Mexico es Colores (y yo soy guia)
Blue -- A sky so deep and cloudless, more vivid even than Carolina blue. The Sea of Cortez, turquoise in the shallows, dropping off to dark. My first day on the water, a blue whale, the biggest creature on earth, ballena giganta, approaches my kayak straight on from behind me. I try not to be scared. She surfaces and blows right between our kayaks, and I can see the lighter colour a few feet below my boat for the many seconds that mark her passage when she dives again.
Yellow -- The sun. High, bright and direct in the day, low golden rays early and evening.
Green -- Palm trees against the sky, and the sun above; with these three colours Mexico could make another flag. On Avenida Salvatierra, shaped trees form a long arch over the cobblestones leading to the Mission in the middle of town. On trip, always the cardon cactus. We cut prickly pear cactus leaves into long strips, fry it with onions and garlic, and serve it in the huevos a la mexicana. We cube chayote and cook it slowly with salt and pepper. Dos Equis Especial at the end of trip comes in a tall cold green bottle.
Red -- In town, some hibiscus are still out. On trip, we serve dark hibiscus juice at lunch, getting everything ready for the guests under a hot sun at the most relentless time of day. In the desert, because we had a long hard rain, the ocotillo cactus blossoms are out. Ginni, another guide, cuts herself cooking. I cut myself washing knives. The sky is red before first light, a thin strip under the black on the horizon as we boil water for coffee and enter the ocean calf-deep to haul water for dishes, headlamps on, the guests asleep. Back at the base, a small tree growing in gravel bears fruit I discover to be pomegranate.
White -- We camp at Arroyo Blanco on Isla Carmen. Everyone wants to stay two nights, guests and guides, but we have to move because El Norte, a powerful funnelled north wind, is coming and we can’t get caught. Finally after dinner and dishes, camp is put away for the night and Ginni is showing the guests Saturn’s rings through her telescope. I leave quietly, scale a steep path up the cliff in the dark and walk the top through low brush and spiky plants. Fifty feet from the edge, I step surprised onto a wide expanse of limestone, bright and visible the way snow is at night at home. Back at the bottom, the moon is almost full and our campsite is washed in light that seems more like an absence of colour than like actual white or silver. I can see clearly to brush my teeth, spread out a tarp and sleeping bag.
Brown -- The first day I arrive, it rains much harder than it should in February. Jimmy and Mary-Ann and I roll our pants to our knees and wade through the murky brown river our dirt road has become, around the corner for a beer. A delivery truck splashes past, and the men lean out the window, singing to us, and we all laugh. My feet, my hands, new freckles across my nose. Charo picks me up in his huge brown muddy truck to go have dinner with the guests at the end of the trip. He has a sticker of the Virgin Mary, and a sticker about protecting Baja’s sea turtles. We load bins of t-shirts into the back that we don’t want to try to sell; we’d rather the guests saved their money for tips. I walk into La Mision church in the Plaza and end up kneeling to pray. Huge beams support the ceiling, dark as mahogany or teak, but they are cedar. My eyes closed in prayer, the church is filled faintly with the warm familiar scent of a wood I know from home.
Orange -- Alejandro, another guide, has perfect timing. Both mornings these first two days off, I walk into the kitchen, buenos dias, and he hands me a glass of orange juice he has just finished squeezing from his press. Muchos gracias, amigo, I tell him. Esta delicioso. Sabes, he says, for love and friendship. In the Mission courtyard, a tree just taller than a tall man bends all branches down with the weight of oranges larger than my two fists. And the sun, on trip at sunset when I have time to glance up and see, is orange every time. Fan coral far down an underwater cliff. The tail of the king angelfish.
Pink -- When the sun rises, the cliffs on islands across the water glow in breathtaking colour. This is the indescribable image. For this, you have to come to Baja.
Purple -- My faithful faithful sleeping bag.
Black -- On trip, the magnificent frigate bird. In town, the shadow of a pelican moving along the main street between cars.
02/23/05 Written on Avenida Salvatierra near the Plaza, Loreto, 2nd day off.
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