The following day we head south, hunting around some reefs and Isla Encantada, seeing pretty much the same fish as the previous day. Every so often a group of
roosterfish come breezing by, pretending to be yellowtail. We hold our fire. Towards afternoon, we decide to try another island, Isla Lobos, famous for its aggressive sea lions. We hunt the north end of the island first.

Somewhere there’s a Guinness book record for the worlds loudest sea lion. He lives on Isla Lobos. You could hear this guy in 40 feet of water. I mean like LOUD. His friends keep buzzing us, we see nothing shootable, so we decide to hit the southern point of the island.

By this point in time the swell is starting to kick up, and the vis is down to 30’ or less. I have one of those odd feelings in the back of my head. It’s a voice saying "this is a bad place". But we need dinner so gun in hand down I go.

I make a few dives, stalking for a shot on a small pargo or parica when I’m buzzed by yet another sea lion. The fish here are spookier than we’ve seen, a fact I attribute to the sea lions in the vicinity. A few more dives and I see something large moving between me and the island.

Shark.

Very LARGE shark.

Really BIG TIGER shark!

An electric chair shot of voltage crawls up my spine into my brain, a shot I’ve only experience once before, after coming within a few feet of a large bear while bow
hunting. It’s the kind of voltage that all animals must feel when they become possible prey. All my awarness becomes focused on the large fish swimming lazily but
quickly past me.

The shark figures out I’m in the water about the same time I figure out he/she’s a shark. It turns its eight foot body and heads rapidly right at me. I push my gun out to ward off the attack and the things stops and stares at me with cold black eyes for a few seconds, before veering off.

I’m thinking "Go away, go away" when it turns around and begins circling. We do a fast waltz, three times around the dance floor before it turns and comes at me again.

Same tune as before, stopping a foot away from my spear tip. Only now this thing is between me and the boat. Somewhere in the back of my head a synapse blows and I decide to swim hard at the beast, hopefully spooking it off. I drive at it, it turns and begins the waltz again…circling circling circling.

Quick turn and another fast run at me, this time stopping 6 small inches from my speartip. We stare at each other for 15 seconds (seemed like 15 minutes) when it turns and moves off into the gloom.

I will admit to being slightly unnerved at this point. For most of my diving life I’ve plied the cold and Great White infested waters of Northern California, diving for
abalone and spearing rockfish, a place that holds the blemished distinction of having the greatest number of GWS attacks in the world. Heck, it’s the only place where one guy was attacked TWICE in one lifetime. Sharks in the water are not a foreign concept, but I’ve never had a beast this size show such an interest as to whether or not I’m edible.

Now the worst part of getting buzzed like this is when you can’t see the damn shark anymore. I’m kicking backwards towards the boat when, duh, I realize the man in the gray suit can also arrive by the back door. So I’m spinning my head around like Linda Blair in the Exorcist, trying to figure out where the thing is going to come from next.

My memory snaps back to the dead sea lion floating just off shore on the other side of the island, a fact that both Nate and I noticed, but didn’t mention to one another. Divers are a superstitious lot, even if they won’t admit it. As coolly empirical as I can be sometimes, I have a shark tattoo that came out of my one North Coast superstition, which was to always wear a shark T shirt to the dive. It genuinely bugged me when I forgot it. The tattoo makes sure I always have the image with me, to act as a talisman. I’m hoping it works for the few seconds it takes me to get to the boat.

Heart pounding in my ears, I get to the boat, throw my (loaded) gun and myself in and start looking for Nate. He’s close to the boat and I yell at him "Shark! Big one!".
Nate nearly walks on water back to the boat.

We start packing up gear when Nate asks a Zen-like riddle:

"Who goes down if the anchor’s stuck?"

But first this commercial announcement:

Are you a free diver? Want to sustain peak performance under arduous conditions? Then you need the Ronco Diver Diet Kit. Used exclusively in Baja by world famous spearfisherman Kurt "Big Eyes" Bickel and Nate "Must Kill" Baker, each Diver Diet Kit contains:

Scabs (beef jerky)

Gatorade

Kraft Cheese and Bread sticks

Powerbars

Vienna Sausages

Oreo Cookies

Yes folks, the Ronco Diver Diet Kit. The breakfast, lunch, and occasional (when the man in the gray suit comes to visit) dinner of champions, guaranteed to withstand temperatures of 125 degrees!

 

Now back to our story…

Well, fortunately, the anchor comes up on the first pull, and we head back to camp. We’re greeted by a single coyote, no doubt trying to scavenge a meal from our trash bag. He will not eat roosterfish. Deciding we’ve had enough of the Sea of Cortez for the time being (more for the lack of big fish than for the shark), we head inland through the desert to Mexico 1, the highway connecting the tip of Baja to the United States.

The hurricane and weather front brought rain to the desert, and everything that could become green has. Plants are blooming amazing flowers, all this backdropped by some of the most stunning geologic vistas anywhere. We go through one section of boulders where every 3rd rock has a big chuckwalla lizard sitting on top of it, where collard lizards fly across the road in front of the car, and desert iguanas sit under bushes trying to catch some shade. Huge cactus, and plants with some of the biggest thorns you could imagine. This flora and fauna mostly makes up for the miserable washboard road we’re on, the fact that the outside air temp gauge has hit 125 degrees, and takes our mind off the slow leak developing in the right rear tire.

 

We stop at a small tire repair shop near Gonzaga bay. In a cage on the patio are two of the most pathetic birds I’ve ever seen. Patchy feathered, they just sit and stare listlessly out of the cage. They are not representative of the proprietors, who put air in our tire in quick fashion for a few dollars. We will have to unpack everything to get to the spare, and there is another car in the shop ahead of us, so we decide to wait until we get to Tortuga to make repairs.

 After 5 hours we hit pavement and pass through one of the many military checkpoints along the way.

 Travelers hint #1: Do not attempt to run these checkpoints. There is usually a board across the highway with a bunch of 5 inch framing nails driven through it. Of course the fact that they are mostly manned by what look to be 16-18 year old kids with automatic weapons should help dissuade you from trying to make like the car chase scene from "Bullit".

 Near as we can tell they are checking us to make sure we’re not carrying cinderblocks, the exclusive building material in Mexico. EVERYTHING is made of
cinderblocks. I swear I saw a pickup truck made of cinderblocks carrying a load of cinderblocks pulling into a construction site where they were building… a cinderblock factory. They (cinderblocks) would probably be the national currency if they weren’t so hard to fit in a wallet.

 Travelers hint #2: The highway gas signs in Mexico lie. Well, maybe not lie exactly, but the gas station they indicate is coming might have the pumps ripped out and the building abandoned. We had to use the "roof gas" (cans tied to the roof rack) to make it through.

 Travelers hint #3: More expensive food does not mean better food anywhere in Mexico. Especially in Guerrero Negro (or Bahia Tortuga for that matter).

 Travelers hint #4: Unlike the US, there is no requirement to leash animals in the back of a pickup. Nate and I were stunned to see a large cow standing, completely
untethered, on a flatbed truck traveling down the highway at 50 MPH. Thank god Ol’ Bessie had good balance…
 

 
                                   Highway laws strictly obeyed, and an example of fine Mexico pavement
 

Stopping in Guerrero Negro, we fuel up and head across the peninsula towards the coast. The rains have filled the dry lakes creating miles of shallow ponds. On the trip back these will have started to dry out, manufacturing a foam that blows across the road like small white tumbleweeds. The dirt road varies between washboard and smooth, at some points completely straight for 10 miles or more. We travel through to Bahia Tortuga, arriving just after dark.

We drive slowly through the dirt streets, looking for a place to stay. Like a shimmering oasis, a cinderblock paradise appears:

MOTEL NANCY

$11.00 US. No reservation required.

We are stoked. A shower. A bed. More Vienna sausages for dinner. Does life get any better?

Travelers advisory #5: Motel Nancy is completely cinderblock (surprise!) and concrete construction. This means the walls absorb heat all day and stay 100 degrees for most of the night. The lack of shower head would not be so bad if the pipe wasn’t bent towards the wall, requiring some interesting contortions to get clean. The water for the shower head comes from large containers on the roof of the motel, put there to store water when the water plant is producing, making the "HOT" and "COLD" knobs somewhat superfluous. More like "tepid" and tepid". After the tepid shower you can lounge on an extra firm mattress, made that way by the poured concrete box spring.

Still, the people who run it are genuinely friendly, the daughter of the proprietor has a heartbreaking smile with dimples, and it’s clean. It will be are base for the next
three nights.
 

  Motel Nancy. (Note fine wiring job) The next morning the tire is flat. We unload the Explorer to get to the jack, and put on the spare which, while not flat, is sagging a bit. We find a tire shop, make some inquiries, and head for the ocean.

We decide to try to find a guide. We inquire in town as best we can, considering that neither one of us speaks much Spanish. Finally we meet a gentleman who seems to understand. He points north and says, "Chester. Puenta Eugenia."

A forty minute drive brings us to Puenta Eugenia, a small lobster village of around 70 people. We inquire about "Chester’s" whereabouts and are directed north again.
We reach the end of the road where a group of lobsterman are pulling in their boats. It is here that we find out "Chester" is a large rock sticking out of the ocean. We
need Rudolpho, who is back at Puenta Eugenia.

We find Rudolpho’s house, only he is out baiting his lobster traps. We’ll dive while we wait. Driving north of the village, we find a shore break and get in the water. We see a few small grouper, lots of kelp bass, and about a gazillion small lobsters, so brazen that if you stick your head in a hole you’ll soon be antennae’d by little guys trying to figure out what you are exactly. Great practice for the lobster opener.

There’s an amazing amount of bait in the water, but no big pelagics. I’m in a cloud of smelt and other small fish when I hear a slap, sort of like a small child doing a
cannonball of the side of a pool. I see a flash out of the corner of my eye and a bird sweeps by, veering off as soon as it sees me. Then another slap. And another.
Pretty soon I’m hearing these slaps about every five seconds, and am in the middle of a bunch of birds flying past me chasing fish.

 If you’ve never seen a diving bird in the water, it’s like watching an evolutionary mishap in action. They sort of "walk" through the water, in a stiff, mechanical motion. Very much like being in a low budget remake of Jurassic Park. Apparently they see very few humans in the water, judging by their shocked expressions (I swear their eyes pop out of their heads, cartoon style) and the haste with which they veer off when they see me.

Nate thinks they are "graceful"

Nate is crazy.

After several hours we get out, locate our guide, and agree on $50 for a panga the next day. Arrangements made, we head back to town. A word on the road back.
They hadn’t graded in what appeared to be several weeks, and the road contained the biggest , deepest, gnarliest washboard I’ve ever seen. You either went very
slowly, feeling each rut as it pounded your kidneys, causing the compact disk player to skip, or you went fast, trying to "get on top" of the ruts, feeling the big holes as they pounded your kidneys, causing the CD player to skip. Road to Punta Eugenia Travelers note #6: While the paved roads in Mexico usually have "Curvo Pelligrosso" or "Pelligrossa" signs marking dangerous bends, most of the dirt roads do not. What they do have is crosses and small shrines marking the spots where people have crashed and met their maker. The more shrines and crosses, the more dangerous the curve. If you opt for the "get on top" approach, try not to find yourself in a four wheel slide, with the brakes locked up, heading into what looks like a catholic cemetery…

 Travelers note #7: Because of the varied road conditions and the effect they have on the CD players, I would make the following musical suggestions:

 Horrible washboard- White Zombie. Headbanger death metal. If this skips it’s nearly impossible to tell, plus it begs for extra loud on the volume, drowning out most of the road noise and the annoying sounds of metal gas cans slamming up and down on the roof.

Not quite so horrible washboard/ early morning- Reel Big Fish. Upbeat ska with horns, can be played loud for the occasional pothole. Good wake up call.

Smooth fast dirt road/ night driving- Mozart’s Requiem. Fosters a sense of drama, grandeur, and mortality. Vary calming as you slide into the unmarked hairpin with all the crosses. Mozart Appropriate road  

Anywhere near the surf- Blue Hawaiians Live. Surf classics redone. "So we head to the waves…I say Mike…too many guys…let’s head south…BAJA!"

 Checkpoints in Mexico- Los Lobos "El Pistol de Corazon". Classic Mexican folks songs performed by U.S./East Los Angeles band. Hopefully the checkpoint guards are too busy rocking out to find the bottles of wine you have stashed under the sleeping bags. Plus the CD makes a good bribe. Not as good coming back across the border to the US.
 

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