Current location:	La Paz, Baja California
Current mood:	happy
Current music:	Bloody Mariachi or cheesy 80s is all they play here!

Hindu Mysticism & stray dogs
So, taking up from where I left off last time.

Our American friend from San Ignacio is a lady called Seva. She moved down to Baja about a year ago, working first in a camp site and restraunt, and then getting her own place. She´s a fascinating character (well, I thought so). She grew up in California, daughter of an alcoholic father and a violent mother, was raised Catholic, married at 16, had 3 sons and was abandoned by her first husband in her early 20s and then remarried a few years after that. A little way into the second marriage, she started having out of body experiences. She thought she was going crazy, the priests she talked to thought she was going crazy and her husband had no clue what was going on. She wandered into a library one day and found a section on Eastern Spirituality, and books that described what had been happening to her in terms of meditiation and spiritual experiences, so she ended up finding a guru from India and becoming a Hindu. We talked a lot about past lives and reincarnation and meditation and all that stuff.

Seva´s a really quiet person, talkative once you get her going, but a strange mix of warmth and reserve initially. She seems the kind of person who wants to be mother to the world, but is trapped to an extent by her own timidity. She drove us down to a beach called Playa de los Naranjos, where we rented a bungalow and the three of us spent the next three days on the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen. Crystal clear water, fish nibbling you if you stay still long enough, and the water as still as a lake.

On our last evening, Seva adopted a puppy in Mulege and brought him home - a little terrier mix, very bright eyed and bushy tailed little guy. She left us in Mulege to get the bus yesterday morning, and we spent the rest of the day driving south to La Paz. The desert is in bloom right now, there have been storms and some flooding lately, so the saguro cacti are standing up from a riot of shrubs and grasses and tiny yellow flowers. We crossed over a flooded part of the road in the bus yesterday, as dark was beginning to fall. There was a storm cloud a few miles away, hanging in the sky with flashes of lighning in the depths of it. Dramatic, if a little scary.

We´re in a proper city again now, staying in a Pension which even has some other backpackers in it. We went wandering this morning and had breakfast in the market. I would be out wandering right now, but it´s just too bloody hot. There´s actual humidity here, as well as serious heat. I keep saying that we´re going to have to get used to it sooner or later, but that´s easier said than done!

We´re probably going to hang out here for a couple of days, and then get the ferry across to mainland Mexico. 18 hours on a boat. What fun!