Bay of the Dead

     Ensenada de los Muertos has a few surprises. After nearly a month in wild places with only a few stops in marinas it took us by surprise to stumble onto, of all things in this remote bay, a model train museum. The entire area is slated for development with a golf course and a hotel already established. There’s an open air restaurant on the opposite side of the harbor with a dingy dock nearby. The hotel is exquisitely designed with pools, artwork, fountains and the unexpected train museum on the mezzanine of the restaurant. The hotel and grounds are laid out with so much thought given to the details of comfort and beauty that it is simply stunning. Roads, lagoons, cliff side homes and shopping centers are planned, but for now it is economically stalled.

     With all this going on it would seem that something as simple as a dock for dinghies would be a somewhat stable affair. It is not. Assembled from large snap together plastic pieces it looks deceptively friendly, like a Playskol product. We tied the dingy up and jumped onto the platform which is when the fun began.  The innocuous plastic dock held an unexpected surprise. The surge sent it slamming it into the rock wall it was tied to, knocking us off our feet. The only safe way to traverse it was on all fours, which none of us were willing to do. We simply could not have successfully sailed down the notoriously difficult Baja coast only to discover the most difficult passage turned out to be fifteen feet of plastic gangway. Big tough sailors cannot exactly walk into a local bar with their heads up after crawling up a kiddy dock. We had merely a moment of warning, when the surge tugged the dock away from the wall, to prepare for the next jolt, arms flailing, knees bent, as it careened into the rock wall. A rubber fender or a few old tires would easily cure the problem, but in a billion dollar development complete with a mile of tiny trains and scads of marble water features it must be have been considered an unnecessary expense to ensure the safety of transient sailors. The surge swept the dock away from the stairs making the leap too far to risk between them. Timing was everything. Missing the chance required bracing for impact, then waiting for the next wave to shove the dock toward the wall, altogether quite challenging for a toy dock.

     The steep stairway leading to the path to the restaurant must have been constructed by the decedents of ancient pyramid builders or they were an afterthought chipped randomly out of the vertical wall. I love Mexico, this would not be allowed north of the border and it was actually quite amusing after the initial near dunking when the dock first revealed its crafty little secret. The molded plastic ladder attached to the end of the dock, a modest convenience for the people who have been launched into the water, proudly displayed the logo “EZ Dock”, which is insultingly oriented toward the person climbing it soaking wet.        

     And for all the people who have been sending advice about lures and how to use them, here is our latest attempt. We are now anchored in clear enough water to actually see the fish smirking at us.