Slow Baja - Sarah Beck A Moms Guide To Traveling Baja

Episode Date: August 29, 2020

When she was ten years-old, Sarah Beck began traveling to Baja with her family to escape the drizzly Oregon winters. After several trips, they decided to put down roots and moved to San Juanico. A few years later, while surfing at dawn, she met her future husband -and a Baja love story was born. In our conversation, Sarah shares her passion for the people and the places that make the Baja peninsula so unique. Follow Sarah and a_moms_guide_to_traveling_baja on Instagram:

Hey, this is Michael Emery. Thanks for tuning into the Slow Baja. This podcast is powered by Tequila Fortaleza, handmade in small batches, and hands down, my favorite tequila. Slow Baja is brought to you by the Baja XL rally. The Baja XL is the largest and longest and longest amateur off-road rally on the Baja Peninsula.

It's 10 Epic Days, L.A. to Cabo to L.A. check it out at BajaXL.org. I'm delighted to be here in San Juan Capistrano with Sarah Beck, and we are talking about our mutual passion for Baja, and you have the Instagram site, a mom's guide to traveling Baja. Do I have that right? That's right, yeah, that's me.

I don't have it up in front of me, a mom's guide to traveling Baja. Yeah. And I've just been impressed, as one Baja lover to another, I've just been impressed with your integrity and authenticity and your passion and your beautiful long, long form posts and that you're down traveling in Baja with your kids. Thank you. And that you're posting every day, which I think is phenomenal. I try.

So let's talk about that. Okay. Yeah. Let's do it. Where should we start? Well, let's start with where did your passion for Baja come from? Okay. Well, I have, I guess, like a pretty long history with Baja.

I grew up in Montana in Oregon. My mom remarried when I was about six or seven, and we moved to Oregon from Montana, and we lived in the drizzly rain and snow, where we lived in rainy coastal Oregon, and then we lived in Bend, and my stepdad was really adventurous, and my mom's very adventurous, too, and they were kind of tired of being in the drizzly rain, and we started surfing on the Oregon coast, and, you know, people on the Oregon coast were talking about Baja. You'll find you'll meet a lot of Oregonians in Baja,

and they all talk about the dream of, you know, wintering in Baja. And so we decided to try that. And we went down for, I don't know, like a month. And then my parents packed us up, and the next thing we knew, a month turned into a couple months. And then every winter, we started spending more time down there. and we started our first trip, I think, down at the wall. And I was maybe like 10, I think.

And we all really loved it. And then the next year, we decided to go all the way. We went down to Cabo and we made friends along the way. We're still friends with all those people. And, you know, as you do when you're traveling in Baja, and I think, as you know, when you meet people down there, we all kind of fall in love with it. So from there, my parents are.

started looking at property. They were kind of like, we want to do this more. And so by the time I was about 14, they were really talking about moving to Tos or Los Cabos area. And we were looking pretty heavily at property in San Jose area. We were down there for months at a time. And we basically lived at San Padrito. At that point, Cerritos was nothing. There was like a little tiny kind of hut on the cliff there. I spent months every day walking from Padrito down to Cerritos on my own, or with my brother just exploring, surfing. I learned out of surf at San Pedroito, boogie-boarded mostly and tried to surf. And then we met this amazing woman named Sue. and she and Teresita who lived in San Juanico at the time or had a place and she said

you should go up to San Juanico so we went to San Juanico and my mom and her husband fell in love with it immediately and they said let's buy a place and that was in about 94 I'd say and so they and we'd been camping up and down the peninsula for a few years there and I'm like 14 and they they bought a place. It was an old Mexican house and we kind of fixed it up as best as we could. And we went up to Oregon and we sold our house and we moved down there full time. I took my GED and my brother kind of like moved on his own way. He was two years older than me.

So he was, think about, you know, almost 16, 17, he decided, I think he ended up moving to Cabo. I don't know. It was kind of crazy. But we ended up staying in San Juanico. And I lived down there for about a year, and my husband ended up moving down. He was a bit older than me, but he, his dad was building a house. I don't know. Do you know San Juanico very well?

No, I mean, I know it a little bit. I have never been there. I drove through in the middle of the night in January on sort of a big off-road adventure, but I'm certainly well aware of the layout. I have a friend who's building a house down there, has a house, and then he's building a sort of attachment to it and sort of putting together a little surf property. Okay. So looking forward to going and getting some longboarding in.

It's a really special spot. I spent a lot of time surfing, you know, learning to surf, getting to know the townspeople. And at this point, I'm like, you know, 16. And I met my husband there surfing. I was surfing at dawn and he paddled out. He came down to finish his dad's house. His dad was building a house and he came down to finish it. And we met and fell in love.

and I helped him with the house for about a year as he sort of finished it, and we had that adventure, and he was from here from San Juan Capistrano. So I ended up following him up here, and from that point, we ended up kind of spending a lot of time in Baja going back and forth. And we also, you know, like traveled the globe. We've gone a lot of places over the years. And we lived in Hawaii. I've got a lot of places.

I've been to Southeast Asia and India. I could name off a bunch of places, but that makes me sound pretentious. No, let me just jump in for a second because most people are already slack-jawed that your parents sold the home and moved to Baja, and you managed to get a GED and, you know, live the life in San Juanico. And you look, I mean, well-adjusted. You've got kids. You're clean hairs combed looking good.

Middle of the day. Sorry, you know. I'm just joking with you here. We don't know each other well, so I shouldn't be taking these liberties with joking. But you're not, yeah, you're not crazy. So I just love that your parents made that leap and obviously to instill the sense of adventure into you. Sure. And you're instilling that sense of adventure and wonderment and bringing your kids to Baja, which, you know, I did with my kids way, way back when.

They're all in college now, so I have twins when they were two, and when my oldest was four, we loaded up the minivan and drove on down. So awesome. And so I think it's obviously admirable, and that's why we're here talking. But tell me about some of those moments with your husband where you said, you know, how can we replicate this thing? Yeah, that's kind of where I was going to get. You know, like we kind of traveled all over, and my father-in-law is really funny because he's got a house down to something. My mom and her husband ended up divorcing and I stepped out I got their house. And so my father-in-law had this house that kind of just sat in San Juanico for a while as I was like finishing my degrees and my husband was working on his career.

And we were both kind of not necessarily focused on Baja. We were still going to Baja. We were still going on adventures and maybe like once a year or so. But we weren't that focused on Baja for a while. I still loved it. But it wasn't our number one focus. and then we had our family and all of a sudden I really really missed it and um my uh my mother-in-law passed away from cancer and I needed a shift I needed it really badly like I was really like

dealing with some grief and um and I looked at my husband right around like the Christmas holiday and we were about to go down to San Juanico with our kids and like hang out my father-in-law's house and I and maybe we had just gotten back I don't know something we had just maybe been down there and I said what do you think about us like pulling the kids out of school enrolling them in school down in San Juanico and like going broke for a while and you commuting he's a firefighter and you commuting to work I know it's a lot but I could really use the change. And he's rad. And he was like, okay, let's try it. And I said, we'll put our kids in Spanish immersion when we decided to come back. And so that's what we did. So that's like, you know,

let's fast forwarding 20 years. And it was exactly what we needed. And that was when my passion for Baja was really like reinstilled. So we started going back down there. And I think I talk a lot on my Instagram page about, um, about the AAA map. It's my favorite map. There's a lot of maps of Baja, but that's kind of like my old trustee. And I like to like pull it out and look at dirt roads and go, I haven't been down that one in a while. Oh, I've never been down that one. And thankfully my husband Julie Adventress.

And, you know, you don't see a lot of him on the page. I've noticed. He doesn't like social media. And he doesn't like. And a lot of times a lot of my videos or pictures are from like archives, right? I post every day. So you don't always see. He, it's not always right now.

A lot of people are like, oh, you're always in Baja. I'm like, well, that was like, you know, last summer. But he doesn't want, like, his coworkers or friends thinking he's in Baja all the time. So he's like, just don't even put me on the page. I'm like, well, that makes me look like I'm single or something. And he's like, that's fine. That's probably better anyway. You're going to get more followers.

I was like, whatever, Jesse. So he's really funny about that. He doesn't want, he doesn't post on his social media. He doesn't want me showing him on his. his social media so um so he's he's my driver most of the time um i like to drive too but um i keep meaning to bring it up in uh on my social media i think i will at some point i'm working on a website and i would like to do a blog post about it i did roll our car about three years ago between hasis maria and uh punta prieta um and that was a really intense experience it was just the kids and i um

if you're a real Baja fanatic, you probably have been in a car accident in Baja. You probably know what it's like. I've had that conversation with a lot of Baja freaks like myself. It's an intense experience. It's also like, I think, a Baja badge, so to speak. Yeah, I think you're right. And I did notice in a deep perusal of your Instagram that you're in the passenger seat. So I deduced that somebody was dry.

and it wasn't either one of your young children. And you did say that you're a mom, so I was able to also deduce that it was probably your husband driving. And being a husband myself, you know, my wife's not too keen on being included when I'm posting, so I get it. Yeah. And tell me about the accident you were with your kids,

and how did that play out? And what have you learned from it? Oh, okay. So it was when we were living down in Baja. I will say this. I have so much to talk about Baja, but now that we're back, I try and like schedule every single vacation around Baja, more or less.

I do like to jump over to the mainland every so often, and there are a lot of other places I'd like to take the kids, which I try and do. But Baja is my passion right now, especially because I'd like to create a guidebook that encourages more moms to get down there because I think it's such an amazing place for kids. It's freedom for kids. And I don't think kids get the freedom of being able to walk to the store like you do anywhere else like Baja.

And so that's my big goal is to encourage more moms and women to get down there with their kids. So I'll give a little plug for that. I don't know when it'll get done. But that's kind of my goal is to have a website and a book out eventually. But back to the car accident. We were living down there at the time And we were coming back up to the U.S. Oddly enough to get on a plane to fly down to southern Mexico

So I had just driven the north road from San Juanico And I felt really good about it We had just gotten out of San Gneseo What's that? That's the dirt road? The north road, yeah, the dirt road from San Juanico From San Ignacio I had just driven the salt flats

It had been a great morning It was if I was going to say where I was going to crash on the Baja highway, it wouldn't have been where I crashed. But I had just gotten through past Gros Negro and past Jesus Maria, which is a really special spot for me. I love that point out there.

Moro Domingo. I don't know if you've been out there, but I highly recommend you get out there to Laguna Manuel. It's a beautiful spot. And I had just passed a semi-truck and gotten the kids plugged into a movie and was about ready to, like,

get through that no-man's land there, you know? It's a long stretch out there to El Rosario and into San Quintin. I was hoping to stay at La Mission, Santa Maria, the hotel out there. That's one of my favorites. So I had like a goal and I was focused. It's a really narrow highway there. They've repaved it since, but it was really narrow and crumbly. And right there, the highway is really, it's up high with no shoulder.

and where I was driving, I think even the painted line at that point wasn't even there. It was so narrow that some of that no shoulder part of the highway had crumbled off. And I hit a freaking pothole, my tire blew. And I just kind of fell off the road a little bit. My tire did. And in retrospect, I probably should have just driven straight off the highway, but I overcorrected it. I was going about 65. The Baja Nomad site, you should have heard, because my blog, I had a blog at the time,

and there was all kinds of commentary about, oh, you're driving too fast. But, you know, 65 is pretty normal for that. I was a straightaway. But because I overcorrected, I spun out. I probably spun three times. And the first I thought was, oh, man, my husband's going to kill me. And then we flew off the road, and we rolled five times. There were angels in our car.

I counted like one. It was slow motion two. Three. By like roll three, I'm thinking, dear God, just let my kids survive. I don't even care if I survive. Just let my kids survive. Four.

Five, we landed on the tires, so we weren't upside down. I still, to this day, I'm so grateful for that. I couldn't open the, driver's side and I heard my son crying so I knew he was okay that I couldn't hear my daughter and the trucker I passed he immediately pulled over and I got out of the passenger side immediately got to my daughter the trucker said what do you need I said get my son get my make sure my son's okay and get him out of his car seat and then I got my like my daughter woke up there was blood everywhere

turns out both kids were fine car seats are a miracle there was a small cut on my daughter I had lacerations everywhere shattered my wrist there's no place to pull over on the road there there was nine I may be four Mexican cars but nine

Mexicans that stopped they collected all of our things of course we were in shock but they were like where's your iPad where's your computer where's your car registration where's your passport where Jepers, they were so concerned that our things were going to get stolen, that they collected all of our stuff, and they put it in a pile,

they washed our faces, wrapped us in blankets, gave us Tylenol, completely took care of us, collected all of our things, and the police then came and put it in the back of their patrol car. And this woman named Claudia, I will never forget her, she had the greenest eyes. She was from Tijuana. She, at this point, they were putting us, like, in the ambulance to go to grown and grow. And mind you, let me tell you, that there was probably nine or ten Westerners that drove past in this time. And imagine me, blonde hair, three and five-year-old redhead blonde-haired daughter, covered in blood with a clearly rolled over California Tundra truck, driving past. full on eye contact with a woman at one point.

I mean, we were right on the side of the road. Nobody even rolled down their window to say, are you okay? And it's fine. I speak fluent Spanish. I cannot tell you what angels these people were that cared for me. But it would have been comforting to have someone to speak English to me and say, are you okay? And I would have said, I'm fine.

I'm good. Thank you. And that's the one thing I can say is if you see anyone on the side of the road that's been in an accident, roll down your window. even if they're like if their car looks overheated roll down your window and say are you okay right right right that's like Baja code so we've gotten on to quite a story here we cut right into it totally Toledo sorry I have a lot to say sorry you know no I'm slackshot and I remember this magnificent leap that my wife and I took she quit her job and they said no no take

six months off and you'll have your job back and we just needed to figure out how to live with no income for six months and I quit my job and we loaded our kids and drove to La Paz and that was in the day of guidebooks and we didn't really know, you know, it was supposed to be a colonial city and, you know, basically had three kids in the minivan, but we weren't driving to North Dakota to see grandma. We were going to Baja and those were things that I worried about. What happens? I had driven that road. I know about the crown. I know about the, you know, no shoulders, crumbling shoulders. And obviously south of El Rosario all the way to Guerrero Negro, there's absolutely no emergency medical treatment and considering your husband's a firefighter, that must have been

truly terrifying. And I know that there's a volunteer group that goes out of El Rosario and they will rescue tourists or they'll rescue anybody. The Green Angels. They'll rescue anyone who's been in an accident. But it comes via CB from the truckers and, you know, they either come up from Greer and Agro or come down from El Rosario. And so it can be quite a while before somebody gets you in quite a ride back. But wow. Yeah. Well, and just say, Wow. And the craziest part is the woman Claudia. Let me get back to her real quick.

Yeah, please. She says to me as we're like, actually the ambulance wasn't there yet. We're in someone's car. She comes up to me. Eyes fiery green. And she says to me in Spanish, you have to listen to me. Let me take your things out of the police car. They are going to steal your stuff.

I know it sounds crazy, but you have to trust me. please let me take your things out of the car. And I said, yes, take my things out of the car. And so they took all my things out of the car, moved it into the car, and then the ambulance came. And then she said, can I put your things in the ambulance? And I said, yes. So there was this crazy shuffle of them, like, collecting all the stuff in the desert,

collecting all the stuff, putting it in the car, collecting all the stuff, moving all the stuff to the car. Meanwhile, my kids are, like, starting to fall asleep from shock. Sure. And so I'm having them count to 100, English and Spanish. So I'm just trying to keep my kids from falling asleep, because I don't know if they have concussions or what's going on. But it was the craziest thing that's really ever happened to me, you know?

So you survived that? We survived it. We survived that. And you're still married. Yeah. And your husband wished he had been there. Yeah, he got a phone call in L.A. And that must have just been, wow.

Yeah, it was nuts. Yeah. Crazy. But, you know, what I can say is the hospital bill was $99. They took incredible. They fed us lunch. The ambulance drivers were amazing. They drove us to Ground Agro.

The firefighters were, they took us to our hotel afterwards. They took such good care of us. And what I can say, and I think what I love about Mexico and what I really love about Baja is the community, the people and how caring they are of foreigners. You know, you can come in and I'm a total foreigner. They don't know me. Guarita. Yeah. And, you know, like, and they're just so giving.

They'll give you the shirt off their back. My husband, he's so funny. He always says, oh, man, Mexians, they'll give you the shirt off their back, and they'll also take it. They'll take yours. Well, so that's what everybody, that's the sweeping generalization here. People say, why would you go to Mexico? Right. And you've basically had a sort of worst nightmare, a traveler's worst nightmare.

Sure. And you've survived. And what you, the takeaway, or at least the takeaway that I'm getting, is that it was the low. It was the locals who looked after you. It was the locals who were most concerned about you faring well in their country to collect your things and move them multiple times and to in your state warn you about losing your iPad and these other things that probably at the end of the day you would be an inconvenience but you would easily replace here. Yeah. They are worried so much about you and they're looking after not only your wounds but your things. your things. They just wanted to care for me in every possible way and they wanted nothing from me.

And that's it. And that's the thing that I'm, I think that if more people had that message and maybe it's, you can be the part of your guidebook, if more people had that message, that it's 99% of the people are just darn nice trying to get dinner on the table, get their kids educated and live a better life. And, and because of, you know, the way life is fragile, they're going to be the ones who will look after the neighbor in need. And you may be that neighbor. neighbor and you were that neighbor yeah yeah and then you know I think I think the other message that I'm constantly talking about on my Instagram page is the freedom you know you know I like all of Baja I'm like one of those people that's like I will take that fancy hotel I love a

weekend away I I love like the waiter coming to me and bringing me the two for one cocktails and the swimming pool and you know I I love that aspect of it that It's really fun. But for me, there is nothing more awesome than, like, taking an unknown road and ending up on a beach or, like, in, like, a mountainous ranch where you're just far and away. And you see, like, beauty, like, I don't know, like, you can't see anywhere else. Like I said, I've, like, travel all over the world. and I just, I don't, I don't, I don't think there's anything like Baja, anywhere else. I mean, there is, you know, but there's just something so, like, raw and untouched about, about being down there.

And, you know, things change. I know a lot about the policies down there when I was in grad school. I really wanted to do my master's thesis on the policy changes that happened in the 90s and the feet of Camisosos and transnational. trade and things like that that occurred. I know a bit about that and why the Ijito properties were split up and what happened there. And why we see the properties sort of pop up when they did, you know, why we see what happened to Cerritos. You know, like in Southern Baja.

And a lot of people will be like, oh, Southern Baja, it's like so ruined or whatever. I don't think it's ruined. I think it's just as cool, you know. I think the East Cape's super rad still. It's different, you know. I don't know, like, if you've seen what happened to Grand Solmar. Do you know about Solmar? So Solmar used to have this tiny little hotel.

It's on the, like, other side of Dwarce Beach there. And I used to have the tiny hotel, and it had a really, really cool, like, wedgy wave out there. It was awesome for, like, hardcore boogie boarders, and the turtles used to nest out there. and it was the concession sand there. You know, like the Mexican government has like a concession area on the beach. It's technically not supposed to be sold. And that got sold somehow. And you talk to, you know, the guys that do the boat,

the glass bottom boats and stuff that take you out to the arch and you ask them about it. And they're like, yeah, somebody sold that. Somebody had some money. They paid someone off. Right. Yeah. and so now there's a grand Solmar and it's this huge beautiful resort it's fun to stay it I've

stayed there I have a girlfriend that has a timeshare there it's lovely but do the turtles nest there anymore no that really sucks ecologically but can you stop modernity no I don't know you know it's just it just it is you know I can't sit there and cry about it I just kind of have to like observe it and say okay well this this is what it is and and and acknowledge it and and just kind of go see the turtle someplace else I guess I mean like what what else can I do there are like some really cool nonprofits and things in southern Baja that are working towards towards preserving preservation in La Paz there's some really cool programs out there and I'm learning about them through my Instagram account, which is super cool.

I don't know if you saw my post about the lease turns. I did. I did. Have you seen them down there? Well, I mean, yes, I'm vaguely, I'm not a birder, but I get it. Okay. Yeah. Well, see, that's what's so cool about Baja, too.

You know, I sound like such a, like, I guess a spastic freak because I, like, find so much joy and all these, like, little things. But, you know, I'm sitting there. We're down there on the estuary. and I never heard the lease turn. I'm like, what are these things? They're like going for my head. And of course, then I go on like this Google search

and I learn about these birds. And like how cool that they're like they're being preserved. Like they weren't down there. Like there is there's been like an effort to bring the leasing turns back there. And like. And it's working. And it's working. And it's working.

And they were going for our head. I saw that. You know. And your kids were, had some unbridled joy about that. Yes. Well, did too, you know, like, wow, so neat. Yeah. So, um, I joke with my wife as I roll into middle

age that we're going to have to learn about, uh, uh, tree species and birds and we're going to be, you know, traveling with binoculars and being birders. That's, that's what, you know, people do. Yeah. I know. Yeah. But, you know, it wasn't that long ago that we were both too up on my motorcycle riding through Baja and eating mangoes and drinking coronas on the beach. Here at Slow Baja, we can't. wait to drive our old land cruiser south of the border. When we go, we'll be going with Baja Bound Insurance. Their website's fast and easy to use. Check them out at Bajaubound.com. That's Bajaubound.com serving Mexico travelers since 1994. A Baja tourism is picking up and our friends

at the Animal Pad and TAP Act want to remind you when you're crossing the border, just say no to puppy peddlers. I know they're cute, but the sooner we can end the demand, we can end the supply. check out theanimalpad.org and Tap Act on Instagram and Facebook. So you've got kids in school and they're young. And what's your routine? You're not too far. You're a couple hours from the border, I'd guess, here. Two hours, more or less, depending on what time you leave.

Yes. So you're two hours north of Tijuana. What's your routine when you're going to take off and you and your unseen husband in your new rig, which just looks terrific, your Jeep with the rooftop 10? What's your routine? And do the kids get fired up about, hey, we're going to Baja, or is it just routine for them now? It's a combo. So I basically have my finger on the pulse of their vacations.

So I know in my head when the next vacation is. We got President's weekend coming up. I also know it's whale watching season. And so we went down last spring for the whales. And we, I wouldn't say we got skunked. It was really cool, actually, but it was like nuking wind. So if I can convince my husband to go down for the whales, he's always like, really? And then we get down there.

And he's like, I'm so glad we went, you know. I'm really, a couple years ago, we got it like, bomb. It was just like misty morning. We got on the first boat. You heard the whale. before you saw them because it was so foggy. You know, it was really magical, and I'd really like a cool experience like that again. The last couple times we've seen them, it's been like really, really windy, which is also really cool.

You know, it's like, that's fun too. There were a ton of whales last time, but it was nuking winds up. So I don't know. That's kind of my next goal. We'll see. Maybe not. It's kind of, we're not, we're not the kind of people who necessarily. have like a plan.

I like that. I like that. But do you always have an anchor because of property in San Juanico? So are you always sort of thinking about that's where you're going to end up? Or do you just say, you know what? We need to go to a ranch in the mountains or we need to get over to the East Coast. It's going to be warmer and it's still winter down there. I would say my anchor is a AAA map.

I love it. Which you can't get any longer, which is tragic. I have a stash. Yeah, so I would say... Let's reproduce it. We should, really. Absolutely. You can't photocopy it.

I've tried. Kinkos gives me a dirty look and says it's impossible. So, yeah, I don't know. It kind of depends. Sometimes we get friends. Have you noticed it's kind of hard to get friends to come to Baja? I have a friend who has young kids, but we were college buddies, and I can get him to go to Baja. Right.

But it isn't, it hasn't been. frankly people you know get into again you know I've got kids in college and I'm hoping that I can get to Baja with my college aged kids more easily than I can get with my with my old buddies who we went so many times so many years ago but it is it's hard it's hard to round people up you know we're always like yeah you want to come to Baja with us and we scare people do you think you scare your friends I mean Southern California Baja is just second nature people love tacos people love everybody's got a pre-runner that they're driving around a Ford Raptor that they're just driving over to the mall.

But do you think you scare your friends? I don't know. I think they're afraid to scratch their $100,000 raptors. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, we have a lot of friends that go to Baja, but it's kind of hard to sync up with them. We do have a few friends we've gone with recently. But I don't know if it's like a scheduling thing or if maybe we're just like a little too

wild. I'm not sure. Yeah. We're always like, we get out to these like remote beaches. Like have you been out to El Burrero? real. Yeah. Yeah, we get out there and we're like, oh man, it is like so beautiful. Wouldn't it be cool if we had like five families out here? Like tons of kids and then we're like, which five families can we get out here? Right. Right. Yeah, I don't know. It's kind of hard to,

hard to round people out. Maybe in the summer we can find some. Well, you'd hope that your husband's firefighter friends would be leaping at the opportunity for fishing and. Yeah, I don't know. It's hard to. It seemed to be guys who enjoy that life or at least they did when I was a kid. I lived in a town that had all the firefighters from San Francisco as the first affordable place up the road from San Francisco. And every one of my coaches when I was a kid was a firefighter. And they all had mustaches. And they all seemed to have a smile on their face and a beer in their hand. And anyways, that's a firefighter reminiscences. Do you have a list of highlights? Do you have places that, does it, when you're thinking about your next trip, is it more about where you haven't been yet or where there's such a warm memory? where there's a photograph with a filter in your mind that says,

I need to get back there and relive that moment. I think I had to post a while back where I listed off, like, the ultimate Baja trip. I'm trying to remember what it was, but I kind of like said like, okay, you got to have like fish tacos. You got to have like street tacos,

like meat tacos. You got to have like a beer. You got to have like a Coke and a glass bottle. You got to go someplace new. You got to go someplace. You haven't been in a long time. You have to go to like an old favorite, right? I can't remember what it was.

I can't remember the post. But I kind of like listed off like the ultimate Baja trip and it was kind of all those things. But yeah, it kind of shifts. We just recently haven't posted much about it. I really need to get a website up where I'm like blogging about this guy, where I'm like really going into detail. But we went to Sierra San Francisco.

And I hadn't been up there before. And that was all time. That was for me mind blowing. We went in the rain. which was really cool. We were really, that's like, we were forced to really unplug. The kids were forced to unplug. We were, we were playing, like, dice and cards with the kids, you know, the donkeys.

I think, like, I just, like, the other night, like, really, like, posted, like, a bunch of highlights on my stories. And I don't know if many people were listening to the sound, but we were, like, on the donkeys. And it's just one video. But my daughter, if you listen to the sound, she goes, oh, no we're not going down there are we because you like we're like kind of up on the mesa and we're about ready to go down and we did go down there and and it was really cool like I think the kids were as blown away as we were by by the adventure and I don't know that was I can't wait to do it again and tell us about your children there are ages

you have a boy and a girl I have a boy and a girl uh Beau is six Leila is eight I would say Leila likes Baja more than Bo um Bo Bo likes his tablet and English. They're both in Spanish immersion. They will speak great Spanish. Leila connects more with Baja. She likes to surf more than

Bo does. She's more adventurous as a whole. Bo is always like, huh, when are we going home? I want to like play with the neighbor kids. He likes it, but he's less enthusiastic. I think that'll change. I think that'll shift.

But Layla is always always up for an adventure. She loves, she really loves Baja. Because they spent a year going to kindergarten down in San Juanico, they have friends down there, which is really cool. They're always really excited to get to San Juanico to see their friends, which was really a goal of mine to establish like ongoing friendships for them. So we always try and get down there in the summer so that they can continue that end like at Christmas time. So that's important to us. It's also really important for me that the kids see how the rest of the world live. They get so much. And I can't help but spoil them, you know, and we don't even, you know, we're not even,

like, we're not super wealthy, but it's just we live in a world of wealth here. You can't even help, but we just have access to so much. It's just like, can't be helped, you know? Yeah, our baseline is so much higher. Yeah. And what I saw when we lived in Baja, you know, on vacation, basically, and then in Zocatecas where our kids went to school was it was embarrassing because, you know, the truck comes around and rings the bell and you have to take your garbage out into the middle of the street with the neighbors. And so they would have one of those little tiny plastic bags. It's 12 inches by 12 inches.

And that's their garbage for a week. Sure. And here we are even consciously trying not to consume. Yeah. And, you know, it's freezing cold. So we went to the Soriana and we bought a space heater for our. our, you know, Adobe that we were renting that was freezing. But you just, you can't, you know, coming from here, it's just eye-opening how much we have

and how much more we have than we actually really need. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that it'd be very interesting to check in with your family when they're, you know, when your kids are 18 and 20 and see what this experience has instilled in them and how they're viewing the world then and what they're deciding to do with their lives. It would be very, I mean, we're going to have to make a date to check back in on the Baja sessions. I have to remind my kids constantly because my really good friend, Dahlia, lives in a very humble home, and they all share a bed.

And I have to say to the kids constantly, where does, and her son is their age, I have to say, where does Adrienne live? Let's talk about Adrienne for a second. What does he have and how happy is Audrey on? Because he's, like, the happiest kid, you know? And I really, I don't know how to get that across to them. They're young, you know. I'm hoping that it'll eventually, like, click. Or maybe it has clicked.

I don't know. Yeah, well, I think, I'm not sure that you can quiz them about it, but certainly, you know, it's something that should be resonating with them deeply. And we went through much of that in Zacatechus you'd referenced earlier. The freedom that your children have that they can just run along. And, you know, we had a boy who turned five down there. And he'd just head out the front door or hang a right, and he'd run down, you know, a couple houses down was a little butcher shop. And then he'd be on to the dulceria on the corner, and there's a little taco stand.

And then if you went around to the block behind her house, there was a kid from his kindergarten class whose parents had a little furniture shop. They lived in the back of the furniture shop. And it, you know, five o'clock or six o'clock. I'd walk down the street, go to the taco stand. D'Ondde-Sau-Roberto. Oh, there, ae, d'i, diLorea. And then you go to the dulceria. And then you go to the dulceria.

Oh, aye, aye. Maibaria. And then you go in there and he's, you know, on his hands and knees playing a bull. And the kid who lives there is, you know, just back from his bull fighting lesson, dressed as a little matador, which like our kids play, you know, soccer or organized baseball, everything here is so organized. You know, in Zocatech is bull country. And so the kid was learning to be a matador. And Roberts in his family's furniture shop, you know, as a bull.

Just knocking stuff over. But the freedom was incredible. Yeah. And that's the thing that we worry so much now here in what's very, very safe country. Yeah. And we worry so much about this. And then you get down there and it's like kids can run. And I think that's a wonderful thing.

You know, and I think that's in particular, my daughter, that does resonate with her. She always talks about how much she loves that she gets to just walk down to the store and, you know, buy herself a snack. She does really get that that is something to value, you know. she loves that she can do that. She loves that she speaks the language and that she can just go in and ask for whatever she wants to buy. And she really appreciates the whole aspect of that. And I love that she has that.

And, you know, I actually, I was talking to my friend Katya, who lives down in San Juanico. And she's actually from Los Cabos. She's Mexican. and she said to me that she that her nephew came from Los Cabos

and she said that her nephew feels the same way. So he's Mexican from Los Cabos and he loves going to like the interior to San Juan Rico for the exact same thing. You know, so it's not just Americans coming to the middle of Bahia, it's also Mexicans from like the city who enjoy that as well, you know? And I think that that's something that I talk about a lot

on my Instagram too is, is that I resonate the most with the middle of my, like El Rosario to La Paz, you know, there's something about. El Rosario to La Paz, you said, yeah. Yeah, yeah. There's something about like that span of Baja. Not that I don't like really connect with all of it. Hold on, let me pull back a second. La Rumorosa. That great. It's like super ad taccati. I don't know.

But it doesn't sound like you're heading down to the Valle with your lady friends for a women's wine weekend. I keep trying to get them to go. You know, I say that all the time. And they say, yeah, I don't know if it's just busyness. You know, I do. I got some girlfriends to go last year. So, yeah, I mean, it's just rounding them up.

I think people are just so busy. Right. Too busy. Too busy to smell the... I had a friend say to me just last night. I was talking about something about getting our girls together. You know, they used to be in the same class together. They haven't been the last couple years.

And I said, I think they really miss each other. We've got to get them together. She's like, oh, yeah, you know, if you didn't have the whole travel thing that you do. Oh, yeah, or the ski team or the travel. Or any of those, yeah. So I go to Baja and give my kids that. Yeah, so sorry. Bad mom.

Yeah. You know, I just, you know, we all have our priorities, and I guess for me, my priority is Baja. What's your next Baja priority? Where are you headed? What's, I think we got sidetracked, but what's brewing on your next trip? Well, gosh, okay, so it's, I do like to do my annual, you know, Canyon de Guadalupe Right

That's like Those hot springs Are you've been up there yeah Yeah and I saw your post about it And how fun it was for you and the family Oh yeah That's Gosh they're getting so expensive though

You know I mean they've always been kind of pricey But I was just looking at their One of their Instagram They were like $112 They know their value Yeah We were joking

And we're like Gosh that's more than like a high-end hotel No I know that's Calistoga pricing. Yeah. Oh, that's like, we were up there like, I think last year, we were like giving them a hard time. You know what?

That's, hey, that's more than like camping in the U.S. But, oh my gosh. A funniest story. I need to post it actually on my Instagram. I need to figure how to do the live because I got some long videos. But we brought some friends up there last year. And I was videoed. I like climbed up on this rock and I was videoing their van like coming in.

And then I got done with the video and I didn't realize my camera was still on. and I come scrambling down and there's a hole like maybe like one and a half feet around and I fall into the hole and you think like I think I had like I had rain boots on and I like it looked like I could just like tap my foot in oh no this this hole was like six feet deep oh yeah I fell so far into it that I had to yell for help and my husband and our friends had to come pull me out of the hole What's your life like here? You've had some adventures, some difficulties. Life here is okay.

You know, I think my last post, I was talking about how if I could just be a little bit more of the person I am when I'm in Baja, I would do a little better. I thought about starting this show with you reading that post because it's truly, I mean, it's spectacular and it's so deep and so authentic. And I think that we're going to throw out your Instagram again. A Mom's Guide to Traveling Baja. A mom's guide to traveling Baja. It's a long one. Exactly. And people should seek your site out because I think it's really, today's post is just amazing. Thank you.

It really is. And so in a world full of glitz and filters and I hate to say, look at me, BS, you're a deep dive into authenticity. And I'm delighted to be sitting here talking with you in person. Well, you know, I was talking to my husband about this. I was like, gosh, you know, it's so tricky because I get the most likes on the pictures of me, but I always feel like really weird posting pictures myself, you know? Like, okay, like, this is a really cute picture of myself, and I'm in Baja, and I look really happy. Okay, I'm going to post a picture myself.

You know, but I always feel kind of weird, like, so I do it every so often. But where were we? I got a last track of. We were actually hoping to get on to your top three or your Baja priorities or where are you heading next. Where am I heading next? Oh, that's so hard. You know, if we have the AAA map here, I could maybe say, you know, it's been a while since I was over to San Francisco. I don't know if we could get over there.

That would be cool. It would be really cool, I guess. If we could did, like, my old, that would be a cool loop. If we could go down and see the whales and then head over to San Francisco. Maybe El Baril. Yeah. I don't know I hadn't like wrap my head around it, but if we go down for President's Day weekend, maybe we'll do that. I'm just coming up with it right now. I really want to get out to like Punta Banda over there. It's been like years since I've been out there. I also, oh man, it just kills me because a lot of these places, before I started my Instagram, we were going out to these places and I just wasn't taking pictures or if I did, I wasn't like thinking about the Instagram. But we went out to La Buffadora and And I took some, like, really killer videos and pictures of those, like, sand hot springs you dig out. And then I, in, like, a Baja meltdown, this is ultimate Baja meltdown.

I was, like, really tired. I had gotten this nasty cold. And we'd driven, like, all the way from San Francisco up to Ensenada. And I wanted a hotel room. And my husband wanted to drive home. And we were just, like, really going on it. Kids had been on the, like, tablets all day. and we were, you know, the tension was there.

I mean, I'm being real here. Family tension was there. And we stop at El Trilero. We grab some tacos. And I'm like, I want a hotel. You know, and the kids aren't getting off the tablet. And I'm like, if you don't get off that tablet right now, I'm throwing the tablet out the window. The kid is not getting off the tablet.

So I literally, you know, I have to fall through. I throw the tablet out the window. It's in like a case, you know. And of course, the tablet goes out the window. and all of the customers at El Trilero turn around in shock, right? Imagine, like, what's this tablet getting thrown out the window? So there's this, like, silent shock going around. And then, of course, I get it out of the car, I pick it up.

Everybody's, you know, it's a total scene. And as I get back in the car, my phone is like, I don't realize it's like half out the door. And I crack the phone in the door. And I lose all of my photos. El Burrell, San Francisco. L.A. Bay, Labufadora, those hot springs there, like, so many. It was like, it was an epic trip. The whales, like, so now I basically have to redo that whole trip.

So your husband didn't learn a happy wife as a happy life and what mama wants. Oh, no, no, no. Oh, no. After that meltdown, he drove me directly to La Fonda and got me a very nice hotel man. Yeah, it's just not worth it. He bought me the most wonderful pancake breakfast the next morning or chili quiles. Yeah, it was great. Yeah, just not worth having mom be unhappy.

No, no, no, no. Not at our house. Oh, no, that was, yeah. We always joke, but that was like the ultimate Mexico meltdown right there. And so on that, you know, you're camping. You've got a rooftop tent now, which is pretty glammy. You're camping. You're in hotels.

Yeah. How do you mix it up? Um, once again, it's kind of just depends. It was really funny actually this summer. Um, my husband who were down in like Southern Baja and he's usually like the one that pushes the camping. He really likes to camp and I like camping too. And, but he was pushing the hotels this summer. He was like, it is too hot to camp and I was making so much fun. I was like, you are getting old, man. This is like, this is you have to hit a turning point in comfort level. But yeah, it just depends. I really like to check out hotels for the, you know,

for the book I'm working on and for the Instagram. I do know a lot of people prefer hotels. I like to go and check out hotels. Sometimes they don't necessarily stay at them. I'll just go and like check out the rooms. It just depends. Depends on how tired we are, how badly we need a shower. And kids, where they are on the meltdown factor.

Yeah, yeah. The kids actually, they're hilarious. They would rather camp. They say that hotels are disgusting. and that they would rather camp. So in their planet, they would prefer to be, like, camped out on a beach. All right.

So on the hotel front, give me a couple of your favorites. Okay, so Le Mision Santa Maria, for me, that was just a rad hotel. I love that it's, like, way out there. It's got that, like, old, like, colonial vibe. I love that it's, like, way out there on the beach. It's just, I don't know.

It's affordable for. 45 bucks. Right. It's just, they keep saying they're going to build a pool. I'm not fully buying it. I love that they have a picture

of a swimming pool, but it's not out there. I really like, is it El Morrow, is that the name of it? In Santa Rosalia, it's kind of funky. The rooms,

or it's not the cleanest. The rooms aren't the cleanest, but I really like. It's the first one there with the gas station. Am I thinking about this? No, it's past the gas station. I'm pretty sure.

It's not, it's not Mama Rosalie. Not El Rosario, Santa Rosalia. Oh, Santa Rosalia. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, on the other side. You and I connected about that because we both have this fascination about the place. I've never stayed there and you did.

Love it, yeah. Yeah, it's so, that whole thing is so fascinating to me. Yeah, it's really, like the whole town is cool. I just keep wanting to go back. My parents hated that town. They read some story when I was a kid in, like, one of their Baja books about how, like, someone got robbed. And so they never wanted to hang out there. So, but I really like that town.

So I think it's called El Morrow. I'll have to check that out now. I'll have to double check. Yeah, it's like a really cool hotel that like overlooks the Sierra Cortez, beautiful sunrise view. It's got a swimming pool. Rooms aren't the cleanest, but it's just like the ambiance is really great. I really like La Tropicana in San Jose del Cabo. That's got super cool vibe.

El Cortez in Los Cabos. kind of like right downtown. It's like, it's fairly affordable and I just like the location. If you know, it's not like, it's not the nicest, but it's cool. If you want a high end, of course, there's, there's the, I was talking about it earlier, the one that's Solmar. Yeah, the Grand Solmar. That's terribly fancy and fantastic.

Where else do I like to stay? Oh, La Perla and La Paz. That's like a classic 1950s. all the celebrities stayed. Ensenada, I love Astero Beach. I really like how it's like down on the water down there. And they always have like really cool musicians that play down there, really cool music.

La Fonda, that's like a really, really fun one. And have you been up to any ranches? Have been to the Melling Ranch or any of the cowboy stuff? Have you done any of that? Yeah, yeah, Melling Ranch is great. Yeah, they've got a cool swimming. See, I always like judge hotels on swimming pools because the kids are like big swimmers, of course. Yeah, so they've got a fun.

It's cold, but the kids are like that. They've got those cool fireplaces. Yeah, Melling Ranch is great. I'm trying to think if I know of any other mountainous hotels. None are coming to mind right now. You know, there's a place I... It's quite a list already off the top of your head. I know.

Just putting on the spot here. That's quite a major. There is one that I really want to go to. that I was reading about that I haven't been to. Maybe some of your listeners know about it. I want to say it's called Agua Verde maybe. It's like a hot spring hotel ranch outside of Ensenada. It's not the San Carlos.

I don't know if you've been out to San Carlos, but that's really cool. They're like 35, 45 minutes south of Ensenada kind of up in the mountains. Those are really neat. But that's like more camping and there might be a couple like little cabins. but there's another one more like east and I think it's called Agua Verde. I need to double check, but I've read about it a couple times and it's like where old their celebrities used to stay. Wow.

And apparently it's kind of high end and it's got hot springs out there. You know, you probably like gathered. I'm kind of in the hot springs. And apparently it's like really cool. Puerto Sitositos is a cool, weird spot. Smelly water. Yeah. I connected, I keep, you know, I've connected with some guy who lives out there with his wife.

He doesn't live there all the time, but he's got a place. And he keeps telling me to visit him. But it's been a while since we've taken the five. So I need to get over there. He keeps saying, like, pop over, say hi. We had some good trips down there in the early 90s before my college buddies all got married. We were there with girlfriends in Volkswagen campers. And you were talking about getting.

friends there. It seems like that was the last time we had a gang of, I don't know, a dozen or 16 people in Puerto Citos and they actually kept the generator on at the bar past 10 o'clock. And the old folks who live there said, oh, we've never had that bar open past 10 o'clock in years. You guys must have really been killing it. But have you spent any time south of Puerto Citos? I think that's a very interesting area as well. Oh, yeah, Gonzaga and then Punta Finale. My husband actually grew up hanging out a lot down there. his good friend the Vicks have a place

down in Punta Fanal and they had a plane so he was lucky enough to get flown down there as like a teenage, like young 13, 14, 15. So he spent a lot of time and we actually had a really cool adventure. I think I've talked about a couple times on my Instagram. One of my most memorable Baja trips

that was in my early 20s that we hiked from Catavina across to Mission Santa Maria and then over on the mission trail to Punta Finale. And what time of year was that? I want to say like spring breakish. Yeah, it was hot but not oppressively hot.

Yeah, it was like incredible, really cool. It was really fun just so we just drove down in there this last Baja trip that we went on. So that was really cool. We made it into the oasis, which we hadn't been to before. So I have amazing pictures and videos of that, which I haven't posted yet. And what time, how's your routine at home on posting to Instagram? Because you are a daily poster, which I love. Yeah, not always, but yeah.

Daily poster and you have great stuff. Thank you. And what time, I mean, you've got young kids and a husband who works and I'm assuming you're keeping yourself busy all the time. You can't be, you're not eating bonbons and posting all day. So when do you find the time? Oftentimes early morning before the kids wake up, I'll like start it and then I'll like hit send right before I like send them to school. So I'll like save it and archive it or right before I go to bed and then I'll send it do it in the morning or maybe after I send them to school like in between like a work thing. Maybe I'll send it. So oftentimes I'll start it and then I'll save it and then, you know.

Yeah, because your stories and the last couple have just been epics. Thank you. Yeah. There really have been epics. Yeah. You know, the work that goes into that's astonishing. I'm a writer. So, yeah.

Well, it shows. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, it's often times stuff that I've sort of written and then like save and then I'll send back. And then sometimes you'll just get a short one. Today, well, one I've been thinking about that I'm, today's pose is going to be really short and sweet. It's just a picture of me in San Juanico like, I was probably like 19 in the picture, so I'm going to post that one today. It's just me.

I'll show you picture. I'll show it to you. Yeah, and so we're going to wrap things up here. We've been at about just an hour. And I want to say Sarah Beck, this has been really terrific to get a chance to talk to you. And I hope that people go to your, oh, there you go. Yeah. Terrific.

Well, they'll be looking at that before this podcast comes out. so they'll have to scroll back to see Sarah Beck at 19 in San Juanico. Long ago, yeah. Before you were Sarah Beck. Yeah, but we were dating. All right. Met my husband when he paddled out at dawn. Yeah, I said, oh, I think I've met you before.

And he goes, no, I would remember you. Wow. Well, we're going to end it right there. So thanks for your time. And where can people find you anywhere else besides Instagram? Not yet. I'm working on a website, so it's coming. Is that website going to have a name?

It's going to be a mom's guy. to traveling or a mom's guide to traveling Baja. I haven't decided yet. So working on getting that down. Well, thanks again. Good talking to you. Yeah, thank you. Hey, you guys know what to do.

Please help us by subscribing, sharing, rating, all that stuff. And if you missed anything, you can find the links in the show notes at slowbaha.com. I'll be back before you know it. And if you want to receive notices on new episodes, please follow Slow Baja on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook for you old folks.