Thoughts on Guerrero Negro

(Written Friday, January 9)

We arrived last night after an excruciatingly long bus ride which dropped us off at the edge of nowhere. After an unsuccessful attempt to make friendly contact with a pair of German backpackers who had arrived on the same bus, we wandered our way to a taco stand, Asaderos, which we have grown to love, got some food, then booked into Hotel El Morro on our waiter’s advice.

Hotel El Morro was depressing but functional, and we seemed to be the only guests that night. The room next to ours was gutted out, concrete rubble piled up in front of it. Predictably, the next morning we were woken up by the construction workers. We packed up our bags and began a long trek around town, looking for a better hotel.

Guerrero Negro’s streets are full of booby traps for the unwary walker. Every time we looked up to gawk at something the sidewalk would drop five inches into a driveway, or we’d nearly impale our feet on the three-inch lengths of rebar embedded in the cement. The city itself is not terribly interesting—most of it exists in order to support a giant salt-mining operation.

However, it does support a large number of taco venders, a fact with Rob and I took full advantage of. Today I ate nothing but tacos—steak for breakfast, fish for lunch, steak and chicken for dinner. Rob mixed it up with tortas, which our friend Ruben in Ensenada described to us as the Mexican hamburger (there’s a picture of me eating one several posts below). Ruben was right about this, though: the tortas in the Parque de Revolucion in Ensenada are the best ones in the world. Or at least in our world so far.

The best taco stand by far is the aforementioned Asaderos. We returned there for dinner, joining the evening rush, sitting at the bar and watching the cook bust out orders of twenty or more tacos each. She patiently let us ask “que es eso?” to various items she was cooking, and we learned about a new fantastic dish, mulas. Mulas are basically steak quesadillas made with a fresh, chewy cheese. We had the same waiter, who gave us a return-customer discount, and I sang a happy taco song on the way back to our hotel. I can’t wait to have tacos again tomorrow.

We ended up checking into the Hotel Malarrima at long last. For only fifty pesos more than last night our room is bright and cheery, with SHADES ON THE LAMPS! and a startling number of carved wooden whales painted in shades of orange, blue and gray. We’ll be taking advantage of their whale-watching tour tomorrow morning. Here’s hoping for clear skies and friendly, photogenic whales.

Noted: Come for the whales, not for the scenery.