Some recent posts on this board made me think about one of
my old dive trips, when I went scallop hunting in Baja California.
The trip was during spring break, in my junior year of college.
I borrowed my father's Volkswagen bug. It was a 1974 model,
yellow, with those round headlights and curved bumpers that gave
VW's an appealing, almost human, smile. The beige interior got hot
in the Mexican sun, but I loved the little car. It wasn't very old,
and it was in great condition.
Victor, James and Ted packed Dad's car with everything we
thought we needed for a long trip in rugged, isolated, foreign
terrain. We took tanks, weight belts, wetsuits, abalone irons, spear
guns, spaghetti, pancake mix and lots of good, cold Mexican beer.
Victor followed in his Datsun, and we drove with two guys in each
car: One to steer, and the other to open beer bottles.
We pointed our two cars south, down the "Trans-Peninsular
Highway," out of Ensenada. I led, with Victor and Ted in the Datsun,
following. My buddy James rode shotgun in Dad's car, opening cervezas
as I drove.
From Ensenada, the road curved inland a bit, and then followed
the coast down the Pacific side of the slender strip of land. We camped
the first night on wind-blown sand dunes near a place called San
Quintin.
In the morning we all piled into the 'Dub and drove it over the
dunes down to the beach. We dove the breaking surf with just snorkels,
since the waves were so big that we didn't feel safe going out through the
white water with tanks on our backs. The water was savage enough that we
could tell a spring storm was coming in. Visibility was only about 5 feet,
so we couldn't even see the tips of our fins as we bobbed in the swells.
We free dove down to the sandy bottom, and swam almost a mile offshore,
looking for a reef. Victor brought his spear gun, but couldn't find a
thing to shoot. After an hour of swimming in the sandy surf, we bodysurfed
back to shore and walked to the car, without a single fish in our hands.
The tide had come in a bit and threatened the car, but the three other
boys pushed it along the beach as I fired it up, and they jumped in the
open passenger door, one-by-one, as we rolled back towards the highway.
South of San Quintin the geography of the land vividly changed
from a verdant rolling pasture landscape to a rugged desert, with huge
cactuses sprouting among boulders. Some of the cacti were at least 50 feet
tall, so we stopped to take pictures and eat lunch. We camped the second
night in a dusty patch near the road north of Guerrero Negro, worried
about both banditos and Federales. San Diego had been full of stories
about the crime in this rough and isolated part of Mexico, and supposedly
the Federal police, known as Federales, were cooperating with the bandits
to rob unsuspecting tourists. We didn't like being close to the highway
where we could easily be seen by such bad guys, so we slept fitfully.
The third morning we drove over the top of the mountain range
that ran down the length of the peninsula. The going was slow. Deep
potholes dotted the road for a stretch of at least 50-60 miles, and
semi-truck trailer rigs roared up the highway perilously. We had to drive
in zig-zag fashion to clear the ravines created by old potholes. Sometimes
the entire right lane was rutted, and we swerved into the left lane on
narrow mountain passes to avoid ruts.
"Watch out!" James screamed at me as a huge truck-trailer rig
roared at us , with a ravine blocking our passage in the right lane.
"Wow," I could only reply, sweating from the narrow escape, "I guess we
need more beer!"
When we finally got down to the Sea of Cortez, we hunted for a
campsite along the water, away from the highway. A half-hour's drive south
of a fishing village called Mulege, we spotted one: A beautiful, isolated
strip of sand down a long road, sheltered by a deep bay that promised calm
water and possibly good diving.
A few fishermen lived on one side of the bay. We drove to the
other side, where a salt water lagoon formed a sand bar near a rocky
promontory. Helmet shaped crustaceans scuttled about the lagoon, which we
fantasized looked a bit like Gilligan's island. This lagoon was at the
base of a rough, rocky promontory, dotted with cacti. We stopped our cars
and pitched Victor's tent. Food supplies were running scarce, but we had
plenty of beer.
The next day we tossed our tanks over our backs, the way we used
to see Mike Nelson don his scuba gear. Black rubber fins in hand, we
walked to the edge of the promontory. I wore my new, bright yellow,
horse-collar BC over my 1/4 inch wetsuit. James and Victor had Jet Fins.
We picked our way out to the end of the point and donned our fins
in the water. Offshore about 200-300 yards was one of the many tiny islands
which dotted that part of the Sea of Cortez, and I led the swim out to it.
We submerged about halfway to the islet, after taking a compass reading,
and swam underwater to the small rocky island and back. We stuck close
together in buddy pairs, because the visibility was limited.
Visibility was about 20 feet, and the water was warm by Pacific
ocean standards. (God only knows the temperature. We didn't have
thermometers with us in those days.) I immediately noticed how much more
buoyant I was in this water than in the ocean. Apparently the Sea here had
a much higher percentage of salinity than I was used to, so it was hard
getting down to the shallow bottom, only about 30' deep there. We saw no
fish that looked edible, no abalones, nothing to supplement our pure
pancake and beer diet.
The things we noticed again and again were the large rock scallops
along the bottom. We pulled at them with our hands, and pried at them with
our knives, but these scallops were not like our Pacific ocean varieties;
these held steadfast, their shells attached to the rocks. We couldn't take
a single one of them, and we were low on food. We had burned our tanks
swimming out to the island and back, so it was time to swim in and think
things over. With only one tank left each, we needed a plan for the second
dive.
The next day, we had figured things out. Victor and I took our
abalone irons, and again went to the end of the bay with our tanks. We
dove shallow that time, only about 10 feet deep. The two of us stuck close
together and hammered away at the scallops, chipping their shells from the
rocks. It was hard work, and our arms were sore when we finished. But, by
the time we had exhausted our air in that shallow water, we had two bags
full of fresh bivalves to lug back to camp! We posed for a picture, with
the hood of Victor's car covered with scallops.
I had long hair, down to my shoulders as I smiled at the camera
holding two of the big mollusks. They were each about 8-9" in diameter,
and fat. I had been doing construction work on weekends and summers, so my
arms and shoulders were bigger than they are now. Damn, it was nice being
young! Too bad I didn't appreciate it then. As they say, youth is wasted
on the young.
Once we cleaned our catch, we immediately noticed the problem with
this food source: These scallops were not only tough to get off the rocks,
but they were tough to eat! We wouldn't be cooking these in a light butter
sauce. So, we chopped up all of the scallop meat and threw it in with the
spaghetti sauce. The dinner tasted great, as one's own catch always tastes
better than store-bought food. And with a liberal amount of beer before,
during and after dinner, I still remember how nice it felt to have full
bellies that night. We listened to hard rock music on Victor's car stereo,
and slept on the beach under the stars.
Having exhausted both tanks (and no dive shops in site) we moved
on. Another 2 hours' drive south, we stopped at the ferry terminal, trying
to get a ride over to the mainland so that we could travel home on the east
side of the Sea of Cortez. A nice woman greeted the four of us in our
grubby clothes and long hair. Vic, who spoke the best Spanish, explained
what we wanted. The woman answered in Spanish that the ferry wasn't there,
and although we couldn't quite understand everything she said, we gathered
the boat was broken and wouldn't be fixed until "manana."
We camped that night in a grove of palm trees inland from La Paz,
that I think was named San Ignacio. We pulled in after dark, threw up the
tent and quickly fell asleep. I awoke in the middle of the night, and
grabbed the speargun at the sound of someone rustling around the campsite
as Victor snored loudly. I stayed in the tent, and footsteps receded. The
following morning we left early and drove as far north as we could in one
day.
Driving as fast as we safely could, we got all the way up to San
Quintin before nightfall. A storm had pelted the area with rain while we
had enjoyed clear weather further south, and the roads were wet. The
"Trans-Peninsular Highway" was a 2 lane strip of roadway, poorly
maintained and seldom policed.
North of our first campsite, the entire road was awash. A river
swept across the highway. We wanted to go home and we needed to get back
to school for the start of a new quarter, but we got out of our cars and
stared at a broad flash-flood that blocked further progress. I considered
trying to drive across the stream; Volkswagen had been running
advertisements about how their cars floated. But I could see that if this
car floated it would be carried downstream, and out to the ocean. In
spite of youthful vigor, discretion got the better part of valor, and the
four of us stopped.
James stared at a map, looking for alternate routes. Of course,
there were none. "What are we gonna do now?" I muttered.
A Mexican farmer drove up to the river in a large tractor, and
gestured to us. For twenty dollars, American, he'd tow us to the other
side. I negotiated in broken Spanish, and talked it over with Vic. For
ten bucks apiece, we agreed to have our cars towed at the back of the
farmer's ancient tractor.
The farmer towed Vic's car first, and then wrapped a steel cable
around the struts at the bottom of the bumper of Dad's Volkswagen. He
pulled us out into the stream, and water would have overflowed the
running boards if the car hadn't floated. The advertising was right!
The car floated behind the tractor, and as we came out into the full
force of the stream the water swept us down current, against the tension
of the cable, for just a moment, before the tires again struck earth.
The bumper was twisted just a little by the tension of the cable as the
car was swept into the stream, so that the VW's smile was just a tiny
bit lopsided, although not really damaged. The bumper was not really
twisted, but the car's smile was just a bit tweaked, as if the 'Dub was
drunk. Vic took another picture as we crossed midstream, with James
leaning out of the passenger door, and water all around.
After the tractor ride, we got back to the States, and finished
our junior and then senior years of college. I got good enough grades to
get into graduate school, and I always kept those photographs of me with
the scallops and James hanging out of the window of Dad's car in the
middle of the river.
After I finally got out of school, I had my father over to my
apartment, and we laughed about all of the good times I had enjoyed, which
made him blanch. My photo album was open on the table, and Dad leaned over
the book, and pointed. "Damn!" He exclaimed, "So THAT'S what happened to
my bumper!"
Drive safely,