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I'll always have an affection for the Nayarit/Jalisco/Colima coast, if only because that's where I first really got into diving. First place I ever even used fins, but I didn't like them that much at the time. I learned a lot along those little coves and reefs, the jungle hanging over the tide pools, the crumbling rock shelves booming with the impact of the waves. I was living a pretty solitary existence at the time: one thing I like about the area is that you can get solitary. Living out of the back of my old panel truck, Scooter Boy, sleeping in a ratty old hammock, living off the land. One beach I stayed at had mango trees in behind it and got a daily delivery of coconuts, drifting in from some beach resort down the way. Coconuts already husked, and with their tops chopped off. They pour them full of booze, the people suck it out with straws, then they chuck the coco in the drink. I scooped the meat out and ate it. Slightly salty taste from immersion, I think I just imagined the faint residue of tequila. Oh, and the beach abounded with lobsters.
At first, it was mostly just dead lobsters I saw on the beach. My meat was coming from lisas and pargos I nailed with my Hawaiian sling. Then I met some lobster divers and my diet improved. So did my diving.
Good work those guy had, if you can get it. They'd start off way up the point and move down along the coast, swimming along the rocks with their pathetic gear. You never saw such runcible, patched-up, post-surplus, Road Warrior equipment in your life. Not being USED, anyway. I think knowing those guys, Primitivo and Eusebio and Viga, was what kept me from ever getting too much into the gear fixation. I learned early on that you can do amazing things with some pretty marginal stuff.
They'd groove along, searching the familiar nooks for lobsters, then grabbing them out with the tool they all carried; a half-meter long stick with a big, marlin-sized fish hook lashed onto the end of it. They'd spot their arthropod of choice, reach that hook into his hidey-hole, and snatch him out so fast his eyes would bug out. At the end of a day's hunt, they'd end up way down by Bucerias, where you could get out pretty easy and there was a road in through the jungle, giving access to cars. And there'd be a taxi there, waiting to take them back to the village with their catch. The first time I saw the taxi, I laughed my butt off. I told them, you guys are pretty well off, commuting to work by cab." They stared at me like I was nuts. The "what planet?" look we frequently exchanged.
Like I say, these guys taught me the basics of diving and swimming in rough water. Not to mention getting fish, lobster, clams, oysters and crabs. Just for kicks, too. Helping a chump get it together. The first time I went in the water with them, they all laughed so much they could barely keep their business together.
If I didn't provide enough amusement for them, they would help me out. I caught up to Viga one day, hanging in the swirl and staring into a hole in the rock. He pointed into the cleft and told me, " Big one in there." By now I'd learned a little about looking for the feelers, and I didn't see any in this particular hole, so I was dubious. You bet, Viga insisted, this one is huge. Why don't you take it? Learn how to land a grandote? Well, okay, if you think so. This is your world, after all, I'm just an egg.
I took all their advice (and there was suddenly a lot of it) and snuck up and speared a stick into the hole, twisting and yanking on the three inch hook at the end. I popped it out, after a bit of a fight, and was suddenly holding a huge, tough, totally pissed off moray right in my face. He was hooked in the side and sharing his feelings about that with great gnashing of teeth and combative lunges. I wasn't about to let go of the stick, but sure as hell didn't want to hold onto it, especially since the morena was writhing up and down it, snapping his nasty mouthful of needles pretty close to my hand. At one point he actually tied himself into a knot and slid the knot up, trying to dislodge the hook. I should have handed the stick to Viga, but didn't think of that for some reason.
What I thought of was yanking out my cool Tekna knife (so much sharper and more effective than the rusty crap the pros were carrying) and try to kill my little handful of exuberance. Knowing what I know now, I can understand what a big kick my asshole diving buddies got out of that. I wore myself out learning that you can't kill a moray eel with anything short of thermonuclear weapons. Which is what Eusebio finally did. He grabbed the stick from me, shaking in such a way that the moray couldn't get near him, then tossed it up onto the bare basalt shelf we were bobbing around. After a half-hour of giving me shit and laughing, he retrieved the stick and the dead, somewhat hacked-to-ribbons moray, and bagged it for dinner. My reaction to this little surprise must have been precious, because I never heard the end of it. Three months later I could be sitting in a bar admiring one of the B-girls across the way and Primitivo or Viga would lean over and say, "There's a big one in that hole, compa," and the whole thing would go into reruns. Great bunch of guys. And knowledgeable about diving at a very different level from your run-of-the-mill instructor.
The only thing that bothered me was that they were taking the lobsters out of season, and that they took everything with no regard to size. One day I saw Eusebio snag a pretty tiny bug and slip it into his bag, and I said, "You know, if you leave the little ones, they'll get to be big ones." He just stared at me...emissary from another planet. Then Viga came in with, "And you know, gringos really like the big ones," and I was back to being the butt of it all. But I didn't forget that look.
Because on my planet, you have to look after the environment, you have to nurture wildlife, and husband populations or you'll be ass out down the road. The world being a garden, and all. You know, Save the Planet.
But on his planet, there's an equally firm reality which says, "What, I should LEAVE IT HERE? Not have food or cash for my family tonight? Let somebody else catch it instead?" And if you've got an argument against that pretty basic hunter/gatherer attitude, I'd be obliged if you'd send it to me: I can't think of anything I could have told him. Besides, he was teaching me.
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