[Somehow, this story got lost a year ago. You may recall we had planned on going to Tibet, and then Ladakh, in 1988, but politics and weather conspired against us, so we ended up in the half-built Baja resort of Loreto, where we met and dove with Fred and Vesma. Fred has just traded his diving watch to a knick-knack salesman for an ironwood animal sculpture. I’m picking up this thread again, because we really ARE going to Tibet, in three weeks.]
Our last day at the El Presidente, the place was just as deserted as it had been all week. Every morning, we’d gather on the beach, then head to the dock where the dive boat left from. Waiting for the crew, we would hang out at a little palapa, a small space covered with palm fronds. Inside was a small kitchenette, where we assumed they served drinks in the afternoon or evening.
Fred corrected our misapprehension. “You guys ever eat here? They serve food all day, you know, from about 10 to 4.”
“No? We should try it?” I looked at Cheryl. “Maybe tomorrow for lunch?” Today would be the last dive day, billed as a special “swim with the seals.” The next day, our plane left in the afternoon, and we’d need some place to eat. It looked perfect.
Once out in the bay, we started to tinker with masks, regulators, tanks, valves, watches, the whole ponderous panoply of paraphernalia which makes SCUBA diving possible.
“Today, we goin’ to be swimming down to the current goes by this little island.” Our guide pointed to a lonely cactus covered stub of land stuck in the sand about two miles out in the Sea of Cortez.
“They’s some seals live there, they used to us. You can swim right into them. But you got to be careful of the current – the main flow going south out of the Sea, heading to the Pacific, picks up right here. It can be a fight to get back. Don’ get too close to the cliffs underwater, OK?”
We all flopped in, and he was right. Immediately, we were surrounded by whiskered sleek black sea mammals, confidently eyeing us as we floated clumsily by. Their hydrodynamics were so much better than ours; just a little flipper flick or body roll or twitch was all it took for them to stay with us, while we were madly kicking flippers and gamely trying to stay oriented with giant pressurized air tanks strapped to our backs while we fought the seaward current.
But it all made for a great story that night, our last dinner with Fred and Vesma. After sharing our visions of being seals if just for one day, Fred started thinking about that ironwood dolphin for which he’d traded his dive watch the previous night.
“I coulda stayed down longer, if I’d had my dive watch. Christ, why did I trade that away? That guy should’ve known I was plastered out of my mind, all those tequila slammers, I didn’t know what I was doing!. Where is that little creep? I’m gonna go get my watch back!” With that, he marched off to the salesman, who was making his nightly rounds at the outdoor restaurant.
After a lot of gesticulating, hands in pockets, waving of the ironwood sculpture, and hair shaking, Fred returned – with the watch and the dolphin.
“What, he just gave it back to you?”
“No, he said, ‘Yanqui, deal is a deal. You wan’ you watch, you gotta buy it back.’ Bastard! I paid him 5000 pesos just to get my watch. That’s more than this piece of trash is worth, for sure. Besides, I don’t have a receipt, I don’t know if I can get it out of the country.”
Fred was morose, and set in to a valiant, but vain attempt to match his tequila record of the previous night. Before he got to his fifth shot, he started mumbling, eyelids droopy, and finally fell face forward onto the plate of fish tacos he had been neglecting.
Next day, Cheryl and I packed up, and headed for the beachside palapa. We were the only two guests in sight. But three white clad servers were hunched over a tinny radio. One came over with bottled water, cerveza, and a short menu.
“Is the sea bass fresh?” I asked.
“Oh, yes sir, fresh today. We bread it, then bake it, bring it right to you.”
With that, one of the waiters left in the direction of the main building, where we presumed the kitchen was – they certainly weren’t cooking any food out here. We dreamily sipped our Coronas, and watched as the baby waves tickled the sand not ten feet away. Endless sun percolated through the palm frond roof, under which we remained pleasantly warm in shorts, tank-tops and sandals.
Ninety minutes later, the waiter returned with our sea bass. It was beyond delicious. It was, in fact, the freshest, most delicate seafood I’d ever had.
“Do you think that guy went out to catch this right now? I mean, he was gone so long!”
Cheryl said nothing. She was too busy devouring the piscine delight.
Fresh fish Fridays!