Did I ever tell you about the time my husband tried to kill me?

The first thing you notice about Cataviňa is the surreal landscape—exclusively saguaro cactus and giant boulders.  The second thing you see (if you look really closely) is that it would be a great place for your husband, Paul, to kill you, confident in the knowledge that no one would ever find the body.

I first learned of this tiny Baja, Mexico town when a friend told me that she was so creeped out by the place that she had vowed never to spend the night there. Of course, as soon as I heard that, I knew I had to see it for myself. And the timing was good–I had an essay due in Spanish class. I figured I could write about the trip.

So Paul and I, and our son, piled into our old 4-Runner and headed out for Cataviňa. We arrived in the evening, and after checking into a unexpectedly sweet room in the town’s only motel, we skipped across the street to the unnamed café owned by the Ramirez family. Paul struck up a conversation with the owner’s adult son who described the local attractions. Nearby there was a small museum, an archeological site where visitors could find fossils, a grove of rare blue palms, and a nature preserve. Almost as an afterthought it seemed, Paul asked about the Mission de Santa Maria. Young Senor Ramirez explained that it was about 25 miles outside of town, and looking at our 4-wheel drive he said the road, “es no problema por tu coche.” (It’s no problem for your car.)

The next morning our after -breakfast conversation went something like this:

Me:      Okay, how about we go to the museum, the archeological site, and then the blue palms? If there is time, we can drive to the nature preserve.

(My family nods in agreement)

Paul:    Yes, it’s agreed, we’ll go to the Mission.

Me:      Huh?

Thoroughly outsmarted, I didn’t object. We headed out toward the Mission—I drove and he navigated—on a road that went from bad, to worse, to ‘no one in their right mind would call this a road’ status. About every fifteen minutes I asked, “Are you sure this is the right road?” Each time he’d look at the map, then check the GPS, and say, “Yes. This is the road.” (I know now that I should have been asking, “Are you out of your freaking mind!? I have no idea what we’re doing out here. Shouldn’t we turn back before it’s too late?!”) Paul admitted later that he’d learned about the Mission because it was on the cover of a 4-wheel drive magazine. But I didn’t know this until it was far too late, and all I could say was “You…have…got…to…be…kidding!”

Our Baja atlas showed a road just beyond the Mission that led back to town. Paul was sure this road was better than the one we were on—which begs the question, why didn’t we just take that road in the first place? But it was comforting to know that we were going to go back on a different road, because it was clear that there was no way we would be able to go back the way we came. We barely made it through the quagmire-y mud bog and river beds, or across the boulders the first time.

After five excruciating, nail biting hours of driving we discovered the promised road didn’t exist. As for the Mission, there wasn’t much to see. It took us about ten minutes to thoroughly investigate its 2 ½ crumbling walls.

About the time it started to sink in that we were going to have to take that same horrendous road back, we realized three other crucial things: no one knew where we were, we had no way to contact anyone if we broke down, and if we couldn’t make back it up the rock inclines between us and Cataviňa, one of us was going to have to walk out to get help.

At one point our adolescent son asked me if we were going to die out there, to which I replied, “We can’t. I haven’t turned in my Spanish composition yet.” It’s hard to recall now if this happened before or after the “baloney water” conversation.

I was taking stock of our supplies and I opened the cooler to see what was there. A package of baloney had bounced out of the upper tray and into the melted ice water below. I was about to dump out this greasy, nasty baloney water when Paul walked by, saw what I was doing, and said, “not yet.” That’s when I knew how deep we were in.

As it turned out, the way back wasn’t impassible, but it certainly was hair raising. I did put a small dent in the truck when we were cornering airborne through the bog and the rear end hit a small tree truck jutting out into the road (and I do use that word loosely.)

Indeed, I did write an essay about the trip. When my professor, a hilarious and kind Costa Rican woman, turned it back to me she said, “Your husband tried to kill you.” I had suffered just enough to get an “A.”

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