The Butterfly Masacre Resumes

Punta Cabras
Page 2 of 7

The next morning I went a couple exits north and met up with Todd, who was packing up a Jeep Cherokee to the gills with enough food to last what seemed like a few months. He and his dad Rod were planning on spending some time at their house in Erendira, or actually more properly the smaller mostly gringo community of Punta Cabras just north of Erendira. I was going to use this as the first stop on my trip down the peninsula. Todd said there was nothing to see south of there and I should just come chill out there for a couple weeks and they’d take me to their dentist in Ensenada. I decided to just play it by ear. I followed the Jeep down through the Tijuana border and was psyched to find out I didn’t have to get a Temporary Import Certificate for the bike like I’d had to do on the mainland, but I still had to get a tourist card that is good for 6 months and cost me $22.50. We took the toll highway from Tijuana to Ensenada that follows the coast and provides the most amazing views. The first few miles follows the border, with The Wall on the right and abject poverty in the outskirts of Tijuana on the left. A few miles later there were the luxury mansions and resorts on the coast. Eventually these fell away to just pristine coast with big breakers on the beaches.

In Ensenada we stopped for fish tacos, a necessary stop on any trip to the Baja. Although I had a recommendation from Trevor and Nina where to stop for The World’s Best Fish Tacos, I had to defer to my hosts who had their own favorite place near the fish market. Yup, they were pretty good! We then went to the fish market and were a little shocked by the price of seafood, it was not cheap. A decent sized lobster cost $30. 2 kilos of shrimp cost $20 or more. There was also a large hunk of cod or halibut that was purchased. By the time this was all accomplished it was starting to get late. The rule in Mexico is ‘don’t drive after dark.’

The sun was setting as we left Ensenada, and it’s another hour to Erendira. We were going to stop at one more store but decided it was too late, and other supplies would be purchased in Erendira. I was glad I was following people who’d made this trip before as the light failed, but it was still scary. The trucks take the mountain passes at ridiculous speeds. I had to let one semi speed by me on a downhill where he was going faster than all the other cars on the road - I have no idea how he made all the switchbacks without tipping over.

As we were approaching Erendira on the potholed side road out to the coast, Todd bent a rim and blew a tire. It was completely dark as we went through town, but this really wasn’t much of an issue here as it is a sleepy little town at night. The road up to Punta Cabras was rocky and a bit tricky to follow - I would have never found the place on my own in the dark.

As it turns out, I probably wouldn’t have found the place in the light either. The instructions were ‘go to Coyote Cal’s and follow the road north a mile until you get to the blue house.’ Except it seemed like more than a mile, and there wasn’t an obvious blue house. I had given these same instructions to Raven, and for the next several days tried to watch for all the vehicles coming down the road so I wouldn’t miss her and Greg if they stopped by. As it turned out, they showed up a couple days late on Christmas Eve while I was out of sight from the road rebuilding and spray painting a box for keeping firewood upstairs near the wood stove. She ha misunderstood my directions, thinking I’d said Coyote Cows rather than Coyote Cal’s, and couldn’t find any information about the place. While driving down Mex 1 she spotted the Coyote Cal’s sign at the turnoff and decided on the spot to give it a try. When they got to Punta Cabras she asked Tony where the house was, who directed her to the correct house. It was cool having them over for Christmas Eve, and we had some of the shrimp from the market.

It was probably fortunate for them that they didn’t show up the night before. Days in Punta Cabras consisted of doing some odd chores in the mornings followed by miscellaneous wanderings in the afternoons. This included driving the cool-ass 1986 Toyota 4X4 Xtra cab around the area exploring, fishing, beach combing, chatting up Gabby and Lulu at Coyote Cal’s or hiking up the mountain behind Punta Cabras that Todd calls Breckenridge in honor of a past resident of the community. On the day in question we went clamming. Todd found one clam loose in the rocks, not sure what it was doing there. What we did find in gross excess were sand crabs. I’d never seen these critters before, but they left a small breathing hole in the sand that gave away their location. One dig with a spade and between two and a half dozen would be exposed. They rarely hung out along. Sand crabs don’t have much in the way for claws, so it appears that nobody eats them and that’s why there is a vast number of them under the sand. We collected 3 to boil and try out nonetheless. Every so often we would also unearth a freshly molted sand crab, practically gooey it would be so soft. Todd figured we could use these as bait for sea bass or something similar. The day before we’d caught sea perch and buttermouth using mussels, so why not sand crab bait? We collected quite a few of these softshell sand crabs when it occurred to Todd that people eat softshell crabs at sushi joints, why not softshell sand crabs? Sorry Todd, I know we were going to keep this secret, but I don’t think it’s going to catch on and I don’t think that many people are going to read this far into this story anyway, so I’m telling – Todd made a tempura batter and we deep fried the softshell sand crabs. They were pretty good, but I didn’t like the middle bite unless they were extra cooked. For a couple hours afterwards I was afraid I was going to get sick, but all was good in the digestive world.

Before long my week in Erendira was over, my dentist appointment in Cabo missed, and no appointment made for a checkup in Ensenada. Rob showed up in Erendira the day after Christmas, and was anxious to head south to do some surfing and meet up with his housemates, who were going to either fly into Loreto at 2:15PM on Dec 30 or 2:15PM on Dec 31 to La Paz. Rob was traveling in his venerable VW Vanagon, and we decided to travel together for a while. I figured I would be heading home at least a week before him, although there was some temptation to just leave the BMW in Punta Cabras and hop in the van. In the end I decided to ride the motorcycle, and with the trip odometer reading 691 miles we started down on the next segment of the trip.

Next: Erendira to Lopez Mateos