by Bryan Jáuregui | Adventure, Blog, Culture, Travel Industry
In the age of jet-setting surfers pursuing monster waves across the globe for fame and money; of California surf breaks so crowded it is not uncommon to see 100 boards or more in the water; of jet skis towing surfers to catch waves that the human body could never conquer on its own, it is wonderful to hear Todos Santos resident Steve Merrill recall the age in which he first saw a surfer. “It was 1956 and I was six years old. My parents were driving the car along Pleasure Point in Santa Cruz, California, and I saw a guy standing on a giant wooden board gliding across the waves, completely alone on the water. It is impossible to describe the impact that vision had on me. I knew then and there that surfing was what I had to do.” Steve’s immediate enthrallment with surfing is echoed in the voice of the young narrator in Australian writer Tim Winton’s surfer-coming-of-age novel Breath, “How strange it was to see men do something beautiful. Something pointless and elegant, as though nobody saw or cared…as if dancing on water was the best and bravest thing a man could do.” Back in the day, Winton tells us, surfing was the closest a man could get to poetry.
If surfing is akin to poetry then Todos Santos today is the City Lights Bookstore and the Beatniks are having a poetry slam. “We’re living the bonus years here in Todos Santos” says surfing resident Billy Girvan. Like many expats in the Todos Santos surfing community, Billy grew up in California just as surfing culture was taking root. “In 1959 I was 12 years old and saw these guys surfing in Santa Barbara. All I wanted was to be like them. It wasn’t just the surfing, it was the life style that was so appealing, the beach life, the freedom. They were so different from everyone else. I traded my go-cart for a surfboard and never looked back.” Todos Santos surfer Jim McRoberts knows just how he feels. “In 1962 I was 15 and living in Sierra Madre, California. My uncle was a founding member of the San Onofre Surf Club and took me with him to the beach one day. That first time riding a wave, the sensation was simply amazing. It took hold of me immediately and I couldn’t think of doing anything else. My passion has never lessened from that day to this.” Like Billy, Jim was just as in love with the surfing culture as with the surfing itself. “Everything important was happening at the beach.”
Billy, Jim, Steve and countless other expat surfers living in Todos Santos went from being “grommets”, or “gremmies” – slang for young surfers – to embracing the full surfing life as older teens and adults. A lot of school was missed, a lot of pretty girls chased, a lot non-food items ingested and a whole lot of waves caught. Poetry? Absolutely. “Poetry is not only dream and vision” says poet Audre Lorde, “It is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It [is] a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.” For these boys surfing was the bridge to embracing nature in a most intimate, thrilling and terrifying way. Surfing was the bridge out of an ordinary life into something sublime. Surfing was the bridge to salvation. “Going to the ocean is like going to church for me.” says Jim who went on to get a Masters in English and is currently writing a novel about surfing. “If it wasn’t for surfing I would have been a drug addict or alcoholic like a lot of my friends. You have to stay physically fit to surf. It saved me.” Billy, who went on to become a founding member and bass player for the hard rock band NoXit, agrees. “I was in the midst of living this rock star’s life and surfing is definitely what kept me healthy, what kept me alive.”
Steve Meisinger and Friends in Baja in 1975
As countless movies and songs throughout the 1960’s and ‘70s glamorized surfing culture, the surf breaks in California inevitably became more crowded and surfers became more territorial and protective of their breaks, often resulting in a tense and aggressive atmosphere. Some surfers, like Steve Meisenger, or “Meisy”, started looking elsewhere and in 1973 at the age of 18 the Morro Bay, California board shaper started coming to Baja to enjoy the peninsula’s stark beauty and uncrowded breaks. “I was getting a degree in Ornamental Horticulture at Cal Poly and would save all the money I made shaping boards during the year to come to Baja in the summer. We would live in the van and camp on the beach. We never went out to eat, we never stayed in a hotel. All of our money went to surfing and survival.” Meisy started a successful, 30-year career as a housing contractor but continued to come to Baja at least once a year. He stumbled upon Todos Santos in 1981 while looking for a mechanic. He was captivated. He found himself returning to surf the breaks here every year, and by 1990 had bought property and started building his house. “The environment in most of Baja is so harsh, but in Todos Santos we get the great waves as well as this lush environment, great weather and wonderful creature comforts.”
Steve Merrill Surfing in Todos Santos. Photo by Sam Belling.
The magic of Todos Santos surfing has a powerful pull. By the time Billy first visited Todos Santos in 1994 it had been 14 years since he’d last been on a surf board. But much to his joy he found that he could still ride the waves. Much to the consternation of his wife he also found that he really wanted to surf all the time, once again. “But luckily that beautiful woman really loves me so when I said I wanted to move to Todos Santos to surf she backed me 100%. We sold all of our property and here we are.” Jim knows just what he means. When he and his wife married in 1989 they moved to the mountains of Oregon so they could pursue her love of horses. “But I thought about surfing every single day, and even carved a sculpture of a wave to put over the mantel.” A 3-year road trip throughout the North American continent brought them to Todos Santos in 2009. It had been 20 years since Jim was last on a surf board, but the magic returned immediately. “Every good wave that you ride is like a gift. It is this energy that is there for you personally, energy that has come 2,000 miles for you to merge with and take to the Todos Santos shore.” Jim and his wife sold their Oregon property and have been in Todos Santos ever since.
No matter whether they surfed every day for the past 5 decades or abandoned the waves for years, surfing still provides the “skeleton architecture” of these men’s lives as they move through their 60s. And one of the key reasons they love surfing Todos Santos is, as Steve says, “This is as nice a surfing community as anyone could ever hope to find. There is hardly any localism and everyone on the waves is respectful and supportive of each other in the water.” While they may not have the stamina and moves of youth, the men don’t seem to mind (much). “Let’s face it” says Billy, “the best surfer out there is the one having the most fun. And that’s usually me!” Coming from a guy with 2 titanium bars, 4 screws and 3 vertical spacers holding his back together, that’s no mean feat. Billy already has days on the water when his back prevents him from getting up on the board, and he can see a time coming when he won’t be physically able to surf any more. “But I’m just not that worried” says Billy. “There is always mind surfing!” Poetry? Oh yes indeed.
This article by Bryan Jáuregui of Todos Santos Eco Adventures and Mario Becerril of Mario Surf School was published in the Summer 2012 issue of Janice Kinne’s Journal del Pacifico.
by Bryan Jáuregui | Adventure, Blog, Travel Industry, Wildlife
This article by Todos Santos Eco Adventures was published in the Spring 2012 issue of Janice Kinne’s Journal del Pacifico.
If you sift back through the catalog of parental admonitions that were meant to ensure you a long and happy life – you know, “don’t stick your tongue on frozen metal”, “don’t eat yellow snow”, “don’t drink your father’s last bottle of beer” – somewhere buried in there your mother must surely have added “and oh yes dear, don’t swim with sharks”.
Very sound advice to be sure but swimming with sharks – whale sharks that is – in the Sea of Cortez is truly one of life’s great (and, sadly for you danger junkies, very safe) adventures. While whale sharks have thousands of teeth in hundreds of rows in their enormous mouths (imagine armed shark mouths 4 to 5 feet wide), they can neither bite nor chew. That’s right, they are happy to forego all human body parts in favor of plankton, krill and small fish. Go figure!
Whale Shark Mouth! Photo by Deni Ramirez
So now you feel safe but even if you were on the varsity swim team you’re probably wondering how you could actually keep pace with a shark in the water. Well, the whale shark got its moniker because it is the only fish that is literally as big as a whale; mature adults can reach 60 feet in length and 50 tons in weight. Reaching these proportions requires an immense amount of energy, which the whale shark gets by consuming huge volumes of plankton-rich water, then straining it out through its gills. In fact, to get the food it needs it is not unusual for a whale shark to filter 400,000 gallons of water an hour. To conserve this hard-won strength – and continue eating – whale sharks tend to do a lot of hanging about in the water, or, if moving, doing so at a very slow pace. This lollygagging is what makes it possible for non-bait types like humans to jump in and swim alongside them for a bit. Of course, when they want to put on the speed they certainly can so when a whale shark tires of your company all you will see is a swishing tail receding into the distance.
Now you’d think it’d be a relatively simple matter to learn about a mammoth fish the size of a school bus dawdling through the water eating up everything in its path. But the fact is that scientists still know relatively little about the whale shark, and La Paz resident Dení Ramirez of Whale Shark Mexico is trying to change all that. Originally from Mexico City, Dení has been studying whale sharks in La Paz since 2001, and completed her Ph.D. in marine biology last year. The whale shark’s skin is covered in a pattern of pale yellow spots and stripes that is unique to each animal, a type of fingerprint if you will, so Dení has been able to track some of the inhabitants of La Paz Bay. In fact, she has been tracking the young sharks Flavio, Tikki Tikki and Tango for almost a decade now, and has determined that they are true Baja residents. While whale sharks have been spotted across the globe from Australia to Djibouti, from the Philippines to Mozambique, Dení’s juveniles appear to travel only in the Sea of Cortez, from the Bay of La Paz to Bahia de Los Angeles – roughly 600 miles. We asked Dení why we seem to be seeing the whale sharks around La Paz so much more over the last couple of years than we ever did before.
Whale Shark Feeding in the Sea of Cortez: Photo by Deni Ramirez
“It’s really just a question of food. Over the last two to three years the conditions in the Bay of La Paz have been just right to produce an enormous amount of plankton for the whale sharks to feed on. The wind, currents, mangrove conditions – all these have combined to create an excellent environment for plankton growth that we just didn’t have for such extended periods in earlier years. Also, in the Bay of La Paz the plankton is rich in the coastal waters, and these relatively shallow waters give the young sharks in my group a certain amount of protection.” Dení is happy to take visitors with her on her research trips and share some of her extensive knowledge of whale sharks and research methodology.
Dení is currently doing a lot of work with the pregnant females who inhabit the deeper waters around Espiritu Santo Island and have found that they have much larger migrations than the young sharks due to their different needs as mothers, mothers who surely will work to ensure the long life and happiness of their offspring by admonishing “and dear, don’t try to eat the humans. They’ll just clog up your gills.”
TOSEA guest Mary Winzig recounts her whale shark adventure:
“Swimming with whales sharks is the most amazing thing I have ever done in my life. They are such magnificent animals and I felt so lucky to be in their presence. I was scared—to see something so large and to know you are jumping in the water with them made me pause for a moment. My heart seemed to be almost leaping through my wetsuit – I asked the guide to make sure they were whale sharks because their dorsal fins were so huge! But after watching them and seeing their polka dots, I realized I had to swim with them. You can’t be afraid of anything with polka dots! Jumping in and seeing them through the snorkel was magical. Once I was in the water, I wasn’t afraid. I have no idea how long I was in the water with them, 2 minutes? 15 minutes? I was transfixed. Their mouths look like the grill of a ‘57 Chevy. I have never felt so small or insignificant, but also so powerful. I have decided I have to do everything in my power to help save these magnificent creatures. Thank you Todos Santos Eco Adventures for this wonderful opportunity. I look forward to swimming with the sharks again!”
Mary Winzig After Swimming with Whale Sharks
© Copyright Sergio and Bryan Jauregui, Casa Payaso S de RL de CV, 2012
by Bryan Jáuregui | Blog, Culture
by Sergio and Bryan Jauregui, Todos Santos Eco Adventures
June through November are the best months for diving and exploring the Sea of Cortés – “the aquarium of the world” – as the warmer water temperatures mean an (even more) incredible variety of fish, superior visibility and calmer seas. But a word of warning for those of you who do venture to the depths of the Sea of Cortés: there is one truly scary thing that you should know about – and be constantly on the alert for – and that is El Mechudo. There are many variations on the story of this wild-haired free diver, but this is the one that the old fishermen around Punta Mechudo tell…
Long ago, when La Paz was the pearl capital of the world, there lived a Yaqui Indian known as El Mechudo, The Hairy One. In those days there were many pearl divers of great skill and daring in La Paz, men and women who could hold their breath for long stretches at a time and knew the secrets of finding large and magnificent pearls. Each year the companies that sold La Paz pearls around the world would hold a contest to see which diver could find the largest and loveliest pearl. The diver who won was awarded the great honor of having his or her pearl presented to the Virgin of Guadalupe. For as many years as anyone could remember, El Mechudo, with his wild flowing black hair, had won the contest; he could hold his breath longer and dive deeper than any of the other divers and he always knew where to find the most fantastic pearls.
Then one year El Mechudo failed to appear at the beginning of the contest. They waited for him for several hours but finally had to hold the event without him. By the time El Mechudo arrived to compete, the contest was over and a winner had been declared. Enraged, El Mechudo insisted on diving. His friends begged him not to risk his life and to simply wait until the following year to prove himself the champion once again. The organizers warned that even if he found the biggest, blackest pearl of all time that they would not crown him the winner, nor would they present the pearl to the Virgin. Unfazed, El Mechudo dove into the water. Time passed. After many minutes he still had not returned to the surface. His friends jumped into the water to search for him and saw a sight that would haunt them for the rest of their lives: the lifeless body of El Mechudo with his hand caught in a giant oyster.
The man known as El Mechudo is dead, but he is not gone. To this day divers, kayakers, fishermen and snorkelers in the Bay of La Paz are visited by the ghost of El Mechudo. There are regular reports of unexplainable touches in the night, rearranged camp sites and voices in the wind. And aspiring pearl divers should beware. Word is that if you go into the Bay of La Paz looking for pearls, El Mechudo will find you and offer you the largest, blackest pearl you can imagine. If you accept, your final resting ground will be the depths of the Bay of La Paz, right beside El Mechudo.
So how did La Paz become the Pearl Capital of the World in
the days of El Mechudo? Tony Burton of MexConnect* explored that story by reaching back to the early 1530s when the explorers of Hernán Cortés sailed into the Sea of Cortés searching for the earthly Paradise of California. The first peoples they encountered on the Baja Peninsula were Pericú Indians. The Spanish explorers were immediately struck by the Pericú’s necklaces which were strung with berries, shells and blackened pearls. As the Pericú did not have metal knives they had been retrieving pearls by throwing oyster shells into a fire, charring the pearls in the process. The Spanish explorers soon determined that opening the oyster shells with their knives gave them access to lustrous, milky-white pearls on par with those to be found in Asia or the Middle East. A robust pearl industry was born, and thousands of pearls were sent from Baja to Europe where they were used in the royal regalía of many European courts. While the Jesuits tried to restrict pearl collection during the period of their missions in Baja (1697 to 1768) due to the poor conditions inflicted in the native Indian divers (see story of El Mechudo above), traffic in the pearls persisted. It was estimated that by 1857, 95,000 tons of oysters, that yielded about 2,770 pounds of pearls, had been removed from the Sea of Cortés. The coves around La Paz and Isla Espiritu Santo were the center of the Baja pearl industry.
Pearl diving was revolutionized after 1874 when larger vessels, equipped with diving suits and accompanying equipment, first entered Mexican waters. The new equipment lengthened the season to include the cooler winter months and had the added benefit of reducing shark attacks. But new dangers emerged: divers confined to diving suits for hours at a time frequently suffered rheumatism, paralysis (due to compression and sudden temperature changes) and partial deafness. Equipment failure led to many deaths. (Never fear new divers – Jacques Cousteau radically enhanced the functionality and safety of scuba gear and since his first Aqua-Lung in 1943, equipment safety has increased dramatically.) Despite the problems faced by the divers, by 1889, a La Paz-based pearl company had come to completely dominate the world pearling industry. A 400-grain pearl, found in the shores of Mulege, now forms part of the Spanish crown jewels.
A 1903 article in The New York Times says that the Baja pearl industry had produced more than two million dollars worth of pearls in 1902, including some of the “finest jewels of this kind found anywhere in the world”. The article emphasizes that the area is “noted for its fancy pearls – that is to say, the colored and especially the black ones”. But by 1936 the natural oyster stocks had been depleted past the point of recovery. This depletion, combined with the widespread availaility of relatively inexpensive cultured and artificial pearls, led to the demise of the natural pearl industry in Baja. Today very few natural pearls are harvested in the Sea of Cortés, but several Baja California firms do cultivate pearls. So La Paz, once the center of the world’s pearling industry, is still known today as the “Pearl of the Sea of Cortés”. But remember, should you encounter one of those few remaining natural pearls while diving in the Bay of La Paz and decide to take it home, El Mechudo will make sure grabbing that pearl is the last thing you ever do!
*Much of the information on the pearl industry in La Paz presented here was researched by Tony Burton and presented in his Did You Know column for MexConnect in June 2008. His sources include:
Anon. Important Pearl Fisheries on the Coast of California. The New York Times, June 14, 1903.
Hardy, R. W. H. 1829 Travels in the Interior of Mexico in 1825, 1826, 1827 and 1828. London: Henry Colburn & Richard Bentley. Reprinted in 1977, Texas: Rio Grande Classics.
Kunz, G. F., and Stevenson, C. H. The Book of the Pearl: Its History, Art, Science and Industry.Dover. 2001.
Mayo, C. M. Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California, the Other Mexico.Milkweed Editions. 2007.
