Several days of lounging by the pool, reading Desert Solitaire, using my limited Spanish with the locals, and shopping in the supermarket, La Comer, had gone by when my family and I were lucky enough to have a Mexican woman and her daughter come and cook for us.
We were staying in a house raised up on the hills of Puerto Los Cabos overlooking the most southern part of the Gulf of California. We knew Lulu through a mutual friend. She cooks often for the houses in our neighborhood and loves to feed her traditional cuisine to hungry American tourists. I was relaxing by the poolside, reading about the intense heat of the Utahn desert, when Lulu and her daughter knocked on our door—an hour early.
She spoke no english. My mom quickly recruited me to translate, and I led her to the kitchen where she said dinner would be ready in an hour. We said we wanted traditional Mexican. And we got it.
Lulu cooked up little steak burritos, fresh guacamole and salsa mexicana (essentially pico de gallo), chicken enchiladas with mole, steak and chorizo, and stuffed peppers wrapped in bacon. It was a feast! I have always loved Mexican food; I probably eat way too much guacamole. But this was a whole new type of Mexican. American tex-mex can come pretty close, but the cheese, avocados, peppers, chorizo and tortillas are never quite the same.
Lulu and her daughter went to clean up the kitchen by themselves, even though I asked several times if they needed help. "No, no! Let us pamper you!" she said in quick Spanish. I passed by my family sitting on the patio, enjoying the view of the sun sinking behind the Sierra de la Laguna mountains and an incredible moonrise. I sat down with them for a few minutes, thinking that I would never be able to quite capture the moon in a photograph.
But eventually I gave in and sprinted to my room to grab my camera and tripod. I set up by the pool, noticing the moon's reflection on the water, a unique little frame for the city lights. Somehow I managed to make it work. It was only a waxing crescent moon, but I decided to increase my ISO and lengthen my shutter speed in order to get a glowing effect of its full shape.
With a belly full of my favorite guacamole so far from our trip, I took shot after shot of the sinking sun and rising moon.