Te Amamos, Baja

Our trip to Mexico turned out differently than expected.

First off, there wasn't supposed to be a trip to Mexico.

I had to be in Cabo San Lucas for a few days, but Julia and I were supposed to meet in Sacramento afterward for a stateside road trip through the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Of course, that all changed when The Adventure Truck never made it to California.

Given the choice between meeting me in Philly to get the truck and head to New England or meeting me in Mexico to bum around some Airbnbs, she chose the latter.

By that point, I'd had enough of Cabo.

I have friends who LOVE Cabo.

Me?

I don't ever need to go back.

Sure, exciting things happened.

The mastermind event I was there for was off-the-chain good.

I had one of the best steaks of my life in a restaurant that turned out to be a front for a brothel.

I surfed every day (although not in Cabo, but 30 minutes north in San Jose)

I got pulled over by La Policia, who seemed baffled that I was neither drunk on tequila nor high on pills (there's a pharmacy on every single corner of Cabo) and disappointed that I wasn't the target for bribery they'd hoped.

And I walked into the wrong kind of massage parlor.

Still - for me - Cabo is meh.

It's a big party/resort town like any other. I would have loved it in my twenties and thirties.

But, pushing 50, five days was more than enough, so as soon as Julia arrived, and despite repeated admonishments from friends and family to stick to the resorts, we headed north.

We ended up driving a loop of around 800 miles from Cabo San Lucas to Todos Santos, over to La Paz, down to El Sargento and La Ventana, and then down to San Jose.

We saw deserted beaches with crystal clear water.

We went to a food festival with 60 chefs and live music (if you like surf music, check out The Mexican Weirdohs on Spotify).

We went to art museums.

We ate tacos while we watched the sunset over the Pacific.

We saw blue whales from 30'.

We swam with wild sea lions.

We walked around cities after dark, spoke broken Spanish to the locals, ate fantastic food, and started looking at real estate in the area.

It wasn't at all what we'd planned.

It was nothing like I expected.

And it was absolutely, 100% incredible.

Te amamos, Baja, y volveremos muy pronto.