The gringo menace is strong in Cabo San Lucas, but not as strong as is rumored.  Most guidebooks will tell you that the place has been aggressively "Americanized", so I was prepared for what I saw:   there's the usual American corporate sprawl with the same damn 20 restaurants repeated as often as market research dictates, and there's even the crown jewels of American shithouse culture, a Planet Hollywood and a Hard Rock Cafe.

And of course there's the attendant uber-gringos walking around in their uniform of a collared shirt hugging their belly too tight and tucked into khaki shorts, or their younger counterparts of jocks holding oversized marguerites and wearing oversized sombreros and oversized gringo grins.  There's even a whiff of spring break in the air.  There's all you can eat of all that stuff in Cabo San Lucas.  But walk 1/4 mile in almost any direction and it's good ol' Baja again, with the dirt roads, hand painted signs, roosters crowing everywhere, dogs everywhere, and jury-rigged houses.  It's Baja in such a pure form that it would probably scare the average gringo who'd arrived directly from the states, and sure enough the only gringos in these areas walk around like house cats outside their territory, which is a welcomed change from the usual American swagger.  

 

I needed a break from the group motor, so I listened  to my inner-gringo and rented a moped and headed for the hills,

where there was nary a gringo to be found, just that organic entity that is the Mexican village growing out of the near tropical landscape.  Incidentally, since La Paz, palm trees have been common as have all sorts of fluorescent flowers.  There was an abrupt climate change, from northern Baja's warm days and chilly nights to southern Baja's scalding days and warm nights.

Riding the moped was also the first time I'd seen a Mexican dog bark:  they're usually totally quiet, with the only dogs barking being those owned by Americans.  It seems the local dogs enjoy a good bark, maybe they're more thoroughly Americanized than the people, who knows.

I came back to The Gringo Zone and within minutes I stumbled on a photoshoot attended by a bunch of L.A. types standing around a woman who'd had so much surgical work done she looked transsexual.

  At times like this the place reminds me of southern California, and at others it goes all the way over to southern New Jersey.  Yes, it's a mess.