Adventures of Krystonia – Baja California

We are home now but….  Between March 30 and May 2 we where in Southern California and Baja.  We traveled south down Highway 395 and stopped at the California Poppy Reserve.  Put this on your “must see” list for some spring.  The fields of gold are spectacular.  The wild flowers were outstanding this whole trip.  We spent five days on the Ocean coast about 200 miles south of the border.  Then we returned to San Diego.  There we met our son Chris and his partner Liz.  Together we went to San Felipe on the Sea of Cortez for a week.

The most asked question we get is:  “Why Mexico, aren’t you afraid of being in Mexico? I hear about so many awful things happening to Americans down there.”

The best answer we could give to this question is this quote found in Moon Handbooks, Baja, fifth edition, by Joe Cummings

Statistics clearly show that violent crime is overall less common in Mexico than anywhere in the United States.  In Baja California, crime statistics are many times lower than the U.S. national average.  Yet Americans seem to be the most paranoid of all visitors to Mexico.

Historical reasons, to a large degree, account for this paranoia.  Chief among them is the general border lawlessness that was the norm in the early 20^th century – an era of border disputes and common banditry on both sides of the border.  Americans living in these areas came to fear banditos who stole livestock and occasionally robbed the Anglo ranchers themselves, while the Mexicans in turn feared American cattle rustlers, horse thieves, gunslingers, and the infamous Texas Rangers, a private militia whose conduct at the time fell somewhere between that of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang and the Los Angeles Police Department.

Soon after this era had begun to wane, as politics on both sides of the border stabilized, the U.S. Prohibition experiment sent millions of Americans scrambling into Mexico border towns for booze.  In the illicit atmosphere, boozers were soon rubbing elbows with gamblers and pimps, and it wasn’t long before Mexican border towns gained an even more unsavory reputation.

Once Prohibition was lifted, Americans no longer had reason to come to Mexico solely for drinking and the border towns began cleaning up their acts.  Among the uninformed and inexperienced, however, the border-town image remains, sadly mixing with the equally outdated bandito tales to prevent many Americans from enjoying the pleasures of life south of the border.

I could not have said it better myself!  We find Mexico is friendly with a warm culture and good food.  True you have to deal with Third World poverty and facilities, but adventure and Mexican hospitality makes it worth it.

Please find more trip descriptions on the "picture page". 

"On second thought, I think I might stay a while longer."
Mopols,  The Adventures of Krystonia

Ruth & Arlo  (Hobbes did not go with us this time.)