Ojo de Liebre

Nothing like waking up in the morning in the midst of palm trees and watch the sun rise. My personal breakfast chef Alex makes Italian coffee and cornflakes with milk and bananas.

Then we get on another straight, boring and windy stretch of road to get to Guerrero Negro. The turn off to the bay of the whales is some 10 miles before that and is the smoothest dirt road ever. It's hard packed dirt so it's more like concrete and supersticky. It takes 10 minutes for 10 miles and we arrive at the biosfera.

There is a museum about whales, a whale skeleton outside, a restaurant and a way more commercial whale watching outfit than Antonio's. It's very touristy, but since there is nobody there except for a few other way too early travelers it's actually really nice and we sign up for the whale watching. In March I'm sure this'll be like a zoo, not of whales but of tourists standing in line for the whales like at Disneyland.

But not now. Now it's peaceful and quiet and mellow.

The little fishing boat brings us out to the bay and the guide starts looking for whales. No idea how he does it, but he can tell before the whales come up and we can point our cameras in that direction. My camera doesn't have a good zoom on it so after a while I decide to put it away and just enjoy the moment and buy a postcard later which will be a much better picture than I can ever take with my well loved but limited camera.

Although we don't see too many whales there are some that come up really close and spout off. The guide does his best to find and get close to the whales, but if I was a whale Mom trying to give birth I wouldn't want to be close to an annoying little boat either. And whales or not, it is just so beautiful too to be out on the water after all this desert.

When we get we weigh our options onj what to do after we get back, which is something I can do great with Alex, we decide to just stay on the beach since it not too windy and there is a restaurant nearby. Turns out that camping is free, and we roll out our sleeping bags underneath a nice palapa. No tent necessary today. The sun sets on the right and rises on the left, and the wind protection doesn't obscure the view of the ocean. The perfect spot!

Speaking of weighing the options: that's something I love doing. I like looking at all the different possibilities, figure out what is important to each one of us and then make the best possible decision from there. It takes time, but hey, I'm on vacation. I have all the time in the world to make it the best possible one. Some people find this way to tedious but I enjoy the process, and in this case we made a great decision because the palapa could be right out of an advertising commercial and the food at this place. is. out. of. this. world. or maybe just very Californian, light and sophisticated in taste and cooked to perfection. I had possibly the best tortilla soup ever and this is no exaggeration. Then I had a coctel de almejas, since the cocinera assured me that the mussels were just caught today and were the freshest sea food they had. Then I had a taste of Alex's chile relleneos com frijoles, and they were so good that I had to have my own order and we had margaritas with that. So there went another three course dinner.

They cooked the whole dinner with candle light too, since there was no electricity.

After that, needless to say, I had to *roll* myself, happily and satisfied, down to the beach. Our neighbors had made a fire and we went over to say Hi. Turns out they also had beer and we huddle around the fire and talk. He is American and she is from Mexico. Later, a young Russian couple and a Dutch guy join us and we talk about environmental issues in Russia and America. Very interesting conversation. The American has traveled as an adviser in agricultural matters all over the world actually, not only Russia, but also Europe and Africa, and the Russian girl studies Environmental Engineering in Santa Barbara, so I learn a lot about some of our current issues with that, and we also exchange a lot of view points.

It becomes a late night. I love exchanging information with people of different viewpoints. I fall asleep with the satisfying feeling that a great exchange has taken place and that it can be easy to connect different cultures.