Mountains and Cowboys

Local Baja California Sur cacti varieties

We made our trek to the mountains in a half day trip and it was a great time.  Seeing the cacti and the long stretches of sun-bleached rocky land reminded me painfully of my summers spent mapping parts of Dillon, Montana for my geology field camps.  We had to hit the brakes a few times when we would come around a curve and see cows grazing a few inches from the road.  There are no barriers or railings of any type on these cliff roads and Graham was astounded by the dozens of crosses and memorials we saw along the side of the road.  We had planned a trip to Miraflores which was only 10km or so from some natural hot springs in the Sierra de la Laguna mountains.  Because our car rental agreement states that we may not take our car off road, and because the reviews of the "roads" to the hot springs seemed a little sketchy we decided to waive the hot springs visit.  I was pretty bummed about that but I don't think a toddler would have allowed me time in the hot spring anyhow.
We made it into Miraflores with a sleeping kid in the backseat.  We got out to stretch our legs a bit and Sebastian woke up and decided to join us outside.  It was a hot day and the local ladies of this village were walking around in flowing skirts, with flowers in their hair, and carrying umbrellas.  We walked across the street and played on the steps of an empty plaza that looked as though it was used for festivities for the town's patron saint the Virgin of Guadalupe.  In fact, every single tiny house had a shrine for the Virgin Mary, or the Lady of Guadalupe, standing at the entrance to their house.  I was amazed that so many of these homes were basically shacks or perhaps simple cinder block cubes, but that the owners of these houses had put so much care and money into their beautiful shrines even going as far as purchasing paint and decorations to adorn them.  While we stretched our legs in the plaza a bit I noticed that a half-dozen ladies with umbrellas stood at the edge of the square and had a morning chit-chat session.
We left Miraflores and decided to head back home and try to make it in time for lunch.  On our way back we ran into hundreds and hundreds of cowboys (both male and female) on horseback riding along the shoulder of the road.  This caused a traffic jam and raised so many unanswered questions for us.  Where were these cowboys going?  I thought they were hired by the local ranchers to round up the cattle we had seen but why were there hundreds upon hundreds of them?  Also, they were dressed rather nicely in starched button-down shirts and spiffy cowboy hats, also none of them had packs attached to their saddles so they could not have been going out for long.  They were not decorated to the point of a horse-show though, and we were in the middle of nowhere at this point with no buildings or arenas in sight.  I told Graham I wanted to google it and try to figure out what was going on but he reminded me that there would be nothing online about this event.

Also this past weekend my husband and I were lucky enough to hire a babysitter for 3 hours and have a nice dinner together at 7 Seas in San Jose del Cabo.  After a month of just the toddler and myself for every moment this was grand.  When I am back in MN my son frequently has time at play groups, with family, and at various activities we attend and we have missed all of those.  When we come back next winter I will look for some sort of preschool that he will hopefully be able to attend for the month or two.  While my husband and I had dinner at 7 Seas watching whales and surfers we were able to eat quietly and uninterrupted at a nice slow pace, and in one sitting!  These simple pleasures really make the whole eating deal a much nicer process.
I can't believe we are now on day 28 of our adventure and preparing to come back home.  Luckily we have still managed to work and release apps while we were here and had a banner day yesterday with the amount of downloads of Rate this Pic.  Also my husband's newest learning app for children with another business partner is being well received in Asia and the press release just went out this morning. I will plan to blog on that soon because it deserves it's own entry.  Thanks for reading!