Without opening my eyes I knew I was already there. I sat in my grandparent’s crowded old van with all my cousins, aunts, and my brother. The drive was long and dizzying. We traveled from the desert through the city and then into a valley. I spent most of the four hours listening to my CD player as I counted the minutes until we arrived. The windy road that led us there always made me uneasy as our car came too close to the edge of the cliffs. We seemed to hover miles and miles over the water. Once we spotted the water we knew we weren’t too far away.
My Grandparents never questioned whether they were incapable of the drive. It was tradition. Every summer around the beginning of June my aunt Marilyn, my uncle Hector their son Jr, and daughter Rosa all came along. My parents followed us too. Once we arrived at Estero Beach we all gathered at my father’s mom’s house. My grandma Nieves also know as grandma Ice Cream, owned and managed about fifthy beach house rentals all aligned along the Baja California peninsula. The grown ups circled her enormous kitchen talking aloud catching up on the past year. The kids kept quiet as we patiently waited till given permission to run down the half mile stretch of land that separated us from the ocean. Once allowed to leave we would race until we got to the sand. It was surrounded by a circle of mountains, and green hills. Off in the distance you could see the city of Ensenada.
We carried our giant rubber tube into the salty blue water and swam out. The water was clean and usually freezing cold. Hours later after swimming and treading in the water we settled on the warm sand and built sand castles. If this wasn’t your thing you could walk over to the camp site close to the beach and rent a horse to ride along the coast for an hour or so. After enough activities everybody was tired and hungry. By that time my dad or one of my uncles started a barbecue. We cooked carne or chicken asada with all the fixings until the sun set. When it was dark we drove to my other grandma’s house. Once settled and unpacked everybody helped clean and set up the place. Since it was vacant for the rest of the year it usually needed some work. The old rustic house had tall ceilings and cold floors. Somehow we made it comfortable. The four bedrooms weren’t enough to accommodate my huge family, so the children setup bed’s in the living room and huddled around a small TV which only received two American channels, with subtitles of course. All these inconveniences were a part of a big luxury to my family. Spending a week in one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen with my entire family is a tradition worth passing on from generation to generation.
