Memories ~ That's What You Get For Sleeping On The Beach!

Errol and I used to travel a lot in our early years together. Mostly to Baja California, Mexico. 

It was a fairly easy drive down the 5 freeway to San Diego, then to San Yasidro and the border. 

In the early days, we'd drive deeper into the long peninsula that is Baja. Later, we found a place much closer to the United States. 

Here I am with our horse, Renegade, by our old Green van. This is at the place where we later leased some land and spent many happy weekends and vacations. For now, I just want to show the green van. 

We went in Errol's old, large, green Econoline van. He used it for work, but it was easily converted to a camping vehicle. 

Since we always arrived in the dark, finding a beach to sleep on could be challenging. 

Sometimes, we'd find ourselves way above the water with steep cliffs and no beach access, other times, there were people and houses. 

When all else failed, there was always the van to sleep in, but what fun was that?

Once though, we found a beautiful beach with white, soft sand. We laid out our sleeping bags and went to sleep as soon as we wrapped them around us. 

I was sleeping so soundly, I didn't even know it was morning, when I heard sounds, voices, speaking in Spanish, while some clanging noises were going on. 

I opened my eyes and found that we were surrounded by a bunch of guys, busily digging in the sand, finding something and unceremoniously throwing their catch into metal buckets. 

I guess Errol woke up at the same time and after we crawled out of our sleeping bags, the guys approached us. 

And we learned they were digging for clams, almejas. 

That's what the grinning dude said to me, as he approached with an almeja in his hand. 

It was not one of those small clams you get in restaurants. 

He offered it to me to eat! 

It was still breathing!

In and out, its body moved.

I said, "no muerto." 

The guy grinned some more, and agreed, no muerto. 

Not dead, indeed, I could still see the thing breathing. 

As I was trying to convey in my pigeon Spanish that I only ate  dead animals, it made everything sound worse, somehow. 

Muerto is such an expressive word, after all. 

Meanwhile, Errol is standing by with the dudes, grinning from ear to ear. Egging me on:

"Why don't you just take a bite?" 

"No way, it's still breathing."

"Take a bite and it will stop breathing, then you can eat the whole thing."

Errol was making fun of me, while the Mexican guy was politely standing off to the side, with the large clam in his hand. 

The story finally ended with me taking a tiny bite of a living, breathing large clam. Phew! 

First and last time I ever did that.

For sure!