By Logan Jenkins – San Diego Union Tribune
Rosarito Beach Fishing Pier
As you’ll see, I’m not alone in my self-imposed exile from Mexico, the bleating theme of last Monday’s column.
But my aging gringo ballad, freighted with nostalgia but spooked by narco-terror and congestion at the border, misses what’s verdad on the ground, many were quick to point out.
“You do not have to miss Mexico,” lectured Diane Kane of San Diego. “After years of living in and traveling to Baja, neither we nor any of our friends have any negative experiences to report. . . . In fact, we have had nothing but polite, friendly dealings with the locals.”
For a reality check, Kane prescribed a weekend at the Rosarito Beach Condo Hotel and a wine-tasting tour to renew this native son’s faith in what always seemed to be San Diego’s equal (if not better) geographic and cultural half.
Robert Gutierrez of Escondido sounded a similar theme.
“Both my family and I have so many wonderful memories that would never have occurred if I had allowed the warnings of people, whose only knowledge of Mexico is gained from newspapers and television, to have kept me on this side of the border.”
Gutierrez loves to tell the story of camping in Baja’s Catavina Desert when his wife got lost. A Mexican trucker saw her wandering on the road, gave her water and delivered her safely.
“Unfortunately, this type of story never makes it into the paper, but anyone who is a Baja regular knows it is not uncommon,” Gutierrez wrote. “Every adventure has an element of danger. That is what makes it so exciting. In this case, the danger is overblown.”
Fresh from an idyllic week on the beach south of San Quintin, Randy Hawley of San Diego advised me to stop thinking and just get behind the wheel.
“While the mess in TJ dominates the news, I implore you to cross the border, follow the road along the new Berlin Wall and hang a big left turn at La Playa. Ensenada is better than ever, and further south it’s still as it once was. Beautiful scenery, great food and gracious, generous people. Don’t do without what you obviously still love and enjoy.”
And in the other corner…
“Your column brought a tear to my eye remembering the good old days of going to a safe Mexico,” wrote Bob Cain of Kensington.
“A bunch of us would leave my office after work on Friday and head for Popotla, a funky little trailer park halfway between Rosarito and Ensenada where we would eat lobsters, grill steaks and drink tequila warmed by the pit fire. . . . No worries about kidnappings, drug lords, hijackings.”
Richard DiMatteo of San Diego was a regular Baja hand when he was shorter in the tooth, so to speak.
“I had a dentist in Rosarito who, believe it or not, infallibly used a tuning fork to find cavities rather than an X-ray machine. He owned the restaurant next door. Got a free margarita after each appointment.”
“Nowadays, you couldn’t pay me to go down there,” DiMatteo wrote.
Ken Coyle of Lakeside is similarly disinclined: “I really do miss being able to freely travel Baja and enjoy the wonderful people and its culture. But those damned drug cartels and their horrible criminally insane acts scare me to death. I won’t even entertain the thought of ever going south of the border again.”
A former bilingual teacher, Kristina Barnes of San Carlos, once traveled extensively in Mexico.
“My kids, who are now 10, 8 and 6, often wonder why we haven’t gone to Mexico. It remains the mysterious land they point out whenever we go to the beach. Mexico is close yet so far away for us. As a mom, I never want to endanger by children by venturing over the armor-plated border and into the world of crime.”
Barnes is booking a cruise next month to expose her kids to “the heart of Mexico,” far from the volatile border zone.
Tijuana is a deserted shadow of its old self, reported Dale Jennings, who divides his time between Mission Hills and Boulevard. Turistas are far and few between.
The big loser is San Diego, Jennings suggests.
“I think San Diego is like the dude in the (Jim) Croce song where he ‘looked like a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone.’ The pieces are Mexico.”
One of those glittering pieces, Bill Leonard of Coronado reminded me, used to be jai alai at the Fronton Palacio where he and friends enjoyed “watching a fast-paced (albeit probably fixed) sport while downing Cuba Libres.”
The Palacio closed as a jai alai venue in 1998. For Leonard, “Baja is a place now fondly remembered rather than experienced.”
“I miss Mexico, too,” confessed Gordon Johnson, a veteran newspaperman and fledgling mystery writer.
“And like you, I find excuses to stay away. Tell you the truth, it’s simply fear on my part. I have a dead acquaintance who went across and got shot execution-style. Others come back with horror stories. I’ll order my Negra Modelo and drink under a palm in O’side.”
Union-Tribune
Logan Jenkins: (760) 737-7555
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