Comida/Food

This is my most favorite food ever.

I don’t have a refrigerator, and it’s been challenging to keep fresh veggies in the house. I crave cold salads, but alas… I have, however, found a great way to get my veggies and enjoy some comfort food all at the same time. You see, when you buy tacos at a taco stand here, you get several bags of condiments. One of those bags is full of cabbage and radishes and maybe even cucumber slices. Well, I found a taco place by my house that not only has some of the best carne asada in town, but they’re also very generous with the condiment bags. This means that I can actually make myself a side salad of veggies to go with my tacos! How’s that for ingenious? I love this food!!

Cultural confusion

I’m so culturally confused sometimes.

It’s because I’ve lived in at three world regions with wildly different cultural practices and sometimes they sort of meld together in my head. It’s more than a language thing, which is its own challenge (I have a hard time with intelligent conversation in English after I’ve been speaking another language for a while). Sometimes it has to do with how to greet someone (I kept bowing to people in Mexico when I first came back after being in Asia), how to eat food properly, what are appropriate topics of conversation, or even how to cross the street. When I returned to the US after being in southeast Asia for a year, my stepstepmom picked me up at LAX. As we were walking to the car, I started across a crosswalk against a red light, intending to weave between oncoming cars like you would do in Asia. My stepstepmom threw out her arm to stop me- oh yeah, we don’t do that in the US, we wait for the light! Ha!

In southeast Asia, it’s customary to leave the last bite or two on your plate, which signifies that your host has fed you enough and not left you hungry, thereby fulfilling the social expectations of being a good host. In other parts of the world, like the US and Mexico, it’s customary to clear your plate, like the food was so delicious that you had to eat it all, thereby fulfilling the social expectations of being a gracious guest. So one of my first nights here in La Paz, my hostess Alba served up this delicious meal.  I still had a couple of bites of food left on my plate when she stood up and began to clear the table. When she asked if I was finished, I started to hand her the plate. But as I went to lift it off the table, I had this moment of total panic-  Eat it or leave it? Eat it or leave it?! – and I set the plate back down on the table, lifted it off the table, set it back down… Alba and I both laughed, and in the end I handed her the plate. That may not have been the thing to do, but I really couldn’t have eaten any more, since it seems that another of the customs here is to serve a gut-busting amount of food to guests!

I was just thinking about my cultural confusion because I just made some ramen noodle soup. I threw in an egg for some protein and flavor. And when it was all done, I thought, hmmm, I know what’ll make this just perfect—salsa picante!!! A little hot sauce with my ramen – what a combo!

More fieldwork

In lieu of three boring paragraphs of me bitching about car repairs, I'll give you some pictures of my most recent field day!

Lucia and I did some more surveys in the San Dionisio area. It took like 8 hours to do 4 surveys. We got hung up at one house where we were treated to some really long stories and advice on how I should make time to get married and have children instead of going to school so much. Sigh... I hear that a lot here!

There was plenty of livestock sitting around in the shade...

...and afterwards we drove through Santiago to see what the zoo looked like (haven't gone in yet). The trees are just fantastic in this area. They're ginormous! And this is what happens when you don't make room in your sidewalk for tree growth...

Santiago sits in a beautiful valley of palms and ag fields...

And before driving back, Lucia and I stopped at our new favorite restaurant in Los Barriles for some well-deserved shrimp and fish tacos!

mmm shrimp tacos. My favorite.

Till next time, hope this finds you all well!

Finally some field work...and lots of down time

Recently I got a request from a friend for a blog update, and I thought, yeah but I haven’t been doing a damn thing lately! Nothing super interesting anyway, but living in a foreign country is its own adventure, so here goes!

Research stuff (and Buffy)

There’s been a LOT of down time. For several weeks I couldn’t really move forward with my research while waiting for the beaurocratic ball to roll. I had to jump through a few hoops for SDSU’s Institutional Review Board, which governs research on human subjects. I had to submit my protocol so they could approve it as being ethical, and then had to make a few adjustments before it was finally approved. I also had to turn in some paperwork for the Institute of Biological Investigation of the Northwest, the university at which my Mexican advisor works. Then there was all the paperwork for the natural resources agency that’s in charge of the biosphere reserve where half of my research takes place. So it took a while before I could even consider really getting up to the ranches.

During this time I did get some work done, like going over old drafts of my thesis proposal to see what I can use for the final draft. But I’m also terribly lazy sometimes, so I took Cali to the boardwalk, or lazed around the house. Somewhere in that first six weeks I got through all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer… for about the fifth time in my life. I know, nerd alert, right? Think what you want, but that show is EPIC- full of positive messages about women, and heavy themes of sacrifice, duty, loyalty, etc. There’s actually a national academic-style Buffy conference every year, and one of the things on my to-do list in life is to present a paper there. Or at least to attend!

My first couple of interviews were in the same area where we did that big crazy climb. In fact, my contact there was the guy who rented us the mules. He introduced me to this one old rancher who REALLY wanted to marry me and move to the United States. Yeah that never gets old…

I also went up to my contact’s ranch, where I spoke with his mom, who was a very sweet lady in her late 70s. When we arrived she was in the middle of making a huge quilt out of scraps of clothing fabric. She got the fabric from a friend who would bring bags of old clothing and then help her cut it into squares.  The quilt had no rhyme or reason in pattern, color, or texture, and ended up being this incredible patchwork explosion of polka dots and stripes and cotton and polyester and reds and purples and everything in between and outside the rainbow. And her sewing machine!! Damned if it wasn’t one of those gorgeous pedal-powered antiques, heavy iron in black lacquer and floral inscription.

Anyway, I didn’t have a translator for these interviews, and by the end of the day I just wanted to cry from frustration. There are times when I’m interacting with people and I understand everything and I’m like, yeah, my Spanish is awesome. And then there are days like this, when I swear I cannot understand a single sentence. But people here are very patient with me… plus I have a voice recorder, so whatever I missed I’ll pick up in transcription. Luckily I had a student from one of the universities help me out on the next trip and it was all so much better! Lucía took great notes and asked all the right questions, so I was able to get much better data.

On this second day of interviews, Lucía accompanied me to Rancho San Dionísio, an area with a number of individual ranches on the eastern slope of the Sierra la Laguna Biosphere Reserve.  There was an infusion of government funds in this particular area to encourage alternative tourism, and some of the ranch owners have become hiking guides and mule renters. We arrived at the first ranch just before mid-day, but it was already warm. These ranches are extremely well-suited to the heat though. The owners of this first ranch had these huge mango trees- they looked prehistoric- and they cast almost continuous shade over the ranch with leaves the size of my head.  The owners of this ranch not only rent out mules and guide hiking trips, but they also own a small restaurant and supply all of their own vegetables from a large garden on the property. Aside from half a dozen types of lettuce, they also grow these cherry tomatoes that melt in your mouth and are sweet like candy. Mmm mm!

Lucía, the ranch owner, and I sat in the shade of the mango trees in one of the half-acre orchards to talk about the history of mountain lions in the area. I sat on a cement block by an unlit fire pit and Lucía sat on an old whale vertebra while the owner regaled us with stories of his father and brother hunting mountain lion decades ago. He also illustrated what a cougar smells like by burning the hair and skin on an old piece of pig hide- little bit rank! He said that when the mules can smell that, they start to spit because they’re frightened. Ha!

Other conversations that day unearthed a ton of interesting stories about how and why the ranchers killed cougars in decades past -usually with guns (.22s) and for various reasons. There was a female with kittens who was likely to attack livestock so she was preemptively killed, one had rabies, one was killing wild pigs too close to ranches, and sometimes they were killed to sell the hides to interested parties. There’s also this story I’ve heard several times now in several different areas of the state, and I’m not sure if it’s something that actually happens sometimes, or one of those tall tales that gets passed around. Ranchers tell of one of their friends (it’s always a friend, never themselves) whose mule goes missing for a day or two. When the mule finally shows up, it has these long gouges down its back. As the story goes, the mule was attacked by a mountain lion and in order to remove the beast from its back, the mule slammed its body against a tree, stunning and dislodging the mountain lion. In my imagination, I always picture the cougar walking off, dazed, shaking its head in confusion and pain.

I love being exposed to these stories and they really help me get a handle on what the general feeling about pumas is in this region. They have almost a mythical status among the people I’ve talked to in the reserve, probably because there haven’t been many pumas since the government bounty program of the 1950s. So far people are almost surprised when I tell them I’m studying the relationship between pumas and people, and about every other person looks at me askance, laughs, and says- Pues, no hay! There aren’t any pumas here! My northern site will probably be different in this sense, since I’ve been told of more recent attacks.

In any case, it was great to finally get started with the data collection, and next week promises to be just as busy.

Agua/ water

My water comes from a underground cistern. An electrical pump pushes it through a PVC pipe into a holding tank on top of the house. This is the water I use to shower, brush my teeth, wash the dishes, and flush the toilet. It makes you very aware of how much water you use when you actually have to go turn on the pump because you’ve run out. But that’s a good thing here, in a region that has so little water to spare. The good news is that I can pump it as often as I need to.

When I was working in Rio Lagartos, down in the Yucatán, we had to be very careful about our water use. The first day I asked our boss about it, and he said, oh yeah, don’t worry, we’ve got plenty of water in the tank. So I and the two gals I worked with were washing our clothes in the sink, not really paying attention to water use (there weren’t exactly water shortages in that part of Mexico). The next thing we knew, the tap was dry!! We asked our boss what the heck had happened, and he said that the water tank was only refilled when it rained and the town water services refilled it! Gah! We had to wait until the next morning to have water. We washed our clothes in buckets after that! So yeah, now I get to turn on the pump every week or so, and that is great.

Garrapatas/ Ticks

Cali has made a number of new friends here. Yeah, of the eight-legged blood-sucking variety and I’m none too happy about it. Every night I spend at least half an hour searching her fur and skin for the little suckers. They are disgusting. And, get this- I kept wondering why I was always finding two ticks at every bite site, one big nasty engorged one and a smaller one. I looked it up. Prepare yourself, this is NAAAASTY. Yeah they’re mating. EWWWWWWWWWWWW!! The big one is the female, who after feeding on my dog, will drop onto the ground and go lay thousands of eggs. Gross.

Balandra Beach/ La Playa Balandra

Balandra is a beach that’s also a local icon of community-led conservation efforts. It’s got this mushroom shaped rock that shows up in tourist guide photos and bumper stickers around town. At one point they were going to turn this particular bay into some kind of tourist destination, but local people rose up, and hundreds (or maybe it was thousands) of people from La Paz walked out to the beach in protest. Apparently that and some other activist events got the government’s attention and it was declared a protected area.

I’ve been there a couple of times for a beach day, and my favorite partner in crime is Daniela. Daniela’s family are the ones who help me out so much while I’m in La Paz. Her mom, Alba, was my professor in San Diego while she was a visiting faculty member, and her class on the society and ecology of Baja California Sur eventually led me to my thesis topic. I was Daniela’s math tutor in San Diego, and I tutor her now as well. But we’re definitely not all business, and she’s one of my favorite people to goof off with.

Cali loved the beach in San Diego and she loves it here, too. The water at Balandra is very shallow for a long while, so when I threw the ball for her, she bounded through the water looking like a dolphin racing along the surface.

Mm’okay, so that’s it for now. I’ll try to be better about getting some blog posts up, even if it doesn’t feel like I’ve been doing anything cool. I'll start carrying my camera around and taking pictures of La Paz.

Eight people, eight mules, two horses, and one dog made the trip up the mountain. Israel (a bighorn sheep biologist), Javier (an Argentinian photographer), and I walked. Franco (our guide), his wife Narda, Don Chito (who owned the mules), Don Chito’s assistant, Aurora (my Mexican adviser), and one of Aurora’s students rode the mules and horses. The rest of the mules packed all the gear and food. Pobrecitas!!! It was a hell of a trip- about 8 miles straight up, a 1900 meter or almost 6000 foot gain. The trail ascended at at least a 45-degree angle the entire time. It was insane! I thought I was going to die. I had to ride the mules a few times for sure. We had also left fairly late in the morning so the sun was beating down something ferocious.

Cali had a hard time of it, with the hot soil and sun, and I think that the next time I’ll leave her at home for this trip. Or leave way earlier in the day. She was also scared to death of the mules and wouldn’t go near them, so when I was riding she sort of took off into the brush. Scared the hell out of me! I had to get down off my mule and call for her for awhile but she showed up eventually, a little panicked but unhurt, and then I had to walk with her. Poor girl. Everyone called her fresa, which translates as ‘strawberry’ and basically means ‘city girl’.

The camp was very rustic, as expected. There a handful of men who stay up at the camp to clear fire breaks and keep the trails clean. They live in a wood and stone structure with a palapa roof, and sleep inside like sardines, with their sleeping bags lined up next to each other. Many of these laborers are young guys just working a job, and a few are ranchers who are working for extra income (nobody gets rich off of ranching around here, it seems).

There was also a large open-air kitchen structure with a shingled roof and wood-fed stoves. Meals were cooked here and at a fire pit off to the side. Luis, our camp cook, made some hearty meals! Eggs and ham and beans for breakfast, quesadillas or machaca (dried beef) burritos for lunch, and dinner varied. The first night Aurora cooked up some top sirloin! We were spoiled with that one, but I gotta tell you it hit the spot after that climb.

We slept in tents in an open area near the kitchen. It was cold up there but not as cold as I expected. My zero-degree bag was actually a little warm, especially with Cali sleeping right. on. top. of me.

The higher altitudes of the Reserve are made of pine-oak forests, which are so strange to see in this part of Mexico. Stranger still are the palms and cactus between the pines and oaks! It’s beautiful up there, and reminds me quite a bit of where I grew up.

The first night I helped Israel set up some cameras to catch those nasty feral pigs in the act of scavenging and destruction. We talked about setting up some cameras for puma as well, and got some tips from the ranchers on a place where they think some pumas travel. The rest of the time I spent just showing my face and talking to the workers, and trying to get into the habit of constantly writing field notes. A couple of the ranchers were telling stories about puma attacking pet dogs and mules (some of these stories I’d heard before in other areas), but all agreed that there weren’t very many puma left in the Reserve. It will be an interesting place to collect data, which I’m guessing I’ll be able to do next month.

The walk down was much easier but just as hot. Whereas the trip up took about eight hours, the trip down took about four and a half. My toenails hurt like I can’t even tell you, and I actually got a blister UNDER my big toenail. It wasn’t that fun to drain it, let me tell you, and I still think it’s going to fall off. Gross!

So now we’re back at El Terreno. It always feels like getting back to reality when I come home from the field. The goddamn truck needed a new fuel pump, I need to deal with the financial aid office and a bunch of other beaurocratic stuff at the school, groceries must be bought, and trash must be emptied. The cats finally started hunting and left me a rotting mouse, which was real nice to come home to. Ah, yes, this is the life!! J

I’m going to Carnavale this weekend so I should have some great photos to share with you. The next couple of weeks or so I’ll just be writing and getting ready to do my first interviews and surveys on a trip north. I’m excited to actually start data collection, and a little nervous too. Mostly I’m feeling the pressure of not having enough time or money to do everything I’d like to do! I’m very grateful though to have some good friends here and a great place to live. Tonight we’re going to watch movies with carne asada takeout from the best place in La Paz (says me). Hope you’re all enjoying the rain/snow/sun of your respective homes!!

fox poop haha

Well, I’m here! After a number of delays (as usual), some car problems (as expected), and some technical difficulties, I finally made it down to La Paz. The drive down wasn’t very eventful. The cats and the dog were all pretty well-behaved and surprisingly quiet. Of course, I may only think that because their kennels were buried in my clothes and books and other stuff and I couldn’t hear them! The guys at the military check points didn’t quite know what to make of my little traveling zoo and I got waved through at every post. I would love to have three or four days to do this trip without rushing and enjoy all the stops along the way. One day…J

I hit Guerrero Negro (about halfway down the peninsula) just as the sun was setting. We found a hotel and hit the hay pretty early. I still overslept the next morning and we got out of town a little later than I would have hoped. That meant two hours of driving in the dark before getting in to La Paz. Not ideal!! But I didn’t hit any cows so that worked out. I was greeted with hugs and kisses by Alba and her mom and dad, and taken out to my new home, El Terreno.

I love El Terreno!! It’s about a ten minute drive from the nearest Pemex gas station (and civilization in general). It’s in a neighborhood that’s slated for development, although that hasn’t really happened yet. Way more empty lots than houses out here. Lots of dust and dirt roads and goat herds. Alba’s dad, Eleazar, is cultivating a shady fruit orchard on the lot, with oranges, pomegranates, and other big leafy trees just hitting maturity. That makes for lots of shade and a pretty view. Eleazar and the nearest neighbor both come out two or three times a week to water the plants, so for as isolated as it is out here, it seems like there’s always someone around.

It’s a lovely little house, you can see from the photos. There’s no hot water, which is mostly fine, but I forgot that it’s actually quite a bit cooler this time of year! I have to time my showers so that the water in the holding tank on top of the house is somewhat warm. In the summer it really doesn’t matter- it’s so damn hot here all you want is a cold shower, but right now it’s a little different. I’m living in the downstairs area right now. The upstairs has a bedroom and a bathroom but it’s not finished yet. I’m going to help Alba and her family tile the floors and bathroom and get it ready for living in.

The cats are in heaven! Aside from all the mice and gophers they can hunt, there are trees to climb and a roof for sunbathing. Cali has plenty of space to run around and of course has charmed Eleazar and the neighbors into throwing the ball for her. I’m so grateful I’m able to live in a place where I can have all the animals!

Cali and I took an afternoon to go swim in the bay....

Since I arrived I’ve been settling in and trying to get this project up and running.I finally met up with my official Mexican faculty sponsor, and she’s been a great help. She already has some projects going near my field sites, so I’ll be able to tag along on some of those trips. In fact, this last week I accompanied her team up to the Sierra La Laguna Biosphere Reserve. They were doing some plant surveys as well as placing some camera traps for a project on the feral pigs there. More on that in the next post….

on the way down

The highway that runs the length of the Baja Peninsula is long and winding and dusty and desolate and surrounded by desert. This is not to say it isn’t beautiful, because it is, and I owe it to my time in Nevada that I’m able to see how beautiful the desert is. The boojum “forests” look like scraggly whiskers across the hilly landscape. Vultures ride the wind currents in the middle of a hot day. The occasional cactus wren flits to or from a nest cavity in one of the bigger cacti.

Water is obvious along the highway. When there’s water, there’s a splash of greenery, either as an isolated oasis or as a row of vegetation along an irrigation canal. You momentarily forget the sand and rock around you and can’t take your eyes off the green. It’s almost seductive, promising cool water, shade, rest, relaxation. But we drove on.

We stopped at a shrine along the way to take some photos, rest, and check out the desert.

Did I mention the highway is long? We drove about a thousand miles in three days. I white-knuckled it almost the whole way, and my hands were constantly cramping. The landscapes were fantastic though, and I saw some things I’d never seen before, like these strange hills that looked like they were made entirely of house-sized boulders, just set in the middle of the desert. My herpetologist roommate would have gone crazy going snake hunting in them. I was pretty happy ooh-ing and ahh-ing and driving right by. We didn’t make as much progress as we’d hoped that first day due to some construction and really slow traffic outside of Ensenada. Not wanting to drive in the dark (my strong sense of self-preservation thought it best not to attempt the hair-pin turns at night after almost killing us while trying to pass a truck on a turn earlier in the day), we stopped at a little roadside hotel in the Santo Tomás area and called it a night. The paint was peeling off the walls in big chunks and there were mounds of that nasty black mold on the bathroom ceiling, but whatever… there was a bed…. Which I slept on with my own sheetJ

The next day we made it as far as Guerrero Negro, about half way down the peninsula. This is the town adjacent to the Ojo de Liebre lagoons, the last pristine grey whale birthing lagoon in the world. If it had been winter, I certainly would have stayed to see them, but not this time. My new new 4runner decided to have some issues at this point, which just ended up being a matter of needing the timing adjusted, which was an $8 fix, thank goodness. And then we were back on the road.

This time we made it to Loreto. Well, barely. The last hour the dark came before I’d anticipated and we got stuck on the road in the dark for an hour. This was far south of areas where the bandidos hang out, mi familia, but I was definitely not happy about the hair-pin turns and random cows on the road. I’ll do everything in my power never to drive in the dark again. But we made it, and stayed at a great little guesthouse with well-decorated rooms, great aircon, and a nice family feel to it. The lady who checked us in was very sweet, and had a nice breakfast for us in the morning. Granted we were there at night and didn’t see any of the town really, but I wasn’t convinced that Loreto had anything to offer us in any case, and I wasn’t tempted to hang out for a while.

And so, finally, we made that last leg of the journey to La Paz. Now, La Paz I love. It’s got it all- the ocean, for when I can stand the sand, and the mountains. Nightlife, if you like that kind of thing, a thriving academic community, and I swear some of the genuinely nicest people on Earth. Great taco stands and restaurants, big shopping centers for when you want the convenient one-stop shopping experience, and a 15-screen movie theater, which is very important when you want to relax in the a/c in the middle of the day. And then the neighborhoods are so quaint and the houses are soooo cute, many of them in the quintessential style- pretty pastel colors, a nice shady garden in back, decorative ironwork around the front yard.

The apartment we’re staying in suits my needs just fine. No nice little garden, but very conveniently located to the university and shops. It’s a bit of haul to downtown and the malecon (boardwalk on the bay), but that really means it’s like a 15 minute drive, because nowhere in La Paz is that far.

From our front porch the first day I saw these cows walking in traffic, heading to the Pemex station for a fill up. Love it.