Maybe you have heard that the Sea of Cortez is the home of Giant Squid. My wife told me about seeing this on National Geographic before I left on this trip. I dismissed it as lunacy. And here I now find myself right in the epicenter of Giant Squid world. Read below and see if I change my mind about these creatures.
We rode a dirt trail out of San Carlos one afternoon. The trail dumped us on this beach.
It was picture perfect. Sand dunes. Mountains. Pristine beach. Not a shred of garbage or litter. Nothing. Out of a story book with beauty. I walked this beach for about an hour picking up numerous seashells for my little girl. This beach was inside a cove of sorts. In the direction you look below, you can see a very small fishing village. There is also one on the other side of the cove.
Now, looking back in the other direction from this same spot is this little town. There is something strange about it, as it sits on a rock outcropping into the cove. Something is different about this place. There are lo power lines. No telephone poles. There is evidence of a windmill, of all things, and two water tanks sitting on roofs. No sign of activity of any kind is apparent.
We walk towards the village. The following two pictures are representative of the buildings in the town. None of the buildings have open windows. Notice that there are footprints in the sand, but there are no people around. No vehicles. Nothing at all.
After looking at these buildings, I ask Jim if he is game for going and trying to meet some of the locals. He says sure. Unfortunately, we leave the cameras back in the bikes. I would have given lots of money to get to record what happens next.
We begin walking up the beach towards the town. When we are about half way up the beach and into the town, a man and two children appear from a building. At first, it seems as if the man does not see or hear us.
I approach and offer greetings. What I see is a very very strange individual indeed. Long matted hair. Very dark skin. His eyes look off in two separate directions. Half his teeth are gone. He is slight, but sinewy. He is wearing a beautiful rosary. It is very obvious that there is some mental instability happening with him, probably Schizophrenia.
We begin talking about our tattoos, because he notices we have some. We show ours. He shows his. His tattoo is the name "Robert" in crude Olde English letters across his chest. I ask him if his name is Robert. He says "No, my name is Roberto". I ask where is the "O" in his tattoo. He replies simply "esta perdido", i.e. it is lost. We keep talking about tats and the conversation changes to the fact that all Jim's tats have animal themes.
On mention of this, Robert(o) tells us "There are many strange animals in this sea". I ask for details. He tells us that once he caught a fish with four eyes. I asked if all the eyes were on one side or if they were two and two. He said two and two. He told me that the whole town thought he was crazy, but when he showed them the fish, they no longer thought that.
We keep talking. He claims to be a fisherman. I say, oh yeah, how do you fish? He points to a 15-20 foot long rowboat and claims that boat as his fishing vessel. I ask him what he fishes for. He tells me "Calamares Gigantes". Giant Squid. No crap!
So I ask for details. And Robert(o) enters this sort of pantomimed acting out of a story where he catches a squid, fights it, and finally kills it by stabbing it in the head with a machete. He goes into great detail about the size of the suckers, the beak, and that sort of thing. I ask him how big it was. He says the body is bigger than a man, about 7 feet long, with tentacles 30 feet long. He told me the creature weighed about 100 kilos, or 225 pounds.
I am obviously suspicious, so I ask him about the method he uses to catch them. Robert(o) then proceeds to diagram in the sand a very detailed and logical device for distributing baits to lure the beasts. Then he says that they are caught at night. Baits are set, and bright lights are shone upon the baits to lure the creatures. In the end, he convinced me that his story was real. It may have been exaggerated a bit, but I do believe that this guy fishes for Giant Squid.
After the discussion, he invites us to his house, which is a camper sitting under a palapa on the point of the outcropping into the bay. At that point, he pulls out some Marijuana, and offers to smoke it up with us. We politely decline.
I ask him the name of the town. It is called La Manga Dos. Or La Manga "number two". I ask where is La Manga Una. He points across the cove. And then he announces that La Manga Tres is over in another direction., he explains. Imagine towns whose existence does not even justify unique original names. That is exactly where we were at the moment.
Robert(o) then begins this bizarre shadow boxing Tai Chi sort of thing. Eventually, he leaps up into the rafters of the palapa and rips off about 15 rapid fire pullups.
He then jumps down, scales down the face of the cliff without saying goodbye, and begins to swim straight out into the ocean off the point of the outcropping.
Very very bizarre. We decide to get on back.
As we walk down the only street of the town. We see absolutely no sign of life. No vehicles. No people. No tire tracks. No open windows or doors. Nothing. It is absolutely creepy, and the street is fully lined on both sides by buildings, each one battened down and chained.
At the end of the line of buildings, we hear this repetitive metallic banging begin. Sounds sort of like a blacksmith pounding on an anvil. Jim and I stop, look at one another, and decide we have no appetite to walk to the end of that street. The idea just gave us the creeps, so we ducked into an alley, and returned to our bikes.
Once on our bikes, we wasted no time going directly back to San Carlos. That was one of the creepiest experiences in my life.
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