Big Trip Day 415: The Last Chapter
Hey friends,
It’s Dory, writing you this message from someplace new: the United States, where we’ve now been for almost two months! But nobody wants to hear about America (not even us) so this is a flashback to our final weeks in Mexico. This’ll be our second to last newsletter — for this era of Big Trip, at least! — so we hope you enjoy these wistful remembrances of a time when the burritos were cheap, the waves were plentiful, and we still hadn’t seen snow in a year.
I’m picking things up in Ensenada, the biggest city we’d found ourselves in since San José del Cabo a thousand kilometers ago. We traveled north for one reason only: reliable internet, since Justin had another job interview, and La Cueva del Pirata wasn’t exactly Starlink-equipped.
Much to our mutual surprise, Ensenada is actually the place in Baja where we could best imagine ourselves living. It’s a real Mexican city, not packed to the gills with wealthy American retirees who don’t speak Spanish, and the people we met were curious, friendly, and eager to get to know us. Plus, the food was excellent, the waves are plentiful, uncrowded, and longboard-friendly, and it’s an easy day’s drive to the border.
Truly though, the people were what made Ensenada stand out. One of our favorite spots was Hostil Burger, a tiny burger joint/art studio owned by Amin, an exceptionally chatty chef who deliberately avoids all publicity. He told us he usually has around eight or ten customers a day — just the right number so he can work on his art when there’s no one ordering. Alongside our burgers (one vegetarian, one tuna) he presented us with an array of easily a dozen sauces (Charred chile and garlic mayo! Chipotle crema! Salsa macha hot honey!) and a set of extremely cute stickers he designed himself. After we paid the bill, presented us with a bag of his favorite dried chiles for my future cooking projects, and then got back to his current art project. What a legend.
We also had a memorable afternoon at the Heisenberg Tap Room, a local brewery we stumbled into during their Thursday afternoon 2x1 pint special. It turned out to be a vortex into another dimension — we stumbled out four hours later with a new understanding of the human body’s ability to metabolize alcohol, having watched our new best friend put down twelve pints of high-point IPA, breaking his own personal record and earning himself a free six-pack to go.
Thoroughly fed and watered, and with Justin’s interview successfully completed (spoiler alert: months later, he got the job! Yay Justin!) it was time for a quick overnight to Europe — er, that is, to the Valle de Guadelupe, the unexpected culinary and fancy-things hot spot of Baja California. We’d been here once before a couple years ago as another surf trip detour, and we repeated the same general itinerary: get accidentally drunk at one single wine tasting, eat a delicious and fancy dinner, and stay overnight in someplace cozy overlooking a vineyard. It’s a great way to spend 24 hours!
On this trip, our most chaotic highlight was a wine tasting at Vinos Piojan, a family-run vineyard perched on a hillside. It was a cold, rainy day, and half of the Valle seemed closed; we parked in an empty lot, and rang the bell under a sign announcing that yes, they were open, please ring for service. As we wandered our way back to the tasting room through rain-slicked trees and paving stones, another tourist emerged — a woman from Chicago who had evidently missed the bell, and was just hovering around, unable to determine if the winery was open.
We ended up sitting with her in the tasting room while the one employee walked us through parallel tastings. He bounced back and forth between English and Spanish, and we rapidly established that our new friend from Chicago was certifiably bananas. When we asked how long she would be traveling for, she answered, “well, maybe 40 years”. She then told us she was “an entrepreneur,” and Justin decided to dig deeper. What kind of projects are you working on, he asked?
“Well, have you heard of Hamilton? The musical?”
We’re both like... yes, we’ve been alive for the past decade, we’ve heard of Hamilton.
“Okay, so my project is basically Hamilton, but it’s like, about business.”
At this point, the spark in Justin’s eye was at full blaze, and he proceeded to grill our new friend about her “corporate social responsibility” themed musical for the next fifteen minutes. We haven’t yet seen the New York Times article about this big theatrical debut, but if you guys see it please send us the link.
Post-winery, we enjoyed our Airbnb hot tub (!) and a remarkably good Moroccan meal in a completely empty restaurant (very Bachelor-coded.) The next morning, it was time to head back to Camalú to catch the last couple days of swell. We resumed our residence at La Cueva del Pirata, making the short drive up to Shipwrecks each day, and eating at Tacos El Perico so frequently that the staff started to recognize us.
As the swell started to drop, we took a rest day to check out the Humedales de San Quintin, a wetland that our friend back at Vinos Piojan recommended as a place worth checking out. It’s a wide marsh located right on the edge of the beach, and nestled in a ring of long-dead volcanoes, tiny cones somehow related to the huge, smoking peaks we hiked in Indonesia.
We hiked around, explored the flatlands around the marsh’s twisting rivers, and ate tostadas at La Barra de Piedra, a tiny restaurant overlooking the marsh. On our way back to the highway, we stopped at Bahia Falsa for oysters, where the cheerful proprietor grilled us two dozen oysters over a fire he started with motor oil, skillfully navigating his wheelchair back and forth between the shucking table and the open flame.
The next morning we woke up to lake-like conditions at Camalú, so we decided it was time to start heading north, and spent a few more days surfing near Ensenada. As we re-entered a more populated part of Baja, we unlocked a new breakfast routine: watch the sides of the road for someone standing under an easy-up with a cooler. Easy-ups on the side of the road are the source of all delicious things in Northern Baja. Most folks are selling burritos, but forget what you think that means. Baja burritos are little, the perfect size to take a single bite without having to unhinge your jaw — and since they’re little, you can eat like three.
Imagine a perfect flour tortilla, charred in spots and translucent in others, with a simple filling: super-seasoned beans and cheese, shredded beef with chile and potato, or a glorious chile relleno. The best vendors will give you a tiny bag of homemade salsa to go with each burrito, or a salted and dried chile de arbol to take tiny nibbles of alongside your burrito. To drink, we’d always get champurrado, a hot, creamy, cinnamon-y drink thickened with masa de harina, the same stuff you use to make corn tortillas. And when it comes time to pay, burritos for two and a hot drink the size of your face usually cost around $5.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Mexico freaking rules.
At this point, we were thinking pretty seriously about being back in the States. We made plans to stay with Justin’s mom and my cousins in San Diego, and had a specific date we had agreed to be back in Salt Lake City — in time for a memorial service for a family friend on March 1. Suddenly, it was all getting a little real!
We went for one last surf, and then drove onwards to Tijuana, where I misread the Google Maps and sent us on a brief wild goose chase through the Southern part of the city, temporarily trapping us in insane, Los Angeles-style traffic. After months of cruising the open roads of Baja Sur, this was understandably a shock.
In spite of this, Tijuana is a cool city. Cooler than you think it is! The slice of city that follows the border has a rightfully dystopian feel, but the city itself is full of good food, cool bars, and all the amenities of any bustling internationally-oriented city. After safely ditching the car in the underground parking lot of the Hyatt (again, shoutout to credit card points) we went for a walk, stopping at a Japanese matcha cafe and a beer bar chock-full of Tijuana locals getting a drink after work. Back at the hotel, Justin was castigated for trying to make a toasted chicken sandwich on our Coleman stove in the parking garage (dog habits die hard) and then we snuck in a short night’s sleep before our 4am alarm to cross the border at San Ysidro.
San Ysidro is the busiest land border crossing in the Western Hemisphere, and the fourth busiest in the world (it’s beat out by China-Macau, Malaysia-Singapore, and China-Hong Kong, in case you’re curious.) Every day, over 70,000 cars and 20,000 people cross north into the United States — and that means traffic. On the way back from a weekend surf trip to Baja, Justin and friends once waited in line for 7 hours. But you’re not just sitting in the car — you’re looking out the window at a constant parade of economic brilliance and desperation.
In line at the border, you can buy almost anything: prescription drugs, hand-painted ceramic turtles, assorted candy and soda, live puppies of disturbing provenance. Food vendors walk between the lines of bumper-to-bumper cars selling whatever’s right for the time of day: tortas, burritos, atole, avena, jugos, licuados... you name it, they’ve got it. If the line starts moving quickly and you drive out of sight of the vendor you ordered from, never fear — someone will chase you down, treats in hand, for a quick cash exchange out your car window.
There is also a seemingly endless stream of people begging: folks with missing limbs or sitting in half-broken wheelchairs, with handwritten signs describing their journeys from afar, their heartbreak and hardship. Children doing miserable acrobatics, barely tall enough to reach car windows as they weave through the vehicles for a handout. It’s depressing because it should be, and a grim reminder of the impacts of the USA’s immigration policies, the violence inherent in militarized borders, and the massive wealth gap that exists between us and our neighbors.
The border is exhausting. It’s hot, it smells like car exhaust, there are people everywhere... and it’s also a daily commuter route for thousands of people each day. And although the American news media talks about the Mexico-USA border almost constantly, I know the majority of Americans will likely never actually see the border itself. Everyone’s got an opinion, but most Americans never watch the people trying to make a living along the border, or see the towering rust-bronze wall and the intense military presence as you approach the customs agents. The border’s exhausting, but I think we should all go experience it, at least once. It’s much more complicated than a line on a map.
After waiting two hours in line, we finally made it to the border. Our license plate was so caked in dust from driving the dirt roads near Camalú that our border agent had to leave his booth and record the digits manually; he peeked at our passports, handed them back, and just like that, we were back in America. As the clock ticked over to 6am, we found ourselves driving down a ghostly-empty eight lane highway at 70mph under morning fog.
We spent a week around San Diego, surfing the much more crowded waves in San Elijo, seeing family and friends, and doing our best to get re-acclimated to the traffic, prices, and general vibe of the United States. Then before we knew it, we were back on the road — this time driving to Salt Lake City with three surfboards strapped to the roof of the car.
And that’s where we’ll leave you: the two of us driving on perfect pavement back to Utah where the whole Big Trip began over a year ago. It’s been the best year of both of our lives, and a joy to share it all with you via calls and texts and this newsletter. We’re honored you took the time to follow along, and so excited to see you (or continue seeing you!) now that we’re back in America.
Re-acclimating has been hard, no question, but we came back here because we wanted to have a community again, and you all have delivered. Thank you for saving space for us in your lives.
There’s one more newsletter coming your way in just a couple days, with our best Big Trip lessons learned and travel tips!
Until then, we love you, and we’re so excited to be back in your time zone.
Big hugs,
Dory + Justin
