What Mexico Has Taught Me

Columns, What Mexico Has Taught Me

What Mexico Has Taught Me: Looking For Gold 

I’ve written before about losing places I love in Ensenada ……restaurants, food carts, folk-art shops, rustic furniture stores, cantinas, book stores.   So, for over 30 years I’ve had to search for new places to fall in love with.  I’m like a miner looking for gold.  (Not a bad job to give yourself.)  And, as the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention.  How have I done it?

My best method is riding my bicycle all over town looking for businesses I haven’t noticed before with my head turning left and right, left and right, like an alert ostrich.  And when it comes to food, I’m looking for places that have lots of customers.  I remember one of the first times this happened.  I was on Juarez / Fifth and saw three taco stands on one corner.  One stand was crowded and the other two weren’t.  Bingo!  That’s how I found Tacos Fenix.  I let the Mexican citizens do my quality control research for me.

Lately I’ve found Mariscos El Coyote, a rolling cart on Las Brisas and east of Costero that is across Brisas from the Kia dealership.  There are food carts all over the city but this place always had a crowd so I stopped and their ceviche tostadas are excellent.  Their days and hours seem to vary a bit but it’s worth it and I bet the Kia workers are a happy gang being so close.  Then I noticed Tacos Mi Ranchito El Fenix at the corner of Sixth and Espinoza; an open-air restaurant with lots of customers.  (But not related to Tacos Fenix only one block away.)  I love their shrimp tacos but their condiment bar really stands out.  I often like building my own tacos where one half of the taco will have a whole different load than the other half.  Plus, I like eating outdoors.

When I ride my bicycle I won’t necessarily ride in a straight line from one place to another.  I like to zig-zag using side streets to find new stuff.  And I’ll go inland, far away from the tourist district, too.  That’s how I found a Oaxacan festival in a small city park.  I SLAMMED on the brakes.   I can cover a lot of ground versus walking but at a slower speed versus a car which allows me to see everything left and right without running over a pedestrian.  Don’t have a bike with you?   You can rent an ATV on Castillo just west of Costero and slowly ride around town instead of being pent up in a car.  I’ve seen lots of cruise ship customers do that and they all have big smiles on their faces.  Or consider getting an e-bike if your stamina is an issue.  Or a folding bike that fits into your car.  (The smaller the wheels, the smaller it folds.)  You can also take a bike you currently own and have its frame cut so that it folds.   You can’t get lost, just head back towards the huge flagpole. 

Next method?  I keep my ears open.  I chat up the staff in the lobby of my hotel or the employees and owners of the businesses I go to.  They know I buy folk-art basketry, masks, beadwork, pottery, Mexican craft beer, and am not afraid to eat from food carts.  I carry an Ensenada map with me at all times so we can pinpoint any location.   Chatting up someone while drinking a beer is a great way to learn about new places.  I sometimes buy the second round if I’m getting lots of good info like I did from the retired Canadian airlines pilot that moved to Ensenada with his wife after first trying Florida.  He was a gold mine.

Bottom line?  I keep looking for gold.  I want to be a smart tourist and not a “touron”.  What’s that?  A relatively new word that combines tourist and moron.  Like it?  Use it.

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 Columns, Tecate, What Mexico Has Taught Me

I Crossed for Tacos and Found Heartbreak Instead

What Mexico Has Taught Me: Pure Horror!!!

I’m on a short leash.  I’m helping a friend who is in terrible shape as he navigates what is left of his life.  I’ve done this before, first with my mother and then my father.  So now I often can’t go to Ensenada for even two or three nights, let alone fly anywhere, but only enjoy five to six hours at the border in Tecate on a Saturday then rush home.  But, it feels like a miracle when I can do this —  to get away and cram as much Mexico as possible into my spirit.  I leave Los Angeles early and start each visit with the excellent shrimp tacos at Tacos Casimiro by 7:15 – 7:20 in the morning.  I am usually their first customer.  I show up on a bicycle.  Wearing shorts.  So… they know me.  Plus I don’t think there is any other place in that small town that serves food that early, let alone seafood.  I need Casimiro.  NEED.

So I parked my vehicle in the States the other day and rode my bicycle across the border.  Shrimp tacos, here I come.  I turned the corner in the quiet residential neighborhood where the place is at and they are CLOSED.  This kind of thing has happened to me many times in Mexico.  A beloved place GONE.  Shock.  Horror.  This place was important to me.  This is going to do damage.

Stunned, I start thinking.  Maybe an employee died and they’re at the funeral.  Maybe a water pipe burst.  Maybe there’s a wedding.  Sure, and maybe I’m the Village Idiot.  But, but, “closed” doesn’t HAVE to mean “gone”, right?  And the empty Coke bottles are still stacked in the parking lot.  Oh, God, not again.  I’m sure I must have sagged visibly.  And, of course, there was no one around for me to ask with my bad Spanish.

Two weeks later I am back and I am prepared.  Prepared to enter a period of grief or to maybe see my buddies again.  (By the way, Plan B Shrimp Tacos Place doesn’t open until 9:00)  I peddled my bike slowly because riding faster was going to deliver bad news sooner.  I crept my way down their street with dread …….. and saw their blue gate was OPEN.  I had to be sure.  I pedaled faster.  Their door was OPEN.  I gave out a shout.  I pulled in, jumped off the bike, pulled a piece of paper out of my wallet, and spoke the words I’d written on it, interrupting the eleven employees in their open kitchen area as they chopped, cleaned, stacked, fried, mixed, de-veined, stirred, and sliced — “Dos semanas pasada.  Julio vientiseis. Sabado.  Mi, aqui.  Casimiro cerrado.  Mi, sustado!”   I believe I said  “Two weeks ago.  July 26.  Saturday.  Me, here.  Casimiro closed.  Me, scared!”  I only got ONE WORD out of the whole crew.  “Vacacion”.

I went straight into my fake crying routine which always works and said “No persona muerto?  Casimiro no muerto?  Mi, asustado!”  More chuckles.  Then they gave me 3 fried serranos chiles instead of my usual 2 with those magnificent shrimp tacos.  But, like I said before, I’ve lost some wonderful places in Mexico.  The statistics in the States are that half of all restaurants close within five years.  And I was told recently by an employee in Ensenada that their place will probably be going out of business soon.  A place so special to me that I go to it almost every single day I am down there.  The life lesson?  I bet we all know it.

#Two tacos, one fried chile, and zero regrets. After two weeks of panic, Casimiro’s kitchen is alive—and my soul is full again.

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 Columns, What Mexico Has Taught Me

What Mexico Has Taught Me: The Need to Escape

BY THE UNKNOWN GRINGO

Erle Stanley Gardner wrote in one of his books on Baja, Hunting the Desert Whale, that ” those who are familiar with the land of Baja California are either afraid of it or they love it, and if they love it they are brought back by an irresistible fascination time and again.”  That perfectly describes me since I first crossed the border.  I just have to keep going back because my fascination shows no sign of diminishing.  And I can easily think of passions / interests in my life that have faded over time.

When Covid hit I didn’t go to Mexico anywhere near as often because I wanted to protect myself and my father.  Here at home, a lot of my hiking trails were closed down so I took city walks instead because that’s how I get my daily exercise and I like to be outdoors.  I discovered Chinatown.  W. H. Auden, the British-American poet, wrote “Man needs escape as he needs food and deep sleep.”   I learned that my “escapes” to Mexico over the decades and then Chinatown have strong similarities.

I go on Sunday mornings.  It’s only a 15 minute drive.  They have shops just like the botanicas in Mexico with ground-up organic compounds for what ails you.  The shop owner will give you advice based on your symptoms.  They have prayer candles, too.  Vendors on the street sell fresh fruit, vegetables, iced drinks, and offer samples before you buy.  Individual citizens, usually senior women, will spread blankets on the sidewalk to sell a very small variety of food or personal objects and will chant loudly in their accent “One dollah.  One dollah.” (Amazingly, each one of them almost always has a can of tuna or salmon to sell.)  Men will be selling small electronic devices and USB cables.  Baseball caps for $3. You can find hair care products, sandals, toys, used tools, etc.  One guy sells straw hats made in Mexico for $5 that sell for $20 at Home Depot.  It all reminds me of how people in Mexico have small specialty stores or are self-employed with folding tables under pop-up canopies on a city street or just a blanket with goods on the ground. 

There is a strength of culture there in Chinatown that makes me feel like I am in another country.  My senses get filled.  And that’s what has had me addicted to Mexico for decades.  I get to “escape” my own normal daily life to enjoy something I find a lot more interesting.   Both cultures fully embrace fireworks and festivals with bright costuming.  Both are rich in mythology and have sacred rituals respecting their dead.  Both have a history of strong prejudice against them up here and created ethnic neighborhoods for their own support.  (What a comfort to have neighbors that speak your language.  That would make your house feel like a home and not a remote island.)  And both are fully aware that the dominant culture in the States also absolutely LOVES their food.  What a world.

I have always felt welcomed in Mexico.  For decades I have described the Mexican people as “warm and gracious”.  It is a louder and more colorful country than my own and I love that.  The citizens of Chinatown are more reserved but I feel welcomed there, too.   Next door is the Plaza de Los Angeles, close to where the city was founded in 1781.  When I’m home on Sundays I get my two breakfast tamales there with three different salsas to choose from and then I start walking Chinatown where my favorite bakery will sell me a baked custard bun.  I get a 2 for 1 escape bargain.

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 Columns, What Mexico Has Taught Me

What Mexico Has Taught Me

International Trade

I’m a docent at the Autry Museum of the American West where I take kids on tours during the school year. Usually grade school but sometimes older. No matter what age they are I always start my tour in front of the huge, stuffed bison / American buffalo we have. He’s visually impressive and I tell the kids how the native Americans would use the bison’s meat, bones, organs, sinew, hooves, leather, and fur to make food, tools, clothes, shoes, blankets, weapons, containers, and shelters called teepees. Nothing went to waste and the products they made were often traded far and wide with tribes that didn’t live in the Great Plains area.

The Pacific Coast natives, of course, harvested ocean fish and shellfish. There is evidence that the sea shells they collected were traded from tribe to tribe to tribe going eastward all the way into Nevada. Traded, eventually, to people that would never understand or see an ocean. The shells were used for beads, jewelry, ornaments, and fish hooks. They were an object of great prestige and could be considered a form of money because of that.

Does any of this apply to me or you? It sure does when some of my friends know I’m going to Mexico soon. They want me to bring back STUFF FOR THEM. The latest thing is Voltaren, an arthritis pain relief gel. They can easily get it here in the States but it is usually at 1% strength. In Mexico I can get it at Extra Strength of 2.32% AND at a better price than regular strength up north. I made the mistake of telling two friends I was doing this for one friend. Bingo, now I have three customers!!

Coffee. I get ground coffee for the woman who was my father’s wound care nurse and now feeds my beloved kitty when I am gone. I get her a wide range of beans from Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Veracruz. I tell her to save the empty bag of anything she wants more of. So far, she likes them all.

Cuban cigars. My mailman pushed me to do this many years ago. He didn’t want big fat ones. He wanted the small thin ones. I got him some, he said he liked them ……. and he wouldn’t pay me back. I kept reminding him. It took several months of me hounding him. He finally paid and then got transferred to another area of town. He was already off my list.

Olive oil. The oil made in the Guadalupe Valley by L.A.Cetto can be found at their winery in the valley, at their store in Ensenada, and sometimes at the large Calimax in Tecate. Again, I have three customers and packing 750ml bottles of olive oil on a motorcycle takes some delicate planning. (The Voltaren and coffee travel much easier.) Oddly enough, I haven’t even tried the local stuff because I buy small 250ml bottles of olive oil at Trader Joe’s.

Menthol cigarettes. Their getting banned in California in November, 2022 caused one desperate neighbor to ask me to get cartons of them EVERY TIME I went to Mexico. I had to turn him down. I did not want to have Customs at the border looking at me suspiciously and I wish there was no such thing as tobacco to harm good people. I would have felt guilty supplying him. 

When I started going to Mexico over 30 years ago I would go to the first Costco that Tijuana had. This was years before Ensenada finally got one. I would see Americans buying DOZENS of cartons of American cigarettes and was told they sneak them back across the border because cigarettes made in the U.S. cost a lot less in Mexico because there is no tax on them there. They would hide them in their RV’s and make good money selling them to their friends back home. Help to pay for part of their vacation down south. 

Mole. One year I sent surprise Christmas gifts to several friends that had salsa macha, Japanese peanuts, and mole in each box. Those packages went to friends in California, Utah, Oregon, and Alaska. The guy in Alaska sent me a desperate letter in return. Could I please send more mole because his estranged girlfriend loved the stuff and she was barely speaking to him even though they were still living together in the same house? Drama. That mole could solve? He got his wish but they remain “just friends”.

And this international trade goes in both directions. I have a buddy who works in a liquor store in Ensenada who asks me to bring un-baked buttermilk biscuits in a tube. Sure. Cheap, easy, small. Just pack them in a plastic bag in case a tube “blows”. No ruptures yet.

High-end American craft beer that isn’t exported down south. One guy swears the beer I brought him that’s made in Michigan is the best he’s ever tasted. For years I’ve given out my favorite IPA from Seattle to friends down there. It’s Elysian Space Dust IPA. The room I create for this stuff going south on my motorcycle makes room for olive oil going north.

Ice Cream. I tried taking Haagen-Dazs ice cream south ONCE over twenty years ago for a friend who works at my favorite hotel. With dry ice and lots of insulation in a cooler in my van. He had to rush it across the street to a restaurant’s freezer since it had turned too soft.

Drill bits. For a friend who worked in a gem shop and needed special drill bits for shaping his stones and minerals. A dear friend. Who never paid me back. I let it go because he was so much older than me and was probably struggling financially. I wrote about him before in the March 27, 2023 article about the Big Bottle of Mezcal – Part Two.  He was almost a legend to me with all the stories he would tell me late at night over a bottle of mezcal about “lost Spanish gold mines, partnerships ending in murder, briefcases of money that would bring out the worst in men, eight foot tall human skeletons found in a cave, mining huge meteorites in the desert for big bucks, and how eating powdered rattlesnake helped him to please the ladies”. He’s passed now and when I go by his old shop I can get a little choked up. I wish I could buy him more drill bits.

A lot of things cross our border in both directions. People, ideas, music, food, products. Sometimes with conflict but also with convergence. International trade brings us closer. My motorcycle and I are a small part of that. I imagine most of you are.

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