| Roosters and Leopards and Sharks OH MY!
An original story by: Kurt Bickel All photographs by : Kurt Bickel
(Chapter 1 of 3)
Nate Baker and I had planned for several months to hunt the Bahia Tortuga area of Baja, Mexico for a week or two in late September. Visions of enormous yellowtail, grouper, dorado, and white sea bass danced in our minds as departure time appear. E mails with subject lines like "Must kill fish" wandered back and forth across the Internet. Every few days mysterious nautical charts would show up in my mailbox with cryptic notes written on them. We had the fever. The day finally comes when we’re leaving and we find out there’s a hurricane off the tip of Baja. Going to plan B, we head decide to head inland to the Sea of Cortez for a couple of days, hopefully avoiding the worst effects of the ‘cain. Preparing for a trip like this requires some logistical planning. We decide to bring my inflatable (folded up inside the truck), and take Nate’s Ford Explorer, which will allow us to lock gear inside if necessary. By time we are ready to leave, his truck looks like the opening scene in the Beverly Hillbillies, sans rocking chair on the roof. There is literally zero airspace in the cargo area, where gear is jigsawed into place after several hours of packing. Gun muzzles intrude into the seating area. The passenger will straddle the CD box, maps, and Baja Catch book for the entire trip. A glance at the roof would bring tears to the eyes of the Ford engineer who spent months making the shape of the truck aerodynamic. We’ve got gear. So, you ask, what gear would intrepid explorers take on a 10 day expedition? A brief list: Three spearguns with extra shafts, tips, and lines. One 14’ inflatable Achilles with oars, sand wheels, fuel tank. Three extra fuel cans One 30 HP Outboard motor Three sleeping bags (one for the cooler) Two large coolers One small cooler One 5 gallon water jug 2 Action packers full of food Tool kit Come Along Camping gear (tent, air mattresses, ground cloth, stove, cooking utensils, plates, eating utensils, Etc.) We can live out of the truck for over a week if need be… Now step two in our plan requires getting across the USA/Mexico border. The drive through customs station works like this: There is a stoplight looking device with a red and green light. You push a button which is supposed to randomly activate one light or the other. Green means head on through, no inspection. Red means pull over, and prepare for the worst. I should have told Nate about my border crossing karma. Every trip to Mexico I’ve been stopped. Including the one time I got the green light. This is in keeping with my metal detector karma at airports. I have literally stripped off everything but pants and shirt and I'm still greeted with the familiar smoke alarm sound. My wife has taken to joking that I was dropped on my head as a child, and my parents were too embarrassed to tell me about the metal plate in my skull. I assume she’s referring to the metal detector, and not to any particular personality trait… Anyway, as strains of the Police’s "Roxanne" ("you don’t have to put on the red light") run through my mind, I cross fingers, toes, arms legs, and eyes, Nate hits the button. Ohhhh, sorry….but we have some lovely consolation prizes for you! Just go backstage with officer Gonzales to sign some forms… Let the games begin. Our customs inspector looks to be about 17 years old. My guess is he's someone's nephew who scored a prime civil service job. I have no evidence of the supposedly rampant corruption among Mexican officials, but I figure if it is true, a customs job is like winning the lottery. As he begins to go through our gear he chants a litany which we will here a dozen times during our trip… "Guns?" "Drugs?" "Beer?" "Cigarettes?" Like a backup group for a 60’s soul act we reply "No no no no" We are emptying gear out of the back, everything being torn apart and inspected as the chant is repeated. We pull out the small cooler which has two bottles of fine California wine in it when he spies the outboard motor. He looks at it from one angle. Then another. He goes to the other door, opens it, and looks some more. He tries moving it, but it’s too heavy. "What is this?" "Outboard motor" "Huh?" "Outboard motor" "For boat?" "Si" He looks at it again. "Motor?" "Si" Long pause. "You cannot. You must import" Nate begins to try to explain. "It’s for the boat" "Boat?" "Si, el barco" "Boat?" "Si" "Where is?" We show him the boat, oars, and other gear. He returns to the motor and looks at it from several other angles. "You must import" I feel a pain starting in the back of my eyes, but I have an idea. Before we left, we had gotten what we thought were all the necessary permits, licenses, Etc. Included in this was a year's boat permit. "We have permit!" "Permit?" "Si" I had him the paper. He looks carefully at one side. He turns it over and examines the other. He turns it upside down. He puts it up to the light like he’s going to see the image of the Virgin Mary watermarked in the paper. No Virgin Mary. He scratches his head. Then he speaks. "Where did you get this?" "San Diego" "San Diego?" "San Diego" He looks at it again. "Wait please" He walks away with our permit. By this point we are surrounded
by about 4 other customs guys, some armed, all with slightly bemused expressions
on their faces.
"Where did you get this?" "San Diego" "San Diego?" "Si." He ponders this for several minutes, going back to take another look at the outboard. "OK" He hands us the paperwork and we proceed to open up the rest of our gear. The small cooler which was pulled out when the contraband outboard motor was discovered has not been checked, and is sitting in a pile with the "OK" gear. The customs mantra is repeated, this time with one addition. "Wine?" Yeah, right. We’ve had to pull every piece of gear out of the truck, they’ve ripped everything apart, kept us on pins and needles about the outboard, and now they want me to roll over on an ’89 Cabernet, and a ‘ 91 Zin, in the prime of their life. I want these bottles of wine. No, after this I NEED these bottles of wine. These bottles of wine may be our only connection with civilization at some point. I can tell Nate’s thinking the same thing. Like a Medallian Cartel mule, I screw up my courage and look him straight in the eye. "No" At this point one of the customs guys is standing right next to the cooler in question. We sweat opening several more boxes, then the ordeal is over. We are free to go. Six hours on the pavement, and another 6 hours on poor dirt roads get
us close to our destination. It’s a mild 121 degrees as the Isla Encantadas
(Enchanted Islands) appear. We locate the remains of an old fish camp,
a few unroofed stone walls, and, as darkness closes in, we set up camp. With winds gently gusting to the 30-40 MPH range we spend an Everest-like night lying awake in the sweltering heat having the tent whipped around like a CEO in an S & M parlor. The only difference is it’s 200 degrees warmer here than on Everest. The wind finally breaks…allowing a full ½ hour of sleep before sunup. I wake up to Nate’s voice. "You gotta see this!" Looking out the tent flap the Sea of Cortez is mirror flat, reflecting the outline of several small black islands against of fiery orange and red sky.
Spearfishing Shangra La We get into my Achilles and head to Isla Miramar, the northernmost island. While varying in size, the Encantadas are not much more than cactus strewn rocks, jutting from the water, volcanic and forbidding. Once in the water we see bunches of grouper and pargo in the 10-25
LB range. Hunting for trophy fish, we pass on shooting until the end of
the day. Nate assigns me the task of getting dinner, and he wants to photograph
the action. Just as I get the my new homemade gun (the "Canon de Muerta
II") loaded, a large fish rushes in on my left. The visibility here is only 15 feet, and I see a tuna-like tail disappear into the fog. I make out the silhouette as the fish turns. It is behaving like a tuna or yellowtail, so instinctively I aim and fire. I see the fish go belly up and begin to retrieve my shooting line. As the fish nears I see it is a roosterfish, at least 55 lb. I’ve got mixed feelings that I’ve shot a rooster. While rarely brought to spear, and a fast and challenging fish, they are poor eating at best, and at worst completely inedible. It would be my luck that of all the fish that match the "profile", (tuna, yellowtail, amberjack) I would shoot the one fish with a reputation of being something the Donner party would have passed on. As I swim the beast to the boat I give my gun to Nate, who shoots a small leopard grouper in case the rooster is as foul as they say. It is. 24 hours later the same hunk of meat that we deposited into the sea will be floating, untouched, in a land where scavengers whittle bones to a bleached white within hours. Seagulls, coyotes, scavenger fish, bacteria,NOTHING seems to like roosterfish. We eat a meal of grouper, tortillas, and salsa, and hit the sack.
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Campo Encantadas
