If you haven’t read Part 1 of this La Paz series, you can go back and read it here»
I’m sitting on the flat cement exterior of an outdoor planter beside the main bus terminal in downtown La Paz. The seven or eight of us on the shuttle van from the San Jose del Cabo airport have just gotten off and walked out into the southern Baja sun. It’s around 4 p.m., and yes, it is very, very hot.
I’m scrolling on my iPhone to see how far it is to my hotel. My second shock, after the initial blast of heat, comes when Google Maps informs me I have no internet connection. I go to the settings on my phone, as I took great care last week to have our provider activate international roaming just so I could find ample connections here!
I see several connections that are available and click “Join” on them, one at a time, but they all require passwords I don’t have. So I’m stuck without Wi-Fi, outdoors in 100-degree Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) heat, with no idea how to get where I need to go during my first few minutes downtown in a city of a country whose language I don’t speak.
To fill out the picture of my mood, this is on the heels of a three-hour airport shuttle ride that had already heightened my anxiety. The ride followed a fairly dull plane flight during which I didn’t feel much like reading and just sort of nodded off into states ranging between napping and meditation.
It was a bit hard to find my shuttle connection outside the airport. I went, as per the shuttle company’s instructions, to Umbrella 5, but no shuttle. Asking people nearby, I found a man who said he was also waiting for one to La Paz. He named a different company than the one I’d signed up with. When the van finally did show up, though, it turned out that either the company had several names, or—same difference—several companies were promoting the same ride.
As we got on the way, I got acquainted with a very talkative, upbeat young woman in the row of seats just behind me. Her fiancé, next to her, was talkative, too, but she was the main spark plug. There was a man across the aisle from their seats to whom they spoke when they weren’t speaking to me. I heard him say he was a Canadian who’d been coming to La Paz for years and knew it extremely well. He and I didn’t have much direct contact with one another.
After a while, I began to realize that I was too tired to continue such an animated conversation. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the side of the van. The young woman continued asking the other man, whose name was John, all sorts of things about the city. She asked about good restaurants and unusual Mexican food dishes, as well as different kinds of drinks. She became enthused about every tidbit he shared with her and her partner.
How did she—how did any of them—keep going? Hadn’t they likely gotten up as early as I had, to catch their respective flights? Did youth convey that much more energy? But John, who was around my age, was also still going strong, and he’d flown all the way from Toronto.
I wasn’t able to fall asleep. Though I’d opted out of the conversation, it still surrounded me. My eyes were closed, but the voices went on buzzing around me: this kind of mescal, that restaurant that the couple could tell, “John sent me,” and so on.
As the ride wore on, I felt boxed into a negative space. Why can’t I keep up? I watched myself create a mini-stigma as “someone who is not in the loop.” Recently, observing my lifelong extreme sensitivity and need of validation, I began doing a unique form of bodywork with a practitioner who believes … as I do now, as well … that I still have major “attachment” issues from early childhood. I think it was a good thing, not a bad one, to be able to identify that in myself, and starting with this practitioner felt like beginning a new adventure. But here now, in the van, my progress in the new work didn’t enable me to do more than reaffirm to myself that yes, I did often get “stuck” in social situations, and remind myself that the current discomfort wouldn’t last forever.
The van finally rumbled into La Paz. Like a number of resort cities I’ve entered through their outskirts in a van, bus or taxi, this one wasn’t impressive. It didn’t look very different from parts of the San Francisco Bay Area that have large Hispanic populations, lots of box stores and fast food restaurants, and appear to have sprung up in a random, haphazard manner. It boggled the mind to think that there even could be urban charm nearby.
Finally, we did—as had happened with several other cities I’d entered in this manner—cross some kind of invisible boundary into, well, anyone’s fantasy of a small tropical city by the sea: streets lined with coconut palms, the bay just beyond, lots of cafés and restaurants.
Soon, the van pulled into the parking area of the bus depot and we filed off. I waited for my travel bag, which I had to remind the driver, as he started to close the baggage door, was still in there. I took it in hand and rolled off, still nursing the foul mood that the ride had fostered, to go sit atop my concrete planter out on the street and try unsuccessfully to find my hotel on Google Maps.
The impossibility of getting online ushered me from annoyance about my captive-audience status on the ride into a minor panic. I wasn’t sure what to do. I’d been in Spanish-speaking cities before and had gotten along. This was just one moment when the heat, the inability to use my app, the lack of any orientation whatever as yet in La Paz, and my residual grumpiness from the ride all combined to overwhelm me a bit.
Finally—the hotel is found
I looked up for a moment and saw that a man was walking in my direction. I recognized him as John, the man from the shuttle.
“Are you trying to get to your hotel?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I can’t get an internet connection.”
“What’s the name of the hotel?”
“Posada LunaSol.”
John clicked a couple of things on his phone, then took a moment to silently evaluate what came up.
“It’s not really in walking distance,” he said.
“Thanks for telling me,” I replied. “Where’s the best place to get a taxi?”
John pointed around the corner. I thanked him for coming to my aid and started rolling my travel bag that way. A little later, a taxi did come by, and five or 10 minutes and 70 pesos—around $4—later, I got out in the courtyard of the hotel that I recognized by its walls. They were the orange-brown colour of Indian or Mexican spices.
This was the place that had charmed me in the pictures I’d seen online. I could see, though, that although the hotel did indeed have a pleasing appearance, what I’d seen online had been its “best pose.” It was situated in a relatively decent neighbourhood near the water and marina, but it wasn’t as spiffy in its frontage as the downtown hotels, nor was it really close to the downtown areas I’d intended to frequent.
I rolled my bag over to a little outdoor booth under an awning, a few feet past a lobby door that appeared to be closed off by a twine barrier festooned with small coloured flags. A young man stood inside the booth. Approaching him, I said “Hi, I have a reservation.”
“Are you Maahx?”
“Yes.”
“May I see your passport?”
Soon I’d paid for my upcoming stay and had my receipt. The young man’s name was Antonio. He was part of the owner’s extended family. Son, cousin, in-law—he didn’t say. He knew some English, but not enough for me to really grill him about what I was starting to feel I needed to know to facilitate my stay.
Antonio walked me up to my room, leading me around a corner to a flight of stairs, from the bottom of which I could now see a large, kidney-shaped swimming pool. On its far wall, there was a long mural of an ocean scene with whales and dolphins. In front of that wall was a stone fountain whose lazy output of water made a very peaceful splashing sound. On a terrace adjacent to the far end of the pool were tables and chairs, and farther back, in a roofed-over area, a counter.
“That is where the breakfast is served,” said Antonio, pointing as he began to lead me up the stairs. The staircase itself had an attractive Mexican ceramic tile at the centre of each step. At eye level were larger tiles. I could see, as we got near the top, that the hallway wall was also decorated with more colourful, tasteful tiles. Several of them embodied the hotel theme “Luna/Sol.”
There were plants in every hallway, too. Climbing all the way up the wall beside the stairs was a glorious stand of pink bougainvillea. Tall palms, including one with lovely green coconuts, stood nearby.
Antonio opened the door of my room. I thanked him, and he gave me the key and left the way we’d come. I walked into the room. The AC was going full blast, awaiting my arrival. My domicile for the next few days appeared and felt quite comfortable.
The walls here in my room were a nice, yellowish complement to the “spicy” orange-brown of the hallway. On the far wall, beside the bed, was a colourful wall hanging of a boat anchored in a bay facing a village. A table looked out a window onto a rather pleasant scene of palm trees and the driveway area of the hotel. The view stretched to the marina. and a little patina of the bay itself was visible in the distance.
Despite the logistical difficulties of staying in one part of town and wanting to spend my time in another—with the afternoons, at least, being too hot to bridge the distance on foot—I loved my hotel room.
I set about unpacking. To begin with, I got out my Meher Baba photos, one of Baba’s consort, Mehera, and several of my wife. I propped them up in prominent places so that wherever I was in the room, I could see one or more of them. I also strategically hung several clothing items and my backpack on a wall-mount that had several protruding hooks. I stored the rest of my clothes in the big wooden cabinet at the foot of the bed.
Unpacking is an art in itself, I’ve learned. I felt, as I did so, that I was further embellishing the room aesthetically, as well as tweaking it to cater to my practical needs.
I took a shower and then arranged the five slim volumes of poetry and prose that I’d brought, along with my notebook and pens, on the writing table. Then I pulled back the deep blue bedspread and the sheet beneath it, pulled up the folded cream-white blanket at the foot of the bed, and jumped into the king-sized bed, pulling the covers up around me for a little nap.
In an hour, I got up. Sleep (as in the van) had eluded me, but I did feel somewhat refreshed. The dinner hour was approaching. I hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast at home, except for a small bag of dates and peanuts that I’d brought along.
The malecon
My plan was to walk out onto the malecon, the 5-mile (8-kilometre) waterfront boardwalk and boulevard that traverses the city. In the heat of the afternoon, I wasn’t going anywhere near as far as the bus station and tourist area I’d arrived at. But I thought if I just went out there and searched a few blocks, I’d find some sort of grocery store and be able to sustain myself for this first night. Small or big didn’t matter.
Every street seemed bathed in mystery, but the mystery was diluted by the unmerciful sun beating down. I had to put most of my awareness into just taking the next step, walking the next block and being on the alert to find what I was looking for.
Several blocks from the hotel, the side street I was on joined up with the malecon and the boulevard that ran alongside it. There was no shade anywhere I could see, but quite a distance ahead of me, I spied a long one-storey building with a large red logo on its white front wall. It could be a grocery, even a supermarket, I thought. I kept up my pace, noticing the places I passed, which included two car rental agencies. They were closed, but I made a mental note to possibly look into such a rental.
I’d walked nearly half a mile and realized that I was now close enough to the long white building to read its sign: Sushi! Not what I wanted! I turned around and went back towards the hotel. I was making choices with an awareness of my limits. I couldn’t stay out in this weather for very long, but really didn’t want to spend a whole night without any food.
I was passing plenty of restaurants, but I had no idea about prices. In this city, where it appeared that a minority of people spoke English, I didn’t yet feel ready to negotiate with waiters and waitresses.
I could think of only one possibility. Before striking out for that mirage of a supermarket, I’d seen what looked like a gas station and convenience store, only a block or two out of my way back to the hotel. It stood at the top of a small hill on a side street. This now became my destination. I could read the sign when it came back into view: OXXO. As I neared, it became clear that this chain was something like the 7-Elevens we have in the U.S. I’d at least find something to eat. Just as important, there would be bottled water.
I pulled open the door and went into the busy store, which thankfully had good air conditioning. Most of the merchandise, of course, consisted of items like beer, soda, chips and candy. At 7-Eleven, though, there’s always a small section with sandwiches, cheese and such things. I located that shelf here. Not a wide selection, but surely I’d find something to at least slake my hunger.
I tried to evaluate the prices of food items that looked at all tasty or even recognizable. My taxi ride from downtown had cost around $4.50 in U.S. dollars. The sandwiches here averaged 80 pesos … about the same as that ride. A little expensive, I thought, but still bought two. One was a ham and cheese sandwich of modest thickness. The other one was big and was filled with a large hunk of some kind of lunch meat. I didn’t know what the word on the wrapper meant. Probably something like spam.
The sandwiches would get me through the night. I also bought an apple, two medium bottles of water, and because I wanted something sweet, a small bottle of pink stuff that looked like it was. I’d have all day to think of a plan for tomorrow’s dinner.
It would be a bit of a problem carrying all these things back to the hotel. The walk wasn’t far, but it would be very clumsy.
“Do you have a bag?” I asked the girl at the cash register.
“No!” she smiled. I wasn’t sure, but she appeared to be taunting me, exulting in my helplessness. Scarcely believing that a 7-Eleven wouldn’t have a bag, I repeated my question, and again came that big Cheshire smile and her strong negative reply. I took my things, pushed the door open and went back out into the heat.
A funny discovery—a little too late
Walking downhill toward the road that led back to Posada Luna/Sol, I passed a large restaurant whose big sign read Asadero Rancho Viejo.
I didn’t exactly understand what was going on at this place. There were quite a few tables outside, all empty; someone at a grill cooking meat; people were cleaning and sweeping here; and apparently, there was also a huge indoor area. I saw no evidence of a single customer inside or out, though. Maybe at dinnertime, they’d come. They’d have to, I imagined, or the place would no longer be in business.
As I walked by, my arms pathetically filled with the odd-shaped food and drink items I was carrying, I noticed a heavyset waiter walking inside the restaurant at a very quick tempo. In another moment, he came back out and handed me a brown plastic bag.
“Muchos gracias!” I said, deeply touched by his thoughtfulness. He nodded and smiled, and went back to work.
I continued walking down the hill and then, after turning, the rest of the way back to the hotel. It was much easier with the bag. Then and only then, after entering the compound, did I remember the backpack I’d bought for this trip—the first backpack I’d ever owned in my life—a beautiful crimson, orange, dark blue and grey creation made in Nepal.
I’d been wearing it the whole time!
GO TO PART 3: DANGER AND BEAUTY: The pleasures and challenges of being alive in La Paz, Mexico
image 1: Max Reif; image 2: Max Reif; image 3: Max Reif; image 4: mar Y Adventuras via Posada LunaSol and Sea & Adventures; image 5: Max Reif; image 6: mar Y Adventuras via Posada LunaSol and Sea & Adventures; image 7: Max Reif; image 8: Max Reif; image 9: Max Reif
