The Traveling Celiac Eats…..

Sunrise in Loreto, Baja California Sur, Mexico. Lovely.

We are just home from traveling. More about that in another post. This post is about food. There are many conditions way, way worse than celiac and in fact, I have a couple. The issue with celiac is that humans need to eat fairly regularly and when one is traveling and has the autoimmune disease celiac, finding safe, appetizing food may or may not be problematic. At home I manage just fine, as long as I’m careful.

In February, we flew to the lovely little town of Loreto, located in Baja California Sur on the Sea of Cortez where we stayed at La Mision Hotel. Because my guy is one of the good ones who looks out for me, he contacted the hotel general manager ahead of our visit, explaining that I have celiac. The GM contacted the chef who instructed his staff and voilà, the food part of our travels were worked out — as long as we ate at the hotel. Contacting places ahead of time is a best practice and allowed the chef to bring in safe corn tortillas for me since most local ones contain wheat. Go figure.The chef at La Mision prepared this beautiful array of vegetables and seafood for me. Yum.

Of course, eating only at the hotel means we forego the travel pleasure of spontaneously buying street tacos or popping into a local joint to eat. That doesn’t work out for someone with celiac. Since we booked our tours through the hotel, the concierge and tour guide also partnered to make sure I was given safe food on tours. On one tour, we stopped at a restaurant in López Mateos, a small town that is a launching point for gray whale viewing. The restaurant owner/chef spoke with our guide and our hotel several times to make sure she prepared a safe meal for me. Traveling adds complicated layers to any trip for us but mostly works out, in part because I have a partner who helps me.

Grilled shrimp and fish tacos at Los Olivos at the La Mision Hotel and the view from the restaurant’s outside dining area. What is not to like?

All went well until we hit Monterey, CA where we’d planned to spend a few days. Before checking into the hotel, we stopped at a restaurant we’d been to before. I ordered from the gluten free menu (salad with grilled fish), asked the server to tell the kitchen I am celiac, and guess what — I got really, really vomiting sick back at the hotel from what must have been hidden gluten or gross cross contamination. Our stay was cut short because I was so ill and we both decided to head home. Even for those of us who are careful, planful travelers things can go wrong because as celiacs we rely on servers and kitchen staff to be upfront about what they can do and to follow safe practices. That did not happen in Monterey.

I’ll be back with more about the trip.

My Year of Whales

A Baja, Mexico sunrise. Beautiful, isn’t it?  I miss them.

Did you ever have a dream when you were young, something you imagined doing without any thought as to how the plan would materialize?  Mine was working in marine biology, specifically working with whales, though I don’t think I really knew what that meant.  I do remember as a kid in the 60s sitting cross legged in front of the family TV mesmerized by The Underseas World of Jacque Cousteau. I wanted that adventure, the interactions with the marine mammals, though I had no understanding of diving or had ever met anyone who dived. My single point of reference was the TV show Sea Hunt.

Who knows if I might have turned my fantasy into a reality. My life took a different turn, my mother died unexpectedly, my adolescent mood took a nose dive, adults and I wondered if I’d survive high school. Prepping me for a career in science just wasn’t in the mix.

Fast forward. I did complete high school and went on to earn advanced degrees. But that was my work life. Now I’m retired.

Retirement is a blank slate, a time when one can do and be whatever she wants. While I’m not interested in pursuing a PhD in marine bio, cause honestly doing that dance once was plenty, I am using travel bucks to enjoy marine life, especially whales.

 

An adult gray whale close by our panga. They are huge.

Richard calls 2019 The Year of the Whale. Our Oregon whale license plate, decorated with a mama gray and her calf, arrived in January. In February, we fled to Hawaii to see the humpback whales in the warmer, protected waters off Maui, an area they visit each year to mate and give birth.

But this year I turn 65 (Medicare here I come) so as a gift, I received a trip to Magdalena Bay in Baja, Mexico, the magical place grays migrate to each year to mate, give birth, and then train their calves for the long migration to their summer feeding grounds in the Arctic.

Our Mexican panga pilots waiting for us to board their boats. Notice the desert landscape….

The Baja peninsula doesn’t appeal to everyone. In fact, some on the expedition ship were bothered by the landscape.  Baja isn’t lush, verdant the way Hawaii is but rather brown, desert-like, with scrubby plants. Mangroves, hardy trees, grow on the shores of the bay but not much else. While the land appears unforgiving, harsh, and almost uninhabitable, the water, the beautiful bay teems with life.  Sea birds are everywhere. Brown pelicans known for their klutzy crash landings are abundant. Terns, cormorants and other birds fill the skies and bay. I love Baja and the gray whales. In the shallow, protected bay, the calm grays captivate those of us in the pangas with their behaviors — spy hopping, reverse diving, breaching, resting and just swimming around. I’m enchanted by these magnificent gentle mammals.

A very old gray whale kind of spy hopping. The white on the whale is scarring, left after it rubbed barnacles off its body. Naturalists told us that the whiter the whale, the longer it has rubbed barnacles off, and thus the older it is. Beautiful, isn’t it?

Bird beach — terns, brown pelicans, blue heron, and more.

While these whales have strongly come back from near extinction, many whales around the world are endangered, partly because of oceans polluted with plastic. A simple scan of the current headlines will yield too many stories of dead whales filled with plastic. On this Lindblad/National Geographic trip, our naturalist leaders reminded us frequently that humans protect what they love. Let’s protect the oceans and our lovable whales.

I’ll leave you with a beautiful sunset. Our time on this planet is limited. But our impact is lasting.

More marine adventures still to come…….