Before we married, my wife and I borrowed her father's Ram conversion van and headed south through Baja California (two consecutive summers!). I think it was in '96 when we spent a rather extraordinary night in Camalu, a surf spot on the Pacific Coast about 200 miles south of the border. Local fisherman position their colorful boats at the base of the cliffs there, and surfers ride waves at a point near the wreck of a freighter named the Isla Martin.
On June 30th, the second full moon of the month (a true blue moon) was just rising in the east as the sun set in the west: for a brief time my wife and I looked at both as the land to the east was largely flat and the ocean to the west afforded unimpeded views. We were parking overnight on a bluff (we were charged a modest camp fee) away from some buildings and surf shacks closer to the point. As the night progressed we drank wine and sat by the van, and the tide was rising and pounding higher and higher on the sides of the cliffs. Sprays of water shot up and the ground thundered under the assault. We walked around the bluffs and loved every minute of it, and the water rose and crashed higher and higher against the cliffs.
I'm not sure of the exact time but somewhere after 10:00 p.m. there was a commotion by the surf shacks. People were running to the cliff's edge and yelling and pointing excitedly, and Donnna and I looked out to the wreck of the freighter: something large and luminous was floating past it, coming toward the bluffs. Below us the tidal surges were coming harder and harder--we went down to the bluffs and saw an enormous form being borne by the water: a whale, a blue whale, larger than any animal I had every seen. It was being jostled against the bluffs, then the ocean would recede a little, then again the giant was shoved against the bluffs in a tidal surge. A couple of the colorful boats used by the fisherman were dashed on the rocks, with at least two of them having their outboard motors broken off and cast on shore at the base of the cliffs. The whale moved slowly south for what seemed like a long time, following the coastline, until he (or she) drifted out of sight. We watched and watched, and were saddened but also awestruck.
The next morning I looked to the south: the tide was now very low. About a half mile from us I could make out a form lying on a now revelaed beach. We walked towards this vision with our dog jack.
I scrambled down the rocks to the whale, while seabirds circled and cried about its corpse. Jack and Donna followed. I walked off the length three times: it was 30 of my strides, or roughly ninety feet in length. Jack decided to climb the whale, perhaps so he too could have a story to tell when we returned...
My name is Jack
I found it dull on an elephant bull
So a climber of whales did I be
We saw what appeared to be a wound on one side of the whale, but could not be certain if it was a gash that caused its demise or was indeed a tear that occured while it was tossed roughly about against the rocks. It was sad, but also beautiful.
May I be borne along by the sea and laid to rest on distant shores...
We continued our drive south and had a few more adventures: getting stuck in the sand of a remote beach, being yelled at by Federales who ran at us as if we were bandits, the vast desert between El Rosario and Guerrero Negro--we listened to Roy Orbison and The Traveling Wilburys and drove and drove and drove.
When we headed north to come home we looked west as we drove through Camalu, but we did not stop. Jack smiled though, and rested his head on Donna's lap.
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Comments
Thanks for the whale tale.