A dreamlike voice at dawn told me that Chamula had returned. As much as he had tried not to, he had made me fall in love with the captain of a cooperative shrimp trawler, Joven, from Guaymas, Mexico. We had met six months earlier in a small palapa restaurant at the mouth of the Mulegé River. For months, he had been having the most incredible experiences. The morning of the dream, my sister and I talked over coffee and I told him how much I had wanted to go out with him on this latest expedition. However, Chamula could not promise when he would return and he thought it was better that he not go. Just then, Alisabeth’s boyfriend, Marcos, walked through the door, his fierce Yaki Indian face looking even more so today. Gravely, he reported that the Young Man had been robbed; The crew being held at gunpoint by the Mexican mob!
The story unfolded. The shrimp boats worked at night and rested during the day, the crew getting a well-deserved sleep. They had anchored off the coast of Sinaloa, Mexico, and that’s when they were approached by six armed men. Forced to remove all their clothes, they were thrown into the cellar. They took the 600 kilos of shrimp, their personal belongings and money.
We ran toward the boat, and I’ll never forget the sight of them: bare-chested, tattered sweatpants, and hatless, squinting against the sun. At that point it would have been hard to tell the difference between the bandits and the crew. They all looked really tough. We were told this was common, due to the wealth that shrimp represented, as valuable as gold, the Mexican mafia regularly took their cut. Elisabeth looked at me with big big eyes. “You wanted to be on this boat trip.” I looked at Chamula. He agreed. He couldn’t even imagine the horror he would have faced, or the likelihood that he would not have returned.
Stormy northerly winds kept the ship stranded for several days. Since the captain and crew were paid according to the number of shrimp brought in, it was critical to get back to work and make up for the loss. I still couldn’t say goodbye and go back to the States, so when he asked me if I wanted to date again, I foolishly said yes. Alisabeth reminded me that it was a “once in a lifetime experience” and we both laughed at the old joke. Back on board, I watched as the palm trees receded in the distance and the water caught the last golden rays of the sun; I was already having serious doubts about my decision. Chamula had not told me where we were going or how long we would be gone. I found him at the helm and that’s when I learned the truth. We would be driving for two days, and the first officer mentioned that we were headed to Sinaloa! That? Chamula timidly claimed it was true, not wanting to tell me because he didn’t want me to return to the states. We were heading to the Sinaloa coast, exactly where they had just been robbed!
“Stupid!” I retorted angrily, dressed as a Mexican sailor. On the deck, I flopped down and leaned back on the salt-encrusted nets. I was shocked. I felt like I had volunteered to be kidnapped. All this because I didn’t have the guts to say goodbye. Well, I had made the choice, and the choice put me here. Made. Now all he could do was stay angry or have an affair. Since it was such a small world on board a ship in the middle of the sea, I thought adventure was the best option.
Chamula followed me. I didn’t understand how he could put me in danger, and I told him so. Her response was very pragmatic. He assured me that since all the shrimp were gone and the mob knew about it, we would be safe from the threat for a while. The sea started to rise the further south we went. I started taking large doses of Dramamine and went to sleep. When I got up the waves had turned dark blue with deep valleys and white caps. I brought Chamula coffee and asked her to show me where we were. I might as well learn something during my trip to hell. He was very happy to see that he was not holding a grudge. By night we had gone south to Loreto and then southeast across the Gulf in the night. We were now close to mainland Mexico. I sat on the wheelhouse step, sipped my coffee, and watched the whales vomit.
At 4:00 pm the rumble of the engine died down. We docked at the stern of another cooperative boat in the middle of nowhere. Well, I knew we were in the Gulf, but I couldn’t see land. The sea was a constant and relentless movement. Concerned, I asked the Captain if we were not going to get closer to the coast. No, he admitted, this was very different from Mulegé. It was unlikely that we would see land, because the gulf was so shallow here that ships could anchor right in the middle with no problem. I thought the boats wouldn’t have a problem, but I did.
The next morning I dragged myself out of the bunk and the movement of the Young Man threw my body against the cabin wall. “Shit!” Another day of heavy seas. I wondered how many days I could stay drugged and asleep. It was then that I wondered if I could get Chamula to let me off the boat. When I asked him, he said that he had a friend in Los Gloriosos, Sinaloa, who could probably help. And so the captain weighed anchor and we headed for the mainland. I felt horrible that I was the reason everything was taking a turn for the worse. My brothers saw it as just another joke, an “adventure” at the time, and if you were a woman stuck in the middle of the gulf, her attitude had a lot going for it.
Once moored at Los Gloriosos, the wonders of Mexican transportation became clear. Everyone knew the Young Man, and a panga was already leaving. The seas were rough. I literally jumped off the boat onto the smaller boat below when they both got thrown. The fisherman in the boat maneuvered through the breaking waves. And like a surfer, riding the loop, he would pause for a moment, and then, at the perfect moment, he would use the force of the water to propel us forward. We would slide on the force until another wave overtook us. We used the momentum all the way to the beach.
After taking the boat out above the tide line, we entered the neighborhood of adobe houses. Chickens and dogs were running loose everywhere. We stopped for cold drinks at a small store. The sun was hot and piercing. Sitting under the shade of a tree near the Sinaloa River, the old friends chatted while a lone gringa looked on. In Mexico there was a time to visit and a time to go. You never thought of going when you visited. But when the time came, we had to go back to the trawler to collect my belongings. We jumped back into the panga and roared through the mangrove trees down the open mouth of the Sinaloa River toward the crashing waves. The breaking waves were hitting the bottom of the boat with such force that we had to hold on with both hands to keep from being tossed off. I knew Chamula expected me to be afraid, but when she looked at me, she was grinning so big we both must have looked foolish. She was “so crazy” for more! And that day I earned the title, “Pirate.”
Back aboard the choppy decks of the Young Man, I went inside to pack. Chamula wouldn’t let me go alone, so we both went to the beach to meet his friend. We traveled in the back of an open truck to the Los Mochis airport. It was a tearful goodbye. My life had changed profoundly in these months. He had lived and loved life to the full. However, I had to leave and it hurt. Looking down at the shimmering waters of the gulf, I reached for my journal to keep the memories fresh. Like a giant spine of ancient volcanic rock, the Baja Peninsula rose out of the water. Slowly, I closed the journal to prepare for the landing in La Paz.