We drive north out of Cabo San Lucas on the road to Todos Santos, just past the new CCC supermarket and Soriana – the Cabo San Lucas equivalent to Kmart - and hang a sharp u-turn in front of the American-sized shopping center. Matt guns our little rental car and amid angry horns honking, crosses two rows of oncoming traffic, and veers into a dusty parking lot filled with old Toyota pickup trucks, American made minivans, and micro-cars not so different than our rental cookie-sheet on wheels. There are no lines on the postage-stamp sized dirt parking lot, but Matt notices a car leaving what appears to be a parking space, and guns the engine again to grab the lone spot before another car claims it.

It is Wednesday at Los Michoacanos, and even though the lunch hour is over, all but a few of the tables in the open-air restaurant are full and a line of people 6 or 8 deep waits in the “To Go� line for tacos. We stand at the entrance and watch as half a dozen wait staff, dressed in jeans and bright red t-shirts emblazoned with cartoon pigs gathered around a large cooking pot, run from table to table, to the open kitchen, to a work station where a woman stands and cooks tortillas, back to the customer. They run the maze of tables over and over again, bringing soda in a can, bottles of Mexican beer, steaming plates of carnitas filled tacos, to the families and locals who sit at the plastic covered tables in white plastic chairs.

We find an empty table near the front of the restaurant and almost immediately, a waiter somewhere in his mid-20s, brings a carousel of traditional salsa, avocado salsa (not guacamole, but a thinner, pale green, almost milky sauce), and chunky pickled peppers and carrots. He takes our drink order and returns a few minutes later with a cold can of soda for me and a slushy bottle of beer for Matt.

We give our order of carnitas tacos to the waiter, and from our vantage point in the center of the restaurant, watch as he takes our order to the man behind the long counter who yields a cleaver as effortlessly as an executive does a pen.

The man behind the counter stands while he works, fetching large chunks of fried pork from a glass display-warming case that holds freshly cooked meat. He drops the ham-sized pieces on a well-worn hard plastic cutting board and with blurring speed, chops the pork into bite-sized carnitas. He picks up a handful of the shredded meat and drops it into a metal scale, sometimes adding a few more pieces to the scale, other times, taking back a few shreds before scooping the meat onto a plastic-lined piece of parchment and wrapping the package expertly. Every few minutes, the cashier handling the “To-Go� orders walks to the man, retrieves a package of carnitas, and exchanges it for a few hundred pesos with a waiting customer.

But we have decided to eat at the restaurant and after bringing bowls of bean soup to our table, the young waiter returns to a table a few feet from our table and waits while a woman kneads a large round of dough across a concave stone. She pulls golf-ball sized pieces of the white cornmeal into her greased hands, smooths and rounds it until it is nearly a perfect sphere, then drops it onto the base of a metal press and brings the top of the press down quickly, flattening the ball into a 6-inch round disk no more than an eighth of an inch high. She tosses cooked tortillas into small cloth-lined baskets and returns to rolling the dough over and over.

The waiter picks up a basket full of tortillas, places three or four on each plate, and takes the plates to the man behind the counter, who drops a few ounces of shredded carnita meat on each tortilla. The waiter sprinkles the tacos with chopped onions and cilantro and within 3 or 4 minutes of placing our order, our steaming plates of carnitas tacos arrive.

Los Michoacanos serves nothing but carnitas tacos and bean soup; no rice, beef, chicken, fish or shrimp. No enchiladas, taco salads, burritos, or dessert. No chips. Nothing I am used to in California except for the carnitas. Even the beans are different.

“They put a lot of faith in these carnitas,� I tell my husband. He shrugs his shoulders as he scoops four different types of salsa on his tacos. I don’t understand how he can taste the food under all that salsa.

I inspect my taco before taking the first bite, looking carefully for anything that shouldn’t be in the meat, but find nothing suspicious. I drizzle a spoonful of avocado salsa over the meat and lean in to take a bite.

I realize, almost instantly, that there is no need to serve anything at Los Michoacanos but carnitas.

We return to Los Michoacanos the following Sunday and are treated to live music – three men dressed in matching jeans, long sleeved shirts and cowboy hats who sing and dance in choreographed unison. We arrive just before 3 pm to mostly empty tables but less than 30 minutes later, every table in the restaurant is filled with families in Sunday-clothes, just in time for the rich-Spanish music to fill the open-air restaurant. We eat several tacos each and then order one or two more and extra tortillas. The woman making the tortillas smiles when we watch her fill our order.

We make one last trek north out of town, just past the Soriana, loop a quick turn against traffic, on the Wednesday before we go home. It is late in the afternoon, early in the evening just after the sun goes down, and as we pull into the little parking lot, we realize we have made an error arriving so late on 2-for-1 Wednesday at Los Michoacanos.

Although the restaurant has no doors or windows, its lights are dimmed and the kitchen is empty and we realize it is closed, sold out of food for the day. We have been told there is no need to lock doors here even though it is in the barrio, but we have not witnessed the trust that exists, the unwritten respect here for local people and businesses, until now. It is something that cannot be legislated. We stay in the car and watch as a potential customer walks through the darkened dining room and checks behind the counter for an employee, then heads back to her car.

We could stop at Hard Rock Café on the way back to the condo, or pick up food to go at McDonald’s or Domino’s Pizza, but we decide to make no stops at all. There are still a few tortillas left over from our excursion on Sunday and since it’s our last night, we decide to clean out the refrigerator. Maybe we’ll use the tortillas and cook some quesadillas on the grill.

Maybe we’ll just heat the tortillas and dip them good salsa.

I stand at the outdoor kitchen by the pool and heat the tortillas until they soften and darken against the heated bars of the grill. I slide a tortilla off the grill and feel the heat of the fire on my palms, feel the woman’s hands, the ridges of the press embedded on the dough. I place sliced pieces of soft Mexican cheese on half of each tortilla and remember the woman who kneaded the dough against the dark stone, rolled the ball of dough in her palms, flattened each into a disk and cooked it just before it came to my plate.

I imagine the people she must have fed, standing behind a table in the middle of a restaurant in the middle of the barrio in Cabo San Lucas.

http://www.losmichoacanos.com/

I cannot sleep, or rather, my body believes that I have had enough sleep, this morning at 5:23. Only six hours, not really enough. But when I close my eyes against the warm night air in my bedroom, my mind swims and my eyelids flutter. I am awake. 5:28 am. I have been like this since coming to Cabo a week ago. Maybe it’s the sound of the fountain outside my front door; maybe I can hear the surf of the Sea of Cortez a few hundred yards away, calling me, beckoning me back to her shores. The sun is still tucked deep behind the horizon and I know it will be another hour and a half before it peaks over the water’s edge and starts the final few days of our vacation.

This morning, I will return to the beach just after sunrise when the tide is at its highest and the water will feel most warm. Air bubbles on the surface of the glistening sand will reveal where sand crabs have dug into the shore after each wave recedes. Maybe there will be turtles hatching on the beach.

This morning, I will take my snorkeling gear: mask, snorkel, fins.

I will wade into the sandy side of the crescent beach and watch as the fish – only a few feet from the water’s edge – swarm around my legs, flick lightly at my knees. I will stay very still and let the puffer fish swim gently by.

* * *
I make my way down the cobbled road from our condo to the abandoned gully that leads to the beach. Rocks poke from the sandy soil and a wide trench runs the length of the gully, a path for the occasional rain water that drenches the peninsula when tropical storms make their way this far north. I step gently, careful not to stumble into a hole or on a rock.

“Buenos dias,� he calls to me, and waves even though I am only a few feet away.

“Hola, Buenos dias,� I reply, and together we walk the last few yards to the water’s edge on the finest sand on the beach.

“Its beautiful,� I say when we get close enough to the water so that each wave just touches the tips of our toes.

“Yes,� the man says, “beautiful. Even on cloudy days.�

I search the sky overhead and see patches of sun trying to break through the blanket of clouds that has kept the tourists from the beach since yesterday morning.

Silently, we drop our bags of fins, snorkels, and towels on nearby rocks, strip off shirts to reveal bathing suits and trunks, grab our masks and snorkels, and walk into the 80-degree water of the Sea of Cortez.

The man and I snorkel together, but separate, for 15 minutes or so until we hear a women, who stands at the edge of the water, yell to the man, “Pepe! Where’s the sun?� His masked face pops from the water a few feet from me and he laughs at her as she wraps her arms around her chest to get warm.

Pepe laughs and yells to her, “Monika! Come in, the water’s caliente!�

She laughs richly and dives into the deep pool of the small bay; easily swims the 10 yards to Pepe.

A few minutes later, an older Mexican gentleman yells from the shore “Nothing is better than this!� when he first glimpses the group of us. He joins Monika, Pepe and I in the water and even though he screams “Frio!� – cold – before he dives in, he teases Manuel, the last person of the group to join us a few minutes later, when the younger man stands on the shore and pretends to shiver on the warm but cloudy morning.

Manuel, a man younger than the others in the group by at least 20 years but older than me by a few, walks the beach several times before he makes a running leap at the water, his feet splashing and kicking up sand until finally, he falls face first into the surf. “He does this every morning,� Monika laughs as Manuel surfaces nearby.

“You do this every morning?� I ask Monika. But I can already tell the group has done this very same thing, swimming and snorkeling, laughing together, each morning for many mornings. I am the interloper, but they welcome me with open arms and inquire about my presence on the beach, in Cabo. Where am I from, how long am I in Mexico, is this my first day on the beach, they want to know. I am from Chico, I say, and I’m here for 10 days, and I’ve been to the beach before, but never like this, at 7 in the morning, swimming with the fishes.

Monika smiles when she hears I am from Chico, “My son went there and I’m from just outside of San Francisco,� she tells me in a light accent I can’t quite place. Maybe Germany, maybe The Netherlands, maybe I just imagined it.

She introduces the men in the group, “That’s Rafa,� she says and points to the balding, genial man who laughs loudly and loves the water. “And that’s Manuel, he owns the restaurant up on the hill. He’s got the best lobster,� Monika smiles. “And that’s Pepe, but we call him ‘The Godfather’ because he’s the guardian of the beach,� Monika laughs again as if she’s made a joke, but deep down, I think she believes what she has said.

“Yes,� Rafa says, “if you want to swim here, you have to ask The Godfather.� Rafa laughs at his own words and Pepe smiles too, but drops his head and searches the surface of the water, his cheeks blushed with color.

Rafa (above)

Julie (Pepe's wife), Pepe, and Monika

“I must have snuck in under his radar,� I wink at The Godfather, and they all laugh.

“And you know Kahlua,� Monika says, and points to the female brindle lab who has walked on this beach more than anyone and now searches the edge of the rocks for fist-sized crabs. When she and Manuel first arrived, she watched him walk away from her on the beach, followed him with her eyes as she walked on the 30-foot outcropping of rocks. Finally, the large dog jumped in, never hesitating, and swam to the middle of the beach, closer to Manuel. When her master walked back toward her, she trotted along the edge of the water until she found the rocks again and resumed her hunt for the elusive crab.

Now, Kahlua paces up and down the rock outcropping, following as Manuel and the others race each other to the middle of the bay, throw chum to the fish, share the most recent stories of grandchildren, the price listed of a nearby house for sale. They are friends, I can tell, even though they are all of different ethnicities, ages, and nationalities. They share the water, the fish swimming in the bay, the feel of the sand between their toes.

I swim farther out into the bay, just to the edge of the rock outcropping, don my mask, slip the snorkel between my lips, dip my face into the salty sea. There goes a neon blue angel fish, a school of shiny silver fish.

A few minutes later, my face buried deep in the water, mask protecting my eyes, snorkel doing its job, I startle at a set of brindle legs as they paddle next to my ear, headed back to shore. I watch as the dog heads to her master.

I dip my head again and lay very still on top of the water, letting the waves carry my body to and fro, feel the pull of the endless tide. There’s a spiny sea urchin, and look, is that abalone on that rock? And if I lay very still and wait, just wait, he will come. There he is. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the brown, spotted puffer fish as he swims gently by.

And for a while, I share the taste of salt in the sea, the rush of the giant waves in my ear, the perfectly white sand under my feet, the whales migrating south for the winter just a few hundred yards off shore.

And for a while, we are one. We are one. We are one.

We arrive at Los Cabos International airport early in the afternoon. The flight from San Francisco - just over three hours – transported us from a rainy and cold winter morning to a sunny, 85-degree afternoon. The flight is nearly empty – Matt and I have an entire row of seats to ourselves and so when we approach the small airport a few miles inland of the Sea of Cortez, I scoot to the window seat and raise the plastic window shade of the airplane window and watch as we descend from 30,000 feet into the barren Baja desert.

Before the road was completed, very few inhabitants called southern Baja home; soon after, the region was granted statehood and ten years later, Americans began to converge on the isolated area. Today, Cabo San Lucas is home to 40,000 people, most of who are transplants (or seasonal American and Canadian residents) from mainland Mexico who followed the tourist trail to the peninsula in search of jobs and a better life.

The first stop we make in Cabo San Lucas- after we check into our condo and drop off our luggage- is the Costco two miles from our condo. In Costco, we scan the much-familiar warehouse aisles and are transported almost immediately back to America when we see the layout of the store is nearly identical to that of the Costco in our own town.

We push our oversized cart between stacks of high-definition televisions, are tempted by the smell of muffins in the bakery, and then, are reminded, by the young woman giving samples of tequila, that we are still in Mexico. After picking up thinly sliced steak for fajitas, soft Mexican cheese (a local specialty), and salad fixings, we add a 36-pack of bottled water to our shopping cart. Even though purified water is delivered once a week to the condo, we are skeptical of the term “purified� and wonder just how clean the water can be. I wonder, is there anyone in Mexico who actually regulates distributors of “purified� water?

It takes a few days to get over my fear of the large “purified� bottle of water in the condo but after using it to wash vegetables and brush my teeth (and not getting sick), I give in and pour myself a glass of water from the 5-gallon jug. It is then that I start to question where the water in Cabo comes from.

There are no rivers near Cabo San Lucas and because this is a desert, ground water is rare; the nearest source of groundwater, spring fed from the small mountain range that rises in the middle of the peninsula, is 30 miles away in San Jose Del Cabo. But even the relatively clean water that comes from the mountain is not enough to feed the 40,000 people in Cabo and the ever growing tourist population along the coast. Every few days, residents of Cabo’s impoverished barrio run out of water.

In Cabo, the answer to the water shortage problem has come from the ocean that surrounds the peninsula. Small desalination plants have existed in Cabo for several years now; the technology has gotten much less expensive in the past decade so large resorts and private residents can afford to buy the equipment needed to remove the salt from the sea water. A few months ago, a large desalination plant, designed to meet the water needs of all the residents in Cabo, began operation just outside the city.

The desalination plant has come as sweet salvation for the residents of Cabo San Lucas.

But I wonder how long the salvation can last. And at what price.

There is a reason that thirty years ago, Cabo San Lucas was all but desert with few inhabitants; it is naturally uninhabitable and unable to environmentally support a large number of people. But like so many other places on Earth, we built roads to transport people and goods, water and fuel where the Earth does not want us. Usually, those places are the most vulnerable; their ecosystems are fragile for some reason and the gentle balance of nature can easily shift to a dangerous tide.

Build a high-rise hotel close to a beach which is the only place a specific type of turtle hatch their eggs, and you lose the entire species. And with it, any other plant or animal that relied on that turtle.

Build a desalination plant and destroy the kelp fields, the coral reefs, and kill the fish in the area because of the high concentration of by product dumped back into the ocean.

I am reminded of Kevin Costner’s Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come,� and wonder, if others know that there is water, if they build more desalination plants, will more people come? Will more high-rises be built? Will the precious ecosystem of Baja be able to tolerate the stampede?

I wonder, when will it stop? When we lose one turtle? Or a thousand? When will we say, “enough�?

I walked around our building, past the family swimming pool, down the sandy hill that curves through palm trees, and out through the gate just beyond the complex’s sewage treatment pool. The construction workers had not yet arrived to begin a new day hammering heavy nails and pouring concrete into the 3 or 4 mansions being built just outside our gates so I turned left toward the cliffs where the new houses will sit and made my way to the end of the continent, and waited for the sun to rise over the Sea of Cortez.

I wonder where the men come from; are they the random men who stand on the street corners outside of Cabo Bello and downtown Cabo San Lucas, hoping for construction foremen to pick them for the day’s work? Or are they permanent workers, who earn a decent, living wage and know they will have work again tomorrow.

Wood is scarce in this part of the world; in fact, we have seen no “real� trees in Baja except for the giant palms that seem to grow everywhere down here. Scrub bushes and many low, drought resistant trees pepper the barren desert around Los Cabos (as the entire tip of Baja is called), but no real trees that would make for good building material. Instead, the construction workers that I watch as the sun rises mix concrete in small, revolving drums and pour it expertly into the forms that will build the houses on the hill above Calinda Beach.

There is a very small “middle class� in Cabo San Lucas; there are the many who live in the barrio on the north side of town (see Zona Residencia), who construct their homes themselves with whatever scraps they happen on over time and then there are the wealthy, who construct homes like the mansions that overlook Calinda Beach. In between the two extremes, very few people live on the west side of Cabo San Lucas, in rundown, but at least livable apartments.

I watch the men as they work on the mansions and occasionally, one man notices me staring and raises his hand briefly in greeting. I make my way back up the stonewall to the road and walk toward the construction crews at the nearest mansions, just across the street from each other.

The men watch me approach with curiosity; the camera in my right hand that dangles from a thin cord and loops around my wrist and my designer sunglasses give me away as a tourist, probably American, but I think that since I have been watching them so intently, they are puzzled.

“Buenos dias,� I say softly as I pass two men in jeans, short sleeve shirts, and light work boots. Their shovels rest momentarily and in unison, they nod their heads slightly, the brims of their baseball caps covering their faces and reply, “Hola, Buenos dias.�

I move on and although I feel the focused gaze of each man on the construction sites, I open my camera and begin taking pictures. As I round the corner of the concrete structure closest to the edge of the cliff, an older man with a crumpled cowboy hat and barely as tall as his shovel, startles me. I instinctively say, “Buenos dias,� and he smiles at me like he’s been waiting for me all morning. He nods deeply and I raise my camera, “Por favor?� I ask and when he nods again and poses for me, I snap his picture. I smile and say, “gracias,� and he beams again.

I spend nearly an hour watching the men work, taking pictures of the concrete monoliths that will have million dollar views of the Sea of Cortez, sitting on the rock wall. I watch as a man runs with his dog on the beach below. Finally, with the sun already high overhead and the day warming, I cross the empty patch of dirt from the edge of the cliff, back to the construction sites, and walk through the men again. The foreman, a burly man driving a new pickup with the name of his company stenciled on the passenger door, glares at me as I raise my camera and take one last shot of the house his men are building. The men turn away from me and focus on their shovels, pickaxes and wheel barrels with studied concentration and the thought, ‘there is something the foreman doesn’t want me to see’, passes through my brain, but I let it go and continue up the road, taking pictures of other completed mansions.

Later, as the sun goes down, I watch the men pack into the small pickup truck, ride away into the night and I wonder where they are going, where home is for them. I wonder, will what they’ve been paid today be enough to put dinner on the table for their families tonight? I wonder, do they have dreams of living in the houses they build? Do they know that most likely, they will never be able to afford one of the houses on the hill? I wonder, what are their dreams? What are their realities? What makes them different from me? And I realize, nothing.

One of the residents in our condo complex mentioned to me that there was only one paved road in Cabo San Lucas 20 years ago, but its difficult to believe if you stay on or around the “Tourist Corridor�, as the main resort area of Cabo is called. The nearly 20 miles of high rise condominiums, hotels, and acres of perfectly manicured golf courses that stand today make it difficult to conjure a Cabo any other way.

But after staying in the “Tourist Corridor� the first few days, we finally made it to downtown Cabo San Lucas yesterday and I realized, as we were driving through the city – can it be a city if most of the roads are poorly maintained dirt or ancient cobblestone?- that the sociologist in me never sleeps.

At the light, a man in his late 40’s or 50’s approaches our car and all of the other cars waiting to turn left. He carries a small box of what look like granola or energy bars and in Spanish, offers up the bars for purchase. He shoves the box toward my husband’s window but before the man can get close to the car, Matt raises his hand dismissively and says firmly, “No, gracias, por favor,� and the man moves to the next car in line. But he is not the first, nor is he the last person who tries to sell us some novelty item as we wait for a stoplight to change.

We spot a truck several cars ahead of us loaded with 15 or 20 men standing in its bed; the ones on the edge with a railing to hold onto as the truck speeds down the highway, those in the middle with nothing but the shirts of men around them to hold if the truck brakes suddenly or, God forbid, crashes.

Although this is common practice in Cabo, from what we have seen, this is the first truck so heavily loaded. We follow the truck for several miles and reach speeds of 50 or 60 miles an hour, and still, the men stand effortlessly and fearless, their daily commute commonplace. I cringe at each light and unconsciously make sure my seatbelt is fastened tightly when the truck changes lanes rapidly, praying the men make it home to their families.

The signs on the highway that lead to the grocery store attempt to guide us in the direction those who run this country want tourists to travel and not travel: Zona Comercial, Zona Tourista and Zona Residencia. Avenue Constitution is the border between the zones and as we follow the men packed into the truck on their commute home, we disregard the “Zona Tourista� and instead, follow the road north and skirt around the “Zona Residencia� to the store and a little restaurant across the street that serves the best carnitas on the tip of Baja. We have made the trip several times before, but at rush hour, the drive is slower and for the first time, we pay attention to the “Zona Residencia�.

As we sit in nearly stopped rush hour traffic, we watch cars and trucks veer off Avenue Constitution at each cross street we come to and enter Zona Residencia.

The Zona Residencia, the only residential area I have seen in Cabo but I am sure there are others, begins just to the north of the Avenue Constitution. It is probably 5 miles wide and extends many miles into the foothills of the nearby mountains, all one story wooden shacks with no grass, no sidewalks, no pavement on the streets, and a top each house, a 250-gallon water reservoir. Utility poles run the length of the area, but I wonder at the reliability of the electricity or telephone lines that travel between each pole.

I have seen similar shacks and neighborhoods other places: Tijuana, Juarez, a few isolated streets in California. But the sheer scope of the poverty we see as the cars exit Avenue Constitution into the Zona Residencia slows my thoughts, makes me realize I will never be able to understand what it is really like to live in poverty.

I have heard people in the States say, “They choose to live like that,� or “They don’t know any better,� but seeing the Zona Residencia in north Cabo, I understand that those people have never seen this. Even if they do see it, they will never understand the depth of desperation the people who live in the Zona face each day.

I am one of those people; I do not understand.

I will never be forced to ride in the back of an overcrowded truck, hold on for dear life, just to get back and forth to work. I will never be forced to stand on a street corner at rush hour and offer granola bars or plastic chicken eggs with pop-up chicks to passing cars. I will never, unless it’s by choice, live on an unpaved street. I will never run out of water and not be able to drink from the tap. I will work, yes, but never as hard or as long as those people I saw in Cabo. I may have times when money is tight, but my children will always have Christmas presents and birthday parties.

We didn’t make it to the grocery store that Friday night; whatever we needed, we realized we could do without until another day. We didn’t go out to dinner. Instead, we drove back to the condo, ate leftovers, again.

We were lucky; we are lucky. We don’t understand.

This morning, while sitting at one of the tables by the pool visiting with a resident of the complex, I noticed Palm fronds falling from the canopy of green above me. I followed the “thwup, thwup, thwup� of a heavy tool beating in the air to the cascade of fronds falling to the sandy soil below and finally, looked up into the tree from which they fell.

A ladder, probably 20-feet tall, rested against the narrow trunk of a tall Palm and atop it, a thin, grizzled man in cowboy boots, blue jeans, a colorful long sleeved shirt, and baseball cap, stood. He held a 12-inch long machete in his oversized hands and swiftly, with precision that comes only from years of repetition, he cut through the stalk of each of the fronds attached to the statuesque tree, leaving only a few tall fronds in the very center of the crown.

“Trabajo,� he said to me. I smiled again and with my eyes, followed his pointing finger to the top of the tree.

I pointed to my camera and in English said, “May I?�

“Si�, he nodded his head and stood beside his ladder, leaned into the tree and posed for a picture.

“Gracias,� I said, and although my high school Spanish class was nearly twenty years ago and I have forgotten almost everything Mr. Perez taught me, I asked, “Como te llamas?� What is your name?

“Carlos,� the grizzled man said to me.

“Carlos,� I repeated. He smiled his big smile again and waited for me to tell him my name. “me llamo Mariana,� I replied, and I wondered where the sentence came from. It popped into my head as random as a star shooting through the night sky.

“Mariana,� he repeated and nodded his head in confirmation.

Carlos stuffed the handle of the machete into the waistband of the back of his jeans and took hold of the ladder, grabbing both sides of the metal contraption with his gnarled hands and hoisting it to the next tree.

I watched as he climbed the 25-foot Palm, the heels of his cowboy boots catching each rung of the ladder on his way. Carlos stopped every few feet and smiled down at me and on cue, I raised my camera over and over to snap his photo. Finally, at the top, he turned his attention from my camera and focused his hands on the regal crown of the giant Palm.

He worked with determination on the foot-long ball of bark that had formed at the base of the crown, peeling away layers of brown husk like the layers of an onion. He worked until the trunk was smooth, the husk discarded to the ground below, the space where the ball had been was nearly flat.

The machete suddenly appeared in his large, chocolate hands and he stopped once more to look down at me, ‘Are you watching?’ He seemed to say. I raised my camera and snapped the photo just as he dropped the machete on the tender flesh of the green stalk. He held the severed frond in one hand and the machete in the other, balancing high on the ladder as he posed for a photo. “Bueno!� I called up to him. He laughed and let the frond fall to the ground.

Carlos spent the next few minutes chopping away at the fronds, letting each fall the way the first had, until brown husk and Palm fronds littered the walkway and shrubs below. Finally, he stuffed the handle of the machete into his waistband again and descended the ladder. When he was planted on the ground, I called to him, “Carlos! Gracias!� and gave my best smile to let him know I appreciated his time. He abandoned his ladder and walked toward me, pointing at the camera in my hands.

“See, see?� he asked, and pointed to himself.

“You want to see the photos?� I asked, and he nodded and smiled. He leaned over my shoulder to see the tiny image of himself in the tree, holding the machete, dropping the fronds. “I’m going to write a story,� I told him, “escribe story,� and I pantomimed writing with a pen and paper.

“Si, story,� he repeated.

“Carlos, Cabo San Lucas?� I asked Carlos if he lived in Cabo San Lucas.

“Todos Santos,� he replied. My husband and I had traveled to the tiny artist’s village a few days earlier. The village hung over a bluff on the Pacific Ocean, perched somewhere between modernity and an ancient Mexican village.

“Oh, beautiful!� I said to him. He nodded his head and agreed with me, “beautiful�.

I had learned “how many, how much?� while shopping a few days before and asked Carlos, “Cuantos anos?� How old are you?

“Cuarenta nueve,� he replied.

“Forty-nine?� I confirm.

“Si, forty-nine anos,� he replied.

Carlos must think I am more learned than I am, for he breaks into rapid, nearly unintelligible to me, Spanish and I make my mind quicken to keep up with his tongue. I pick out a few words, but nothing that will make a sentence and I realize that my education, although good, was wasted due to my constant residence in the United States. When it comes to other cultures and languages, I am nearly bankrupt.

But I nodded my head and parroted a few of the words Carlos has spoken to tell him that some of what he said got through, that I was paying attention, that I will remember. He smiled and enveloped my hand in his surprisingly soft grasp, shaking it warmly for several seconds.

“Gracias, Carlos, Gracias,� I said and smiled.

“Gracias, senora,� he said, and dropped my hand. It was replaced almost immediately by the machete and as I walked away, he moved his ladder to a new Palm, climbed the giant tree to its top, and went to work, once again.

I’ve been in Mexico- Cabo San Lucas, which is a little resort town at the very tip of Baja California- for less than three days now. We arrived on Tuesday afternoon at the international airport 30 miles away and spent the first afternoon/evening grocery shopping, cooking dinner, and swimming in the heated pool.

On our first evening I went to speak with Miguel, the manager here at the small condo complex we are staying in, about the use of the barbecue by the pool, finding a detailed map, and the drinking water supply. His English is impeccable with only a slight Spanish accent. I wanted to ask him where he learned to speak my language so well, when I, a relatively privileged college instructor from America, knows only one language, English.

But the last thing I want to do is embarrass Miguel, and instead, I ask him for his guidance, his expertise about the area. Where should we eat? What sights should we take in while we are here? What should we avoid? And when he ticked off a list of restaurants, the beach, and small towns we should see, I scribbled furiously on the mental notepad inside my head and vowed to myself to visit as many as we could fit into our 9 days in Miguel’s country.

Wednesday, we drove the curvy but beautiful road north to Todos Santos, a destitute artisan’s village that sits on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Miguel suggested that we make the 45 mile drive to get a feel of the “real Mexico� and when I saw the look in his eyes when he said “real Mexico�, I wondered, is he sad, like I am, that in the last 15 years or so, that his little village of Cabo San Lucas has been transformed into a mini resort town, bringing Costco, Home Depot, more people, and awaking thousands of his countrymen and women to the economic disparity between Mexico and America and Canada? Although he is kind and generous to his guests, there is sadness to the set of Miguel’s eyes, lips, and brow.

I find out quickly that the price marked is not necessarily the price I will pay; when we show interest in two different items in one store, the shop owner takes twenty percent off the price, if we purchase both. My husband translates the drop in price to me and I smile, nod, “Gracias,� and we move to the next little shop in the side of the building.

We spend a few hours in Todos Santos, the little village by the ocean, and make our way into almost every shop along its main street, plus the town’s museum, which is really several rooms filled with black and white photos of the town’s notable residents and buildings. But in the entryway, since Christmas is very close now, a large nativity stands at attention. And outside, two angels, 12-feet tall with burgundy wings that light up at night, watch over the museum and its contents.

We enjoy 80-degree weather, the few tourists who sit at tables on the sidewalk drinking ice-cold Mexican beer, and the music drifting from the local hotel that anchors the main street. It is named, “Hotel California�, but has no connection to the song made famous by the Eagles. Todos Santos is a quiet little town, a gem along the ocean and a welcome relief from the bright lights of downtown Cabo.

Todos Santos is beautiful, but it is the drive to and from that makes the village worth visiting. Forty-five miles of nearly untouched coastal range spans from just north of Cabo San Lucas to Todos Santos, protecting the most pristine stretch of white sand I have ever seen.

Along the way, we marvel at the isolation, the poverty, but there is something comforting in knowing that the big-box stores and fast food restaurants that dot America are nowhere near this small stretch of the world. I am relieved to see that somehow, the road to Todos Santos has escaped, thus far, unscathed.

I have made the acquaintance of one of the more permanent residents of our condo complex and the morning after our trip to Todos Santos, tell him of our adventure visiting the village. He sighs heavily and fixes the table we sit at with a look of resignation.

“Yes, its beautiful, but not for long,� he says. “They’re building a 4-lane road, don’t you know, from La Paz.�

My geography is poor in America, and even worse in Baja California, so his sadness does not register until he says, “it’ll go right through Todos Santos.� And then, I understand. The new road will connect the resort towns of La Paz in the north on the Sea of Cortez, and the growing resort town of Cabo San Lucas in the south on the Pacific. Todos Santos will be the halfway point, the stopping point. “In ten years, you won’t recognize it,� my friend says.

Instead of being remote, protected, somewhat difficult to reach, the tiny village of Todos Santos, what the manager Miguel said was the “real Mexico�, will be gone, and with it, another chunk of Mexican identity and culture. It will be another Cabo, which is rumored to be getting its first Wal Mart this year.

I let the gravity of what he has told me set in, overwhelmed with the magnitude of the prospect. And I admit, I didn’t know what to say. But my friend, who has been here much longer than I, sums it up perfectly in his sarcastic manner, “Progress, huh?�

“Progress,� I say, but my mind wanders to the little village perched on a bluff on the Pacific, and I remember the giant angels with glowing wings, and I wonder, what is progress? And I realize, I don’t know.