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Spontaneous Consumption
http://www.outsideonline.com/fitness/Spontaneous-Consumption...
Bahěa Magdalena was to be merely a pit stop. Then he met Paloma, Queen of Ceviche.
By Randy Wayne White
Outside magazine
September, 1997
It was Paloma Magallanes, a spirited but untraveled grandmother, who unwittingly convinced me to spend a week in a tiny seaside village in Baja that
I'd never heard of and certainly never planned to visit. I stayed only because the woman possessed a great gift that cast an ungodly spell on me.
Fellow Third World sojourners will appreciate the reason: good food and lots of it.
Paloma is waitress, head cook, and owner of the tiny Restaurante El Faro in Puerto Adolfo Lopez Mateos, a town of dusty streets, sleepy chickens, and
wandering dogs on Baja's Pacific coast. El Faro is a pleasant open-air bistro with a dirt courtyard and six Formica-topped tables. There's a plywood
ceiling and a bright seascape hand-painted on the front window. Off to one side, Paloma has arranged four old mismatched recliners, to facilitate
digestion.
Even with its few tables, El Faro's seating capacity seems optimistic when you consider the fact that the village of Puerto Adolfo Lopez Mateos has
fewer than a hundred souls and isn't even shown on most maps. In a country weary of injustice, Mexico's geographers perhaps decided it was unfair that
a settlement so small should have a name that took up so much space and required so much labor.
To find Puerto Adolfo Lopez Mateos (whose name locals have efficiently shortened to "Lopez Mateos"), follow the Pacific coast of Baja south about
three-fourths of the way down until the barrier island of Isla Magdalena swoops dramatically westward. The land shift is so abrupt that it's as if, in
some long-gone geological epic, the island attempted to sneak away from its desert host but failed. Look inland and you'll see an estuary — Bahěa
Magdalena, or Mag Bay, as it's known to gringos. Lopez Mateos is to the north, where the barrier island squeezes close to the mainland. If you arrive
by boat, you'll see the bare dunes of Isla Magdalena and then a large factory of blue and beige corrugated metal. The complex is fenced, and there are
guards at the gate. This is the Mareden fish cannery, the village's only employer and one of two sources of income — the other being the tourists who
come each spring to watch the annual migration of gray whales through Magdalena Bay. Lopez Mateos is, in short, a company town. Every morning, a steam
whistle awakens the citizenry at six and calls employees to work at ten till seven. Ten hours later, the whistle sends the workers home again.
Late one morning my friend Galen Hanselman and I were walking east past the cannery, heading toward the white church at the center of town, when we
stumbled into Paloma's restaurant. We'd been flying all over Baja in Galen's Cessna 182, and we'd originally just planned to make a pit stop here in
Lopez Mateos — thinking, instead, that we'd spend the night a little farther south along the bay, in a place called San Carlos (an uninteresting
tourist town, it turned out). But our plan began to cave in as soon as we sat at one of the little Formica tables. We could have sat anywhere — we
were the only living creatures in the place except for a dog lying beside one of the chairs. Eventually, a chunky Mexican woman approached. She had a
flat, handsome face with vaguely Gaelic features, and she walked with the swagger of a trail hand.
Had we come for a meal?
Yes, we told her, a light lunch perhaps. She nodded with the kind of approval that one associates with grandmothers who like to see people eat. We
expected her to return with menus. Instead, she returned wiping ice from three bottles of Pacifico Clara beer and carrying a very large ceramic bowl.
One of the bottles was for herself. She toasted: "To the good life!"
In the bowl was ceviche: chunks of raw fish, onions, varieties of peppers and tomatoes, all soaked in lime juice. Ceviche, made properly and served
fresh, is one of the great concoctions of the world, the bouillabaisse of the tropics. But even in the best restaurants ceviche is usually a
disappointment, if not downright dangerous.
Galen dipped a spoon into the bowl and tasted experimentally. He looked at me and dipped the spoon again. "Hey!" he said. He began to scoop the
ceviche onto his plate. "You're not going to believe this stuff," he said. "It's really good."
No, it was great. Maybe the best ceviche I'd ever had.
Next Paloma brought salad, tortillas, and a bowl of frijoles. "My God," Galen said. "These beans! Have you tried the beans?"
Keep in mind that we'd been flying all over Baja, a great peninsula in a great nation where people really know how to make beans. But truly, Paloma's
beans were the beans of an artist.
Then she brought out a platter of grilled fish. It was corvina, a genus common in coastal Mexico and closely related to the weakfish of the Atlantic
Seaboard. It's a nice fish to eat, very mild-tasting, but not particularly firm. Yet somehow Paloma's artistry transcended the frailties of the
species.
Galen and I sat there feasting, and Paloma kept bringing food. We hadn't ordered; there were no menus. But we'd come for a meal, and that's what the
woman was serving us. As we ate, she'd sometimes swing into a chair at our table and talk. Had we come in the small plane that recently landed? Yes,
we'd come in the small plane — which seemed to either interest her or impress her, I couldn't tell which. Did we like the food? Yes, we loved the food
— which made her grin. We were very lucky to have this fish, she said. It was the last she had. "I buy only fresh fish!" she said. "The fishermen know
that I'm very fussy!"
As we ate dessert (papaya with lime juice and sliced wild oranges), I noticed Galen glancing at his watch. "I guess we have to get going, huh?" I
said.
"Yeah, I guess so," he said. He was drumming his fingers on the table. "But, my God, that was really some meal."
"The best."
"Extraordinary."
"Really extraordinary."
I wondered if Galen was contemplating the same thing I was. "When you think about it," I said, "discovering great food on the road, food this good, is
a rare thing indeed."
He was nodding his head. "Can you imagine what it would be like to eat dinner here?" You bet I could imagine it. Dinner, breakfast too, and maybe
lunch again. The only problem was, Paloma really was out of fish.
No problem. On Hanselman's plane I had stowed a 15-horsepower Mercury outboard motor and a beautiful little Avon Inflatable boat. And as I've already
explained, the village of Puerto Adolfo Lopez Mateos is on Magdalena Bay, a place teeming with fish.
Bahia Magdalena is formed by a 130-mile-long string of sand barrier islands that are separated by deep water cuts or passes (bocas, they are called),
which allow ingress from the Pacific and which have made the bay a favorite harbor on this isolated coast. Its history is not unlike the history of
all wild anchorages that are rich in resources except for one: fresh water. Although indigenous people lived here off and on since before the time of
Christ, they were necessarily migratory. In the late 1800s, a U.S. land company settled 5,000 Americans on the bay, but the colony failed. It wasn't
until the late 1930s, when deep wells were sunk, that the region slowly began to acquire a permanent populace.
Mag Bay's backwater littoral remains pristine, wind-cropped, wild with light, and seldom traveled. There's a good reason for this: It's extremely
shallow, sometimes just a couple of feet deep, a fact that poses serious access problems and makes it a perfect place for sea kayaks and fast little
inflatables like the Avon.
I tried to explain all this to Galen; the man is brilliant when it comes to aviation, but he's from Idaho, for God's sake, and knows nothing about the
sea. I told him, "Visit any of the remote estuaries in the world, and the problem is always access. It's frustrating. All the fish you could ever want
to catch, great birding and exploring, but you can't get on the water. This little Avon changes all that. We can go anyplace."
Galen was dubious. All week long, the wind had blown a steady 20 knots but on this cloudy afternoon had freshened to 25. The bay had a menacing arctic
glow about it. Still, we were headed for the mangrove estuaries, not the open sea. And we were prepared. We'd packed several gallons of water,
flashlights, military-issue MREs, and paddles.
Besides, we were on a mission: The Restaurante El Faro needed fish. We weren't just fishermen; we were providers. True, we mostly wanted to provide
for ourselves, but the mandate was compelling even if the intent was selfish. Anglers and travelers must be allowed our small dishonesties.
I indulged in a second dishonesty. I'd read here and there that one of my favorite gamefish, the snook, also known as robalo, could possibly be caught
in Magdalena Bay. None of the writers, however, claimed to have caught one, nor did they claim to know anyone who had. Indeed, the tone of the
articles treated the snook like a shadowy creature of Baja legend. Well I, for one, wanted to prove that snook could indeed be caught in Mag Bay.
That afternoon we headed out in the Avon, crashing through waves. We went north along the mainland shore until I found a mangrove point where there
was an interesting confluence of tidal rips. It looked like a good place to fish.
My first cast — boom. I played and landed a big corvina. Second cast — boom. I played and landed a California halibut that had to weigh ten pounds. A
few casts later, I got a nice sea bass.
Galen didn't try to hide his surprise. "You actually caught something!" He hustled toward the boat to get his rod.
Back in the village, Galen and I drew a crowd as we walked through the streets shouldering the weight of a stringer full of fish. In the evening,
lounging in one of the big mismatched recliners after one of the finest dinners I've ever had, I said to Galen, "You know, we can leave tomorrow, but
I'd bet anything there are snook on that point. I'd hate to fly out without proving it." I proceeded to give a detailed explanation of tides and
habitat to prove that my claim had merit.
He not only accepted this fiction; he embraced it. "Snook, damn right," he said. "They've got to be there. We should stay."
We did. For several days. We ate, we fished, we slept, and then we ate and fished some more — though we never saw a single snook. In the evenings,
Galen and I would roam the streets, listening to the music emanating from the white church, conversing with the local fishermen at the docks. They
claimed they often caught robalo. We never saw one among the piles of fish they did catch, but they were good stories to hear as we stood among the
mud and small boats drinking beer with them.
We'd rented a cheap room at a boarding house, but the restaurant was our real home. We stopped there three or four times a day. At each meal, Paloma,
brilliant Paloma, who had achieved an expanded artistry in this small, small place, swaggered about, bringing us more of this, more of that. She spent
more and more time sitting at our table asking us about places we'd been, places we were going, and she seemed particularly interested in Galen's
Cessna. "Many men in this village would be afraid to leave the ground in a plane," she boasted. "But not me! I would never be afraid!"
It finally dawned on us. "She wants to go for a ride," Galen said.
So on our last morning in Puerto Adolfo Lopez Mateos, we escorted Paloma Magallanes of the Restaurante El Faro through dusty streets to the landing
strip. It was early. The steam whistle had just called villagers to work at the Mareden cannery, but Paloma ignored their stares with a regal
indifference.
It was no wonder that they stared. Despite the intense morning heat, Paloma wore a long dress, a cape, jewelry, make-up, and a furry hat that came
down over her ears. Also, the sand apparently made it difficult to walk in high heels.
When I told her that she looked as if she were going to a party, this normally talkative woman didn't reply. Indeed, she said nothing until we were
banking over the emptiness of Magdalena Bay. It was then that she finally braved her first peek out the window, touched her face with trembling
fingers, and smiled.
There was no swagger in her smile, only a trace of wistfulness. For the first time, she looked down on the little swatch of bleached sand and
turquoise sea that had defined her entire life. "It's something I always wanted to do," she said. "I always wanted to know what it feels like, just
once, to fly away."
--
Randy Wayne White is a New York Times best selling author whose novel, Sanibel Flats, was chosen by the American Independent Mystery Booksellers
Association as one of the Hundred Favorite Mysteries of the 20th Century, and he was named a “Florida Literary Legend” in 2011 by the Florida
Heritage Book Festival. Randy’s novels featuring marine biologist Doc Ford and quirky pal, Tomlinson, have enjoyed a growing cult following since the
first book appeared in 1990. For more information on Randy, visit:
http://www.randywaynewhite.com
Galen Hanselman is author of the book Air Baja! A Pilot's Guide to the Forgotten Peninsula:
http://www.flyidaho.com
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jbcoug
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Registered: 9-24-2006
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Wonderful story,very enjoyable!
John
\"The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.\" Andy Rooney
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LancairDriver
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Great read! The authors traveling companion Galen Hanselman, has a very entertaining humorous writing style, evident in his "Flying Baja" book. It
would be nice for him to upgrade the book, as there have been a lot of changes since it was published.(most not for the better) Probably only a small
percentage of the airstrips he wrote about still open today.
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ncampion
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One of my favorite authors. Great storyteller, didn't know he wrote about areas outside of Florida.
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bill erhardt
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Great story!
I just ordered up Everglades on Kindle.
And, yes, there are robalo in the estero at Lopez Mateos.
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oladulce
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Registered: 5-30-2005
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Nice!
And for those long stretches of desert driving, Randy Wayne White's audiobooks are some of my favorite.
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