Early in the morning, before it became too hot, I went for a walk along the shore. I was looking for a way to get close to several structures we had seen from the water. I found a pile of cinderblocks right at the top of the berm with an abandoned dirt road leading straight inland. The road lead to what could have been a nice house up on a bluff. The foundation was cinderblocks and concrete, the house itself was wood frame with two large rooms and two closet sized rooms. The roof covered the rooms and extended in a wide porch all around the house. The roof still looked like it would shed water but the posts at the edge of the porch were rotting and getting pulled out by storm winds. Soon the roof will get blown off. The house had door and window frames with no trace that the doors and windows had ever been installed. The bluff that the structure was built on was eroded on one side by storm water flowing through the dry wash. This was a big dry wash that drained a third of Isla Tiburon and apparently someone had realized it would one day wash away the whole bluff, for they had started building a bulkhead of cinderblocks at the base of the bluff to prevent this. All of Isla Tiburon is a Biological Reserve now and cannot be developed. I wonder what the history of this place could be? Across a low spot in the bluff there was another house that had never had the outside shell put on. Just the wood frame standing open to the weather and looking worse for wear.
The dirt road that lead from the pile of cinderblocks to the house was straight and lined with rocks painted white. This road met up with another one that was “maintained” by driving a 4WD vehicle on it from time to time to keep the vegetation down. We had read in one of the cruising guides that there was a road between the building I called the “old resort” on the south side of the island and the Marine camp on the east side of the island. The guide said that they thought this road also went north to somewhere. The fresh looking tire tracks on this road seemed pretty good evidence that the road goes all the way to the north end of the island! Rather than re-trace my steps along the coast I followed this road and found that it was the same road we had seen passing behind our camp. I was a little concerned that the marines would come down this road sometime and hassle us, but fortunately they never did while we were camped here.
Don went fishing in the shallow water in front of our camp. He was able to walk out to a gravel point early in the day but as he fished the tide came in until he was standing on a small island which got smaller and smaller. We joked about having to call the Mexican Navy to come rescue him. When he returned he showed us his catch: Seven trigger fish! Don says he has found the trick to catching them. Most of the lures we brought were too big and the trigger fish were nibbling them to pieces. Don cut one of his rubber lures into small pieces and put these pieces right on the point of a hook so the fish had to take the hook to bite them. He tossed this small lure out and pulled it back quickly to incite an aggressive trigger fish to hit it on the way in.
Lucy showed some interest in learning how to fish so Don gave her some lessons. Unfortunately by the time they went back out to do this a wind had come up and rifled the water. The fish stopped biting and Lucy did not get very much practice. Don had been catching one fish almost every time he cast the line, Lucy only got one fish on the line in many tries and that one got away. I found watching Don give Lucy lessons much more fun than fishing itself!
I spent a lot of time sitting in the shade of the trees in our camp, taking notes for my journal and reading from my book. In the afternoon I went for a short walk to investigate an abandoned well a mile or less down the road. John Somers and Lucy had both reported finding this well on their hikes in the morning. Although I had plenty of fresh water to drink, I had an idea that required throwing fresh water away. Some of my clothes were pretty rank after living or sleeping in them for eight or nine days. I was afraid to wash them in salt water for fear that the salt would make them crusty, scratchy or damp from hydroscopically absorbed moisture. My plan was to scoop up a bucket of fresh water from this well and use that to wash my T-shirt, underpants and socks. After photographing the calm water in the bottom of the well, I dropped an aluminum bucket (cooling pot) into the water on the end of a 30 foot tow rope. Getting the bucket to turn over and gulp some water turned out to be very difficult. Finally I pulled up a few liters of water stained brown by years of desert seeds blowing into it. It smelled so strongly of sulfur that Don convinced me not to risk dunking my clothes in it.
I offered to filet all the fish that Don had caught. I have heard from Konstantin Gortinsky that there is a trick to easily cleaning these fish but I could not recall what it was. Several days ago when we had a few of these fish in tacos for dinner, John and I had taken turns trying to filet them. I had experimented and come up with a system I thought might be the trick. I have a serrated filleting knife that I can use to saw through the tough skin along side the dorsal fin. Once in, I slide the tip of the knife along the vertical spines, over the vertebrae and off the bottom of the fish, and then cut it off behind the gills. Doing this on both sides removes most of the flesh off the fish in two large pieces without ever having to gut it. Each side has a short row of bones in it which can be left behind on the skin as you slice the meat off the skin with a filleting trick I learned by watching John Barnett in Baja several years ago. That involves holding the skin on a flat cutting board and sliding the knife flat against the skin. This worked well enough for me, but when we returned home I asked Konstantin if I had figured out all the tricks. He says that there is another trick with trigger fish where you can knick them at the tail and then pull the skin completely off one side with a pair of pliers. Then filet the meat off the fish without gutting it.
I but large amounts of fish in the juice from four lemons with some minced onion to make ceviche for appetizers and for lunch the next day. There was still enough fish left over to feed us all when poached in a teriyaki sauce made from fried onions, soy sauce and sweet mirin wine. Lucy also cooked a batch of macaroni and cheese and made a salad so we had a huge feast for dinner.