by Chris Cowland –
It’s December as I write this, sitting outside in shorts and a T-shirt. No, I’m not embarking on a Polar Bear swim; I’m sitting on the balcony of my casita in Mulegé, on the Baja Peninsula, Mexico. I don’t enjoy busy touristy areas, so this small town of 3,800 people on the Bay of Conception, Sea of Cortez, is perfect. The local economy is driven by agriculture and fishing, with around a dozen good (cheap!) restaurants and numerous taco stands. A recent groundbreaking development was the opening of the Mulegé Brewery, which features a wide selection of excellent craft beers for around $5 a pint.
Life here is wonderfully unhurried. You quickly learn that “manana” does not mean “tomorrow,” it just means “not today.”
We have been coming here for nearly 10 years, and have picked up eight rescue dogs over that period. Mexican dogs and cats are rarely spayed or neutered, and as a result many puppies and kittens are born and left to starve. The first pup we rescued was Carlito, dumped at the roadside in a cardboard box. At first he was too scared to come inside, so we left food, water and a blanket at the front door, and would be greeted with licks and a beating tail every morning.
One day we returned home from shopping in the next town to find no Carlito. It turned out that a mining engineer renting a casita close to ours had taken a shine to the dog, and he had been puppynapped. The engineer somewhat aggressively rejected my request to return Carlito, but agreed to my suggestion to “let the puppy decide.”
I said I would return shortly. In my absence a bit of a crowd gathered to witness the showdown. It took me five minutes to fry a slice of bacon and crumble it into my right trouser pocket. I sauntered back – hands in pockets – patted Carlito on the nose, and then the engineer and I backed off 10 paces, and called the dog simultaneously. It was no contest! We shook hands in settlement (the engineer must have attributed my slimy grip to nervousness).
One of my neighbours adopted a kitten last year, and then left her with a housekeeper when she returned to Idaho for the summer. Around three weeks later she received a dozen increasingly urgent calls from the housekeeper complaining of the total breakdown of the septic system. She cut short her home visit to return, hire a contractor, and fix the septic. Two days of digging revealed no problems, but the housekeeper was observed frying fish one evening. Now, this cat had been fed nothing but dry cat food her whole life. “Well, I ran out about two weeks ago, and have been feeding her fish ever since.” It turned out that the disgusting odours in the house were merely cat farts, brought about by the drastic change in diet.
Our favourite restaurant is El Patron, right on the beach at the end of the river estuary. The floor is raked sand, there is no glass in most of the windows, the walls are recycled driftwood and the roof is palapa. It was completely flattened by a hurricane four years ago; total damages amounted to about $50. Their specialty is fish, but I can guarantee I won’t feed any to my neighbour’s cat for a joke, as there are never any leftovers!
