Perros: There are so many dogs in these rural Baja towns. No leashes, no chains, probably no spaying and neutering. Yet few (no) obvious strays. Some dogs have their territory and property and they keep to it without restraint while others stretch out a bit more. Completely opposite to America. Maybe there are vets, maybe money gets spent on vet services, but I doubt much. Though every tienda has dog food. These are not the commercial bags like in America. Small quantities in unlabeled plastic bags that a dog would eat in a few days. Depending on its size. I doubt there is overfeeding. These are mutts to the core. I’m careful as I walk by them, keep a watchful eye, but a calm, unfearful, and unchallenging demeanor (all animals, humans included, feel and react to that) and haven’t had any issues. Sometimes you’ll get a growler, like I did yesterday, but you wait and see and act like an animal to an animal. And we sorted it out. Its cohort was just a yapper that wouldn’t shut up, but non-threatening. And eventually its owner came around, yelling at it to quiet down(presumably.) My guess is if you have a biter and meany it quickly gets destroyed, and everyone moves on. There can be no leeway for such behavior in animal husbandry of this sort. You watch where you step and everything goes along just fine.

Chickens: I’m convinced that each town has cock fighting. Not that I’ve seen it, though I would very much like to. Some of you might not like that, but let me give you some background. Bear with me, even if repulsed, you might find this interesting. In my youth, I gained a bit of chicken experience. I was a member of 4-H and grew up on a small farm in central New York. Every year the Kiwanis Club would give any 4-Her who wanted them 25 baby chicks in the spring. The deal was you had to raise them, show some in the county fair, and in the fall, either donate a dozen eggs or a butchered and dressed bird back to the club, who presumably passed those on to the needy. This whole program was a boon to any rural family. We would alternate every year between an egg-laying breed and a meat-oriented breed. Egg-layers are good for a couple years so you need to refresh that resource. Egg-layers are delicious eating too while they are young (all the chicken you eat is young, as older birds are tough), but they are smaller breeds, so don’t produce as much to feed a family of five. The meat-oriented birds can grow quickly to be quite large, but hardly lay any eggs. They are not worth the feed, time, or real estate once beyond the tender age, which is only a few months. At that time (I’m not sure about now), it wasn’t possible to sex baby chicks, so you would generally expect to get about half female and half male. So, in your egg-layer year you would get about 13 fresh hens that would produce about two eggs each, every three days for a couple of years. Do the math, that is an abundance of eggs. Eggs every day for breakfast, baking, (and pancakes) still meant plenty. So, we traded them with one neighbor for fresh milk(unpasteurized) and butter, and another neighbor for haircuts. (Anyone who knows me, knows I am averse to paying for haircuts. Now you know why.) In a meat-oriented year, the hens were big and the roosters bigger and the freezers (we had three) were filled. (The gruesome details of butchering is a bit off topic.) We would only save a few to fill out the categories for showing in the fair. Now back to the cock fighting. I learned early on, you could only save one rooster per year. Egg or meat, you butchered all but the one you thought would be the best show bird. If you didn’t, you would have cock fighting. Period. I think about the first year, I kept two. Bad move. How this works is as they come of age, they begin to fight for command of the brood. One of them dominates and the other lives an isolated life of cowering at a safe distance. Even as a single digit aged youngster, I recognized this, and I felt bad for it. I never made that mistake again. Chicken lives aren’t that long, so the rotation works out. So, is cock fighting inhumane? In my small farm experience, one got to live and the others got eaten. Is that a humane way to settle things? Alternatively, you could cage them for separation. Is that humane? What’s the point? We had a chicken house where the brood would roost for the evening with boxes the hens would lay eggs in, but all had free range during the day. The second rooster wasn’t allowed in house at night by the dominator. It wasn’t enough to just establish dominance, it was a constant life of terror. Is that humane? In these rural western Baja towns, you can hear the roosters crowing. So, I followed my ear. It turns out the crowing seems to come from the same lot. If you can sneak a peek into that lot, which oddly, sometimes you can’t, you will see multiple roosters in cages, of course, otherwise, I just explained, they will fight. The most reasonable explanation for this to me is for cock fighting as an event. There will be hens around too, roaming free, sometimes with baby chicks, so I guess you could argue they are used for breeding and a variation of the genetic pool. If you have worthy credentials on Mexican culture, chickens, and genetics we might have a reasonable debate on such matters. If you are just a bleeding-heart, I’m not biting. I wouldn’t expect this to be cock fighting, as depicted in movies, to the death with artificial spurs added for destruction. I would expect something more along the lines of two roosters presented, wagers made, they are put together, they fight for dominance until one finally submits and runs away. Winners collect and the next animals are presented. If a rooster no longer remains competitive, I suspect its cage becomes a new one’s home. Otherwise, these would be just pets. Maybe, but this is difficult for me to buy. This is all pure speculation, of course, but it is on my list of investigative topics. If it is in Mexican culture to have chicken fights, bring it on. It is American conditioning to oppose this as entertainment, but I have no interest in imposing American conditioning on non-Americans. (Or Americans for that matter.) If you watch a nature channel and they show males of various species fighting for dominance, are you not observing the same thing for entertainment? I’ve shoveled my share of chicken crap, collected hundreds (thousands?) of eggs, fed and watered them daily, deloused and presented birds to judges, and have even been endeared to them, but with maybe the exception of that single proud rooster each year (and that had definite limits), I never considered them pets. And no sick chicken was taken to the vet. I recognize I might be considered cold. At this point in life, it is what it is.

I was recently asked if there were any farms in western Baja or is it all fishing and tourism. No, there are no farms here. It is all desert. I have not seen an active stream or river. I’ve been here for over a month with one day of light rain. I got doused in the surf and my clothes were dry in 20 minutes. When the wind blows, so does the dirt. Fishing (which is really to say, lobstering) is definitely a thing, but mostly on a small scale. Mostly pangas. Every now and then you see a bigger trawler. (I walked into the fish camps here in the mangroves of Bahia Santa Maria. Marcos with cincuenta anos of lobstering aqui, explained he went out every day at 0600, pulled, emptied, and redeployed his traps. The catch was brought back and kept in cages. Every few days, the big boat from his Co-op would come into the bay and collect their catch.) The pangas buzz in and out of the “harbor” every day. Generally, about 20-25 feet in length with typically one driver and one crew. These are open fiberglass boats that all look the same. They are driven by gasoline outboard engines of varying vintage, but sound and run the way they should. You will see around the camps and Co-ops the older stripped out engines for parts. Yamaha is a common brand and is a good engine. In Bahia Santa Maria, it was mostly 75 HP Yamahas. They are pretty consistent, which makes sense. You would want to be able to swap parts out, so if everyone uses the same, this is to alls’ advantage. I have yet to see any vendors, so wherever and whoever the vendor is, they are likely the determiners of the engine brands and sizes. It was similar in Greenland. Everyone had the same engine brand and it was 250 HP, regardless of the boat’s size. This made for some comical matchings. In small town America this happens too. If there is one store, the vendors choice is your choice if you’ve got to have it right away. But in America, you can travel outside of town to a different vendor, or order it online and receive it the next day. Rural Baja, (and Greenland) not so much.

Every town seems to have at least one Co-op that controls the fishing. It’s quite possible/probable, they own the boats, the engines, and the fishing gear, so they also would be in on the determination of equipment. In Asuncion I spoke to Ricky who was the sole boat repairman for his Co-op. It appeared he was maintaining the whole fleet, which leads me to believe the Co-op owns the boats. They apparently gave him health insurance for his family, but it took 6 months to get his last paycheck. Working outside under a tarp, the scent of polyester resin was apparent. He had a Tyvek suit on sometimes, but he said it was difficult/impossible to get them to supply latex/nitrile gloves. He finally got them to get him some acetone so he could wash his hands. This, after he mistakenly got too much catalyst on his hands and the pain he experienced that eve. (In PT I would see old timers washing with acetone, but the younger generation cringes at it. To do that, I have to deem the chemical I mistakenly got on my hands worse for me than the acetone I’m using to get it off. I use gloves, but those 3M and Sikaflex type sealants are very difficult to apply without making a mess and getting it everywhere. If you are super diligent, you easily burn through many pairs of gloves for one sealant job. Far beyond the rural Mexican economy. When the pandemic hit and gloves became in short supply, you could hear the chatter about glove re-use and conservation.) These pangas live a hard life. In Asuncion, I watched a pair of fishermen come in and beach their boat. The “beach” was a mixture of rock and sand. They then got their pickup truck and dragged the boat up above the tide line. This was comedy, even for them. The ramp was dirt and uphill. The truck’s tires were a bit worn and getting more so at every attempt. They had a 1-inch line attached to the stem of the boat and hooked to a trailer hitch on the truck. They couldn’t just pull the panga up steadily. They had to back the truck down to the panga and gun it, jerking the boat up about 3 feet at a time, spinning the tires until forward motion ceased. Repeat about five or six times. I’m not suggesting this was the norm, but apparently this was their best option in this circumstance. Some pangas stay at moorings. In San Juanico, they were kept on la playa and each one was stored on a trailer. So, techniques depend on the facilities and the landings.

As for tourism, yes, and as I have mentioned, varies from town to town. In general, the cruisers don’t seem like huge tourism assets. Fuel and grocery are our main need as we tend to be self-sufficient. This is why in America; we are often not welcome. Gypsy boaters move on. If you are not a loose capital boater paying for a slip every night and eating at the restaurants, we don’t want you around. Less so in the Pacific Northwest, (but I recognized that attitude increasing in Port Townsend) but made very clear in Southern California. Consume, consume, consume. Conservation is for losers. A metaphor for the vibe I got is “You are not making my house bigger, I do not gain money from you, go away.” Anchor time limits, unwelcoming harbor patrols, and limiting shore access (thus, some places even limiting your ability to shop at the stores) are their present techniques. Back to Baja. Tourists on holiday must contribute some. But these are the outdoorsy types who, again, know how to get by with less. Maybe they drive a camper (land yacht) and stay at a campground. Baja is not where you take the family for a Disney-style vacation. It is not where a typical American would take their once a year, two-week vacation for an easy and luxurious time. I would say the expats help a bit, building their homes and the materials and labor associated with that. For example, my observation was that the local hardware store in an expat heavy town was far better than in an expat light one.

As for groceries on the west coast of Baja, it’s slim pickings. I’d buy more if there was more worth buying. There is some limited produce if it looks good. Nothing lasts too long in the heat. At la tienda y el barco. Some things in some places are kept in coolers. Meat is usually available in some places. Do it yourself bagging from the lift-up freezer is not uncommon. Though sometimes there is a meat counter. Tecate is available everywhere. Restock is once a week, so knowing which day that is helps. Lots of junk food. No sugarless/diet drinks whatsoever. Lots of Coca Cola products for you investors out there. Seafood must be a staple. Based on the stores, clearly the diet is simple. And it almost seems like the staples must not be coming from la tienda. Incidentals only? I can’t speak on the restaurants as I have not been to any. Geared toward tourists, my understanding is they are too pricey for most of the Mexican population. The “Enjoy life, eat out more often.” motto is not a good way to conserve limited funds regardless of where you live. If you are doing well enough that the expense of regularly eating out is still cost-effective time management, you probably don’t read Resourceful Sailor articles.


And remember, these are just speculations and observations of a student. I claim little-to-no expertise. I’m just a fool in a 20-foot boat with a microphone.