When My Baby Smiles At Me I Go To The Rio

I was playing at a little restaurant on Alberni Street one night when this guy walks up to me and says,
“Hey man you sound really good. What are you doing for the next month?” I slowly looked at the ceiling as I wondered where this was going. “Nothing,” I said. “What do you have in mind?” He then proceeded to explain the scenario: They needed a third member of a trio that had been performing at a little bar in Cabo San Lucas called the Rio Bar & Grille. There was a keyboard player, a drummer/bass player and they needed someone to front the band. The more he explained the situation, the more I wanted to go to Mexico as I was long overdue for a trip somewhere and this sounded perfect. The only problem was that I had to leave in two days and understandably there were a few things I had to cancel and defer.

My passport was still in order as I ran around and packed my suitcase, and got everything else taken care of. I was quite nervous on the day before my flight, as I was supposed to pay for one way down there and would be reimbursed when I arrived. This was something I almost never did, as not having plane fare covered was often a sign of things to come. I threw caution to the wind and before I knew it, I was on my way to Cabo with my harmonicas, a guitar and a bass. I was asked to bring along a bass because the_bass player didn’t have one down there.

When I arrived at the airport I was met by the drummer of the band, a New Zealander. What I didn’t know at the time was that the keyboard player couldn’t find the money to come down, and I was now doing a duo with a drummer that was learning the bass out of necessity and had only just begun the journey. As soon as we loaded my bags into the van he owned to do his carpet installation business, we headed straight to a gig at a private estate on the road to San Jose. It was a windy and treacherous ride along the shoreline. Our estate was a trailer home that had been fashioned out of a summer cottage trailer and slowly turned into a small mansion by adding section-by-section and continuing to improve the grounds. In this country, labour is cheap and wonderful grounds evolve from the feeling of obligation to keep locals employed.

We acquired a Mexican drummer from somewhere and before long the three of us were set up in front of the ocean and were playing between two palm trees. I will never forget how strange it was to unexpectedly leave the rain of a Vancouver winter and find myself standing in front of huge beer coolers of ice brimming with 8-inch mini-bottles of Corona and Pacifica beer. I called many of my easier songs not knowing the rest of the players and noticed that everything started to sound the same. The drummer was a one trick pony and the bass player seemed to be running after a train. This turned out to be something I was never very comfortable with as I am used to _a very high caliber of musician. We played for the party and the people loved the music and generally enjoyed themselves.

We drove back to Cabo San Lucas and went to the Rio Bar & Grille where I would spend the next five weeks performing every happy hour and evening under the stars as there was no roof. _Without the keyboard player or drummer in Cabo, I had to try and figure out how to access the drums that existed somewhere inside the keyboard. There was no manual, so I spent many hours poking buttons and trying to figure out the architecture of this Japanese equivalent to the Rubik’s Cube. I finally was able to get the monster to play three simple beats and I revised all my songs to fit into one of the three. I had one more sound that was the thump of the bass drum only, which funny enough, was used more often than not. We called ourselves Dos Heuvos, which means “two eggs” in Spanish.

The accommodations were in a round hut high on the hill overlooking the whole town. The bass player had his own house where he lived with his girlfriend, and I had the tiny apartment to myself with a half-circle of windows offering a view of the whole town. There was a bed and a writing table and a great porch where I spent a lot of time practicing my guitar. The people next door to me had been hired to look after a boat owned by a rich businessman from San Diego. His marlin fishing boat sat waiting in Cabo for his occasional trip down with clients and friends.

My neighbors were the crew/caretakers of the boat and although I never got to go on it, over the five weeks that I was there, I sampled almost every kind of local fish that was available, as they always shared the spoils of their day’s catch. We had some great fish fries on the deck between our two buildings. Because I had to perform the happy hour and then return again to play well into the night, I could never stay too long.

Many people come to Cabo, San Lucas to enjoy a brief holiday with friends. They lie on the beach by day and visit the clubs and restaurants by night. As the weeks passed I started noticing that some of the locals had stories in their past that would make Desperate Housewives look like Bambi. The one rule about the place that you learned quickly was not to ask where people came from or how they ended up in Cabo. I saw more than one local get up and walk away from too many questions being asked in a conversation. There were many that could never go back home and after a while, I heard stories about some of the most seasoned characters the frequented the Rio Bar & Grille.

We had a 2-for-1 happy hour every day, and before the band started every afternoon we would clink our gold tequila glasses together and toast another day in paradise and down a shot of some very smooth tequila kept behind the bar for us. As the weeks went by we built up the business so that soon we were the happening happy hour in town, which made our bosses happy. Our bosses, by the way, were five girls from Boston, who after much cajoling to mom and dad, opened a bar in Cabo with the help of their Mexican boyfriends.

Nothing is accomplished without the help of locals that know the lay of the land in matters of permits and such. One Saturday, all the staff decided to take a boat trip out on the ocean. I was there working on some gear problem when a man walked in carrying a clipboard and a briefcase. He spoke English and demanded to see the manager and owner. I told him that I didn’t know where they were but assumed they would be back soon. He said that the restaurant hadn’t paid their business license and he was going to shut the restaurant down if the license was not produced. He then proceeded to take a strong wide tape out of his briefcase tape up all the beer fridges so they could not be opened for Saturday night, the busiest night of the week. After a while one of the sisters showed up and tried to reason with the inspector. He stood firm and would not budge and by this time all the coolers had been sealed. She took him into the back room where some kind of deal was agreed upon. After paying the man off with an undisclosed amount, he took all the locks off the coolers and proceeded on his way.

When the gang got back from the boat trip, the story was relayed to the manager who went into the office and produced all the permits fully paid and up-to-date. A call made to the city permit office revealed that the inspector had never worked for the city permit department and the whole thing was a scam. Perhaps it might have been overheard in conversation that everyone was leaving for the day. The inspector may have offered with $40 or $50 for his trouble but that would have been more than a week’s wages for most people there.

One afternoon as we got off the stage we were invited to sit with a man sitting alone, who introduced himself as Dean and bought us a drink. We sat down and had a friendly conversation where Dean explained that he was down on a holiday from San Diego doing some marlin fishing on his boat, and that his wife would rather read a book on the beach than go out on the boat with all those crazies out there. I didn’t have a clue what his wife was referring to but we were soon to find out as the man invited us to go fishing on his boat the next morning.

For those of us who had never experienced marlin fishing, I will try to describe the phenomena: First off, everything about it is expensive. The reels used to hold the hundreds of yards of line are huge and can cost $5000 a piece. This particular boat was 36 feet long with a high deck for scanning the horizon. On the rear of the boat in the center of the main deck sat a massive white padded chair, similar to an old fashioned barber’s chair. It had big footrests to push against when the person playing the marlin has his fish on. First however, one has to find the marlin and so we stopped the engines and waited in silence, scanning the horizon in all directions with binoculars. On a typical day, twenty miles or so off the coast of Cabo San Lucas, will sit 50 to 100 boats spread over a square ten miles by ten miles. All the boats watch each other waiting for the right moment. The moment comes when whoever spots the marlin school takes off like a maniac as fast as they can go and starts to chase the school. What the other boats are patiently waiting for is the telltale puff of black smoke that comes from a boat engine being gunned to the max. As soon as the smoke is noticed, the entire group of boats race towards it and the madness begins.

We were fortunate in being quite close to the sighting boat and we tore after it as fast as we could. On the way to the fishing grounds, Dean had briefed us in advance what to do next so we readied ourselves for the hunt. On the end of two attractor rods that we attached to each side of the stern of the boat, was a wooden plug that looked like six inches of carved salami with two huge eyes on it painted red and yellow, with plastic tassels along the sides. It had a huge hook at the back of it and I was told that one plug cold cost around $90. The front contour of this monster lure was designed in a way that the plug would dive deep under the water and then return to the surface, only to grab air bubbles from the surface and carry them down under water mimicking a school of fish. The boats would be trolling very fast towing these plugs.

Very soon there were 30 or so boats doing the same fast troll in a close area around the school. I think a good deal of the appeal of the sport is the excitement of the evasive driving with these huge fast boats during the trolling. After about 20 minutes the marlin school disappeared without a strike. We wound in our lines, and motored off to another quiet spot on the sea to watch.

On the next smoke sighting we had more luck and soon after our plugs were in the water we had a hit. Now the beak of a marlin is almost all bone so even after hitting a plug in the water, the hook will easily break free and the marlin will escape. This is when the live bait is used and the bait carp are hooked through the front of the nose and quickly thrown overboard one on each side. We continued to troll with the baitfish skimming the top of the water and then WHAM! The bait line got a hit from a marlin and I was instructed to sit in the chair to be strapped in. Dean handed me the huge rod and reel and I heard the “vzzzzzzzzzzz” as the line left the boat to follow the escaping fish. I was instructed to let it go and not try to reel in until the fish had had a chance to leave the area around our boat and settle down a bit. I was only to keep constant tension on the fish.

The engines of our boat now stopped and Dean ran a fish on a flag up the flagpole. When the other boats around us saw this flag hoisted they courteously moved out our area to let us have enough room to play our fish. It was now quiet around us except for the sound of the marlin breaking the surface and becoming airborne 200 yards off the stern of the boat—an amazing sight! The adrenalin was rushing through my body as I now started the long process of reeling in the fish. Heaving the rod towards me with all my might and then quickly winding as I dipped the heavy rod down towards the water again would sometimes only yield one or two turns of the highly geared reel.

Sometimes the line would disappear into the water to my left and I would watch this spot, only to see the marlin breach the water far in the distance to my right. After about an hour, I managed to wind the marlin to within about 20 yards of the boat. With one look at the boat, vzzzzzzz, my rod started to whine with all my carefully wound line flying out again. It took an hour and 45 minutes to finally land the beautiful thing before I could say anything. Dean’s wooden club ended the life of this beautiful animal. At that time it was the custom of the local fishing guides to donate the catch of the day to the locals of the village if it was not taken home or stuffed.

On the return to shore I kept looking at the fish and feeling sadness in the pit of my stomach. The joy of the day had been tarnished. After having my tourist photo taken with my 127 pound marlin, the fish was given up to be shared with the poor. I felt a bit better about this. I have since heard that you cannot keep any marlin in the area of Cabo San Lucas. I hope this law was instigated before the depletion of the species in the area.

That night I could hardly hold up my arms to play the guitar. Like a prizefighter that had just boxed 15 rounds there was trouble even lift them. One of the sisters Maria, who had been travelling with her boyfriend arrived back at the restaurant and decided to do some spring-cleaning of the storeroom, which had become appallingly cluttered in her absence. She did this on a whim late at night when no one was in the place.

The next day at 4:30 when we arrived to collect our box of paraphernalia that we stored nightly in the storage room, we couldn’t find it anywhere. We tore the room apart and before long everyone was helping to look and noticing that everything have been moved around in the room. When Maria was located she proudly announced that all the junk in the room had been cleaned out and taken to the dump to be burned. Tires squealed in the parking lot as the manager and his girlfriend raced off to try and find our equipment. When they returned the manager held up my microphone that had melted in the fire and looked liked an ice cream cone with the ice cream ball melted half way down the cone. We lost everything: cords, mics, harmonicas, tuners, picks, everything. So there I was in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico with two weeks to go before I cold fly home on my return ticket.

We scoured the town for any kind of microphone from a ghetto blaster or old fashioned tape recorder that we could jerry rig to work for us. The closest music store was in La Pas many hours away. The days that followed were a bit of an anti climax as it is always frustrating for a cook of any discipline to try and conduct his or her business without the proper tools to do the job. We ended up with one microphone salvaged from an old plane with the talk button taped down. We had to revamp almost all the songs with harmonica to the key of G as I only had one harmonica left and used modified swizzle sticks for guitar picks.

It was hard to get used to this new equipment but we dutifully finished the two weeks said our goodbyes and before I knew it I was sitting on a plane heading back to a rainy winter day in Vancouver. I looked out the window and couldn’t stop shaking my head and smiling at the rampant abandon that constitutes the norm in Mexico.

Viva Dos Heavos!