If you haven’t read them yet, go back and visit Part 4, Part 3, Part 2 and Part 1 of this series about La Paz, Mexico.
It’s late afternoon on my first whole day in La Paz, and I’m starting to think about dinner. The place I do not want to get my meal from is the OXXO convenience store! It sufficed to get me through my first night, but this is my vacation and I feel I deserve better.
I don’t feel as intimidated as I did the night before about sitting down in a restaurant and ordering. If I need it, Google Translate is there. As far as understanding the menu, there may be pictures. Someone in the place may speak some English. The prices will be clearly printed, and I’m capable of understanding them and translating them into American dollars (100 pesos equals around $5). I’m ready for this.
I’m thinking of a place I noticed on Google Maps called Asadero Rancho Viejo. The notation on the map said, “Open 24 Hours.” That’s why I want to scope it out.
Besides dinner, I’m still thinking of how to enact my desire to go out early in the morning for coffee, reading and writing, come back to the hotel for breakfast and then go downtown after that. This restaurant is only eight minutes away on foot, the app says. I can walk that far in this late afternoon heat without risking sunstroke.
I set out down the dirt path that exits the hotel compound. Once on the street, I try Google Maps. It works again, and tells me to go down the same roads I’ve taken twice before, the ones that lead to the malecon.
I cross the wide street that follows the bay and see that next, I’m being told to go up the hill toward OXXO. Asadero Rancho Viejo, I realize, is the very restaurant where the kind waiter brought me a plastic bag as I passed yesterday evening!
I remember having to pass through the restaurant’s space because the sidewalk runs right through the middle of its substantial outdoor section. Once again, today, those tables are completely empty. A man is cooking at the grill and a woman is tidying up and sweeping just like yesterday.
“Apierto?” I ask, approaching her.
“Si.”
“Can I go inside?” I ask, pointing. She nods. I walk through a doorway and down a hallway, and then I turn into a big room with a large-screen TV playing some game show at the far end. Two couples and a family of three are actually sitting at tables here, eating. So there are actual customers!
First sumptuous dinner in La Paz
It’s fairly cool in here. Definitely air-conditioned. I sit at a table on the far side of the room, and in a little while, a very pretty dark-haired young woman comes in with a smile. She sets a large plastic menu, yellow and red with black type and lots of pictures, before me.
It’s very hard for me to read the menu, and I don’t have time to run all the options through Google Translate. The pictures help some. I finally settle on a tosta, which (as near as I can tell) is a fancy chicken sandwich loaded with trimmings, and French fries on the side. I order a diet Coke to go with it. I’m a little concerned that it will keep me up, but extremely doubtful that they have the caffeine-free variety.
My waitress returns and I show her what I want. I start to check things on my phone, thinking about plugging in my ear buds and listening to a book while I eat. A little later, she comes back yet again with a bowl of tortilla chips and three smaller bowls of sauce: one red, one green, and one consisting of chopped tomatoes and onions.
This array before me is just beautiful. It makes me feel a bit like a prince. I pick up a chip and dip it in the salsa verde. The sauce is delicious on the chip, and I reach right in for another.
Before long, my smiling waitress brings me a huge sandwich on large buns. I rarely order fries and am happy to see them. I pull off the top bun and see dark lettuce, avocado and sauce. I put the bun back on and take a big bite. Very enjoyable!
I have my ear bud in and a book playing, but I’m not really listening intently. I take sips of diet Coke alternating with mouthfuls of sandwich, fries and more chips. In half an hour, I’ve paid and am out of there, most appreciative of the sumptuous meal.
I walk up to the OXXO for a moment to buy a couple of bottles of agua for the next day. Leaving the store, I decide to deliberately take a new way back to the hotel. A little adventure, now that the main route has more or less become second nature.
The street I turn onto is residential. There are several of the orange-ish “spice-coloured” haciendas that I’m so fond of, and several more beige or dark ones. Walking along, I pass an intersection that goes downhill and has a clear view of a lovely sunset over the bay. I decide to give Barbara a call, to share the view with her on Facetime.
“Beautiful!” she says.
“I’m taking a walk after dinner at a really enjoyable restaurant. I had something called a tosta. Something I’d never heard of before. Have you? It’s a kind of glorified chicken sandwich. It was really good.”
“Tosta? No, I don’t think I have. You know what?” she continued. “After I got back from the eye doctor this afternoon, I decided I didn’t want to cook tonight, and on my way home, I stopped and got a take-out tostada dinner from the Mexican place at our shopping centre!”
“Cool!” I said. “ How was it?”
“Very fresh and good, the tostada part. I didn’t care for the rice that came with it, and the refried beans were disgusting, full of lard!”
I’d been walking downhill while we talked. Now, for the first time, I walked across the wide street and the malecon walkway beyond it, onto a stretch of bay beach with gentle waves washing up. Not quite the open ocean, but nice! My walk along the curving beach led to a marina dock, then onto a hotel parking lot, and eventually to the little street that was my usual way back to Posada LunaSol.
Barbara and I talked a bit more and then said goodnight. What a sweet nightcap it was, sharing the sunset along the Sea of Cortez. The evening was cooling, too, as darkness came on. I dawdled along the street that led to the hotel, loving the exoticism of it, still more pink or yellow-brown buildings. The very fact of it all being so unknown brought imagined mysteries behind every wall and shadow, which were easier to appreciate at leisure now that the blazing sun had set.
A not-so-sumptuous night
It started an hour later, back in my room. I’d gotten undressed, showered and pulled up the laptop to do some end-of-day perusal and upload a few more photos. After that, I intended to say my prayers and sit awhile before Meher Baba’s photo—the “semi-retreat” part of my vacation—and then really see if I could get a good night’s sleep.
Something was wrong in my stomach, though! It hadn’t been so a little while ago, and now it was. The discomfort wasn’t excruciating, but you know how it is with stomach ailments: they’re uncomfortable enough to prevent you from focusing on anything. I felt extremely restless, but even after visiting the bathroom, I found no relief. I said my prayers quickly, forewent the meditation session and threw myself into bed.
Sleep, as I’d feared, was also impossible, even with the antihistamines that I sometimes used as sleep aids. So was relaxation. I lay there for a while, hands on my heart, and tried to steady myself. Before long, the restlessness led me to turn onto one side, in the hope that such a change might bring some comfort. It didn’t, and soon I turned onto the opposite side and continued to make these moves every few minutes.
These repetitive cycles continued all night. No progress, no sleep. One position to another. Back to the bathroom. Back in bed once again, picking up my phone and checking Facebook. Checking Instagram. To the table to open the laptop. Email. The news. Calling Barbara.
At around 5 a.m., back in bed, I Googled “food poisoning” and read an article about different kinds. If the onset was four hours or less after the meal, apparently, then it was a “benign” poisoning. The body would overcome this by itself within 18 to 24 hours. Mine had come on only an hour or two after eating, so that kindled a presentiment of eventual relief, and I resigned myself to just waiting it out.
I opened up the laptop again a little past dawn, and read there a bit. There were more responses to the pictures and photos I’d posted. Suddenly, though, a few minutes into my session, as I was writing a reply to someone, a message came onto the lower-right corner of my screen, where the icon showed how much juice there was in my battery: “you have only a few minutes of charge left.” I checked the cord in the side of the laptop, which it turned out had come loose, as it does at times. Almost immediately, though, as I was pushing it back in, the screen went completely dark.
I made sure the cord was staying secure and did what I usually do in such cases: closed the laptop, then opened it once more and pressed the POWER button on the keyboard. Nothing. It was still dead. In the past, doing this had always successfully restarted the device. I looked to see if the plug was secure in the wall. It was.
After three or four tries at starting the laptop and failing, starting to think it would only be good as a doorstop now, it finally did power up. A little while later, though, “you have only a few minutes of charge left” appeared again on the battery icon. A glance showed me that the side plug-in had come out yet again. I pushed it back as fast and hard as I could and held it there. I watched the battery light on the bottom right of the screen start to pulse. It was charging once more. But it stopped after four or five pulses. There wasn’t nearly enough juice to keep it going without this “artificial respiration” I was giving it.
I pulled the side cord out again and immediately stuck it back in. I saw the battery icon pulse five more times, and then stop yet again! What was wrong with this thing? Once again, I pulled the cord out and plugged it back in hard. Five more pulses, then nothing, though the machine wasn’t shutting down by itself any longer.
I couldn’t imagine the ordeal of having to find a computer repair person here, in addition to everything else I was going through! Unable to think of another alternative, I simply continued pulling the plug-in to the side of the laptop out when it would go dead after five pulses, and then sticking right back in its hole, making sure it was all the way in. I felt so lame! Was there any hope it would ever begin to “breathe on its own”?
I remembered now that the day before I’d come to Mexico, it had fallen out of my bag as I’d put the bag on my back. It had actually crashed on the hard floor of the café I was in and come apart! I’d tried to snap everything back in place, and appeared to have been successful.
Now, examining the computer carefully, I saw there were still a few things that were not right: multiple places where the gap between two surfaces of plastic wasn’t quite closed all the way. An area where a thin thread of plastic that ran all the way around the machine was properly tucked into the cracks most of the way, but not in one area. I did my best to fix all that I saw, then resumed my manual “transfusions” of power.
I don’t know how long I kept it up. Maybe half an hour! Finally, I noted that when I put the cursor over the battery icon, it said 30% charge. It was no longer a “breath by breath” emergency. I made certain that the side-plug was snug, got out the roll of masking tape that I’d brought along, and taped the plug to the laptop securely. I checked to make sure the charge was continuing, closed the top of the device, and left it alone to charge itself the rest of the way.
Disaster averted! I gave thanks and just breathed at the table before getting up. The loss of the laptop might well have been one more inconvenience than I could handle. I’d still have had my phone, but to feel really secure in my electronic connectedness, I needed the bigger screen and especially the bigger keyboard, on which one could type with much more ease and far fewer typos than on a tiny phone.
My stomach was really no better, but it was getting near breakfast time. Not that I could eat much, but, I decided I’d go down. I could eat the fruit and some yogurt. Maybe some toast.
Had I slept at all? I wasn’t even sure. How would I spend the day? I didn’t know. Barbara had suggested a Gas-X pill might help, but I hadn’t brought any. After breakfast, I’d try to find a pharmacy that was closer than downtown. But was there one around here, or were they as rare as food stores?
The search for Gas-X
I showered again, to see if it would refresh me at all. Following that, I dried myself off, shaved, brushed my teeth and got dressed. I then went down to the breakfast bar. The article I’d read had suggested avoiding caffeine, and I really didn’t feel like eating very much. I told the smiling cook, “No ham and huevos today.” I accepted her offer of fruit, went to the bar to get yogurt, and, noticing a jar of instant decaf, made a small cup of it.
After breakfast, I walked over to the hotel entrance in the next courtyard over. A middle-aged man with glasses was sitting there in a wooden chair.
Hotel Posada LunaSol
“Hi,” I said. “Are you one of the owners?”
“Yes, he said. “I am Ricardo.”
“Ricardo, it’s nice to meet you,” I replied. “The hotel is so beautiful. I love being here!”
“But I have some kind of mild food poisoning from my dinner last night,” I continued. “Do you know how I can get to a Farmacia? I don’t feel well enough to walk all the way downtown.”
Ricardo became animated. “There’s a Farmacia just around the corner!” he said.
“Do they have what we call Gas-X in America?”
“They have our version. It’s called Nesajar. We take it all the time. Your upset is not too bad?”
“No, not too bad, but very uncomfortable. Kept me up all night.”
“Yes. Go and get some,” Ricardo said.
“Thanks. I will.”
And yet again, I walked down the path out of the compound. This time I turned right at the intersection, a direction I hadn’t taken before, and found the pharmacy at the end of the block.
The new medicine didn’t help, though. I waited for an hour back in my room, but there was no change in my condition. I wasn’t in shape to go downtown today. It had to be a sick day.
I went back to my routine from the night: tossing and turning, going to the bathroom, coming back, checking my phone. Repeat. Almost in a trance. The laptop was fine now. I’d saved it. I paid it visits every hour or two, but I didn’t feel well enough to do anything besides a little passive reading.
A happy ending to another ordeal
Towards the late afternoon, I woke from a brief snooze, and noticed the pain finally seemed to have gone away. I stood up. Yes. I felt better. I walked a bit in the room. It was indeed gone.
I’d spent the entire day in “sick bay.” Now, another evening was approaching. Once again, I didn’t want to let myself be caught without any food. How I wished there was a grocery store around! My vacation, which I’d won back from forces of opposition only a day before—what a day of joy and celebration that had been—had gotten lost again! Fate had spun its wheel, back again to ordeal!
But I would find myself some food. I would go out and procure it. In the absence of anything else, I thought, I’d just go back to OXXO, and then tomorrow, hopefully, resume my vacation and exploration. I dressed again and shouldered my backpack, which was almost empty so as to leave room for food, and went out. Halfway down the hotel stairs, I felt smacked in the face by the heat! I continued walking, but I realized I’d never even make it as far as OXXO.
I was walking mechanically in that direction. There were some restaurants here on these streets near the hotel, but that meant I’d have to chance restaurant food again, the same kind of food I’d gotten sick from.
At least not at the same place, though. I passed a little taco shack that one of the hotel employees had said was inexpensive, but kept going. Crossing the street, I came to the front gate of a garden restaurant called Banditos, with fancy white coverings on each of the terrace tables. Two young hosts, a woman and a man, were standing at the gate.
The woman said, “Come in!” I looked in, but I didn’t see any indoor dining possibilities. I didn’t want to sit outside in this heat and felt a bit shy of the formality here.
“I’ll come back another day,” I said, and walked on.
On the other side of the street, there was a place I’d taken for a scuzzy bar the first time I’d passed it. A couple had been sitting on tall chairs at a little table out front, drinking. It must have been their vibes. I’d instinctively moved past the establishment, quickening my step. Now I could see a big sign on the front of the building:
KOKO’S BAR 10 AM-4 PM
SEREPHIA’S RESTAURANT 5 PM-12 AM
I walked inside. What there was of an inside. It was a semi-open building with holes in the wall instead of windows, a tall ceiling and on the walls, colourful, life-size posters of Mexican heroes like Pancho Villa and Emilio Zapata.
“We’ll be open in about 10 minutes,” said a tall, thin man in perfect English.
“Feel free to sit down and wait, though,” said a heavily tattooed young woman who was finalizing the table settings. “I’m Beatrice.”
Beatrice placed a plastic menu in front of me and I took a look, still wary of complicated dishes. I saw something called New Mexico Tacos, and thought, this might work. A little weakened by the heat, I ordered the dish and waited at the table, drinking my bottled water and checking my phone.
The kitchen grill was behind a counter right out here in the middle of the restaurant. A young man with a bandanna on his head was working at the grill. He lifted his head and smiled at me.
“I’m Tony.”
“Hi, I’m Max. Another American! Where are you from?”
“Beatrice and I came down from San Diego and decided to stay, a couple of years ago.”
“Do you ever get used to the heat?” I asked him.’
“You don’t really get used to it, but there are little things you learn to do. My bandanna absorbs sweat; I sip on water. Carlos here,” he said, nodding at a heavyset man near him in the pit, “He was born in Mexico and he can’t take it either!”
Edward, the owner, who’d left shortly after his greeting when I’d walked in, was from Los Angeles, Tony told me. The restaurant was a new enterprise, only open around six weeks.
“Here are your tacos,” Beatrice said as she approached me from behind and put the Styrofoam container down at the table. I gave her my Visa card, wrote in a tip on the invoice, thanked them for their hospitality and the food, and walked back out to the street.
Five minutes later, I was grateful to be back in my cool, comfortable room. I had my electrolytes, plenty of water—and now, dinner. I’d see what I could make of the night. It would be my third in La Paz. It was Friday. I had three more full days here, before taking the shuttle back to Cabo airport on Tuesday morning for my flight home.
GO TO PART SIX: NIGHT SEA JOURNEY: Buying back sanity in La Paz, Mexico
images: Max Reif
