A perfect walk on the beach, and a great fish dinner

I really don't like adventures. I'm a timid soul on Mexican highways. But I do love being in interesting places. Like now, I'm quite content to be stuck at the beach while we wonder when the promised mechanic will arrive. Today is the day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and this may slow things up, or perhaps her intervention will help. I am far from being a Catholic, but I do love la morenita... that's one of her many nicknames.

Cando, unable to move further, has arrived by a motel and RV park on the shores of the sea of Cortez. There are maybe a dozen other RVs here by the beach.

Yesterday in the late afternoon, we went for a long walk along the sandy beach. It seems to stretch for miles in either direction. We didn't realize when we got here that the beach is aligned east-west rather than the general north-south direction of the coastline. Funny how hard it is to change your sense of place once you get something fixed in your mind. Anyway, we went west yesterday, which took us past a number of pleasant vacation homes, probably belonging to Mexicans and mostly seeming to be unoccupied. As Baja California is between us and the open ocean, the waves are small. The water isn't exactly cold, but this is December, and the air hasn't been warm enough yet to entice us into the water.

The beach has more shells than any we've been on. I like the late-afternoon sun on these:


After our walk, we stopped by the restaurant here. The wind was blowing and it had gotten dark. "How about takeouts?" I suggested. We asked and the waiter said sure. I asked what they were known for and he said the fish dinners. I asked what one of them was, and he took me into the kitchen to show me. It looked good.

Kelly and I decided on that one, and said we'd come back when it was ready. When would that be? Our waiter teased us that it would be half an hour, or 40 minutes, or 50. We said we'd be back in half an hour and went off to take showers in the motel.

After half an hour, there was a knock on Cando's door. The waiter grinned as he presented us with a huge platter containing a fish sliced in half down the middle, resting on aluminum foil, and covered with a sauce. There were plates, silverware, a bowl of warm tortillas in a handwoven basket, fresh tomato salsa, fresh cut limes, and assorted condiments.

We spread everything on the table, and just as our forks were in hand, I said, "Maybe we should get a photo for my blog." But we were too hungry to wait.

The fish was a true feast, and the fresh salsa -- really more like a spicy salad -- was a perfect complement to it. When we took the plates back to the kitchen, I asked the cook how he made it. He told us the name of the fish but it didn't mean anything to us. He said it was a local red fish. On top of it, he put thinly sliced individual rings of onion, then a small layer of mayonnaise (and Mexican mayonnaise typically has more personality than ours, with lime juice and perhaps other things), then a little cheese. None of these add-ons were allowed to overpower the flavor of the fish. Exquisite!

Proof that the fish was local turned up this morning, as I walked our dog on the beach. Larry found a skeleton of exactly the species we had eaten last night.