Don’t Bite the Hand that
Feeds You |
A few years back, we took our children on our first "tropical" family vacation - a trip to Cabo San Lucas in Mexico for some much-anticipated fun in the sun.
Although scuba took a back seat to bodysurfing and bartering with the pesky and persistent beach vendors, we did manage to sneak in a couple of dives one day when we dove with Carlos out of Land's End Divers, a dive op located in the harbour at Cabo.
As we were trying on rental wetsuits at the shop, Carlos asked if we would like to watch him feed the eels on our dive. Not usually thrilled by these kind of human interactions with wild animals, but not wanting to offend, we just shrugged our shoulders noncommittally and watched as he loaded up his bc pockets with some dead fishies, shooting each other snide, meaningful glances while we whispered to each other to stay back from the chumsicle during the dive in case Señor Sharky was in the 'hood...
Then Carlos led us down to the boat moorage. There, we paid 10 pesos each for the privilege of setting a toe on the dock (Mexico - the land of the outstretched hand) - before we hopped into the humble little fishing boat for the five minute ride out to North Wall. We donned the scuba gear while the kids got their masks and fins on, ready to snorkel above us.
The surface water temperatures were a balmy 75 degrees that April, and so the in-your-face thermocline at 30 feet, where the temperature dropped down into the low 50's, was an unwelcome surprise. We followed Carlos as he descended, gasping at the rude shock of frigid water insinuating itself into our ill-fitting rented wetsuits as we crossed through the thermocline, and then shivered and sulked behind as he took us on a leisurely tour of the reef. Hey, we thought we had left cold water diving behind us in Canada.
When we reached a tumble of small boulders, Carlos pulled a fish out of his bc pocket and ripped its head off, feeding it to an eel with bad table manners. Then he took another chunk and fed it to another eel, close by. As I looked around more carefully, I saw that there were many, many big green morays hanging out between the rocks, looking pretty intense and hungry, like eels usually do with their lipsmacking ways. Behind them, queen angels and moorish idols and big blue parrotfish went about their business, as far as the 30 or 40 foot viz would let me see.
I was spending alot of time clearing my mask - I still don’t know why, but there is something about wearing a hood that guarantees that I will have trouble with my mask. This time, the line of water kept creeping inexorably up my face towards my eyes, threatening the contact lenses that I was wearing for the first time ever diving. So it was with scrunched up Mr. Magoo eyes that I watched the main event...
A HUGE moray eel came flying out of nowhere and took a run at Carlos as he cruised along in mid-water - ten or fifteen feet above the reef. I watched in horror as the big water serpent slithered up between his legs and attacked him. Well, it looked like an attack from my fins, anyway. Carlos, sensing a presence between his legs, which was clearly not the object of his desire, flipped out. Most unprofessional, in retrospect. After all, it was only an eel frisking him for more sushi. The eel picked his pockets a bit before beating a hasty retreat. Meanwhile, Carlos was emptying his pockets in a whirling dervish frenzy - fish bits were flying everywhere as he hastened to rid himself of the chum. I signaled to Carlos, once the beast had dined and dashed and he had finished unloading his pockets, if he was okay, and I got a shaky reply as he checked out his wetsuit for bitemarks, and counted his fingers and toes.
If you feed them, they will come, is the moral of this story. Or maybe it is don’t bite the hand that feeds you. All I know is, I was pretty alert for the rest of the dive. It was pretty uneventful, except for the eel that came after my husband, but I rescued him from certain entanglement by hauling on his first stage and swimming like stink. He wasn’t too thrilled about being dragged through the water, but hey, I thought he’d prefer to surface with all of his appendages intact. I was a happy camper when we ascended up into the warmer water where our daughters were having a blast watching the trumpetfish and triggers flitting by, safely out of the eel zone.
We dove once more with Carlos, for the second of the only two tanks that we dove on that trip to the Baja. This time we were at Pelican Rock - a place as lovely above the water as below. The famed Arch is just around the corner -- carved out by collision of the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Cortez. The driver of the boat took us on a brief tour during our surface interval and we saw the great sea lions lounging on the gnarled shore and were awed by the huge pitons of stone that rise straight from the ocean.
On the second, shivering dive, we saw two horn sharks, nestled in the rocks, and the biggest school of yellow striped grunts that I have ever seen - it was so huge that it darkened the dive as it passed over us.
We all learned a few things in Mexico: always negotiate cab fare before putting a toe in a taxi. Dave, my husband, who is a non-confrontational sort, got into an awful throwing-money-in-the-dust-with-disgust confrontation with an usurious driver who tried to charge us triple the usual fare to what had become our favourite restaurant.
We learned that if something sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is. We learned this when we were promised a bounty of wonderful gifts for sitting thru a long, pressure-charged timeshare presentation, and instead were handed a couple of ratty mexican blankets and a no show dive & snorkel excursion for our troubles.
We neophytes learned that in Mexico, nothing is as it seems: a $30 money clip being hawked by a beach vendor really costs $10 and is worth about a buck. “We will fix it mañana” means maybe sometime next year.
And Buenos dias amiga means “Hey lady, you look like a sucker, wanna buy some stuff?