at this time of the year, very hot. Some places are quite poor, but others have been nicely developed for the tourists coming from north of the border. There are check points monitored by the Mexican army at regular intervals. Sometimes our vehicle is searched, sometimes not. Most of the time the soldiers are very nice. One could not recognise my passport, despite the fact it is in five languages, including English; but not in Spanish. So I told him “Suiza” and he asked if I could speak “Suizo”, and I said yes. Going into details about the specificity of Switzerland would have been to complicated and unnecessary at that point. Cannot blame him for never having heard of Switzerland either. 

We also had our first flat tyre experience… fortunately, and because we have been very lucky during that trip so far, it did not happen in the middle of nowhere, but in the campground at La Paz… we were relaxing and sipping a beer when we heard this whistling sound that no one wants to hear coming from the back tyre… We looked and felt some air coming out… that was it, our first flat tyre. We asked the owners of the campground to call a mechanic and were told he would come in the morning. In the meantime, in order to keep the tyre in a good shape and to allow us to sleep comfortably, we put the van on the jack, with the help of some very nice Brazilians who are travelling from Brazil all the way to Alaska. Of course, we were a bit stressed, because we had to catch the ferry in the afternoon and did not know how long in would take to fix the tyre. The mechanic arrived at nine in the morning. He fixed everything in a little more than an hour, removing a long nail from the tyre; he had all the gear, tools and parts needed in his pick up truck. That was great and far less complicated than expected. 

So off we went to catch the ferry. We had to be there three hours before the departure at 5pm. This is the hottest part of the day, and it was indeed very hot waiting… We had made the booking online but could not get any cabin because they were all already booked. The ferry takes 18 hours to reach Mazatlan. We had two seats, air plane cattle class size in a crowded room with TV blaring at full blast. We sat at the bar crowded with truck drivers watching some movie for some time. At that point I was a bit down at the prospect of spending some many hours in such conditions. And then, the stroke of luck: some people did not show up and we got their cabin. So tonight we are comfortably sleeping in a spacious cabin for four, but just the two of us, with a view on the sea of Cortez, a proper bathroom and AC. This is such a bliss! The ferry starts to rock a bit now but we will be fine and rested tomorrow morning! Viva Mexico!