Coyotes, Lobsters, and a Surfer Named Steve (part 5)

Then a little more singing that night when I tell Toke how his name is pronounced in English and what it means. He’s delighted. Then I tell him about the song, “One Toke Over the Line . . .” and the meaning. He loves it. Steve then sings a couple of verses of the song — beautifully: “One toke over the line, sweet Jesus, one toke over the line . . .” He’s a real musician. I’m impressed.

ne night at the surf camp, “says Steve around the campfire, “We had a guy who it turns out was a diabetic, go into insulin shock. (He didn’t tell me about his condition, thanks a lot!) Here we are, it’s dark out, we have unreliable radio contact with shore, we can’t get off the island by boat at night . . . ”

“It turns out the guy’s buddy is a doctor. ‘We’ve got to get sugar into him,’ the doc says, ‘or he’ll die.’”

“We get a pot and mix up a batch of tang and water with lots of sugar. We get a turkey baster. He’s out cold, clenching his teeth together. We can’t get him to open his mouth so finally one of the surfers grabs one of his nipples and twists. His mouth comes open and we pour down the sugar. He spits it out. We get more in.”

“We worked for over 3 hours on him and I’m talking on the radio to a helicopter rescue team on shore, and I’m just about to tell them to come for him and the doctor says, “I think he’s coming around.”

“He came out of the shock, sat up, didn’t know where he’d been, and went to sleep for the night.”

“The next morning he bounced up, a lotta energy. He was wired on sugar, and grabbed his board and went surfing!”

In the morning sun after breakfast, we’re sitting on the sand talking. Stine says, “My father has had (pause) LOTS of wives.”

“How many? I ask.

She laughs. “Well, actually five wives, but also lots of girlfriends.”

“Jeez!”

“Actually, they all get along well together, they’re all good friends,” she tells us. “They all have a party each Christmas and the women get together and talk about my father’s faults.”

“He loves it!”

round noon on Friday we head back across the bay. We pull into the beach just below Steve’s house and unload. Steve is going to eat well, as one of the fishermen gave hin 8 small lobsters. We hang out there for a while, looking at surf photos, talking to Steve and Olga, playing with the happy little girl. Steve shows everyone the Shelter book.

“How did you meet your wife,” asks Toke.

Steve met Olga some time ago at the local disco. “We were friends for a long time,” he says,” and when we got together, she loved me, you know, not for being a novelty (which I am out here), but for the real me. We lived together for a while, and then we got married . . .”

In the Mexican tradition, the grandparents live with them. Grandma is a great baby-sitter. Every Sunday Olga’s brothers show up and the family has a barbecue. Main courses are local: lobsters, oysters, scallops, clams, abalone, dorado, rock fish . . . . Then music.

Toke and Stine are going to La Paz, where I’m heading that day. They pile into the truck and we have a good, if crowded, 3-hour trip, talking a lot for the first hour or so. Stine gets going on coyotes again: “Are they like dingos? What color are their eyes?” Toke loves surfer words so I go through some surfer lexicon: gnarly, takeoff, wipeout, glassy, dropping in, cutback, get air, hang five, etc. Then we lapse into a comfortable silence and roll on through the desert countryside.

I drop them off at the Hotel Yeneka, a very funky, very charming and wacky place. The owner is a collector and the walls of the place (and its restaurant) are covered with rusty old tools, artifacts, a huge rattlesnake skin, objects of every description. There’s a rusty vintage 1920’s Ford truck in the patio. It’s like a slightly seedy but expatriate artistic refuge in a decaying tropical port. In the patio, high in a tree, for years, there was a monkey on a leash.

“He died on December 26th this year,” Steve had told me earlier that day. “I went outside the house that morning and the windshield wipers were frozen. And that’s the day the monkey died.” (It never gets that cold down there.)

I hug my new friends, wish them well, and head south. By the time I get to my favorite camping spot, out on the east coast of Los Cabos, it’s 1:30 A.M. I slip the Toyota into 4-wheel drive and head out on the sand, put up the tent and go to sleep looking up at the stars and out at the waves.

he next morning I go visit Jeannie, Kenny & Erica, Bolinas friends, in their hideouts. On the way back to San Jose I see a genuine Greyhound bus parked in a beach arroyo. It’s Calvin MacKenzie and his wife Leanne, from British Columbia. He’s a mechanic, so can fix the motor. It looks in great shape. A spiffy roll-out tarp. The sign in front says “St. Louis Express,” and there’s a roll above the windshield with major U.S. big-city names.


$40,000 rolling home Calvin and LeAnne Mackenzie from Kamloops, British Columbia, and their ’50s Greyhound bus home, in a beach arroyo east of San José del Cabo.	© Lloyd Kahn, 1999

“It’s unreal, it’s so tough,” says Calvin. “Plus it rides on air bags. No springs.” He has about $40K invested in the bus. It’s immaculate inside, linoleum floors, formica counters. “I haven’t even swept this morning,” LeAnne tells me.

In San José, I visit with Peter Kohlsaat, artist, fisherman, explorer. We drink Wild Turkey and look at pictures of his 3-week trip coming down to Baja from Duluth, Minnesota. Peter chronicles his adventures in Baja with drawings, photos, and great stories. He travels with his dog Zelda, and at times, various Mexican compatriots, in the funkiest of vans, all the better to conceal his $6K worth of computer communication equipment. He spends 3–4 months in Baja each year, skin diving for dinner, riding a mountain bike, travelling, and (actually) — working!


$400 rolling home Travelling artist/fisherman Peter Kohlsaat’s mobile communications vehicle gets driven every year from Duluth, Minnesota to Baja California Sur. Check him out at http://www.northwired.com/kohlsaat/index.htm.	© Lloyd Kahn, 1999

He’s a syndicated cartoonist with the LA Times and emails his cartoons in from wherever he happens to be in the world. Great gig! Lately he’s been posting stories on his Mexican adventures on his website. He goes into obscure towns and has to talk a public phone office into letting him plug into his modem. Great stuff! Check him out at http://www.northwired.com/kohlsaat/index.htm.

On Sunday morning, Cesar, 16-year old son of my friend Chilón, gives me a ride to the airport. On the way we stop off for some great birria de chivo (goat soup) and fresh corn tortillas. I get on the plane and in 3 hours am back in the grey rainy Bay Area and the storms of the century, but recharged with the warm sun and the blue skies of Baja. Viva México!