Where the real journey began. All photos by Joey Sackett
Highway 1 in Baja can be a dangerous road, we knew that much.
The plan was to pick up Cooper in Baja, chase waves, and drop him at the San Diego airport. The last chapter to his five-month trip. Cooper had just quit his job in Seattle and biked to Baja, towing his surfboard behind in a mini trailer and surfing down the West Coast. I quit my corporate life in Seattle a year before him and moved into my car, chasing adventure and learning to take photos.
We were an hour from the next break, Cooper was changing the song, distracted by his phone.
He tried to correct course but turned the wheel too hard to the right. At 70 miles per hour, we were now rolling through the air, flipping, weightless. The fearful anticipation slowed down time, and the world fell silent. When we hit the ground our bodies whipped around the cab while anchored in our seatbelts. We rolled five times through the desert, at one point it seemed like it’d never end. “Can we stop flipping already,” I thought, “so we can keep driving and set up camp.” Suddenly, everything was okay. We’d be at the next surf spot in no time.
Death came knocking, but there was no epiphany, not a ripple of regret, nor the faintest memory of family. Just a refusal to accept reality. At least the movies prepared me for the slow motion and ringing in my ears.
The real heroes of our story.
Finally, the world was upright again. The vultures above must’ve been upset to see us walk out of the car in good health. The dust settled, and the severity of the situation set in. I had been living in that car, and now it was a pile of Mexican scrap metal, 10 hours south of the border in Baja.
A bilingual mother and nurse from San Diego pulled over and treated the cut on the bridge of my nose, she gave us water, and even translated with the Mexican insurance agent over the phone.
I felt so stupid, a nuisance sitting on the road embankment, bandaged up, covered in sand. I stared blankly at all my clothes and belongings scattered on the sand. I’ve never felt more vulnerable, doubts filled my head. It was only the first few months into #vanlife. Was this life of adventure really for me? I should have never left my corporate job.
Then a short, stocky man approached, offering to grab his truck and take us and our things to the junkyard, where the totaled car was being dropped. We graciously accepted his offer.
Baja: Come for the waves, stay for the relationships with good people.
Armando, the man with the truck, returned. We piled our things in the truck bed, drank beers, and got to know him, his wife, and three-year-old son, all seated in the front bench seat of his lifted F-150. We laughed and chatted for two hours in my intermediate Spanish before arriving at the junkyard. Armando even helped set us up for a ride to the border for the next day.
Armando was so genuine, and beer never tasted so good. I was indebted and inspired. In a matter of minutes the worst situation of my life turned wildly beautiful.
As I got my life sorted, Armando texted me asking when I’d come back, an invitation of sorts. I immediately schemed a plan for when I had a new set of wheels. Then COVID hit and the trip was delayed. But always staying in touch with Armando, sending photos and catching up. The year after, Cooper couldn’t take enough time off work. But I had to go. I had to thank the man that showed me kindness during my lowest low. The man that reinvigorated my soul with adventure.
And so I did. I traveled down the Baja again to meet Armando and his family. We ate oysters, watched the local baseball game, and danced to Norteño music. It was everything I had dreamt. But something was missing: Cooper. The circle was still broken.
Yeah, the Baja is fun.
This March, after five years of talk, Cooper and I, along with a friend named Tyrus, crossed the Tijuana border with surfboards stacked on his Subaru Forester. Cooper and I even took Spanish lessons for this moment so that we could properly thank Armando. Memories flooded in as those familiar cacti flew passed the window. Cooper shared his memory of a Mexican Coca Cola bottle flipping in slow motion through the cab as the car turned end over end. I opened up about some tears I held back after the accident while on a call with my Dad. We both remember how lucky we got. Lucky to be alive, and even luckier to have made a friend out of it.
As we made our way south to Armando, we chased waves – the only way to travel in Baja. After surfing, we’d sleep under the stars. Then we’d keep on south to the next wave, trying to stay off the highway as much as possible, but always moving closer to Armando.
Eventually, we arrived at the southern most point of the trip, Armando’s home. My third time here and the town was as familiar as ever, no directions needed. We pulled up to his ranch-style home and embraced. Without wasting time, the grill was hot and chairs set in the sandy yard.
Finally, the prophecy foretold. Armando’s brother-in-law parked in the driveway and dropped a box of a hundred oysters next to the grill. Five years earlier, while Cooper and I were sitting in the back seat of his Ford F-150 talking about the delicious oysters in Baja, we said, “one day we’ll come back and we’ll all eat oysters together.”
Wish you were here.
My Spanish improves each year, so each visit has been new in its own way. I understand more, I talk more, I connect with Armando and his family, and the conversation gets more complex. But these aren’t complex matters; it’s all quite simple. There’s a big sign one block from Armando’s home that sums it up better than I could: “There are a lot of small people, in small places, doing small things, that can change the world.”
“Hay mucha gente pequeña, en lugares pequeños, haciendo cosas pequeñas, que pueden cambiar el mundo.”
Armando, a local Mexican teacher, drove past a car wreck on his way home from school and just pulled over to see how he could help out. That’s the short version. Sometimes, I guess, it doesn’t take too much to change someone else’s world.
