Always Anna

Who am I to leave you hanging this way? Alexis? Ha!

So, there I am in Baja on a Saturday night, eating a fabulous lobster dinner with two fabulous girls at a fabulous restaurant called La Fonda. (I know I just used the word fabulous three times in one sentence - I’m watching a re-run of Sex and the City right now, so it’s to be expected.)

We eat, we have strong margaritas (only one each!), I miss my chance to meet Luke Walton (or somebody who looks EXACTLY like him) because I don’t muster up the courage to harass him before he leaves the bar, we dance… a good time is had by all for the majority of the night. Then, out of nowhere, this drunk j@ck@ss decides to assault the three of us. He tries to grope us, but we manage to avoid him. He moves on… to assault a girl who clearly has Down’s Syndrome.

We stood there, frozen in horror, as he pulled this girl’s shirt up and groped her breast. When she (understandably) freaked out and ran off the dance floor, he drunkenly stumbled back towards us. So, Cami told him off. After a 20 minute scene that involved us telling him he was an @ss, him whining that what he did wasn’t really that bad, and Cami literally shoving him away from us, we chose to leave the bar. (And, in case you’re wondering, the lady with Down’s found the rest of her party and seemed to be okay.)

At this point, it was about 1:30 am, so we decided to drive back to the house. We got into our car and hopped back onto the four lane highway that has two south-bound lanes that run along the beach (where we are in our car) and two north-bound lanes that hug the hills overlooking the beach (where our house is). The two sides are separated by a large median strip with plants and cement… and NO breaks for about 20 miles past the part of the hill that our house is located on.

We figure there must be some way of crossing over from the south-bound lanes to the hills, so I start combing through the hand-drawn map that the owner of the house had given us - a map that includes a drawing of a shark in the water, a car labeled “lost gringos,” and a “handy nearby cemetery” - to try and find a way to get to the house without driving 40 miles out of the way. Being the expert map-reader that I am, I find what looks like an exit that loops around to cross over all four lanes before heading into the hills. I show my find to the girls and we all agree that must be the way to go. Hooray!

We find the off-ramp, swing around over the highway… and end up on a dark road that heads straight back into the hills. NOT the hill that our house is on, unfortunately.

When we realize that the road doesn’t head back to the house, we turn around and head back the way that we came.  Lo and behold, we see a little road that branches off on our left hand side - a road that wasn’t visible when we were driving the other way, but that clearly goes towards our house.  So we veer to the left, head down the road… and 10 seconds later realize that we are heading the wrong way down a one-way road.  How do we realize this?  There are headlights blinding us.  With flashing red and blue lights on the top.

Clearly not a good sign.

As brilliant women, we quickly realize that La Policia want us to pull over on the side of the road.  Which we do, even as we freak out about being pulled over, squint into the blinding lights in an attempt to see what’s going on, figure out how much money we have to use as a bribe, and try NOT to think about being thrown in a Mexican jail.

Two cops materialize at the driver’s window - one is probably in his early 30s, and one is somewhere in his 50s.  They are obviously VERY angry with us, and start barking questions at Cami in Spanish. While I have vague memories of high school Spanish, I immediately start (silently) thanking god that Cami is fluent. The cops ask questions. Cami answers. They shine their flash light into the car and look around for a reason to arrest us. While I did catch a few words here and there in the conversation, I’ll post Cami’s recap of the dialogue here:

La Policia: “What are you DOING?”

Cami: “Oh, you know, just trying to get back to the house that we’ve rented for the weekend. It’s just a little bit farther up this road.”

LP: “You are going the WRONG WAY DOWN A ONE WAY ROAD, lady.”

C: “What?!?! How could that be? There were no signs back there where we turned on…”

LP: “Where are you coming from? And where are you going?”

C: “Oh, we went to dinner at La Fonda. And we’re just going back to our house in the gated community right over there.” (Cami points down the road into pitch black.) “We aren’t sure quite where it is…”

LP: “We have NO idea what you’re talking about.”

C: “The community is right near here. There are guards and lights…”

LP: “Have you been there before?”

C: “Well, we stayed there last night. We got lost going there yesterday, but we have this map…” (I recognize the word “mapa” at this point and thrust the stupid thing into Cami’s hands.) “See, here’s where we’re going, and we were trying to take this exit….”

La policia take the map out of Cami’s hands and start inspecting it as she shows them our attempted route. As they look at it, their faces loosen up. The younger cop laughs under his breath at the “lost gringos.” Emboldened by this friendliness, Cami adds, “You see why we’re lost. La puta mapa…”

LP: “Ha! La puta mapa!”

And with that little curse, Cami won the cops over. The younger guy joked around with us for a few minutes while the older cop wandered down the road. When he returned, the cops got back in their car, left the flashing lights on, and backed down the highway so that we could follow them to the entrance to our community.

Isn’t that nice? And I think the lesson here is clear. Swearing in other languages is the key to good international relations.