No abre la boca o entran las moscas

In Bahía, a California weed farmer who’s mothers’ family was from my hometown, and two brothers of someone I went to high school with, also from my hometown. Seemingly crazy odds like this seem to happen quite often.

Stories about cartels, corrupt police. Neighbors dissapearing in the night. Drug running accross the Sea of Cortez from Sinaloa. They have a saying, “No abre la bica o entran las moscas” (Don’t open your mouth or the flies will come in).

Several days later down the coast, I was going for a swim when I heard some distant shouts. Two stumbling figures materialized at the opposite end of the beach. As they got closer I could hear “agua, agua!”. They were almost falling over as they tried to come down the beach. Andre and I brought them several liters of water and food, and they said they were fisherman who had been in a shipwreck, they had walked several days down the coast. The problem is, no fisherman wears pressed jeans and white sneakers.

They quickly refused any help from a sattelite rescue device. I went ahead and ran into some moto riders that picked them up and brought them to a fishing village (where Pancho lives).

But, they were great guys, and later a woman in the village cooked us all scrambled eggs and coffee.

In 1940 Steinbeck wrote about Bahía de Los Angeles in his novel “Log From the Sea of Cortez:

Perhaps we had been hearing too many rumors: it was said that many guns were being run over the border for the trouble that was generally expected during the election. The fishermen did not look like fishermen, and Mexicans and Americans were too interested in us until they discovered what we were doing and too uninterested after they had found out. Perhaps we imagined it, but we had a strong feeling of secrecy about the place.