Santa Rosalia, BCS, Mexico - The Ferry to Guaymas

Santa Rosalia smells like fish, at least down around the malecon (seafront). But it’s an interesting looking town, with houses creeping up into the hills surrounding the bay. It was formerly a French copper mining town, and you can still get baguettes at the panaderia (bakery). I’ve only been in Mexico a week; I’m still happy with tortillas. There’s a museum dealing with the copper mining but we are lazy bastards. We did at least go see the prefabricated church designed by Gustave Eiffel (of Tower fame) and bought by the copper company in 1895.

Having seen the church, we decided to leave. Here’s the thing. When you have a week’s vacation, you put a lot of planning into it because you have so little time. But since we have so much time, we’re going to places that we don’t know much about and might not fall in love with. Sometimes it takes time to get into the right groove. Santa Rosalia is nice enough, but we didn’t want to stay anymore. So we went to the ferry terminal to see about tickets to Guaymas, on the mainland of Mexico.

At the ticket counter, the woman told us there was a boat today. “Hoy,” she said, like, a million times. And then she wrote on a piece of paper, “hoy” and “dos de la tarde.” Great. Two in the afternoon. So we went to the Banomex ATM, packed up our stuff and left it at the hotel’s oficina, and went to have lunch at the restaurant we’d eaten at yesterday. Michael, who had laughed and laughed at my “gringo chicken special” went and ordered it himself – but a half chicken. I had enchiladas.

At 1:30 we were back at the ferry terminal to purchase our tickets and fill out our customs forms (?). The place was pretty deserted and as two o’clock neared and we didn’t see a boat or any passengers, we began to get nervous. I didn’t want to ask the few people who were there because I was afraid of them. The big guy kept squealing like a pig. I don’t mean he had a funny laugh or that he said “oink, oink,” I mean he lay down on his side and let out this tremendous, spine-tingling “sqeeeeeeeeeeeee” that sounded like a pig being hung upside-down to slaughter. Why would you do that? It seemed like it was his schtick too, because the others didn’t even seem startled.

But finally I had to do it. And it turned out the ferry was to arrive at 4:00. Sigh. Thus began the wait. The highlight of the two hours? Seeing something splashing in the water and having somone tell us it was a lobo marino. I got out my little dictionary and found out that means seal. Michael and I practiced saying “lobo marino” to each other, trying to improve our speed and pronounciation until I speculated on what degree of foolishness we must have reached by sitting and saying “seal” to each other over and over. “Seal.” “Seal.” “Seeaal?” “Seeeeaaal.” “Seal

We didn’t know what to expect from the ferry. The overnight ferry from Stockholm to Tallinn features a disco and slot machines. But this is neither Sweden or Estonia. When the ferry finally arrived, a mass of people swarmed off and they did not look like they’d been in a casino all day. They were grubby and sweaty and tired-looking. And most disconcerting of all, the majority of them carried blankets. Because most of the visible space of the boat was taken up by space to transport vehicles, we wondered if there were any proper facilities for passengers. Would we be lying on the floor all night, hungry and freezing to death without blankets? Michael ran to the store and bought us some chips and water.

Everyone who got off the boat had to “push the button” and possibly get his or her bags inspected. When it finally came time to get on the boat, we Guaymas-bound passengers had to do the same. I got the green light, but Michael’s bag was inspected.

It turned out there was a perfectly nice passenger area below the car area. Rows of reclining pleather bus-style seats, air conditioned and everything. There were so few passengers that we’d easily be able to stretch out across several seats and sleep. The Dramamine I had taken made me drowsy, and it was painfully hot on deck, so I immediately lay down and went to sleep. But Michael woke me up for the sunset and then afterwards we watched some Charlie’s Angels on the big TV and ate some tamales from the food kiosk before I conked out again

We arrived at Guaymas at 3:00 in the morning. An enterprising taxi-driver found us on the ferry and offered to take us to our hotel for 80 pesos. I told him that sounded expensive, though I really had no idea what taxi prices are like. He went down to 60. I don’t know if we got a good deal, but we saved two dollars.

We had to wake up the guy in the officina. But my Spanish came through excellently and we got ourselves a room. The room was interesting. It featured an air conditioner, a ventilation window above the toilet that vented out into the main room, and a lizard in the corner near the ceiling. The lizard’s name was Ignacio and he was very welcoming. (That falls squarely in the You Had To Be There category, so I’ll leave it at that. But we had a good time with that lizard.) So we went to bed at 4:00 am very pleased with ourselves for successfully negotiating such a variety of obstacles.

HOURS ON THE BUS: 35.5

HOURS ON THE BOAT: 11