La Bufadora

2008, March 2: a different drum.

I’m sitting here with laptop in my tent. It makes a little dome, that glows around me as I sleep at night. It’s like having my own little planetarium. With the air mattress it’s more comfortable than any van, And warmer too. I can hear the waves crashing up against some rocks about two hundred feet away. In the evening I can hear soccer games, with drums and cheering, at the university next door. Sure, dogs will bark, gunshots will go off. High school age drunk Mexican girls will dance naked to Shakira on the patio of one of the nearby mansions that back the RV lot. But dat’s trailer park life.
In the mornings, I wake up sweaty, and with an erection. Amped up Mariachi music peaks the speakers of a nearby radio. It’s the same cliché soundtrack one uses in bad comedy montages of piñatas and chickens and siestas and sombreros. Mexico is all cliché, buddy, Everything here is a cheap imitation of a cheap imitation, and you’ve seen it all before.

My surfboard is pulling double duty as a kitchen counter. Our patio is pulling double duty as a skatepark. My penis is pulling double duty as a useless flap of skin. Our neighbours live in a bus sized RV, they have a hummer parked next to it, and they never go outside, until this morning, when I saw a fat man, his Mexican with, and two kids walk all the way from the RV to the hummer and drive off. I had no Idea, and I’m wondering how many other RV’s here have people in them who we will never see, because they never go outside.

I was eating a fish taco on the side of the road, when I had the good fortune of seeing a middle aged American lady being attacked by dogs. I was about fifty feet away, and I saw her go to the ground while a growling black animal holding her leg in its jaws jerked it’s head around. The Lady had grey hair, and a starched white t-shirt, and sunglasses. “Aaah… aaaaah… ahhh” She was saying, as she rolled around on the ground. Her husband got out of their Pontiac escalade and ran around the vehicle. It looked like he was about to do something, he raised his arms a bit, but then he just stood there, gawking. His blue linen shirt was very neatly pressed, and his khaki’s were glowing and fresh. There was another, smaller dog, yapping and jumping at him. “Now honey.” He was saying to his wife “Now honey…” and that was the extent of his usefulness. Quickly a group of young Mexican men ran out from behind a bush and coaxed the dogs off the Americans, and led the animals off into a fenced area. The American couple looked around, a bit dazed. Eventually the man helped his wife up, and into the SUV, and they drove off. I pushed my sunglasses a little further up my nose and ordered a coke.

Saturday we went to see La Bufadora. It’s the most famous thing in these parts of Mexico, and everybody always raves about how spectacular it is. I rode in Jay’s van about twenty kilometers out of town, past infinite hot tamale stands, and up another road that winds it’s way out another 15km out to the end of the peninsula that lines the south end of Ensenada bay. We paid two dollars to park, and then walked a half mile past farmacia’s and souvenier stands. It was a beautiful mountaintop location, with a wonderful view of Mexico, but you can’t see any of that: The walk way is lined with an impenetrable wall of shops selling useless crap. There are many tourists, but there are even more vendors. There are about five people at each little stand. One persons job is to operate the cash box, and the other four jump around in front of you, babbling like idiots, trying to get your attention. Every store sells the same crap, and all this crap is way up on a mountaintop, at the end of a long peninsula. After this walk of shame, all the tourists crowd around to see waves down below crash up against the rocks and make a thirty foot spray. That’s the famous ‘La Bufadora’. But I what I don’t understand is how a thousand people could be trying to make a living off of a few busloads of cruise ship tourists who ride up from the harbour evey few days to watch a geyser of water spray into the air. They form up around Ensenada’s one big tourist destination like barnacles of rocks trying to draw a nutrients out of the occasional passing wave of tourists. There’s a middle class here in this city, much like Edmonton, but imagine our city with about three or fourhundred thousand desperately poor people squeezed into every available nook and cranny, with begging children, festering wounds and blank stares. They Double up the sugar in everything here.