Winter in Baja Day 46: This could get rough

Rancho San Dionisio -> The East Cape //

I love this life so much… living in a tiny space, spending the majority of our time outside, moving to a new location every few days.

Most of the time.

Then there are days like today, when it just feels hard.

I woke up in the middle of the night with a cough and unmistakeable taste in my throat.  I’m sick.  Nothing makes a tiny home feel smaller than when trying to live in it while ill.  And being sick without getting your companion sick, in 60 square feet, is about as unlikely as a plane taking off backwards.  It’s one thing for me to be sick but if Mark goes down, everything is going to get exponentially more difficult.  He’s the captain of this ship, the foreman of this operation.  This lifestyle is very hands on, laying around for days on end is not an option. These are the thoughts racing through my head as I try to fall back to sleep.

In the morning I don’t feel terrible, there’s just a little scratch in my throat and I have zero energy.  I’m optimistic this won’t be so bad.  

We continue with our plan to pack up and leave the ranch and move to the East Cape, stopping in San Jose del Cabo along the way for groceries.  I hate saying goodbye to Clarence and Isabel and San Dionisio not knowing if we’ll ever return but I tell myself we will, it’s a waste of energy that I don’t have to dwell on the unknown.

San Jose del Cabo is one of the biggest cities in Baja and Mark and I are bracing ourselves for a stressful day.  Cities are such a necessary evil for us, we hate the pace and congestion and traffic, but we love the resources they provide that aren’t available anywhere else in Baja.  To our utter delight there’s a toll road that outlines the outer edge of the city with very little traffic that brings us directly to our destination, a store called Chedraui.  We’ve never been to a Chedraui but couldn’t ignore the glowing recommendation provided by a Canadian couple we’d just met at the ranch.  The moment we walk inside I’m filled with excitement, I can tell we’ve struck Baja gold.  After hours filling our cart with the biggest grocery haul of our trip so far, I decide that Chedraui is a cross between Walmart and Whole Foods.  It’s entirely worth the trip to the city.

Crossing from the west side of San Jose to the east is easier than anticipated and before we know it we’re on the East Cape road, well on our way to our next camp.  We stop for lunch at a restaurant overlooking the ocean where they’re serving BBQ and airing an NFL game.  The whole atmosphere couldn’t be more American except for the sports correspondents speaking in Spanish and the fact that no one seems to care all that much about the game.

A few kilometers further down the dusty East Cape road takes us to Nine Palms where we happily reconnect with Josh, Darci & Hannah.  The moment Mark pops the top on the camper I pass out in bed, easily ignoring our $250 worth of grocery bags filling every corner of the camper.  At dusk I wake and catch up with Josh and Darci only to be drawn right back to bed no less than two hours later.  I curl up with a headache facing the wall, hoping that if I breathe away from Mark he might stand a chance, and doze off hoping a 12 hour sleep will give my immune system the boost it needs to fight off whatever it is that’s trying to take me down.