Mexico: Baja And The Desert Tuna
By Randy Kohl

It’s October, but the temperature is a steady 93 degrees with humidity to match, which is about 65 degrees warmer than where I began my day, so I embrace the shimmering heat waves, even as my body’s thermostat works overtime to adapt.  The van heads north, quickly leaving civilization on a two-lane mountain road, which was built in a very literal interpretation of its intended width.  A thin strip of pavement, almost exactly as wide as two mini-vans, snakes along the sides of steep hills, across dusty arroyos, and around the spectacular wreckage of one washed out bridge.  The road is occasionally marked with a jagged center line, as if drawn by hand from a moving vehicle, but most cars drive in the middle when possible, so swerving is standard operating procedure.

Lean, irritable cattle graze freely along the terrain, where they often encroach upon the roadway.  Our driver casually maneuvers around a trotting steer, missing its two-foot twisted horn by an arm’s length.  The driver looks back, laughs, then takes a nice pull from a can of beer he has in his cup holder.  As long as the driver is having a drink, I open a beer of my own and accept fate, still glad that I had decided not to drive on my own.

We cross the Tropic of Cancer, actually heading north from San Jose del Cabo toward the coast along the Sea of Cortez.  We are now technically outside the tropics, but passing the invisible marker encircling the globe has no discernable effects on my surroundings.  Our destination is the Cabo del Este, the sparsely populated, semi-desert region just north of the Gordo Banks fishing grounds. 

After the relative luxury of the asphalt, the van turns onto a dirt road for the last 18 kilometers of the ride.  The van’s suspension is ill equipped for the deep ruts and jagged stones that serve as the roadway, but it trudges on as it has a hundred times before.

Peregrine falcons glide along the thermal drafts or rest on the outstretched arms of saguaro cactus as they survey the terrain.  A three foot, mottled-green snake, sunning itself in the road, slithers into the brush to avoid our tires.  Roadrunners dart precariously across our path as if seeking danger in the absence of a wily coyote.

Scattered signs of humanity dot the natural landscape.  Impossibly small concrete-block homes surrounded by the skeletons of ancient cars and scraps of metal appear huddled together every few miles.   The homes give a glimpse of the crushing poverty that is prevalent in the region.  But I’m a tourist, so I romanticize the faded Corona signs and half-naked toddlers and think instead about dipping my feet into the sea.

There are few road signs in rural Mexico and fewer people to ask for directions.  Our driver reverses course several times, chattering on a cell phone that drops its signal every few seconds.  Almost by accident the van reaches a point where the deep blue of the ocean merges with its reflection in the sky, and I can feel the drive nearing an end.

The sign proclaims that the hotel was built in 1953; and as if to prove the point, much of the surroundings and decorations look original.  Keeping with its rustic feel, the rooms are Spartan in an almost pious way.  There is no chair, clock, television, or telephone in the room.  The twin beds are so narrow they resemble balance beams with blankets laid over them.  More baffling, there are no locks on any door.  This was not a welcome feature in a place that does not accept credit cards and does not cash traveler’s checks—there are several dozen tourists, each with a wad of bills mostly in American currency.
 
We ask for a room with a view, but that is an easy request.  Most of the three dozen rooms face the ocean, sitting only a hundred yards from the sapphire sea.  A steep hill, perhaps eighty feet high, leads down to a white sand beach, pocked by buffalo-sized boulders.  The water crashes into the rocks in its soothing, relentless way.  I take a seat along the second floor balcony, and I can feel my blood pressure drop in sequence with the surf.

To the north, the beach disappears around the edge of the bay; a single home on a hillside provides the only visible human development on the horizon.  There are no other hotels to vie for space, no boardwalks lined with artisans and craftsmen, no stores or cantinas.  In fact, there are no commercial enterprises of any kind within 10 rugged miles of where I sit. 

To the south, the beach opens onto flatter landscape where a short, leaning pier extends into the water.  Behind the pier, a peeling fish scale sits awaiting the next giant to be pulled from the deep.  And that is why I’m here, to deep sea fish—for the first time in my life. 

I’m up the next day at 4:30AM, a time I’ve previously encountered only after a night on the town, to prepare for the dawn boat launch.  We watch the first rays peak over the horizon slowly eating away the blackness that blankets the sea.  For some reason the sunrise seems more satisfying than sunset, perhaps because some effort is required to experience it.  The growing light reveals a flotilla of two dozen fishing boats already lined up to take on their passengers.  An orderly chaos ensues as the boats pull to the dock in rapid succession, each taking aboard three or four groggy fisherman loaded with gear.

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