Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Mexico: Cabo

Just like Mexico City, I had some preconceived notions about Cabo, the Mexican resort and tourist town at the Southern tip of the Baja Peninsula. My ideas about Cabo weren't really preconceived, rather I put no thought into what Cabo would be like since I had no part in planning our Mexico trip. The boy's parents pretty much handled everything. Thanks H and E!.

In my mind, resort town + warm climate + ocean = tropical paradise. Um . . . nope. Cabo is a hilly dessert landscape filled with sand, cacti, and dead scrub trees. You know, the Baja dessert. The irrigated resorts are tropical looking, though. I clearly put no thought into the vacation, but instead succumbed to the flow. It's what you have to do when traveling as a pack of nine.The ocean currents are too strong to swim on the Pacific side of the peninsula, which is where our resort was. And even on the Sea of Cortez side of the peninsula, the undertow and waves are pretty brutal. Step in above the ankle and your ass is going down. And mine did!

So, what you do in Cabo besides be an annoying American tourist mainlining alcohol and UV rays is go deep sea fishing. Supposedly Cabo is one of the best places to sport fish. So, we did it. And it was pretty awesome. Thanks, Uncle S for the experience!
Six of us loaded into a boat similar to the ones you see here docked at the marina around 7am and headed out to, fortunately, a calm and kind sea that day. It was about 6 or 7 hours of trolling around the seas waiting for a fish to bite. I felt really lame for falling asleep for most of the trip (everyone on our boat did), but, dang, fishing is the most boring sport EVAR! Except for when the fish are biting. Then it's crazy exciting!About one or two hours into our trip with no bites at all, the captain got a report of a school of Yellowfin Tuna, so we hightailed over to the happening location. Once there, the fish were biting non-stop, one fish right after the other. Even though we didn't catch any prize winners, those little guys are nothing but muscle, and take a bit of work to reel in.

Well, after an hour, we had caught the legal limit of tuna (3 per person, so, in our case, 18), then we switched up bait for Marlin and trolled for the next 3 hours or so without a single bite. I was feeling pretty lame about our luck, until we go back into the marina and found out that only 2 of the 7 boats from the outfitter we went out with caught any fish at all.
Back at the marina the fish get thrown straight off the boat into a bucket to be hauled off to an outdoor cleaning area right around the corner. Everyone comes to take a peak at your catch.
This was our haul of 18 Yellowfin Tuna. A couple of guys expertly cut four fillets out of each tuna at lightening speed. Seriously, in about 10 minutes they were done and we were ready to take our bags of tuna away with us.
There was a lot of wasted meat that we didn't get (guess they figure tourists only want fillets), but I didn't feel too bad about the waste because the locals took our remains and cut quite a bit of good meat off the fish.
We took four fillets (one fish) with us to a restaurant where they prepared a large plate of sashimi (pictured above) and a plate of carpaccio.
They grilled the rest and presented us with two huge platters — more than enough to feed eight people.

The rest of the fish was vacuum packed and frozen by the fishing outfitters, democratically divided amongst our group (I didn't get any because I don't eat fish), and came home with us in coolers. I say I didn't get any, but the boy got some because he does eat fish, so we have more than enough über-fresh, hand-caught tuna in our freezer as I write this.

In case it comes up as a question in comments as to how I could fish and not eat fish, the answer is that I have no problem with hunting and fishing as long as the animal is eaten and put to good use. After all that, how about some soy fajitas? Thanks to all the American tourists and their crazy demands, such a thing can be found in Cabo.
And don't forget to pick up a Day of the Dead Michael Jackson figurine to take back to the States!

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