Scatological Ambuscade on Isla San Marcos

So, at long last, my worst Baja camping nightmare comes true: I am awoken from sleep to see standing outside my tent a dude packing a very large pistola. He´s wearing a black ball cap and pointy black leather dress shoes (amid the scorpionic rubble of a desert arroyo) and his mustashioed face is peering very suspiciously under my sun tarp. Yikes! I mean, ¨Buenos dias!¨

Hm, OK, he´s with the Mexican marines, based in Mulege. This means I can go from 100% alarmed to about 85%. What are the notoriously incorruptible Mexican authorities doing camped out on a little cove on Isla San Marcos, which is the marine version of the middle of hardly anywhere? Not, like, intercepting a drug shipment to take possesion of, or something like that, I hope?

In fact, this morning visit wasn´t a total surprise. The previous night, just after laying down in the sweet silence of my arroyo camp, I heard a boat motoring slowly into my cove. It came in slowly, under light of a couple of weak flashlights. Alarm level: 110%. I got up, grabbed my can of bear mace and an aluminum rod tube, and exited the tent. Last thing I want is to be trapped in a tent, surrounded by ill will. Nor do I want to give up all my goods without some kind of fight, which could include machete swashbuckliung, aerial flares (horizontally deployed) and large rocks as well as the bear mace. Some will say this is stupid, and I don´t necessarily disagree; it´s just that I would rather feel stupid than helpless and weak.

Anyway, no attack nor confrontation ensued. After creeping into the shadow of a bush, I heard a lot of bumping and goofing around down on the beach, and distinctly heard a boyish male voice whining about being hungry and could we eat soon please? This gang of goofs was most probably a bunch of fisherman, and I figured the worst-case scenario was that they would spend the night, make a lot of noise, find my camp, and try to make me have mescal shots with them.

I was just about to go back to my tent and just be quiet, when one of the dudes came up from the beach and stopped right near me, in the full glow of the moonlight. He dug a small hole with a shovel, and before I could make a move, dropped his pants and squatted. Christer. I was hidden in the shadows -- but if I moved, he might notice me, and then wouldn´t THAT be embarrassing . . . .

Based on height, hat and mustaches, I´m pretty sure that the dude I watched wiping his ass was the black-shoed commandante.

After a bit of an amused morning chat, the commandante went back down the beach. Then, two by two, uniformed dudes with machine guns came up and inspected my camp, all with a vaguely irritated air. I gather it may have been their responsibility to make sure the area was secure, and that the commandante blamed them for not taking notice of my camp. I don´t blame them so much: the camp was intentionally located behind a bluff that obscured views from the beach, exactly to discourage curious visits. It worked for five peaceful days running last April.

When I loaded up the boat and launched from the beach, they were just about finishing their breakfast, with eggshells and shrimp tails tossed down on the beach along with emptied hot sauce cans and coke bottles. I felt grateful that they at least dug cat holes for their turds.

Sad to say, the island-based fishing was a bit disappointing, altogether: one big skipjack on the yellotail bajo, a small cabrilla, a sculpin, various ambitous pufferfish; just about zero strikes over the reefs that produced plenty of large pargo and grouper back in April. More than once I looked wistfully over at the ¨haystack hill¨ on the mainland, where the sierra bite was probably still running hot, with lots of corvina in the bay to boot.

I paddle out there across the channel both for fishing and for a small adventure. This time the fishing was not so hot, I didn´t get marooned by the wind, but still, there was a little bit of an adventure after all.