1. I am going back to DC tomorrow! My flight leaves at 11:44 am and arrives at 8:56 pm at Dulles (yuck...). However, I can't complain. My summer fellowship is paying for it. According to my mom, who arrived back in DC today, it's 64 degrees there and beautiful. And to think, I was just sweating my ass off here this afternoon, tooling around the parking lot of Fry's, miserably staring at a Mexican toddler wearing only diapers and sporting a six inch rat tail down his back. On the flipside, I did also take a final swim at the pool here today, and I think I swam my personal best, or at least I was faster than the four people on my side of the pool (including two guys), which was somewhat of a mental boost for the competitive freak that comes out in me from time to time.
Oh, my lovely UA pool, I will miss you so...
2. I must warn you that the blog action might slow down a bit while I'm back in DC. First of all, I have a life there and hopefully won't rely on my computer (and this blog) as my best friend. Second, I won't be able to blog at my place of summer employment. And third, my access to a computer during my "off" time may be spotty.
3. Speaking of having a life, I'm already booked for this coming Friday, Saturday, and Sunday! Miguel is taking me out for my b-day on Friday (holy crap, I will be 32... how scary is that?). Then we are going to Nichole & Luis's annual Mexican BBQ on Saturday. Around 50 people have already RSVPed to their evite, and I am friends with at least half of them (many of whom I haven't seen in almost a year) so it should be a fabulous time! They are promising a huge layout of food, plus a special tequila punch, and I have no doubt that beer and wine will be plentiful. Two years ago we were there dancing and hanging out until almost 4 am. If anybody can throw a great party, it's those two...
Some members of the "Nichole & Luis fan club" hanging out in Mexico in 2004. N & L are on the left both wearing green.
And then on Sunday, my friend Lizzy is hosting a party at her parents' house in Upper NW. It's actually a fundraiser for her non-profit, the St. Bernard Project, that she and her boyfriend started to help New Orleans victims re-build their homes.
Here are my supremely philanthropic friends, Liz & Zack.
4. And now, moving on to totally non-philanthropic issues... allow me to recount my recent foray into Mexico with my mother...
We left mid-morning on Sunday, heading SW on Ajo Way out of Tucson. We nearly baked on the four-hour drive out there, passing through mile upon mile of nothing but saguaro cacti, scrub brush, and sand. Although we drove through the Arizona "towns" of Sells, Why, and Lukeville, each of them consisted of nothing more than a gas station where one could purchase fuel, drinks, and Mexican car insurance (which I certainly did buy)...
Here was a view out my window right near the border of Mexico...
I kept trying to watch for coyote smugglers leading little clusters of illegal immigrants through the desert landscape, but I never spotted any, although I told my mom I thought I saw a few 'staging areas.'
And here is a Border Patrol checkpoint we had to drive through...
We were questioned by a stumpy little ex-football player (now Border Patrol guard) with lots of extra testosterone. Luckily, we passed muster. Can you even imagine having a job where you have to commute 40 miles to stand in 100 degree heat along a blistering roadside in the middle of nowhere? I'd prefer death.
Anyway, an hour over the border, we finally came to the sandy, dusty, and scrappy little town of Puerto Penasco (AKA Rocky Point), which is located on the Gulf of California...
Let me sum up the place for you in a nutshell:
a. It's RV Heaven
b. There's not a lot of pavement in this little town... it's mostly sand roads
c. Every U.S. state has rednecks, and they all love the beach. Arizona rednecks like Rocky Point.
d. Rednecks love four-wheeling, which is one of the main activities around town.
e. Richer people are starting to invest in an area called "Sandy Beach" near to where our hotel was situated, but it's still in the somewhat early development stages. Give it five years to become nicer.
f. Sonora has a little ways still to go in developing its tourism industry... (see below)
Here is our hotel, the Laos Mar, which was located on Playa Bonita, near Sandy Beach...
The pool was really very nice... and our room was very clean.
And here is the palapa hut where they served breakfast...
It was also very nice.
But then, when I was walking up to our room after breakfast, I spotted this in the central foyer...
That would be a black sock next to the plant, and an electrical socket with the front plug and wires totally pulled out of the wall. I don't even want to know what happened here, but this scene remained unchanged for the full two days we were there. Perhaps a memorial to an electrician lost on the job?
The big problem was that the beach in front of the hotel was pretty dirty with garbage washed up onto the sand. It resembled a less grotesque version of the below photo:
Really, it was not, I repeat... it was NOT this bad (this is a picture I pulled off the internet and is not of the beach where we were located), but it was very noticeably garbage-y. Lots of broken glass, plastic bags, and food remnants that made one not really want to dip in to the water for a swim, even in sizzling temperatures. It also didn't make for particularly pleasant beach sitting either, although we made do after clearing out a little spot.
The really bad part came on Monday morning, when we headed out onto the hotel beach in the morning after breakfast, only to come upon the corpse of some bloated stinking creature that had washed up with high tide. I suggested to my mother that perhaps it was Natalie Holloway.
Needless to say, we got in the car and drove a mile down the beach to a nicer, non-smelly spot near an RV camp. The beach and water was enough cleaner that we actually did take a mini-swim.
Lest I have been too negative (as I am sometimes apt to be), I will say that we had a very nice dinner at the hotel next to ours on Sunday night, where they had great seafood and live music with a balcony overlooking the water at enough of a distance (and in the dark) that one could not decipher the Wal-Mart bags floating around in the tide. We enjoyed that a lot... and truly had a delicious dinner with excellent service and to-die-for Mexican fried ice cream while reveling in the crisp sea breeze. As a sidenote, I also enjoyed watching NASCAR dads cavorting around on the dance floor doing the "white man's shuffle" to the Casiotone keyboard of the band.
We did a little shopping in town (and had a tasty lunch of chimichangas and fajitas) before returning to the U.S. on Monday.
I wanted to share a sample of the t-shirts available for sale in Puerto Penasco (just like the Hamptons!)...
Option One:
Option Two:
Option Three:
I like the artist's representation of pubic hairs on this one...
And finally, Option Four:
I want you all to know that a NASCAR dad with two teenage daughters (or at least, we thought they were his daughters) wore this last t-shirt option to breakfast at the hotel on Monday morning. My mom and I were pretty impressed with his candor, not to mention his clearly announced large package hidden in his jean shorts. However, I was even more impressed that one of his teen girls was wearing a Hustler magazine t-shirt. It made for quite the dynamic and polished duo.
Viva Puerto Penasco! Or should it be Puerto Penisco?
I have to go to bed now... I have a big day ahead of me. I'll be back in a day or two... KVB
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