Spring Break, Day 1: Bahia de Los Angeles

Things have been quiet at Chez Schaackmobile lately because I have been on the road. As many of you know, I can’t resist an invitation to join friends in their field work. This weakness has provided me with many travel opportunities and tons of fun over the years, so when I was invited to go collect rattlesnakes on desert islands in the Sea of Cortez, the answer, of course, was Yes! Lack of freshwater? No problem! Venomous snakes? Yes, please! Unpredictable ocean currents? There is nothing I love more!
Admittedly, our 4000-mile odyssey got off to a kind of rough start. The crew consisted of me, three snake aficionado biologists (Jesse Meik, Michelle Lawing, and Matt Ingrasci), and one dog. Michelle is a grad student at IU in Biology and Geology, and she and I were friends in Bloomington (she had come there from Arlington, and I was heading to Arlington, so she tried to prep me for it the best she could). She and Jesse have collaborated for years on various projects, and most recently have been working on body size evolution in rattlesnakes. Matt is Jesse’s roommate and loves herps (reptiles and amphibians, for those unfamiliar with the jargon) more than anything else in life, other than his dog. The goal of the trip was to go about halfway down the Baja peninsula and venture out to 3 islands (of the 120 that make up the archipelago in this sea) and catch Crotalus mitchelli—commonly known as speckled rattlesnakes. These snakes are found on lots of the islands and, interestingly, their size correlates with the area of the island on which they are found. Although they rattle when you get dangerously close, finding the snakes is not trivial. They are nocturnal, cryptic, venomous, and quick. My love of joining friends at their field sites has given me several opportunities to catch herps in the past (turtles and iguanas), but this was my first time snake hunting.
In order to get to the islands, you need a boat. On their last collecting trip, Jesse and Michelle had paid fishermen to take them to the islands, drop them off, and come back 1-3 days later to pick them up. Because we had four people (and the dog), lots more gear, a tight schedule, and a tight budget, Michelle had thought it might be more convenient if we had our own boat rather than paying fisherman for each individual trip-- so she bought one, on ebay. The boat she bought can most accurately be described as a glorified waverunner. It was about 14 ft. long, and it only cost $2500. In reality, it cost nothing at all because, even though the advertisement for it claimed the engine “worked great” and it ran perfectly on the lake “last weekend”, when she picked the boat up after purchasing it, it didn’t work at all. Thankfully, ebay’s buyer protection policy meant that she got to keep the boat, and got her money back. Of course fixing it then cost $3000, so the boat didn’t really cost nothing afterall, but she got the repairs done and hooked up the trailer to her Ford Taurus and drove 900 miles to Arlington to kick off the trip.
To transport the boat, the crew, the gear and the dog to Baja, we took two vehicles. Our rough start included probably about 6 stops at various Walmarts between here and the Mexican border in an attempt to try and find replacement trailer tires for those shredded by some combination of sun, low air pressure, and age in the first few hundred miles of our drive. I can't help but put in a shameless plug for PepBoys here, as it is the second time they have helped me out personally, for free, when in a pickle on the road.
Eventually, we got into Mexico, and made a late night push for Bahia de Los Angeles (BLA) in order to try and make up for lost time. BLA boasts "no banks, no doctors, and no ATMS" on a sign in town, but they have plenty of fish taco stands and provide the best home base for exploring these particular islands. By the next afternoon, we had permits in hand and decided to take the boat out for a test run to one of the islands, just to make sure it was sea worthy. We loaded up ourselves, the bare essentials for an afternoon on a desert island, and the dog and were able to travel at a mighty clip of about 10 mph out to Smith Island, the closest of the three to the peninsula. The waves were moderate that afternoon, but the boat is designed so that the passengers will get splashed, for fun. So even medium waves meant we were all soaked, and surprisingly cold, by the time we landed on the island. No matter! It's the desert, we were going to dry quickly. When we arrived, we dropped anchor in a small bay and unloaded everything on to the beach. We split up and set out, even though it was the middle of the afternoon and probably an unlikely time to find snakes. The island was gorgeous-- rocky slopes, winding gullies, a lagoon, dramatic intertidal zone-- all surrounded by perfectly clear, deep turquoise water, blue sky, and sunshine. After a few hours, we reconvened at the bay where we arrived and found the boat beached. No problem! We dislodged it, piled in, started the engine, heard a terrible sound, and headed out of the bay at a slow crawl, from which we never were able to break free. About an hour later-- again soaked (even while puttering, the spray over the bow was significant), we got to the beach where we had left our vehicles and dropped anchor. We unloaded Matt, Jesse, the dog, and the gear and Michelle and I set out to continue puttering towards town, where there was a boatramp where we would be able to get the boat out of the water and to a mechanic to find out what was wrong. It was dusk, and we were wet and cold, but double-wide optimism is not a property of the schaackmobile alone, and we figured we'd get to warm up in a few minutes when we got the boat out of the water.
So we puttered towards town, where we were going to meet Matt with his truck. About 20 minutes later, still far from our destination, but long after Matt had departed for it, the engine of the boat cut out and refused to restart. We were about 20 yards offshore, in about 5 feet of water, and I realized immediately that if we got any deeper, I wouldn't be able to touch, and we would have no control over where the boat was going. So I jumped in the water, Michelle threw me a rope, and I began to tow the boat manually down the coast towards town, but eagerly in search of a boat ramp closer by. The sun set.
At some point, Jesse realized it was strange that we had not made it to the boat ramp yet and came looking along the coast for us with the Taurus. He found us and we told him about the dead engine and the freezing our butts off. He went to try and find Matt (who had the trailer) while I played human anchor offshore. The tide was going out, so in order not to beach the boat, we had to stay further and further from shore. The stars came out.
Meanwhile, Matt had started to realize it was weird that we never arrived at the boat ramp and started cruising along the coast in search of us. At one point, he saw a boat in the water and flashed his headlights to see if it was us. We saw the lights, and thought-- Hurray! When we did not signal back (which we couldn't do with a broken boat and no flashlights), Matt decided it must not be us, and turned back towards town. One by one, houses turned off their lights.
Eventually, Jesse found Matt, and they found us, and we got the boat out of the water, and got dry and got warm. I asked the tipsy Californian who let us use their boat ramp (instead of towing it on foot the additional ~3km into town) who the best mechanic in BLA was and he said Pancho Verduga. So we were optimistic once again, and ready for day two.