After leaving the island Isla Espiritu Santo, everyone was quite ready to be back in civilization. Most importantly, we were ready to rinse off all the salt and sand from our bodies to create a feeling of cleanliness.
The place where we passed the final three nights of our trip was Casitas El Salitral. The Casitas were about a 20-minute drive away from Todos Santos and super close to the world´s famous surf beach Cerritos. Driving into our new place, we were awaited by lots of dogs and bright colors in the midst of the grey-khaki-colored desert of Baja California Sur. It felt like a little oasis in the Sahara. Three to four people would share one of the colorful Casitas. Amarillo, azul, and rosa were the colors of choice. Each one of the houses was round and had a palapas roof made out of palm tree fronds. In the mornings, we woke up to birds chirping on the not-quite-soundproof rooftop. They were so loud and lively they sounded like someone’s alarm ringing. The central building at El Salitral also provided a terrace with a beautiful view on the wavy Pacific Ocean.
On our last two days, we surfed and played beach volleyball in the mornings and then had trip wrap-up time in the evenings. For the wrap-up time, we did several writing pieces and exercises. The writing was really engaging and brought back so many good memories from the trip. We had lots of different tasks. For example, we wrote superlatives about moments on the trip. A “silliest moment” was, for instance, when two groups of two students had a rap battle while kayaking.
In the heat of the afternoon sun, we thought about all that we had experienced together. One main part of the wrap-up was discussing what the trip had meant to us. Personally, I liked that part the most because it was so much more than remembering things. It was about trying to implement the qualities we had developed and lived on this trip and experienced through the people we met. We collected so many different qualities that we liked about that trip. From curiosity to unconditional love to self-reflection, these were all qualities that members of our group wanted to try to implement in our everyday school life. This will make this school the best we can and will also help us improve ourselves to be a new person in every moment, to think about what we can work on next time to help ourselves and the whole group grow.
Baja is over now, but the experiences we lived through, the laughter and love we shared, the knowledge we gained, and the learning we made, all of this will stay with us our whole lives because we chose to make this trip intentional. This wasn´t a vacation; this was a journey of growth.
