Sleeping under a 300 year old bed.

Loreto is the oldest town in the Californias, one of the last spots of North America to finally, surely with regret, be conquered by the big ships, and all the mess. Loreto is close to 313 years old, after that came the mission of San Xavier. San Xavier, the mission, the church built by the Jesuit missionaries is still standing, Loreto`s is not.

Last Friday I didn´t had any clue the ages of this two towns, I just heard that San Xavier was a pretty old mission up in the mountains, on the Sierra de la Giganta, and that the fruit candy that San Xavier people made where amazing, this was enough for me to go. My stomach rules most of my important decisions, or at least I would like that. I must say that I had a free weekend so I decided to hitch hike, up the 40 km of high sierra rocky terrain that separate the peaceful beaches of Loreto, from the Mission. My day started early, I packed my sleeping bag, a sweatshirt, water, a cap, my cellphone with some songs, and money (I forgot my toothbrush), not even a book, what if I didn´t get a ride, I wasn´t going to walk all the way up with a heavy book on my back. Before starting my adventure I needed to stop at the clinic to get my stiches out, when I arrived there the nurse was laying on her ass and told me to get back on Sunday, I think she was chilling at the moment and didn´t want to move for a simple removing procedure, its not that I am paying her with my taxes or anything.

With stiches and my swollen purple eye, I started to walk to the highway, it wasn’t long till a big muscular gringo stop in his Cadillac escalade and gave me a ride just where the San Xavier road starts, exactly where it starts to go up the hill. I got down and started to walk, it was like 10 am and the sun was hitting hard. I put up my headphones and started to listen “Remember me as a time of the day”, by Explosions in the Sky, a song that I relate with taking a shower, and stepping on the cold water in the morning, so its kind of a refreshing song. I walked for about an hour and a half noticing spots on the mountains, good places to camp, to stop and have some water, places with a good shade, hills that I could climb for a better view… The scenery was vast, huge, not a single spot of humanity around, just the dirt road I was walking through. On my back I had the Sea of Cortez reflecting like a mirror in an amazing deep blue, everything else was rock and cactus, big tall cardones, and other dry bushes, I could hear birds everywhere and I decided I was going to keep walking until I got tired and if I feel like going back I was going to, if not, I will keep it on.

Suddenly ,like taken out from a movie three cars stop in front of me, they where 4 by 4 offroad cars, the kind they use in the Baja 1000 races. One of the guys with his white helmet and his full nomex suit told me to get in. I unhooked the window, that was really a net, and buckle up. The car had a gps and no more, and this guy was stepping hard on the accelerator, we where flying and of course not having a windshield made it all more exciting. I could see in between all the dirt, the cows this guy was avoiding on one side, and the cliffs and precipices on the other. We were getting up and up the cliff, very very fast, passing one curve after another. I can say I really enjoyed the adrenaline hit, but my stomach was having enough and I was also feeling dizzy, it was exactly like riding with el “Archiemen”, or even his mom or dad in the highway, where every second of the road you feel you are about to dye, but you are having a great time about it, somehow.

Finally I arrived, got the dirt of my head and arms, thanked the driver, who happened to be an Italian professional racer called Andrea, he even offered me to keep riding all the way south, but I was finally in San Xavier and I was getting that candy.

Wow, I was still feeling dizzy and it was like stepping out of a time machine, San Xavier is beautiful (this place close to Guatemala, jajaja) its one of those special places where time has stop by. Of all the towns I have been in Baja before, coastal ones are relatively young establishments, because people arrived there to fish them 50 or 60 years ago, or less, the old people are not even from those places, but in here it was different. The houses where beautiful, made out of rock, or adobe, I think, and all painted in white with a gray “Guardapolvo” in the bottom, and a palapa roof. All the houses, or the main houses of the town, where built infront of a broad road covered with pebbles that gets you all the way to the mission, the original church built 311 year ago, built out of the same rocks that cover the mountains that surround this valley, or this canyon, cause water runs through the middle, giving the church a especial aura that makes her fit entirely on this environment. This white road covered with pebbles has a bunch of rounded benches with orange trees in the middle, a perfecto place for the tired pilgrim to sit by the shade. I walked directly to the church, I wanted to feel the cold inside that rock cavern, and check out the windows that where ordered and delivered by ship all the way from Tlaxcala and where the first windows in the peninsula, or what about the golden retables that where also ordered and brought on a ship more that 300 years ago.

The places was fantastic, you could really feel that it had been there for a while, no wonder why thousands of people come here every year to celebrate San Francisco Xavier. After a while cooling down in the church I walked out, just thorough the roses, and like other 10 different kind of flowers that were planted at the front of the church, I walked around it and saw that the back of the church was full of gardens, I mean big gardens, and I started walking to take a look in between the date palm trees and the onion fields, the place was an Oasis, a skinny wound of green, almost like a scratch on the hard rock. On the back of the onion field I could see a big broad tree, not tall, but huge in proportion, a muscular trunk full of chunks of wood and scars, and bumps everywhere, also I could hear water running. Wow that thing was old, I thought. I walked by it and just by its foot, a small water channel used to water the fields was running, and the tree was absolutely the king of that land, and was getting all the water he wanted from it. At that moment I met Cirilo, Don Cirilo, the owner of the property, a 5^th generation, AT LEAST, (he couldn’t really remember) man that was working his land just like his grandfather was when he reached 115 years old. His grandfather was born there, and had eaten the olives of that tree and drink the water of that channel, just as his grandson. “This place has a 130 population, in which we all know each other, Cirilo told me, a lot of people, like my grandfather, get to live after their hundred birthday. It is because of this water, of this clean air, of this olives, and of this soil”. He asked me If I knew how old the tree was, and he told me: This three was planted by the Jesuit missionaries before they built the church 311 years ago. That means this crooked and complicated old creatures is the oldest thing around, oldest than the oldest building in the Californias.

We talked for a while and before he left I asked him one thing “Can I sleep here under the tree, close to the channel, on its shade?” he said yes.

I got a spot to sleep, the hard part was done, now I needed to get some candy, and walk around the town. I have never seen so many different kinds of plants and flowers in my life, I couldn´t believe it. Every house was a botanical garden, and a jungle on itself. First you could see the olive trees, then the palm trees, then the fig trees, after that the chamomile flowers, the orange tree, the papayas, the mangos, la calabaza, and so many others that of course I had any idea what they were. I returned to the church and met Don Chuy, he was the one chosen by the community to be in charge of the church and the turists for that month. Probably it was even charging the foreigners, he didn’t charged me, I am not sure. We talked for a long time, about candy recipes and how he makes his favorite with just the skin of the orange, never the flesh. So the best way to do orange candy, was with its horrible untasty skin. He was sure about that, and he told me, he had to stay at the church for like an hour more, but after that he would take me back to try it.

At that moment the church was celebrating a Quinceañera with all the pink and all the cheesy ribbons you could imagine. I decided to skip it and curled under an orange tree on top of the church 300 year old stone fence. The heat was reaching its highest, but under the tree everything was calm and fress, I could see hummingbirds flying around me, and I can only hope my snoring wasn`t heard in the church, because I slept like a baby.

When Chuy was out he wake me up and we walked to his house, in there he sell me 1 kilo of candy but I open it and we ate like half of its sugary orangy amazingness just there, This Chuy really loved his candy. Then he offer me some goat cheese his neighbor made and he gave me another half a kilo piece of cheese. Uhmm combine with the candy, this cheese, was so tasty and different from the “local” queso Oaxaca they sell at Soriana that taste like pus jelly.

When I came out of the house it was starting to get dark, I walked around the town a little bit completely full, with still half a kilo of candy with me, jaja, sugarrr. I walked in a complete darkness to my tree, because the town has just a diesel electric plant, and this, thank God, makes the stars shine brighter instead of the televisions.

The amazing curly tree was there waiting, the night was cooling down up in the Sierra, I could see the moon and many many stars, in between the branches. I unrolled my sleeping bag, and draw a circle around it, so scorpions, and hopefully drunk rapists would avoid me, like I learned, in Oaxaca some years ago, preaching high in the Sierra, (ohh yeah, another story) I hook up some music on my cellphone, and started to listen a song that seemed to be written for this moment; “Glittering Blackness”, by Explosions in the Sky, under a 300 and counting olive tree.