Here am i

11/17/12

Rancho San Francisco

Rancho San Fransisco is a place like so many others here. It is a small community made up of make shift dwellings, built on the "Ranchero's" land, by the field workers. Diseased skinny dogs wander through the dirt sniffing for morsels of sustenance, clothes dry strung across string and stick fences, the air smells of cooking fires and dust. Barefoot children in ill fitting, ragged clothing usually come running as the van drives slowly down the rows of homes giving 2 quick honks. The children know what those honks mean. Every Friday afternoon a friend of ours, a 24 year old young woman, arrives with food, hugs, and prizes for Bible verses learned that week. We had the privilege of joining her on her visit. We had visited Rancho San Fransisco last December and participated in a little Christmas drama and pinata fiesta so many of the faces were familiar.

As we drove up to the little church, a construction of plywood and plastic, we wondered where all the children were. Then off in the distance we spotted them practicing for their Revolution day parade. Instead of the little Bible class our friend usually does with the children, we decided to just be spectators.

This little rag tag group of kids were all thrilled to be a part of something bigger than themselves as they paraded their national pride. This is such a fun holiday here...I love the costumes.

The littlest ones were wearing the typical revolutionary costumes and doing their little dance.

Others did acrobatics and marching.

It was ridiculously cute.

The kids here in Mexico wear uniforms to school but often in the "rancho" schools where the poorest children attend they are more relaxed about the uniform rules.

The blue building is a school that a group came and built a few years ago.

Once the children headed back to the school we returned to the church to start setting up the supper. We started with cups of milk with a peanut butter coated spoon in each...then when they finished that we had hot homemade soup to fill their cup with.

I left the two youngest children home with Nathanael but brought Aili and Roman along. They were great little helpers filling up the cups, scooping peanut butter, and gathering garbage.

Our friend who will soon be returning home to California after three years spent serving and loving the people here in Baja. This young lady has a huge heart and the kids at the Rancho obviously adore her. It's more than just a come and go, pass out stuff and leave outreach ministry. This woman, and others who come with her, build relationships with the children and the families here. Like little rays of light and warmth in a hard cold place.

A little one enjoying a spoonful of cacahuate (peanut butter)

Once we began to serve up the soup (in the big white jug) I didn't have time for snapping pictures. Aili did snag the camera and take a few though. It was a lot of fun and thankfully we had plenty to go around and I was able to give the kids lots of refills.

Adventure Day

We woke up with nothing much to do so we decided to clean up breakfast and just go for a drive. Little did I know when we piled into the van that we wouldn't be back until supper time, and came close to not coming back that night at all. I figured we'd be gone a couple hours at the most packed accordingly (nothing).

We decided to start driving south and just see some sights. We had heard about the "Old Mill" restaurant out in the middle of nowhere south of San Quintin so that was our first stop. After miles and miles of jaw rattling wash board Nathanael let some air out of the tires which made a huge difference. As you can see, he has his number one fan helping him.

The Baja is funny because you can be travelling for miles in what seems like utter wilderness and then off the beaten path somewhere is some magnificent structure or fancy restaurant. There are so many little treasures to discover.

Enjoying the sights at Bahia San Quintin. The boys wearing their new "1000 miles" shirts.

Someone catching his lunch with some string and a beer bottle.

....and look a special kind of rat. How sweet.

After our visit to the "Old Mill" we decided to keep driving south.

This week was the Baja 1000 race which happened to be running the whole way down the Baja (down to La Paz)...most of it runs down the other side of the peninsula. The guys went up to Ensenada to see the vehicles entering the race and be a part of the kick off but we would have had to travel quite a bit further to make it over to see the races. We probably didn't pick the best day to drive down the main Baja highway though since all the support vehicles were racing their way down the highway on the west side of the Baja to meet up with their drivers bombing down the trails and dirt roads on the east side. The only highway down the peninsula was really busy. The funny thing was when we drove through little towns kids would come running out onto the highway holding cardboard signs "Stickers". The racers and support vehicles would pass out big fancy sponsor stickers (Roman has a bag full of them from his day in Ensenada). The kids thought our big van driven by gringos was part of the Baja 1000 and I kind of wished I had some pretty little "hello kitty" or princess stickers to toss out just to mess with them. I'm sick like that. Those kids were pretty gutsy to stand out in the middle of the main highway flagging down vehicles.

Ever since the Baja race of '09 when Roman hung out with Eric Kudla's race team he's been itching to meet his hero again. Ensenada was crazy and crowded and they didn't see his race team there...but as luck would have it they passed us on the highway as we were out sight seeing.

We stopped for lunch at El Rosario at the famous Mama Espenosa's restaurant. We arrived there along with a bunch of race teams, which is likely why it took a long time to get our food. The food was totally worth the wait though. The best Nopale (cactus) omelete I've ever had. It seems that this race is good for the economy down here...with all the gasolina and tacos purchased alone.

While we were eating our lunch the idea was jokingly presented that we keep driving down to Bahia de los Angeles the town that the race and the main highway meet up again and watch the race. We had spent a couple days down there in 2010 so it didn't seem like a bad idea...especially if we could find a room at Los Vientos motel again. It seemed kind of crazy to leave for a little morning outing with no supplies or extra clothes along, and then keep driving in hopes we'd find a hotel somewhere. After a few minutes of contemplating I decided it could be fun, or at least interesting, to just keep driving south..but in end concern that Bahia would be packed full with no vacancy or they'd charge us a crazy inflated price if we did find a place to stay for the night, won out over our spontaneous sense of adventure. That and a grumpy, over tired, partially potty trained two year old kind of dampened our sense of adventure. We decided to head back north and go check out the seal caves instead.

This took us quite far off the beaten path.

The sandy drop to your death roads were nerve wracking.

Although not as terrifying as the actual seal caves. We had been hear before back in 2010 but time had erased the memory of how ridiculously dangerous the place is. I was a neurotic hyper vigilant nut case the whole time. It's crazy...nothing is roped off or fenced or marked....just sand and then cliffs and giant holes. It super fun place to take children. I don't have "watch my children plummet to their deaths" on my bucket list and I wasn't about to add it to my life experience. I have very little faith in my children's observation and general awareness skills...they are skippy, spazzy, and often oblivious to their surroundings. When you combine those traits with cliffs...it was enough to make me stroke. Thankfully they were good at staying next to us, despite my visions of them skipping off to their watery graves.