Nightmarish aspects of the previous evening aside, the day dawned glorious and in the light it provided we soon found the little corner of Eden we had been seeking. I'll save the description of the great beauty and wild grandeur of the place for the main body of this narrative; suffice it to say that for the next two days we frolicked among sea lions, pelicans, cormorants, dolphins, and grey whales. We ate sea urchin raw, pulled straight from the water, and mussels, steamed, minutes after they were pried from the rock. We rode waves that carried us, more thrilling than any roller coaster, straight into the mouths of caves; we played under a natural waterspout; we risked joyful death a hundred ways amongst the rocks and waves. When we tired of our own cooking we gorged ourselves on delicious fish tacos in the market town nearby.
For reasons that will become obvious if they are not so already, we have returned again and again to this little spot. Indeed, it is now the custom of our extended group to gather annually at Los Arbolitos. February 1997 (President's Day Weekend) was the first of these annual Gatherings.
Description
After a harrowing drive over rutted mountain trails, and none too soon for most of us, the road levels out at last, and from the level spot one can look down upon the round, flat area at the top of the sea-cliff where we set up camp. (Actually taking a vehicle down the last short stretch to the camp area itself requires nerves of steel and great faith both in four-wheel drive and in the state of the last sandy, muddy ruts masquerading as a roadway.) The camp area is ringed on three sides by steep hills; the fourth side is the cliff-edge. A rough stairway, reminiscent of an estado-unidense 1930's PWA project, has been cut into the cliff and leads down to the pebble beach below. The beach is a narrow, crescent-shaped strip between the curve of the cliff and the waters of the cove. The cove is formed by two arms of rock reaching out into the Pacific to form a perfect 'C'; the opening to the cove is broken by a great spire of rock which towers over the breaking waves and divides the cove entrance into a narrow and a wide opening. The seas are at their roughest entering through the narrow opening.
Twenty minutes' paddle to the south lies an island shared by huge colonies of sea lions and pelicans. (We generally do not go further south than this island, for on its other side one is subjected to the stench of its thick crust of birdshit. Hence our name for it: "Guano Island." To tempt the unititiate to visit it we call it "Seal Rock," a cognomen equally accurate but far less viscerally apt.) To the north the coastline sports one cave after another, and the waters off the coast are dotted with small rocky crags forming an obstacle course of islands and wave breaks.
Trip
Our cast of characters on this First Annual Revelry was too lengthy to permit a complete listing; I'll merely lay out for ye the Dramatis Personæ to whom I refer by name within the body of this narrative.
Mad Gerardo was there, a man with more than a touch of the uncanny about him; there was the wily and intrepid Gene McKenna; there was "Thaqib," whose bloodline is more than half of the trollish kind. Captain Piddle-Paddle was in attendance, Downtown Matt Brown was there, and the Citizen, and Nita, along with a host of perhaps forty additional satyrs and nymphs, all sporting and debauching wildly.
I was there, too. You already know all about me.
...Neverthegoddamnless, one note regarding my presence is very much in order: I was there, chiefly, because the Citizen, Matt B., "Thaqib," and the Cap'n had pooled their resources to fly me from the grey, dreary, frozen midwestern winter into the blazing sunshine of the Pacific coast, so my cup was running over even before I crossed the border into Mexico. Had I not already done so, I would have sworn vows of eternal brotherhood with these true men on the spot.
The very jewel in the crown of this stretch of Baja California coastline is the waterspout or blowhole which lies in a small semi-circular inlet, hard by the mouth of a sea-cave navigable through to another opening on the other side of the inlet. The blowhole is an emergent property of another sea-cave, this one with its opening right at or just below sea level. In the brief "valley" between two incoming waves, the opening is exposed to and filled by air. Then, as the next wave rolls in, the opening is sealed by the inpouring water, which compresses the air inside until it is forced out with a roar, a rumble, and a furious explosion of foam, spray, and wind.
When the blowhole goes off hard it drives the water in the inlet and within the nearby cave into a mild frenzy, providing a thrilling ride.
The tunnel-like cave by the blowhole has a third opening, about half a meter beneath the surface of the water, on its seaward wall. On the first outing of our first full day, I was floating serenely in my boat when I noticed a kayak, plainly riderless, forcing its way awkwardly through that submarine opening. I immediately realized, of course, that something was amiss on the other side, within the cave.
I paddled over as quickly as I could, to find Captain Piddle-Paddle and Kim both off their boats, trying to reach the one that wasn't stuck halfway through a wall of rock. It appeared that the blowhole had gone off while Kim was in the cave, unseating her. Captain Piddle-Paddle -- at heart more surfer than yakker -- had immediately dropped his paddle and flopped to his belly on the top of his boat, and hurried into the cave to rescue her as though his kayak were no more than a mere surfboard. Mere seconds later, inevitably, he too had slipped off his boat. I believe they were both mildly demoralized, but we got them both safely back on their kayaks in a trice, the only danger to anyone being that the rest of us would laugh so hard at the Captain's antics that we too would join them in the drink.
One can paddle all day in these beautiful waters, playing in the caves, sighting dolphins, sea lions, whales, pelicans, cormorants, and more, riding the churning waters as waves are channeled between one craggy formation of rock and another, and never tire of it. The Citizen's great obsession, for example, is in climbing ever higher up the spire of rock breaking up the entrance of the cove, and leaping therefrom into the water.
But return to shore one must, if only to let someone else try out a kayak, when the group is large and the number of boats limited. While on shore, a group of us were sitting at camp, listening to "Thaqib" regale us with tales of Mad Gerardo and his 999 lives. Gerardo is the sort of man who will give you a glad wave of recognition when you come upon him suspended by his arms over a three-story drop into a stairwell -- thereby losing his hold and plummeting to the bottom. He has made the Leap of the Flaming Saber, a euphemistic sort of a description for a feat far more horrifying than it sounds. These and many other tales we were enjoying, when a cry from atop one of the high, steep, cactus-begirt hills surrounding us caused us to look up. There loomed Gerardo himself, silhouetted against the sky, astride a mountain bike already known to have two flat tires. Pausing only long enough to allow us to begin to wonder whether he truly intended what it seemed he must do, he released another yawp of challenge to the gods and launched himself down the near-vertical hill. Within seconds, the bicycle balked and he was hurled over its handlebars to land face first in a cactus.
That night we were joined by vast crowds, our campsite becoming a veritable shanty-town of canvas, bringing with them the lamb on which we were to feast that night. Nita reserved one leg of it to curry over coals, while Matt began the process of roasting the rest over one main and two supplementary firepits. We gorged like barbarians, tearing chunks of meat off with our hands, and washing it down with good red wine. How many guitars were played that night? How many songs sung? How many men stood to recite verse for the edification and pleasure of the intoxilexicated crowd? It was one of those evenings that lasts forever before it ends, a lifetime of revelry in a single night.
...And this, of course, was only the first day. The most wonderful thing about the Arbolitos, you see, is that it is a sort of Valhöll where every day the warriors rise up to struggle with glad strife against the elements, then feast all the night long, only to repeat the same joyful experience with the following sunrise, and again with the next, and again...
Appendix One: Injuries
The spirits of the Arbolitos are generous with their gifts, but in return they demand blood. Every major expedition to the Arbolitos has seen at least one injury; smaller expeditions appear to fall under some obscure de minimus exception tucked away somewhere deep within the dusty pages of the arbolitian bylaws.
Here are the Major Expeditions on record so far, listed with their respective Injuries: