Today I had a very Cabo day. It’s hard to explain what that means if you don’t live here. 

And of course, it sometimes means different things. Not unlike a New York City day. Some days, a Cabo day goes like this: “Today I handed someone a check for about 300 dollars, made out to cash, who promised he would show up next week to do about 1,000 dollars worth of work on my house. We made a ‘contract’ on the back of a Costco receipt, and then we shared some cappucino-flavored mezcal that he bought at a flea market while watching a video he recorded on his Motorola phone of himself eating a live scorpion. Then he drove off on his royal blue motorcycle with a horse-hair seat into the sunlight.”

Actually, that is exactly how I spent the first 2 hours of my day today.

My husband and I then joked for a few more hours about how we were never, ever going to see that 300 dollars again, but if we did, it would be pretty neat. And that our “contractor” was probably the coolest Mexican we’d ever met. In fairness, my husband is the coolest Mexican I’ve ever met. But the scorpion guy is a close second.

Anyway. The other variation on this theme is what we did after the scorpion guy buzzed off into the sunset to catch a siesta before cocktail hour:

First I wrapped some reheated pizza in tinfoil and tucked it into a plastic grocery bag. I put that bag on top of our (filthy) cooler. We got in the truck, camera in tow, and stopped off at the convenience store, where for a few pesos we had a store employee dump a fresh bag of ice into our cooler and arrange some “caguamas” (Pacifico beer version of a 40 oz.) on top. 

We drove to a local surf beach that’s really just a big arroyo (in between two mountains, which floods during a rain but, you know, this is a desert bordering an ocean, so that only happens about once a year). We put the truck in 4WD and drove right up to the shoreline, where locals had arranged some large rocks in circular patterns near the low tide line– in effect, creating a series of about six pools. A girl– maybe 18– and her son (maybe 3)– kicked up sand while the girl’s friend splashed in one of the pools. To the right of us, a family set up a charcoal grill and started shucking fresh clams while their sons (in pajamas) jumped in the water.

Behind us the sun started to set.

Suddenly the wind kicked up and the sand started stinging. In the distance all you could see were clouds of sand in pockets of tornado-like wind, backlit by the setting sun. We jumped off our chairs (our beach chairs, complete with tray and cup holder) and wrapped ourselves in the sleeping bags we use to camp on the emptier beaches a few miles north, our backs to the wind to protect ourselves from the bite of sand on skin.

Huddling like this we drank our caguamas and watched all the surfers paddle in in a hurry. We had to clutch at the blankets and the bags. From where we sat we could see the truck take a beating from the relentless wind. The sand here is not unlike sand I am used to, but in every handful is a layer of dust that coats your feet and hands; when the wind starts, this much finer sand is what principally blows about, coating everything in spitting distance. 

My husband’s baseball hat blew off when he stood, so he had to go run after it. Meanwhile a little boy’s boogie board started banging down the beach, battered in the wind. A yellow Lab came bounding out of the water, where he was swimming, to accompany his master– an overlarge American gentleman (with half-Mexican kids) who grabbed the boogie board and brought it about 100 yards down the beach to the boy to whom it belonged. 

Within about 10 minutes the wind died down, but it was a long 10 minutes. The sunset cast that peculiar (and legendary) Baja light on everything it touched. The sand looked golden, everything in view was dewy and vibrant– as if we’d kicked up the saturation in Photoshop. We lounged against our bunched-up sleeping bags, warm, happy, a little drunk. The wind had scared away most of the folks who were there for the day, hanging and cooking on the beach. 

We stayed there for a long time, until the sun went down and we couldn’t make out the sea water any more and our caguamas were empty. Ice clinking in the bed of the pickup we drove over the bumpy sand through the canyon and back up to the (two lane) highway, home.