Due to the number of participants involved, Cathy and I decided to ride down with Amigo Mike. The trip down started out as usual...same old drill. Until, that is, we got about 3 miles south of Campo La Costilla. We stopped to check unfamiliar "road sounds". Lo & behold, we had two flat tires. I plugged the one on the truck, slapped on the spare for the other and headed on down the road. We hit the Coñejo Feliz sign at about 10:15 p.m. When we got down to Toni's, it was a beautiful sight: the thieving hoard of predatory scum was
It was sure nice going outside and not worrying about locking your place, hearing motors at 5:00 every morning, seeing people wandering all over, driving vehicles...the whole disgusting trip. Peaceful tranquility as we remember it had returned. The trailers had not been disturbed since we left them on Christmas. Apparently, Brownie and Toni cleaned the beach up as best as possible. I was going to tape some footage up there, but never got around to it . You'll have to check out these pictures, courtesy of Bwana Bruce.The ladrones efficiently raped the sea. The amount of scallops and other invertebrates they took out was truly phenomenal. You'll have to wait until the October trip to see the full extent of it. I want to do some math to figure out approximately how many scallops they took. Half a million...a million? We just hope they didn't get below the critical level for the local population to recover. Here's the disgusting mess:
Whew! I'll bet that stunk when it was in its heyday.
When we got there, what I call the Devil's Wind was blowing. It's an off-shore flow that courses across the Vizcaino Desert to the west. From the high plateau and peaks of the Sierra la Asamblea at an average altitude of about 4,000', the air gets compressed on its way down to sea level. Are you familiar with the term, dry adiabatic lapse rate...maybe just never heard it called that? It's the change of temperature associated with a change in altitude with no thermodynamic monkey-business: changes of state into fog or rain or the like. It amounts to 3 degrees F./1,000' elevation change. For 4,000 feet, that's 12 degrees. The net effect of it all was that it was 86 degrees at night when we got there. Not wonderful sleeping weather. The only good part was the humidity was low, albeit a bit too low...17%. The coastal plain in this area is narrow. It extends about 5 - 8 miles west. At that point, the Sierra rise abruptly. The next day, the thermometer topped out at 101, but the water was nice. Good for a short swim and downright pleasant out in the boat. The moon was full and the tides were running at 22 feet between high and low. Low tide was early, so we had to wait until about 11:00 to launch the boats the first day. When we got them in, we ran up to Three Humps to get some bass. We got a few and brought them home for future fish tacos. Mike and I found a nice hole and caught 5 baggers.
The next day, Saturday, the sea was calm and we headed out to the islands. Fishing was actually quite good. We trolled the spots by Punta los Añegados and Caleta Paraje de Trabanco. No Flag or Spotted Cabrilla this time, but Mikey caught maybe the largest Ribera Cabrilla (Panama Graysby) that I've ever seen.
He also wrestled in a nice size Sierra
The Magnificent Frigatebirds were on station at the rookery.
We went past Punta Piedra Volcanica. These red rocks are presumably rhyolite. No shortage of volcanism here. Alternating beds of ash flows and what appear to be volcanic plugs abound.
We continued past the north point and fished over on the east side of Isla San Luis, where Eddie and I saw some nice Yellowtail over Christmas. We picked up a few firecracker Yellows, including a double. After awhile, we ran over to North La Poma, trolled around the east side of Islote La Poma, down to the south and back again. Finally, we trolled up toward the Seamount. I had a real nice hookup on the troll, but didn't make the set. I wasn't marking anything of note on the Seamount. We went back to where we hit the Yellows. Eventually, we went back to the Caleta, but action was slim. We decided, for no particular reason, to head back to camp. I fired it up and we were cruising at full speed for about 1.25 miles. Abruptly, we encountered a veritable wall of water. Big breaking wind waves, 6 footers maybe, with extremely short intervals...hardly the length of the boat. The GPS said we were still 2 miles from camp. It was a rough, tough ride back. We took about a half dozen waves over the bow. It was the only time since I've been going down here that I thought I might actually loose her. Mike and I were getting pelted with water. I had put the drain plug in because I was worried about insufficient speed, but with the amount of water we'd already taken-on, I pulled it back out with the hope that more would drain out when we were cruising than we'd take on when we backed-down. It apparently helped. We had a slow plodding ride back. The waves didn't settle down until we were almost in Roger's Bay. We ran her up on the beach. High tide was in and I kissed the ground. Bruce made it back about 15 minutes later. Then the adrenaline crash hit and I just bombed-out on the beach. In an hour, the winds had subsided substantially. Laying on the beach was nice. Here's a picture of what it could have been like, courtesy of Bwana.
Saturday night, the moon rose over Punta Bufeo. It was quite serene.
Sunday, Eddie found El Alacran crawling around under his camper. Nice guy that he is, he put it in a muffin container and took it out to the desert to eat some bugs...away from his camper, mind you. Here's El Alacran...the scorpion, and a big `un at that.
We fished Sunday south of Punta Bufeo, down past Grouper Point. Fishing in that area was simply not good. We headed back to the point. Mike and I were sightseeing off Punta Bufeo village and the wind came up again. We beelined back to camp. Eddie was heading up to Three Humps, but changed his mind when it turned ugly. Weird weather this Memorial Day. We had company on the beach late that afternoon: Mr. Coyote checked us out.
That night, the sunset was spectacular...one of the best, if not the best ever.
Here it is looking up toward Lobos and Cholludo.
Eddie and Mike were awestruck :-)
Monday, we fished the humps to get some more bass for fish tacos. We got some, so we invited our neighbors to the south, Gene and Mary Kay from Prescott, and their friends, Tom and Sheila. Tom & Sheila were from Washington, DC and were taking 6 months to fly all over North America in their plane. They all flew in so our fish tacos beat their canned spaghetti. After fishing, we landed the boats in front of Ed's, ready for the pull-up.
Here's another view at high tide, lookin' down toward the point
And another one, of Chris & Mike
Here's the Campo, in all its glory.
Here's what powers the whole camp: two golf cart batteries, a solar charge controller, and lots of bells and whistles. The ladrones couldn't figure this stuff out, I suspect.
And here's me, with Cathy's favorite swimsuit on ;-) It's too contrasty to see either me or the colors, but as usual, pics of me are scarce and after all, it IS my website!
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