Mike the Aztec

The guy with the big Aztec tatoo told me his name was Mike once, and another time Joe. He told Carlos his name was Roberto, and he told The Pepper his name was Javier.
I asked the men about going out. They said it was too windy, but that we could go out in the morning. "Where are all the mujeres?" The Pepper asked.
"All the women belong to the men here. They're all someone's wife or sister or daughter. Don't mess with the women around here."
"I heard this was a great place to party," said the Pepper.
Mike said, "If you're looking for women you came to the wrong place."
"How about beer?" I asked.
"That we got."
"Where?"
"Let's go. I'll show you." He got into the front of the truck with the Pepper and me and directed us back up the road to the little store. It was still closed. "I'll be right back," he said. He went around the side and climbed in through a high window and came back with a case of Tecate. "I'll pay the lady tomorrow," he said. "Give me like five bucks."
We went to the hotel and got a room. It had two beds and a toilet that didn't seem to flush. "I'll sleep in the truck," I said.
We sat at a little table in front of the room and drank Tecates, while Mike the Aztec babbled about shit. "Up there on the hill, that house, they're movers. Over there's where the sheriff lives. He's a mover, too. We're looking for investors. We're going to build a big resort all along the edge of the bay..." Yada yada yada. While we sat there, a big, brand new SUV with no plates pulled up to the hotel. I guy with a gun in a holster and cowboy hat got out with a couple empty duffel bags and went into one of the rooms. A little while later he came out with full duffel bags and drove away.
"I'm going to look for some post cards," said the Pepper.
Post cards?! I didn't say anything, but I don't know where in hell he thought he was going to get any post cards. Carlos and I sat there and drank our Tecates and didn't really listen to Mike the Aztec who never stopped talking about being in the Marines and doing his time and how his business back in LA didn't work out. Three more times new four-wheel-drive vehicles pulled up to the hotel and guys with guns filled duffel bags and left. Duh. Movers. I was starting to understand.

El Chubasco

The "town" consisted of a rectangular cinder-block building divided into rooms that was the "hotel", a building with a kitchen that was the restaurant, and also a white-washed cube with a door in it that was the store. In the hills around the place were perhaps a dozen or so other structures. The place ran on a gas-powered generator that shut down at nine o'clock each night. When we arrived it was late afternoon. No one was in the store or the restaurant or at the hotel. We found a beach with pangas all pulled up to the sand and about ten men were around a big cement table, ten feet by ten feet, piled high with more varities of fish than I'd ever seen or even imagined could be caught in one place. The men were busy with their knives, slitting out the guts of the fish. When I raised my camera, to take a picture, a fierce-looking, red-eyed chunk of Mexican unceremoniously told me no pictures were to be taken. I shrugged.
"That's Chubasco," said a pit-faced dude with no shirt who had among many tatoos on his torso and forearm one big one all across his chest of an Aztec warrior carrying a naked girl. "Better just do what he says."
I knew that a "chubasco" is the local word for the sudden and violent storms in the region that flash flood the desert and sink boats in the sea. I put my camera away.

Vultures Everywhere

We decided to start heading back north. We went to a little place for huevos rancheros and bloody marias, and ran into the mother-daughter combo who had pulled us from the sand back in Mulege. They told us if we were heading back north, we had to go out to Bahia de Los Angeles. We told them we would, and we went back to our rooms and packed up and said adios to Cabo San Lucas. We drove around past San Jose Del Cabo and up the peninsula and made Mulege by nightfall. We got a room in the old hotel. The next morning, we drove further back up the peninsula, the tropics turning back into desert and there were vultures in the trees everywhere, and the car started to sputter at times, but there was nothing to do but press on. Back through Santa Rosalia, and inland again past San Ignacio, up though the cactus and canyons over the crazy road. When we came to the turn-off for Bahia de Los Angeles, I was inclined to skip it, but the Insanity Pepper lobbied for it, and I turned down the road. The pavement barely held together and was riddled with thousands of potholes. It is sixty-six miles from the main highway to the town, but it takes over two hours. The desert here no longer seemed wondrous as it had earlier in the trip, and I became more and more aware of rattles and pings in the truck that hadn't been there when we'd started out. At one point we had to move off to the side of the road for a caravan of eight brand new four-wheel drive SUVs with CB antennas and tinted windows. "What you suppose that's all about?" I asked the Insanity Pepper.
"I'm telling you, Zurn, that mother and daughter said this was the place to party. Those were probably a bunch of rich kids leaving town."
"I'm not so sure."
The truck banged along down the road, and I was becoming filled with misgivings. Then we came around a bend over a hill, and the deep blue gulf is down there, and you can tell the wind is blowing even from many miles away because of all the white wrinkles on the water, and the seascape is dotted with islands of all sizes and hues, and I began to get excited about fishing again. It was late afternoon when we dropped down into the "town". It seemed like a peaceful place, but it had some locura in store for us.

A Bad Case of P.O.B.

That day I went down to the beach and drank the kinds of drinks you drink on the beach. Then I rented a jet-ski and raced around the bay and out to Land's End. Back on the beach, Carlos and the Insanity Pepper showed up. The Pepper said the maid gave him another room and that there was no problem with him pulling the sink out of the wall. We drank into the night, and grubbed at a little taco cart, before hitting the clubs. By midnight or so, I had a bad case of P.O.B. (Pussy On the Brain), but all the women were with their boyfriends and husbands, and I was too drunk to carry on a conversation anyway. The Insanity Pepper led me to a brothel called El Torito. It was a dark and sullen place just down a side street. Nobody danced. The girls just sat around little cocktail tables and didn't seem to give a crap about anything. It was lame and depressing, and still I picked out the prettiest girl and got a room. She wouldn't talk or smile. I couldn't get into the mood. I became disgusted with myself and walked out without doing anything, but I went to Mermaids, the strip club. I paid to go into the back room with a smoking hot honey, who worked her ass off (almost literally) trying to get me to blow through my pants, but I had a terrible case of whiskey dick, and nothing happened despite an effort on her part that was way above and beyond the call of duty. I went back to the hotel room full of shame and bewilderment.

Something Bad Happened

I was sleeping peacefully the next morning when there came a rapping at my chamber door. It was the Insanity Pepper. He had gone beyond five o'clock shadow right on into the next day. His clothes were rumpled and wet. He hadn't brushed his teeth, nor come in any contact with soap that morning judging from the odor. "Zurn, something bad happened."
I knew it. He'd been rolled by whore. She had his wallet. We were going to have to try to pay the Pepper's way all the way back to the states. These were my first thoughts. "What happened?" I asked.
"Come with me. I'll show you."

We left Carlos sleeping and walked across the courtyard to his room. A little waterfall was coming down the red tile stairs. We went up the stairs holding the rail so as not to slip. A lake of water, inches deep, rippled over the floor as we stepped into the room. The sink was pulled off the wall in the bathroom and water was still trickling out of the pipe coming from the hole in the wall. The mirror and wall were covered in chunky glop. A brown-stained towel sat in the corner.
"I was really drunk. When I got back here, I had to take a shit. When I was done, I stood up and turned around to get the toilet paper off the tank, and I fumbled it into the toilet. I didn't know what to do, so I grabbed a towel from the shower and wiped my ass with that." Here he did the Pepper giggle, a high-pitched hee-hee-hee. "I threw the towel into the corner and I started to feel sick, so I went over to the sink, and I puked all over the place." He always had had a gift, shall we say, for projectile vometing. "I started to lose my balance and as I fell, I grabbed the sink, Zurn, and it came right out of the wall. Then I must have passed out because right now when I woke up, I was on my back in the water. Lucky I was on my back, or I might have drowned."
Just then the maid walked in. "Caramba!" she said. She went over to the wall and turned a valve and the water stopped coming from the pipe.
"Dude, give her twenty bucks and tell her your super sorry, and you don't know what happened. Uh, I'll see you later." And I skeedaddled back to my room, leaving the Pepper to sort that one out on his own.

The Guatemalan Insanity Pepper Meets his Hero, Chili Davis

We were already pretty well snockered by the time we got to the Giggling Marlin that night. Or was it Squid Roe? Not entirely sure. By now we'd been south of the border for around ten days and a thousand beers between three of us. I must exaggerate. Maybe it was only seven hundred and fifty beers and another sixty margaritas. Anyway, we were drunk when we got to the Giggling Marlin. The place was packed and bouncing. We sat at the bar and the Insanity Pepper, who is a die-hard, off-the- charts, psycho, out-of-control California Angels baseball fan, turns to his left and there is Angel outfielder and all-around stud, Chili Davis, with a hot blond companion on his left. "Oh my Gard, ish Chili Davish," Miguel slurs, and puts his arm around Chili. "Shili, lemme buy you a marga-margarita."
"Uh, That's okay, man, I can buy my own margarita, but thank you."
"Booshit, Chili. I'm buying you and your wife--Wait! That's not your wife.  Your  wife's black, right? I saw her on tv. Ooooh.  Anyway let me buy you and your girlfriend a margarita."  He ordered the   margaritas and told Chili all about Chili's career and all about Chili's big homerun against the Twins that one time, and about all the moves he would make if he were the General Manager of the Angels, and if Chili could just speak to Bavasi about trading so-and-so for so-and-so, then the Angels would win the pennant finally for sure.
The bartender brought the margaritas. "And six tequila shots," Chili Davis said.
"So Shili, where you staying? We should get together tomorrow. I'm gonn rent some jet skish. Where you staying? I wish I could play for the Angels.  I used to have a pretty good pretty good curve ball (He used to get rocked like you were pitching underhand to the '27 Yankees when I played with him in the Sunday leagues)."
"Yeah, you look like you could really play."
The tequila shots came.
"These are for you," Chili told the Insanity Pepper.
"You shudna done that, Shili. I'm buying for you and your wife. Tha's not your wife."
"No, no. Let's see you take those tequila shots. I bet you can't do all six of them right now."
"Booshit, Shili. Watch this." The Pepper slammed all six shots in under a minute.
When I got up to leave, Miguel was hanging on Chili Davis, with his eyes half closed, mumbling. Chili took Miguel's hand off his shoulder and put it on the bar. The he turned around to talk to his lady friend or whoever she was. I went upstairs and moved through the crowded throng of dancers, unable for the life of me to think of anything to say fast enough that might start a conversation with a pretty girl. I was exhausted from partying the night before, and the night before, and the night before and so on, and driving a thousand miles, and getting up early and being on the ocean all day, so I went back to the room and gratefully slept.

Spectacular Fishing Off Land's End

I got up very early the next morning, shook off my hangover, and headed down to the docks, leaving Carlos asleep in his bed and the Insanity Pepper, God knows. I found a guy with a panga willing to take me out. The sun was just coming up as we went around Land's End, with its famous natural arch of stone sticking out of the water, as the last big dorsal fin of rock marks the final tip of the Baja peninsula. It's a sight for which the word 'fantastic' actually applies. Tunnels have been eroded by the ocean through the rock where you can look out from the Gulf of California to the Pacific. We headed west then north out into the ocean, looking for flotsam under which the dorado (also known as dolphin fish in the Atlantic, and mahi mahi in Hawaii) congregate. It wasn't long before whe had hooked up with some twenty pounders. They jump spectacularly trying to throw the hook, and there is no more beautiful fish anywhere in the oceans. It gleams a metallic gold, with turqoise and sapphire, and I don't mean blue, I mean sapphire, because the blue is lustrous as precious gems, and almost like a neon sign the blue changes to emerald depending on the how the sun hits it and the emotion of the fish. Later in the day we trawled for billfish, dragging big squid-looking lures a couple of hundred feet behind the boat. I spotted the back and tail of a small black marlin at the surface, and we circled around the bastard, pulling the lure right over his nose, but he wouldn't take the bait. In the afternoon, the winds came up strong, and we returned to the harbor with five nice dorado, but no bills. Back at the dock, the skipper filleted my dorado, while I sat at the bar and drank some frozen margaritas. I took the dorado to one of the resort restaurants and they put it in the fridge for me. That evening, before Carlos and the Gip and I went out, the kitchen at the resort grilled the dorado for us, and we feasted on mahi mahi steaks with rice and beans and warm buttered tortillas. Man, was it good.

Squid Row, Cabo Wabo, Giggling Marlin--Yee Haw!

We awoke that afternoon to the sqauwking of a scarlet mccaw on the railing outside the door of our room at the Hotel Lorimar. We loaded up and headed south through Todos Santos and across the Tropic of Cancer. Wow! There's a stone monument marking the line, and you get some ideas about what Henry Miller might have been talking about. It was close to sundown as we pulled into Cabo San Lucas with a sense of triumph. We'd made it. Didn't know where to go exactly. I drove the truck onto a beach. I thought we would immediatley find some cabana boys and start drinking frozen drinks, but we walked a long time before we came to a huge resort with a pool and so on. We went into the lobby to see about getting a room, but it was some kind of time share cult, so we kept on down the beach and came to another palatial resort that was also some kind of time share. It seemed we couldn't stay in any beach resorts. We went back to the truck and drove a few blocks up into the town of Cabo San Lucas and found a cheap motel. Carlos and I got a room and the Guatemala Insanity Pepper got his own room. "I might meet some chicks, Zurn. You never know." Yeah, okay. What did we do first? I barely remember. Squid Row (or is it Roe?), Cabo Wabo, Giggling Marlin, margaritas, Tecates, Daiquiris, Pacificos, Pina Coladas, Mai Tais, Carta Blancas, fish tacos, dancing, yeehaw. Truth be told, I didn't dance much, I felt so tired, but I was happy and satisfied and proud that we'd made it.

Through a Turnstile for the Best Massage

The cab driver's name was Ruben. A Canadian motorcycle rider who had just finished the race joined us. "I need a massage after that," he said. Before we had left for Mexico, several older white people shared with me stories of friends of friends who had gone to Mexico and were abducted by police or bandits and left naked out in the boondocks. This thought crossed my mind again as the cab went many miles into the dark countryside. Eventually we turned up a dirt road and came to a little ranch. There was a main building advertising Carta Blanca beer on a banner, and behind a fence were two rows of hotel-type dwellings behind the main building. When it was a ranch the buildings might have been the main house and quarters for the men. We went inside. The cab driver, who laughed a lot, decided to come in with us. We were welcomed by a girl in a Budweiser bathing suit, with sari wrapped around her waist. She escorted us to a little round table. There were a lot of other little round tables, and a lot of girls wandering around, dressed like they were ready for a night of dancing at Papas and Beers. Ruben volunteered to buy the first bucket of beers. There weren't many other patrons. Soon the girls started coming by to visit our table. We invited them all to drink with us. Hours passed, with us drinking and dancing and drinking and dancing. Miguel was haggling with a big bouncer while a girl stood by. The Canadian was slow dancing with one of the girls, and she led him over to a counter, and he paid a man some money, and went through a turnstile and out a door. The girls took turns sitting on my lap and telling me how handsome I was, and did I want to dance, and I danced with all of them. Soon the Canadian came back. "Hooo-wee! Best massage I've had in a while." Miguel was gone. Ruben wasn't visible either. The girl in the Budweiser bathing suit came up and asked me to dance when a slow song had come on. I obliged. She was pretty in a hard way, with fierce eyes and nostrils, and strong deep lines around her smile. While we danced, she rubbed my shoulders and back, and I started doing the same to her. When the song was over, she said, "Do you want to come to my room?" "Uh, yeah." She led me to the counter. "We have to rent the room," she said. I paid the big bouncer forty dollars and we went through the turnstile and out the door. We walked across the fenced yard to one of the old ranchero quarters. She led me inside and turned on a soft light and lit some candles. "Do you want to take a shower?" she said. "Okay." She stripped me and led me to the shower. Then she took off her clothes and got in the shower with me. She scrubbed me down pretty good and gave me a thorough inspection. I felt pretty upright about everything. She dried me off and herself off and led me to the bed and unpeeled a condom...

Afterward, she stripped the sheets and put them by the door and led me to the shower again. She soaped us both down and washed us, and we dried off and got dressed. Then she led me back to the main building and we went in. And she dropped my hand and very suddenly I was a stranger to her again. That actually hurt a tiny little bit, but not more than it had felt good, and I realized that it was better this way.

Miguel was nowhere around. Ruben was asleep with his head on the table. The Canadian was relaxing with a beer. The girls ignored us now. I got a beer. Soon Miguel came out. He looked worried. "Zurn, come on, dude. Let's go."
"What?"
"Let's just go."
"We're going," I said to the Canadian. He had a strange smile. "I think I'm going to stay here for a few more days," he said.
I had to practically carry the cabdriver to the car. I put him in front of the steering wheel. It started raining. He mumbled some shit and started snoring.
"Zurn, let's go."
"What did you do?"
"I'll tell you later. Let's just go."
I moved Ruben over and started the cab. We drove off into the night, not real sure which was the way back. The Insanity Pepper told some story about having an argument with two of the girls and the bouncer about not getting what he had paid for, and then they had sent him through with another girl, and now he thought it was best that we leave right away. At some point the cab blew a tire, and I had to put on the spare in the rain and dark, but eventually I found the hotel again.

A Kind of Bullfight

In the morning I drove to the outskirts of town to watch the racers coming in to the finish. Hundreds of Mexicans line the route as the modified dune buggies, pick-ups, motorcycles, bugs and motorcycles came crashing out of the desert. Drunken spectators wait right in the middle of the dirt path and play a kind of bullfight game where they do not dive out of the way of a speeding vehicle until the last possible moment. In places there are little hills where if you sit just right the cars practically jump over you as they get air clearing the rise. My camera and I were covered with dust that night when I went back into town to watch the racers speed through town, screaming around corners and across the finish line, where the party wasn't as wild as I'd thought it would be until I realized how exhausted the racers were upon arrival.  I tried chatting with some Tecate girls, trying to convince them I was a writer/photgrapher/ racing-type guy, but they weren't real impressed. Back at the hotel bar, the Insanity Pepper had hatched a plan. He had found a taxi driver who was going to take him out El Ranchito, a whorehouse outside of town somewhere. I'd never been to one, so I decided to go along, just to see what it was like.

Twenty-five Yellow-Spotted Sierra

We pulled into the Hotel Los Arcos right on the beach. We wandered around looking for bars. It was a quieter town than we thought it would be. We strolled the malecon, the sidewalk near the sea wall along the bay. We found a club with music coming out the door and we went in. There was the daughter of the mother-daughter team that had pulled us out of the sand back in Mulege. We drank and danced until late into the night.
The next morning, I hooked up with a gold-toothed Mexican whose name eveyone said was Captain Jack. He had a twenty-five foot boat with a little roof, and we trawled the bay. I caught about twenty-five yellow-spotted sierra, which are like wahoo, but not as big and strong. I hooked up with one beautiful, jumping, dorado, flashing in the sun like precious metal, but it threw the hook before I could boat it. In the afternoon, we beached the boat near the hotel, and cleaned the fish. I had several pounds of crumbly meat, and I bought some lime and tabasco and tomato and onion and cilantro and corn chips and brought it back to the room and made ceviche and Miguel and Carlos and I ate it with Pacificos.

The Guidebooks Say Not to Drive at Night

We passed through Ciudad Insurgentes again. The sky was low and hot. South of the city the road split miles and miles of fields of corn, wheat, and alfalfa. I'd heard the water comes from deep wells, but that already the aquifer has been depleted to the point that it is becoming salty. We came to the dusty main drag of Ciudad Constitucion. Farmhands rode around sullenly in the back of pickup trucks. The "city" seemed to be rows of automobile dealerships, auto parts shops, and auto repair garages. South of the city, the road goes straight through flat land with far horizons for thirty miles, before becoming dangerous and snaky again, dropping without warning into arroyos, and suddenly u-turning around immoveable mesas. Here clouds of dust came roaring out of the desert, and the first of the Baja 1000 racers would come careening up onto the road and blast past you leaving a roostertail of dirt raining on your windshield as they practiced for the big race. The sunset was invisibile in the gray overcast on this day, and the mood in the truck was contemplative. It soon became too dark to make out much of the landscape, though there seemed to be a lot of flora along the roadside. It started to drizzle. The world became the road in the headlights through the windshield wipers and nothing more. We drove slowly and no one said anything. There were no other cars on the highway. All the guidebooks say not to drive at night. We went slowly. Hours. And then, we came around a bend, and glittering acoss a bay, were the lights of the city of La Paz.