Dec 11, 2008

We have been on this beach for almost 3 days now. It's name is San Pedrito and it is a wonderful place to spend some time. There is a large community of people living here. Down the beach towards the rocks are the long term campers. Hippies and surf enthusiasts who come here for the winter to escape the cold of Canada and California and catch some good waves. The majority of them are from British Columbia but there is a strong base from California as well. Near where we are staying there is an abandoned house that used to be the bade for an RV park but it was destroyed by a hurricane I am told a couple of years ago and now sits here empty. There are several people camped out around the house as well but not for as long term as the ones with campers and RV's by the rocks. The temporary campers consist of three teenage boys from Vancouver island, 4 twenty something year old's from Gibson B.C., a couple from north Vancouver, A girl from New Zealand and her boyfriend from Italy, and a couple from Tijuana/San Diego. The guys from Gibson it seems went to high school with Buzz the guy from north Van and ran into each other here by chance. They have all provided sufficient male comraderie for me since Devon is now gone and it is only Jaime and I at this point. Buzz is probably my favorite though. He walks around all day in a pair or rediculous short red shorts smoking 2 packs of Marlboros a day and drinking a countless amount of Ballenas. I don't think I have seen him without a beer in hand since I arrived here. His girlfriend Michaela is very friendly and invited us to move our camp closer to the community when we met the first night around the fire. Samuel and Daniella, the couple from Tijuana/San Diego were the first people we met when we arrived and Daniella old us about a tap under a palapa down the beach where we could get fresh drinkable water. She also told us that where we were building our camp was not a good place since the tide had been coming up to that spot in the mornings lately. Amanda the girl from New Zealand has taken it upon herself to clean up the abandoned house and has even done some incredible paintings on a lot of the walls inside and out. This prompted me to buy some spray paint in town the other day and add my own contribution to the house the other day.

I am told that the hut was quite a mess before Amanda showed up and there has been a large effort by a lot of the people living here to clean it out and keep it clean. The younger boys however haven't been keeping the area to clean. a few yards from the house sits and unfinished palapa they were attempting to build with bamboo and leaves from the surrounding areas. The original site for the hut I'm told turned out to be on top of a grave for a local surfer who died on this beach and they were warned away from it when somebody told him that he was burried right where they were digging. They moved the site over a few yards out of the rock circle that marked this grave but now it appears they have given up on the project and now it sits half finished in the middle of the beach. One of the guys from Gibson is also a guitar player and he and I have been jamming a little around the camp fire at night to keep everyone entertained and it turns out that his other 3 companions are all in a band together so we have some singing to go along sometimes. As I write this right now they are all deeply engaged in an experiment to find out if it is true that a cockroach can live for 3 days with it's head removed. They have been debating and arguing about how long it will last and gauging how fast or slow it is moving from time to time. One of them purchased a fantastic storm trooper mask at a Toys'r'Us in Cabo and they are taking turns wearing it as well. There are buttons on the side and when you press them they spout Star Wars phrases in Spanish out of a speaker. It is incredibly entertaining.

Since we have been here Jaime hasn't been feeling to well though and I wonder if that water we were told was okay to drink really is. However Samuel and Daniella have been drinking it for weeks they claim and I have since we got here and it hasn't bothered me. I also managed to complete my crab trap today with wire and mesh I bought at the Fereteria in Todos Santos. The Mexicans in the store however looked at me like I was an idiot for buying such a small amount of stuff and my spanish is still not up to par so that didn't help much either. I got a lot of looks from them that said "what are you stupid what do you need 2 meters of mesh for?" Getting the trap out to sea however proved to be a bit of a challenge. Cootenay(or princess as he is called) lent me his surf board to take the trap out and I tried to launch it from some rocks but was continually bashed by strong waves knocking me the board and the trap around in the water. The trap was crudely built so it had a lot of sharp edges and the rocks while already sharp were packed with barnacles and other annoying things. After 20 mins of trying to get out I gave up and threw the trap out to sea with its buoy attached by 100' of rope. However now have a lot of really bad cuts on my legs and feet which were bleeding heavily when I arrived back at camp from my adventure. They hurt a lot but I have been trying my hardest to keep sand out of them to reduce the chance of infection. That is quite a challenge though considering this is the beach and sand finds it's way into everything here.

Things with Jaime have become strained a little. We don't fight but I continue to get the feeling that she doesn't want me here anymore. She never seems to talk to me and always goes to sleep before I get back to the tent at night. Whenever I hang around with her she leaves after 5 or more minutes and goes to hang out with somebody else. What sex we do have has declined rapidly in quality and enthusiasm. Though there was one incident which I thought was a little funny and I don't think she did as much. One night after dinner we were fooling around and I was feeling around a little(you know). A moment later she began shouting that something was burning and took off out of the tent naked and running for the ocean. It was late so nobody was up but I was left alone and confused so I layed back down trying to figure out what the problem was. When she returned she was very cold from the water and cuddled back up to me in the bed for warmth. I asked her what the problem was and she said that she didn't know but that her private area began burning. We both thought about what could have caused this for a moment and then she asked me "Did you cut up jalapeno's for the salsa tonight?" At first I didn't understand until the light came on in my head and I realized what had happened. I apologised to her for my foolish mistake and we went to sleep. I knew from our second day here together that things weren't going to work out between us but I really didn't expect them to start going downhill so soon. Then again I knew what I was getting into going on this trip. Chasing a girl you have known for 6 months to Mexico is pretty stupid to anybody with the exception of the illustrius rick and complete narcisists. What the hell I thought though when I began this. I had saved a bunch of money from collecting employment insurance for my broken ankles all summer and I certainly didn't want to stick around for winter in Canada if I could help it. I had a bad feeling though since the ticket was booked that things would go sour somewhere but I don't want to leave yet nor do I want to leave on bad terms. We have a lot of mutual friends back home though and besides she hasn't really done anything to bad other than acting slightly indifferent towards me occasionally. Perhaps she is just feeling bad and I am reading to much into things but still I remain cautious and know that only time will tell. There are plenty of other things to keep my mind distracted in the meantime though. My drinking and smoking hasn't been extreme, but it certainly hasn't been mellow either. I generally smoke one pack of Marlboro reds in a day and I don't think I have gone a single day yet without consuming at least 3 Ballenas.

The other night we had fish burritos for dinner with some fish I bought from a local fisherman earlier in the day. While we were prepairing it over the fire a bunch of the group noticed a large fire in the desert far down the beach. Immediately dinner was abandoned and we piled about nine of us into Princess' Jeep Cheroke and took off down the beach. Princess drove like a mad man in 4 wheel until we reached a road that would take us closer to the fire. When we got closer we saw that it was inside of a large area fenced of by a 14' cement wall. We soon realized though that the fire wasn't as cool as we had anticipated and we made our way back to camp. Not before stopping in town at the Pemex(Mexican gas station) to buy some more beers and cigarettes. When we got back to camp the fish I had prepaired was burnt but we ate it anyways and it was excellent. We had it with some salsa that I had also made and some guacamole care of Jaime. After dinner Jaime went to bed and I stayed up and drank more beers and shot the shit with everyone for a while. Shortly after I went to bed dissapointed to find her asleep already. No sex again!